Time to Disco

Just got news on another paper acceptance, which takes this week's up to three -- Two papers in GPC 2011, and one in Policy 2011. I figured it's time for some music :).

Speaking of that, here is a playlist (following the success of my item-song playlist earlier) of Bollywood Disco Songs.

For inclusion, the conditions are:

• The song should be in a Bollywood-produced movie [no Hollywood, Kollywood, or any other]
• The song should not be a remix
• The word "disco" should be in the title [on in the main chorus] of the song.

So here is the playlist [also at http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=DE29FABDE56E1EDE ]



As always, suggestions from you will be most appreciated :).

cheers,
-A

Good Times

Yesterday was a good day by most counts.

First, the France telecom guys showed up (after their crazy SMS to me two days ago that they will come on the 9th of November at 00:00hrs!).

Turns out that the wire was disconnected in the circuit box outside my apartment. They attached it, and my Internet works! :)

The Second (and perhaps the biggest) piece of news was that my journal paper to the IEEE Transactions on Computers, which was under minor revision, has finally been accepted without any more changes. Now just a week more to upload all the files, and it will be done :).

Thirdly, I realized that neuf now allows free phone calls (using the VoIP phone that comes as part of my DSL plan) to INDIAN LANDLINES also!

Fourthly, I finally installed 64-bit Ubuntu Linux on my new desktop, (pre-assembly picture here) and can properly use its 4GB of RAM and 500GB Harddrive. And yes, portal is running well on it :). See screenshot below.



And the final good news came last night, when I realized that the free channels that come with my IPTV (again, part of my DSL plan), include Zee Music! Finally, auto-playing new bollywood video songs in the background :).

Life, in short, is good.

-A
P.S. Tonight is nuit blanche, and I will be meeting Barman and Dalal from my ITBHU days. More good times :)

A week of personal good news

This past week, I must say, will count as one of the most packed-with-good-news in recent memory, for the sheer _number_ of good things that happened. Here they are:

1. My toolkit, Srijan, which can be used to graphically and quickly design sensor network applications, finally started working again, after some long-pending bugfixes. [videos here]

2. I was invited to be a part of the technical program committee of the established SECON 2009 conference.

3. The paper based on the last part of my PhD research was accepted [with minor revision] in the IEEE Transactions on Computers, one of the biggest journals in the area!

and last but not the least

4. Never Forget has gotten off to a good start in its first week since its announcement. From visitors, and enthusiastic, action-oriented sign-ups, to getting responses from iPhones of elected representatives, it has been good.

But the work, in all the 4 items above, is far from over. Here's to more work-and-good-news-filled weeks!

-A
P.S. Sadly, the week was not great for everyone, Leesa had a brush with danger, and of course, the Mangalore lets-beat-girls-who-drink-alcohol craziness happened. More about those coming later.

Paper, Poster, and Tricolor

The past couple of days were spent in Santa Fe, NM, at DCOSS - a premier conference in sensor networks, my research area. Apart from presenting my paper and poster, I was also here to help my advisor in organizing the conference.

The talk took 20 minutes [the presentation had gone through some 5 revisions in the process], and at the end of it, to my horror, noone asked a question! Obviously, I had failed to connect with the audience. Then the session chair, who is bound by duty to ask a question if the speaker gets none, asked me one I answered it, and suddenly, 5 hands went up in the audience! I was like, where the hell were you guys before?!

Anyways, I answered the questions, and proceeded downstairs for my demo. To my pleasant surprise, both the keynote speakers, Richard Karp and P. R. Kumar, both very big guys in the area, spent some time at my poster/demo, and seemed interested in my work :).

My advisor was also pleased with my performance, and so I figured that it was a good time to talk about my future plans - that of going back to ITBHU as a faculty member.

Once again, surprisingly, he was not the least bit concerned with the "why are you missing out on golden opportunities in the states" argument that I have been given so often by others who know of my plans. He was very supportive, and seemed to appreciate the idea :). The only requirement - do lots of research before you graduate! But hey, isn't that what a PhD is all about?

So, in summary, things are looking up, and tons of more work needs to be done, but I am excited!

-A
P.S. I visited Los Alamos last night and met Zack. We went for a hike, got some freshly made pizza with his girlfriend, and saw "The Matrix" on his home projector. Good times!