3D graphics Programming using an API - some thoughts

I was the chief resource person for a one day session organized by Kerala Microsoft User Group and Microsoft msdn academic program at Kadayirippu,Kolenchery. The url for the event can be retrieved from http://k-mug.org/content/FT250409.aspx

I had prepared some example programs for the event using WPF 3d graphics API. While returning from aluva to trivandrum , i flipped through the pages of the Charles Petzold's 3D graphics programming under windows book. Being a seasoned veteran of Graphics API , i found
WPF 3D is yet anoteher Scene graph API. The One which i have come across in the past include
Java3D, HOOPS from TechSoft America , HEIDI from Autodesk , OpenScene Graph , OGRE , Open Inventor, and custom display lists over OpenGL and Direct3D to name a few. I was thinking about how one can shorten the learning curve while switching the APIs. All the APIs are doing the same thing..right ?

Here are the questions u should ask

A) The API is using right handed co-ordinate system or left handed co-ordinate system ?
B) Points and vectors are row order or column order ?
C) Texture co-ordinate convention ?
D) Scene graph organization ?
E) Any support for mesh file formats ?
F) Support for interaction and hit testing ?
G) Off screen rendering support ?
H) Vector , Matrix support ?
I) Animation classes supported ?
J) Support for Axis-Angle rotation , Quaternions etc..

A nice book and it's follow up

I purchased a book on Machine Learning last friday. The book is hardbound and for a naive onlooker full of mathematical gibberish. Since i have invested some time in learning Statistics , Probability and Bayesian Models recently,i could comprehend the math really well.

The publisher is Prentice Hall Of India and the url of the book can retrived from
http://www.phindia.com/bookdetail.php?isbn=81-203-2791-8
While flipping through the book , i remembered a book which i purchased last year by the title
Programming Collective Intelligence by Toby Segaran. To my surprise , i am having at my disposal Executable code (in Python ) for most of the topics covered in the machine learning book. I got immersed with both the books for another couple of hours. With Patience, i assume anyone can learn about machine learning. It is just a matter of time. That is true for most worthy things in this world.

The ecstasy came to an end when my wife intervened and was back on earth soon !!.

The url for the collective intelligence book can be retrieved from
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596529321/

Eddington Monkeys

Long ago , i read about a story attributed to the British Physicist Arthur Eddington. The story is as follows .In a room full of typewriters, if we release a group of monkeys , perhaps a book might come out of it. I have used this story to explain phenomena like run away successes , luck etc.

In one company which i worked for a considerable amount of time , In the name of saving the cost of installation of a windows network, some employees ( Monkeys ? ) began to install the requisite software by trial and error. The saga continued for couple of months , untill one employee figured it out. I used to call them "Eddington Monkeys".

Today , i came across a link which reviews the book "Einstien : his life and times " by
Philipp Frank. I have read this book long back and this reminded me of the
eddington monkeys.

When i searched about this , i stumbled upon infinite monkey theorem.

Protestantism and Printing Press

I have already blogged about a book on History of Economics by Roger Backhouse here. Now a days when i travel to and fro to my native place, i read chapters from the book. Today , i came acrossan interesting paragraph about spread of Protestantism . The father of Protestant movement wasone German reformer by the name Martin Luther. The reason for his unusual success was the invention of Printing by Guttenburg. Behind every phenomena there are unusual coincidences which is hard to explain.

The true color of the "secular" media

Ever since 2002 , in kerala an average guy who does not belong to semetic faith had the burden of Narendra Modi on their back. In Every political discussion , the
so-called secular people will always rake up the Post Godhra Riots ( The same people keep mum on Godhra Train burning. ) to brand people who question the one sided
view of the media. A Political party like Congress blaming BJP can be understood
in the terms of political platform. I have always got perplexed why Media who are
supposed to be objective take sides and they only see one side of the issue.

The NGOs are always funded by vested interests and anti nationals to divide the people and take away the grants of the govt. from the deserving. Teesta Setalvad
was projected as the greatest social activist to have "defended" the minority rights.

Pls. take a look at the following link

http://www.breakingnewsonline.net/2009/04/sit-censures-teesta-setalvad-and-ngos.html
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/NGOs-Teesta-spiced-up-Gujarat-riot-incidents-SIT/articleshow/4396986.cms

The average "secularist" thinks that so called mainstream media's report is always true and always end up hurting people who argue on the other side.

What is so "extreme" about Extreme Programming ?

One of my coleague told me ytd. that Agile methodologies advocate the use of
Best Practices to the extreme. if the practice is good , take it to the extreme is
their motto. Hence the name Extreme Programming ..! Sounds Plausible ? any other
school of thought for the namesake ?

A good blog site on Mathematics

While searching the net for new ways to master mathematical thinking , i came across a blog by one Rashmi Kathuria , who is a mathematics school teacher from Delhi.

Pls. check her blog @
http://www.blogger.com/profile/00944802501965898439

Who is Fourier ?

Jean Baptiste Fourier was a French Mathematician who has over the years become a Terror for Engineering Students world wide. Yet , without Fourier Analysis and Transform u cannot work in most Engineering disciplines. Fourier Transform is taught
in the domain of signal processing. But, The application of Fourier Analysis are
there in Cryptography ( Multiplication of Large Numbers ! ) , Image Processing
( Image processing operations like DCT ( Jpeg compression ) comes under signal processing ) , Audio Processing , Data Compression to name a few. Now a worthy successor for Fourier Transform has matured to be useful in all branches of Engineering. WaveLet Analysis starts from where Fourier leaves of . Fourier Analysis can be regarded as "Pre-Calculus" of Wavelet Analysis. The JPEG 2000 uses Discrete Wavelet Transform ( DWT ).

There is a society in japan called Trans national College of Lex. They have written
a wonderful book by the title "Who is Fourier ?". I virtually "stole" a copy from
my friend in 2002. Boy, it is a fun book to read. I suspect u will emerge smart in
Calculus , Vectors , FFT , Complex numbers and Series.

http://www.amazon.com/Who-Fourier-Mathematical-Transnational-College/dp/0964350408

Also pls. check the site @

http://www.lexlrf.org/pub/

The Origin of the word Sadism and a CNN-IBN article

The word sadism owes it's origin to a french aristocrat by the name Marques de sade. U can read about him from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_Sade. I got information on the origin of this word from a colleague of mine.

Today , one of my colleague forwarded a link which was amusing. How far it is true is another matter.

u can read the article @

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/spank-your-partner-get-closer-study/89112-13.html

i came across a word which is the combination of sadism and masochism,flogging,spanking etc. English is a wonderful language as it is in a unique position to take words from all the cultures in the world.

After the Plato's Academy it is Salman Khan's Academy

The Plato's (The Greek Philosopher ) Academy was a venerable place for learning. It survived for nearly three centuries. Now for Mathematics , One Mr. Salman Khan has put up an impressive site to teach Mathematics. The url is
http://www.khanacademy.org. He has uploaded a whopping 800 videos on topics ranging from Algebra to Differential Equations.

A girl from Karachi Or Lahore Dancing to a Asha Bhosle Song

I came across a video on the youtube in which a girl dances well. The song is
Sharara Sharara from the movie Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi. The movie starred Jimmy Shergill,
Uday Chopra and Tulip joshi. The song was an item number by Shamita Shetty.

The theme of the movie was it is not possible for people from the opposite gender become friends without sexual tension coming in between. The Malayalam movie niram
had a similar theme.

u can watch the video @

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYHx_meI4iI


Once u have finished watching the video , pls. compare it with
Shamita shetty item # @

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY8XbC10YrA

Bollywood in the late 80s

Now a days , when i get some spare time , visiting the youtube site and searching for the forgotten movies and it's actors has become a favorite of mine. Roughly , the same time Kumar Sanu and Udit Narayan (male playback singers ) made the debut in the film industry , the Amithabh era was almost over.

My first movie was Ram Balram starring Dharmendra and Amithabh Bachan. Amjad Khan was the main villian and Kader Khan was the favorite dialogue writer back then.

From mid 80s to 1991, it was Mithun Da era. In our school , most of the people were
going to a barber who knows to make "Mithun" out of every one. The movies like
Disco Dancer , Pyar Jhukta Nahin , Kasam Paide Karne Wale ki , Maa Kasam , Dance Dance , Commando , Ghar Ek Mandir , Guru were very successful in Kerala.

There was a singer by the name Mohammed Aziz who used to sing for Mithun Chakraborty.
Every thing associated with Mithun was heard with passion in those days. To this day , I watch Mithun Chakraborty films with the same fervor i used to watch it back then. ( Now it is a nostalgic affair !)

Besides Amithabh Bachan Movies ( and Mithun Movies ) , Anil Kapoor and Jackie Shroff movies were crowd pullers too. Sunny Deol and Rishi Kapoor used to make occassional impact as well..!

In Kerala , very few used to watch Hindi movies then.

What a book !

I came across the book Flatland (by Edwin Abott ) in (2002) a casual conversation with a IIsc graduate. When i searched Project guttenberg , i could get a text version of the book. Once in a while , when i see lectures on Physics , Mathematics , Geometry and even OLAP ( Online Analytical Processing !!) , mention of this pops up. I purchased an anotated edition of this book by Prof. Ian Stewart. While travelling back to my work place , i read the sections upto the first chapter.

The book was written by a english Head master , Edwin A. Abott. This is a satire on
victorian english society. By reading this book , ( i suspect ) u will become better at Analtic Geometry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland

Economics and the theory of evolution

The Economic thought of any era reflects the social , cultural and the intellectual "mood" of the times. Economists heavily borrow from the natural sciences to strengthen the case of their argument. There are times when economic
literature can influence science. Charles Darwin has acknowledged the Role of
Robert Malthus Thomas ( Human population doubles in Geometric Progression , where as food production grows in Arithematic Progression ) in formulating his theory of evolution.

one can read more about this intellectual synergy by visiting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthus

A nice book on History of Economics

The subject of Economics has always fascinated me ever since i happened to read John Kenneth Galbraith's "Almost Every one's guide to the Economics". Some time back , i had purchased a book on History of Economics, published by Penguin , india. Ytd,I was explaining the virtues of reading books to my brother in law who is just finishing his engineering. The subject of economics popped up and i explained the logic behind some "back of the envelope calculations" in judging an investment. From the shelf , i picked the history of economics book as well. After the discussion i i flipped through the pages and got intrigued by the conent of the book.
While comming back from Aluva, i covered the first two chapters of the book.

The topics included Judeo-Christian economic thought , Islamic Shariah Economics
and more modern economic thoughts and the socio-political settings of the time.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Penguin-History-Economics-Roger-Backhouse/dp/0140260420

The tale of a lawyer's murder

One of the Chotta shakeel gangster's lawyer based in Mangalore was shot dead yesterday. The gangster had plans to murder Varun gandhi for his alleged hate speech


u can read about the story in
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/varun-hate-talk-sparks-underworld-gang-war-in-mumbai/89940-3.html

The Mumbai underworld got split shortly after the Mumbai Bomb blast of 1993. It was rumoured that Arun Gawli and Chotta rajan split with D-Company because of the D-Companys collusion with ISI. The communal polarization has affected the underworld as well. In a way , it is good because their internicine battle will reduce the anti nationals ( who collude with Pakistan ) and criminals ( the so called patriots who take on the first gang ) within the country . But, the "poor" Lawyer got stuck in
between.

JF ribeiro used internicine battle between gangsters to control the situation in late 1980s. He was a smart police officer.

One Mr. Ravi Poojary based in Australia seems to have claimed the responsibility.

Two books which invoked the memory of nostalgic Late 1980s

When i visited Modern Book house today,I purchased indian reprints of two Problem books in Mathematics. The books were originally published by Mir Publishers,Moscow during the soviet era. The typesetting and layout of the text reminded me of the days when i struggled with USSR textbooks in mathematics.

The Differential and Integral Calculus by Piskunov is my first serious calculus book. ( I learned the tricks of calculating derivatives from Janardhanan Pillay's text book on Mathematics. He has written at least 50 mathematics text books. I even worked in a s/w company run by his son for a period of six months )

The Amazon url for the book is http://www.amazon.com/Differential-Integral-Calculus-N-Piskunov/dp/0677206003

Another notable book in those days was "A brief course in Higer Mathematics" by Kudrayatsev and Boris Demidovich. I have got Volume One of Piskunov and Higher mathematics with me.

The latter book was so inspiring that , i still flip the pages to get a different perspective on the subject. That book advocated treating mathematics as a cultural
asset. That means, every learned man ought to know calculus.

A Dictionary of Statistics

I Purchased Oxford Paper back reference's ( indian edition) Dictionary of Statistics from the Modern book house,ThiruvananthaPuram. The book , which costs only Rs. 245 , seems to be a good investment as the topics are clearly explained ,and the work seems to be elaborate enough for an "amateur" (in statistics ) like me.

I am planning to use the dictionary as my companion to search the net effectively for topics relating to statistics and probability.

Religious symbolism - Avoid it !

I was reading the judgement of the supreme court regarding a boy's pettition to allow him to grow beard in a convent school in Madhya Pradesh. Justice Markandeya
Katju, seems to have got the verdict right. The rule of instituition should not be changed for a single individual.

I think in places like Office and Schools, the exibhition of religious symbols should be minimized. If one group , assert their identity , others will "retaliate" by their symbolic gizmos.

At the same time , we should discuss these vexing issues openly with all and try to
create a consensus on this.

A good book

Last weekend , while scanning my shelf for some interesting stuff to read , i noticed a Old book on Psychology. The book was published in 1976 or so. I spent most of the weekend with chapters on Learning , Motivation , Defense Mechanisms and Social behaviour.

While travelling back , i took the book "Mind - An introduction to Cognitive science" with me . Even though , i purchased the book couple of months back , for the first time i took a serious look into the contents of the book. I read the introduction and skimmed through the chapter on Logic and Rules. The material made
more sense in the back drop of reading a psychology book earlier.

http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Introduction-Cognitive-Paul-Thagard/dp/0262201062

The News of my resignation was an exaggeration !

The title is a pun on Mark Twain's "The news of my death was an exaggeration". Ytd. , to play a prank (April 1st , dude ! ) on my colleagues , i sent an email whose content is as follows


Subject : adieu to all
Hi all,

I am planning to move to Pune to take up position in NVIDIA ( http://www.nvidia.com ) as assistant researcher In 3D accelerated rendering using Photon Mapping. I would like to thank all of u for the cooperation during my stay

In this company. I wish all of u sunny days ahead in your future career.


Regards
Praseed Pai

P.S :- this mail is sent to only a select few of my chosen friends to keep up with the tradition of some people who FRAMEd us in WORK. ( The Postscript was a dig at
a set of people and their cronies who i consider as the proponents of Technical Megalomania. The statement does not make sense to people who are not in my immediate circle. )


After the above content , i created lot of blank lines and keyed in

WANT TO FIND REASON for leaving?





























APRIL FOOL!

Amazon book review - a boon or bane ?

Of late , whenever i buy a book , i try to go to the amazon web site and read the review comments by people. Now that i am into it for a long time , i assume i have mastered the art of retrieving correct information by "de-biasing" the user comments.
This has helped me in getting more from most books.

initially , this process can be bit disconcerting as the books which u purchased might not be favourably reviewed. u can fall into framing bias as well. So, read the reviews with care.

When a new fact arrives in the group , semantic net created in each people's brain will be different. So, reviews need not be relevant for u . Reader discretion is adviced.

A Textbook on Linear Algebra

I accompanied one of my colleague to the Modern Book house and Purchased a book by the title "Linear Algebra and its applications" . The Author is Glibert Strang, a MIT professor who is well known for his lectures. Some of the mathematics lecture by Prof. strang can be retrieved from MIT OCW web site.

The book i purchased is the standard reference for the course from

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Mathematics/18-06Spring-2005/VideoLectures/detail/lecture01.htm