Note to Self

1. Although money can't solve all the problems, it can take care of some important ones; so that you can concentrate on the rest.

My parents' dream

Like Randy Pausch, I also think I have won the parent lottery.

As the new year is approaching, I was thinking about my new year's resolutions and about my dreams about my life. Suddenly, this thought struck my mind. What were my parents' dream?

The way it looks like to me right now is their dream was how can the help us make our dream true!

Priorities

It's an irony how our priorities change.

Things that matter most to us today, persons those we desire most be be with, fades away from our mind tomorrow. Is this simply "familiarity" breeding "contempt" or some more complex arrangement inside our mind? The toys that I always wanted to have as a child, does not get a fraction of my attention anymore. The promises I made to old friends once, seems like I don't feel like keeping them anymore. Instead, I am making new promises to new friends.

It seems like there is nothing absolute in our priority list; at least in my list. And it's so sad. Because, I am running after something and then realizing this should not be my priority. And the worst case scenario is when I got the thing check off from my list and then realize that it should not have been in the list at the first place.

My priority list defines myself, defines my list. And this become a ever-changing vague list, then what is the meaning of the life I am leading?

I need to find answer to this or at least a better defined priority list. Time for soul-searching!

Optimality Conditions

Till this day of my life, I kind of bragged about not to take the optimal path. For me, it was "Win it" or "Lose it all!". Even though, I lost most of the times than winning, I preferred things to be that way. I looked with my pity eyes  at the friends and family, who chose the optimal path for life.

But, now I think, I need a major revision on that thought process. There is no shame is choosing the optimal path. In fact, I now believe, it's the way nature chose for itself.

Debugger

"Get in the debugger", says my manager to me!

Another Weird day

I had a very weird day. I was anticipating something and it did not happened. Result: my brain was swelling with evil molecules all over. I started acting like a big insecure jerk. I don't know what stupid things I will end up doing today.

Southbound!

Leaving for Texas today evening. Like everyone is planning to attend Thanksgiving with their families, I am also going to see my nearest kin in US, my BackBencher buddies in Dallas. Jamy and Rushaed will be riding with me. Expecting a lot of fun for the weekend. Happy Thanksgiving !

১০।১১।১২

মন খারাপ। ভীষন ভীষন মন খারাপ।

Free and Bad Advice

Till this point, I have asked for too many free and bad advice. Recently, I was thinking about how whole process of reaching out for free (and probably bad) advice works for me.

Turns out, it's pretty straight forward. Whenever, I am not sure about my success, I go and ask people. This is basically like a defense mechanism so that if I fail, I can implicitly blame others instead of accepting my failures. Shame on me!

This happened to me time and time again. Whenever, there was a critical moment that I had to stand up and face the challenge, I cowardly escaped the burden of decision making and let others decide it for me. No doubt, these cost me a lot.

But, the good part is, as now I understand the whole thing, I am taking a lot on myself. Even though, I am not sure about something, I am going and trying it out. Even though, I risk failure more than ever. I am learning to trust my gut feelings or at least, I do not regret of not pursuing things. It's not exactly that I am getting more confident about success but I am learning quickly from my failures!

Update

This is an update to this post. It seems even though my observations were correct, I drew the wrong conclusion.

Though, computer programmer or mathematician can be a desired date, I was actually referring to persons who are passionate about what they do. From my experience, I found most people with the mentioned background are passionate about what they do and that's what attracted me at the first place. So it was never about what they do but more about their attitude to follow their passion.

Average/ Above Average

Recently one of my friend posted on Facebook about someone being above average and hence looking for partners in the above average demography. That made me thinking where do I belong in that demography.

Personally (or in a politically correct way!), I think none belongs to the "absolutely average" category. People are generally good at something and suck at some other things. The question is, when judging someone, do you count those things?  Think of the Big Bang boys... doing cool science and at the same time suck at social interaction.

For myself, I think I am average in most of the stuffs. But at the same time, I try to be hard-working and sincere in things that I love and also push myself to raise the bar everyday.

Love!

This is a serious confession to myself.... I have never realized that before...Now it seems so true... I never loved anyone except myself (Narcissistic! I know!)... I just loved the idea of loving someone but never loved someone!

Random Note

Till now, I work because I like what do. I just don't want to turn myself into another money-making-bill-paying machine.

3 Big Things

1. Insecurity
2. Inferiority complex
3. Always over-analyzing / Self-conscious / Judgmental

So, I find these are the three big problems that I have when I interact with people.

Strangers make me really uncomfortable because of these. Conversely, when I am with my friends (like real friends), I don't feel these things and that's why I can enjoy the awesome time with them.

Note to Self: Finding satisfaction

Right now, I am meeting so many different people and everyone is doing something different after their day job to find fulfillment from their lives. All these things they are doing seem so attractive that it's easy to fall into the trap of trying to do all these for myself...actually I am standing right on the edge of this trap... I must turn back...

I need to find my own inner peace rather than just imitating others to find satisfaction.... I will have to find my own thing...

Everyone has an unique problem... so the solution should also be unique!

Note to self 5

Am I a bad selfish guy???

Because it seems, everything that I have been doing is just for myself... even though from the outside a lot of my activities seems to have broader objectives, deep down the bottom, I am doing all just for myself....and I can feel... this is really shitty :-(


And the most annoying part is recently I developed a bad habit of judging people based on how much money they make...CRAP.... I don't know how I got into this but feeling really ashamed of me :-(

Windows and me

Some relationships just hang on the cliff; you are unsure of holding it tight or letting it go. And if you are lucky, there happens a happy accident that decides for you. You feel greatly relieved.

And, that's what happened to me this morning. After two long years of dilemma about what to do with my Windows 7 installation, I accidentally deleted it in an attempt to restore it. I rarely used Windows. It was just sitting there with wasting space and serving as a breeding ground for viruses. I always wanted to get rid of it but I had to pay for it and that's why I was not to sure of the idea to delete it.

Earlier today, I was trying to  restore Windows just to get rid of some annoying viruses. Unfortunately, the restore command failed to serve what it promised but wiped my entire hard-disk. Many many thanks to Dropbox that I still own all my important files. Although I lost all the pictures that I took with my camera for the last two years, I think it actually clears the clutter that I developed over time. I am also thinking of getting a bigger cloud service like Dropbox for my pictures.

Note To Self: Leadership and Olympic

Leadership:

We are really struggling to find new people to take over School of Dynamic Systems Graduate Students Association at the University of Cincinnati. We do not have a very good clue why this is happening? This year we were awarded the best GSA of the year. Even after this, we failed to attract new people on board. My realization from this is we made a big mistake on creating new leaders. We were busy about just serving the community but failed to invest part of out time to cultivate new leaders. This is something that we need to watch for in future.

Olympics 2012:

I was watching the men's 100m final on last Sunday. And I feel lucky that I don't have to prove myself just only within that 10 seconds of time. It would have been a tough life then!

This is something I was also discussing with one of my roommate. She plays golf and she was saying that even though she spends a whole day in the course, the effective time that she actually takes shots is less than five minutes. So the margin of errors is so narrow. Once again, I feel lucky!

Learning Data Structures

I never took a class on data structures in college. So every time I ran to some kind of data structure discussions, I always had to struggle to understand all those concepts of lists and trees.  But last night, I came across this wonderful YouTube play-list from UC-Berkley on data structures. The professor is really good. I highly recommend someone like me, who is a Non-CS major but wants to understand the mysterious world of data structures, to watch the videos. The total length is around 30 hours. Lets learn some data structures this summer

To keep me in track!

It's just the middle of 2012, but I feel the need to set some resolutions for the rest of the year. I am done with my masters and got a job with Siemens. So I will be going through a big change in my life. So that's why I want to set some resolutions to keep me on track!

First, I really want to be in a good position in Siemens, so that I can get a better deal in six months from now!

Second, getting fit so that I can run 5 miles at a stretch.

Third, get better in Turkish

Fourth, be serious with photography

Fifth, learn Ukulele

Sixth, join an open source project.

Done with school! (Forever?)

So, yesterday I had my last class as a masters student. Its a little different feeling. I am happy and sad at the same time. I also had my last CC meeting yesterday. I got my OPT approved and probably I am going to start with Siemens from June 18th. I am really excited about this. This is very close to what I wanted to do!

And I got my car. Thanks to Texas Cowboys, they are bringing it here next Friday. Hope that they bring it here in a piece!

Focus

Kind of given up on multi-tasking....need to tackle one problem at a time...

Turkish # Lecture 3

Grammar

1. Producing Possessive Pronouns

Our = Bizim

Your(Plural or Respectful) = Sizin

Their = Onların

The complete chart describing the affixes for possessive pronouns is given below.

2. Interrogative Sentence:

What is this? Bu ne?

What are these? Bunlar ne?

This is a map : Bu harıta

These are tables : Bunlar masa

New Vocabulary

Harıta = Map

Masa = Table

Sandalye = Chair

Kitaplık = Bookshelf

Tahta = Blackboard

Defter = Notebook

Kalem = Pencil

Silgi = Eraser

Being Shy Is Just a Bad Habit

Two interesting post after my awkward Bartini moment last night

http://lifehacker.com/5909696/being-shy-is-just-a-bad-habit-and-you-can-break-it-with-regular-practice


http://the99percent.com/articles/7164/Op-Ed-Confidence-vs-Shyness

Got a phone call from dad early in the morning. One of my uncle lost his battle against cancer today.

Which Car I Should buy

So I took a leap of faith and I survived. I got the offer letter from Siemens yesterday. And now I need a car to commute and I am facing a philosophical problem...which car I should buy?

I can buy a new one...my paycheck can definitely afford that. But that does not mean I should get that one! I called Rushaed to get some idea and he insisted to get a good one, asking the question of what will I do with my money if I don't spend?

But I don't want to live american dream...that's not what I wanted...I came to US mainly because I will get the chance to do what I like to do; it was very little about making money...I could have done that in Bangladesh, working with my dad.

I am a programmer...I wear cheap jeans with t-shirt and enjoy writing codes, doing maths. I do not think I will be happy with expensive cars! I should just go with a reliable one.

Leap of Faith

It seems I will have to take a leap of faith tomorrow. I had a successful interview with NX Nastran development team. They told me that they are going to send me the offer by Tuesday as my other offer with Dassault Systemes expires of Tuesday. Now, they need some additional processing and the earlier they can get back to me is on Wednesday. So if I want to reject the other offer, I will need to make a leap of faith with NX Nastran. I don't know what I should do!

Top ToDo List

I have been thinking about this a lot....I even wrote blogs about things I want to do if I get a chance to redo my life.

One of my favorite blogger Paul Graham blogged about it today. Have a look: http://www.paulgraham.com/todo.html

Learning Turkish #2

Grammar

Minor Vowel Harmony: 

Similar to major vowel harmony, Turkish words has minor vowel harmony which dictates what suffixes are going to be added next to a word. In this lecture, we will see the application of minor vowel harmony for creating possessive pronouns.

If the vowel preceding  the suffix has	Then the vowel of the  suffix will be
a, ı	ı
e, i	i
ö, ü	ü
o, u	u

Producing Possessive Pronoun:

Benim = my. Suffixes for “my” are ım, im, um, üm. The selection suffix is determinted by minor vowel harmony. For example, ad= name. So my name = adım because ad has vowel 'a' and minor vowel harmony dictates that the vowel in the suffix will be 'ı'. If there is vowel at the end of the word, we need to add just 'm' at the end as the suffix.

Senin = your. Suffixes for “your” are ın, in, un, ün. The selection suffix is determined by minor vowel harmony. For example, ad= name. So your name = adın because ad has vowel 'a' and minor vowel harmony dictates that the vowel in the suffix will be 'ı'. If there is vowel at the end of the word, we need to add just 'n' at the end as the suffix.

Onun= his/ her/ its. Suffixes for “his/ her/ its” are ı, i, u, ü. Depending on minor vowel harmony, the suffix is added at the end. For example, okul means school. So his school can be written as okulu. But if the word itself ends with a vowel sound, we add s+ one of these vowels  ı, i, u, ü, depending on minor vowel harmony. For example, anne means mother. So her mother will be aneesi.

New Vocabulary

Arkadaş= Friend

Nine = Friend

Kalem = Pencil

Kitap = Book

İsim = Name

Soyad = Last Name

Soyadım = My last name

Soyadın = Your last name

İyi = Good

hasta = Sick

Yourgun = Tired

Heyecalnı = Excited

Üzgün = Sad

Kızgın = Angry

Mutlu = Happy

Okul = School

Araba = Car

Ev = Home

Köy = Town

Nasınsın = How are you?

İyiyim = I am good.

Sağ ol = Thank you!

Tesekkün edmin = Thank you!

Siz nasalzınız = How are you all?

Öğretmen = Teacher

Mathematics: Invention vs Discovery

This week was awesome! I was in NFS BEM conference at Minneapolis, MN. I got the chance to meet the big names of BEM, specially my grand advisor Dr. Frank Rizzo and Dr. Subrata Mukherjee. My words will never be sufficient to describe the feelings that I had during the whole week.

Dr. Rizzo had a question for everyone. He wanted to know whether people invent mathematics or discover mathematics. My adviser added one more option, improving others' mathematics. Well, I am also going to add one more option, borrowing others' mathematics to solve my problems.

One of the main reasons for me to get more interested in mathematics at this point is the need of borrowing others' work. I am working on some projects, which are kind of low hanging fruits in terms of discovering/ inventing something new. But, in those I borrow other peoples idea and thats where I need to understand what exactly they are doing. A lot of time, the barrier is not understanding the language of mathematicians. Thats why, I am getting more and more in to math now a days!

Randoms

Dating Preference
I hear this so much these days, so here is my take on dating preference:

1. Computer programmer
2. Mathematician
3. Athlete
4. Engineer
5. Everyone else!

Priority Boarding
I just wonder why people care so much about priority boarding? Is it just a show-off towards other. Because, even if you board early, the plane is not going to leave unless everyone else is boarded; you have to wait in that tiny seat for everyone else.

The Genius Programmer Myth

Not using Facebook seems to open up a lot of time to do other stuffs on internet.
This youtube video is one of those things that I have been watching since "No Facebook"

Turkish 101 # Lecture 1

So finally I started learning a new language this year. I don’t how it ended up being Turkish. I am going to post my class notes here as a notes to self, so that I can come back latter and review it. As I understood, the lessons are going to be divided into two parts. One is simple grammar rules and the other is simple Turkish phrases to communicate with people

Grammar:
1.    Major Vowel Harmony: The vowels of Turkish alphabet are divided into two categories, hard vowels (a, ı, o, u) and soft vowels (e, i, ö, ü). All words except the foreign words can only have the vowels of one type in them. In other words, the hard vowels and the soft vowels do not mix in a word except for the foreign words.

2.    Plural: Adding ‘lar’/ ‘ler’ as a suffix can make a noun plural. Major vowel harmony is followed to decide which suffix in going to be added. If the last vowel of the word is hard vowel, we use ‘lar’. In the other case, we use ‘ler’

3.    Second person salutation: Unlike English, to address a second person (‘you’), there are two different words. To address friends or younger people, ‘Sen’ is used. To address elder persons and to stress politeness, ‘Siz’ is used. 

Some useful phrases:
Günaydin = Good morning
Merhaba = Hello/ Hi
Iyi günler= Good afternoon
Iyi akşamlar = Good evening
Iyi geceler = Good night
Hoşça kalın = Good bye
Güle güle= Bye bye
Hoş geldiniz = Welcome (Formal/ To elder person)
Hoş bulduk = In reply of welcome / Welcome yourself
Görüşürüz = See you later
Benim adim Samee = My name is Samee
Senin adin ne?(to friends/ youger peoson)
Sizin adiniz ne? ( to elder person) = What is your name?
Memnum oldum! = Nice to meet you!
Ben de = Same to you!

Modeling Nature

"The mind of god is music resonating through 10 dimensional hyperspace." - Michio Kaku.

Just came across few videos of Michio Kaku. This guy is amazing. I liked the thought process of him as a theoretical physicist. Myself, being a modeling and simulation enthusiast, I think that should be the approach when you are trying to model a natural phenomena and express as a theory.

Few days back, I was reading a book by Feynman ( The pleasure of finding things out) which had the same point of view for building new theories to understand nature.

Scared!

Just sent the draft of last two chapters of my thesis to my adviser. The feeling I am having?....simply scared....just hoping everything works well :-)

apt-get Wife!!!

Found a interesting website http://www.math-linux.com

This is one cartoon I ran into...The idea is awesome!!!

Ukulele

Ever since I saw the Ekulele in the Google Glass teaser, I can not get it of my head. I am now thinking of getting a cheap one as soon as I am done with defending!

New Headphone!

Just got my new headphones...Behringer - Multipurpose Headphones...this is kind of cheap, which I was worried about but they sounds awesome! Now I need to get a good mp3 player except ipod!

Non-linear Math

These days, I am so much into procrastinating. I was surfing some math blogs and came across this presentation.

Recently, I have been thinking a lot to learn more maths but the plethora of linkage between all the math topics kept me baffled about where to start from!

Friday

Finally, I am spending a Friday night at home. It feels so good just to chill at home!

The Dates that Changed My Life

1. One wonderful summer morning in May 2002, when my dad bought the first computer for me and my brother.

No More Facebook!

Happiness is too loud on Facebook and when you are unhappy it gets even louder. So, goodbye Facebook!

Random Note to Self 3

I have to admit, I really like the emotional roller-coaster ride of research life.

I have been working in a project for the last one year. Most of the time, I was working blind, just based on mathematical modeling, without any sort of experimental data. There were times, when I was really skeptical about the research, the model I was developing. But last week, I started receiving experimental results from the other person I was working with. The similarity in the results made me feel so good! It made me forgot all those ups and downs that I went through for the last one year. I really love my work!

A Mathematician's Apology

"There are many highly respected motives which may lead men

to prosecute research, but three which are much more important

than the rest. The first (without which the rest must come to

nothing) is intellectual curiosity, desire to know the truth. Then,

professional pride, anxiety to be satisfied with one’s performance,

the shame that overcomes any self-respecting craftsman when his

work is unworthy of his talent. Finally, ambition, desire for

reputation, and the position, even the power or the money, which

it brings. It may be fine to feel, when you have done your work,

that you have added to the happiness or alleviated the sufferings

of others, but that will not be why you did it. So if a mathematician,

or a chemist, or even a physiologist, were to tell me that the

driving force in his work had been the desired to benefit

humanity, then I should not believe him (nor should I think the

better of him if I did). His dominant motives have been those

which I have stated, and in which, surely, there is nothing of

which any decent man need be ashamed."

-G. H. Hardy

MArch 7, 2012

Another empty inbox day went by...this emotional roller-coaster ride is becoming so unbearable!

One slightly good thing is I scheduled my defense...its on April 30th....Hope to do it clean.


###
So here I am again, sad and lonely at home :-(
I wish things would be different :-(

A blog about mathematics

Just came across this wonderful blog by Terry Tao. For someone like me who desires to be a mathematician, its a wonderful blog to read!

Hope to post mode detail soon!

Grad Life 7

Just finished writing third chapter of my thesis...now two more chapter between me and my degree!!!

I got accepted at UIUC but without any financial assistant till now...its been a really hard moment right now...have not heard anything from the other schools yet....

don't know whats going to happen..I could have applied to any mediocre school but I am sure that was not something I wanted....I tried to the top schools...at least I will not regret of not trying....fingers crossed!

Myself

I like to solve problems, problems related to mathematics, mechanics and programming. I feel passionate about problems in these topics but at the same time less emotionally attached to the problems I solved.

I wanna be engineer cum mathematician.

I dislike vanity or I should say I would love to dislike vanity.

Random Note to Self 2

Its not just me who has issues with life, pretty much everyone has their own issues with life. Fortunately, my issues are still manageable!