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Name: Salil
Country: United States
State: Rhode Island
Metro: Providence
Birthday: 6/7/1980
Gender: Male
Interests: Playing guitar and/or making music, programming multimedia apps, reading, arguing, playing sports (tennis, basketball, etc), yada yada yada
Occupation: Student
Industry: Engineering
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
6/21/2005
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| The time has come... doo doo doo,
To leave xanga... doo doo doo,
To stop blogging... doo doo doo,
And to pay my share.
How can I continue to blog on Xanga?
When I've got my own site at:
http://www.rasik.com/salil
END SONG
Ok, the URL didn't quite fit the synchopation of the original but
anyway, I'm blogging on my own site. No more stupid Xanga restrictions
and stuff. I'm free!!
| | |
| Alrighty folks, here is the brief skinny on SIGGRAPH 2005. To give a
quick introduction, SIGGRAPH is the premier conference in the field of computer
graphics. This encompasses many areas like pure computer
graphics, computer vision, real-time animation, UI and TONS of other
areas. People send representatives from animation studios, game
companies, colleges, etc. Just being there was pretty cool and
presenting a poster (while below a paper or sketch in the scheme of
things) was pretty awesome. Some researchers and attendees came by our
poster and were pretty impressed and happy with our work. We also had a
real-time section of our booth where we had a live demonstration of a
small portion of our project and people really liked this idea. Anyway,
there was so many things that went on at the conference including an
electronic/animation theater which had some amazing short films, a
nusto expo area, courses, paper presentations, and just a lot of other things. I took a few pics so
check them out! (Excuse the blurry pics... SIGGRAPH must have made me
on edge.....)
The main entrance to all the courses, papers, etc.
A reall cool Minority Report type interface using two cameras giving
real-time stereo depth information along with computing optical flow to
track hand motion. Very sweeet...
A panoramic LCD spinning on a rotoscope allowing a full 360 degrees of
viewing. So you see the side of this girl's face from this viewing
angle...
... and the other side from this viewing angle
A touch screen interface that allows the user to warp the image you see.
Matt standing by our poster submission.
Our poster submission with our video demonstration running on my laptop.
Red five, I'm goin' in! Standing by a full-size replica of an X-Wing fighter.
Some rasta looking dood smelling something which looked kinda funny and suspicious.. ;)
A hang-gliding simulation using stereoscopic projection and head
tracking. It looks cooler than it really was in action. They did have a few
fans hooked up to the system whose speed was controlled by the virtual speed of the glider.
The coolest exhibit demonstrated these pair of headphone looking things which
send small electric impulses behind your ear and fool your body into
thinking it is falling over. Your body just automatically
compensates for this change in equilibrium. These two individuals in the picture are just straight falling over (its
kinda blurry, I know...)
A machine that can send a very directed puff of scented air -- so
precise in fact that two people standing next to each other can be
smelling different things.
Matt using a new straw-interface where you can feel the vibration one
expects when sucking up asparagus (in this case) up a straw. Other
possibilities were beans, eggs, beer, hookah, and some others.
This last exhibit had a box which was placed into a virtual screen with
two gnome-like creatures. If you moved the box and it happened to
collide with a gnome on the screen, the gnome would flinch. If you let
the box stand still, the gnomes on the screen would push the box on the
screen and the real box on the table would move. Pretty amazing...
Main entrance to SIGGRAPH and the LA Convention Center
This last pic was for documentation purposes only. I figured most
females (and some males) may have never seen the trough style toilet
made popular by sports arenas. I always found these things to be
strange. I mean, don't horses drink outta these things? I guess I could
argue I kinda feel like a stud while peeing in here (ok, bad pun...
sorry!!!)
That's all folks!
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| Pip-pip, tally-ho! Yes, I'm back in Cali, where the people speak funny
phrases such as the ones spoken above. Or wait, is it just me who says
weird-ass stuff like that? Ahh, I can't remember, but what remains true
is my presence in Cali! When I left Providence yesterday, it definitely
felt a little weird and odd but I guess it was just another phase in
life, coming to pass. I didn't really go to see any buildings for old
times sake. In fact, for dinner, I ate at East Side Pockets, a place
that I like but wasn't neccessarily my favorite. You know, I think I
played the part of the anti-sentinmental. Everything that I could have
done that was sentimental, I didn't do. Even at night, I just sat in
front of the TV, watching stuff I could have watched just about anywhere.
Weirdness....
Well, so I'm at my bro's place in la-la land and we've just pretty much
been kickin' it. I worked a little bit but for the most part, I've been
hanging out, checking out my bro's new Pro Tools rig, and just chillin
like a villain whose name ain't Dylan (its Salil). We eventually got a
call from Matt and we picked him up and went to dinner at this
Greek/Lebanese place, where I may have upset some of the patrons. You
see, there was live music playing here and after each song, these two
doods were yelling "Opa!! Yiasso!!" Now, not wanting to be left out of
the fun, I quickly joined in and the doods were ok with that. But after
this one song, I yelled out "Opa!!" and the doods gave me the craziest
stink eye ever.
stink eye - n. a stare which gives you the feeling that someone either
wants to unleash all hell upon you or some portion of Beelzebub's
minions. Not to be confused with pink eye which can be equally annoying
due to the physical trauma caused by the constant need to scratch one's
eyeball, coupled with the 24/7 bloodshot eyes.
Anyway, the following were the conjectures of people:
Amit - All the songs up until that point were good and this bad song
came along which I cheered for. The people lost all respect for my
taste in music so they gave my the stink eye.
Matt - Opa is the name of one of their daughters. Nuff' said.
Ketaki - The song being played at that point was a sad number, possibly a eu-googly for someone. I'm such a jerk.
After dinner, we went to hit up a few bars, one of which was named
Clear while the other was named Firefly. We weren't doing any serious
drinking but more just chillin' and chattin'. We came back at the
serious hour of 1am and hit the hay. A great end to the first day back
in Cali.... (though I'm up at 7:00am. What the hell is wrong with me??)
| | |
| Well, today is my last day in Providence, RI. I may come back for
visits or to defend my Masters but for the foreseeable future, I'm
kinda outta here. Its definitely sad to be leaving here but perhaps all
this moving is the nature of man.
Ketaki and I had a discussion about this yesterday. Indeed, man since
his earliest days was probably nomadic, following his food and
resources.
If one area could no longer sustain the whole, then the whole had to
move
to another area which could provide better sustenance. Its what I would
call macro-migration because it deals with people moving on a large
scale. On the other hand, with the development of more structured
villages and cities (and without the modes of transportation we are so
reliant on today), I think man has also seen periods of non-migration.
Sure, you have your single families moving away because they were
exiled or because they wanted a new life, but I would consider these
more micro-migrations. I remember reading an essay in Harper which
talked about man's constant redefinition of the family unit and that
how in this century, we are once again seeing a breakdown of the family
unit. And the author argued that this has not been spurred by a
breakdown of family values but rather because opportunities are always
available elsewhere and its so convenient to make a move that we are
more prone to migrate. He was arguing this from the standpoint of
how this affects the family unit but I would argue that perhaps, more
basically, this points out that we are
now in an age of macro-migration again. I mean, the last century has
seen so many ethnic groups coming to the US for a new and better life.
And the migration patterns have not been constrained to just one family
or village but whole countries (ie, people of Asian countries like
China and India moving to the US). I think whether man is truly nomadic
or not is more an issue of his times. If his times and environment
dictate or afford better opportinuties while having a nomadic
lifestyle,
then he will adapt this way. But if staying in one village and owning a
home for hundreds of years provides more benefit (and we know this is
true for so many people in all parts of the world), then he will do
this. And so, I make the move once again (though
admittedly back to my home so a sort of reverse-migration) in these
times of macro-migration. Man's journey...
Anyway, aside from that little digression, I got to spend yesterday
with my cousins, nieces and uncle and aunt in MA. I chatted with my
peeps, ate some great good, and watched a movie titled "Flavors" which
was pretty cool. It wasn't just another one of those NRI identity-clash
Indo
films because the script was pretty well-written and the acting wasn't
too bad. I was gonna come home last night but then my nieces wanted me
to stay. Isn't it funny how when you are a kid, just knowing that
someone is staying over makes things more fun? It was so cute when they
asked their parents if I could stay the night. Unfortunately, we had to
leave
early in the morning so I didn't get to say bye to my nieces (niceci?)
but that just means they all have to come to Cali to visit!
Hi ho, hi ho, its off to Cali we go.....
| | |
| Today was strangely packed with lots of activities. Who'da thunk you
could have a packed day with activities while living by yourself?
My day began with a lovely conversation with Ketaki (yay!) after which
I started packing for the Bay. I shipped one box UPS-style and did some
other random packing as well. All in all, it looks like the actual
moving of the bags is gonna be the biggest headache versus the packing
itself.
After all that was done, I went to the CS building to get some work
done in the AC. It was a real scorcher today so it was nice being in a
nice, cool building. On my way back from lab, I got to do a little
dumpster diving. I saw this old Portuguese cleaning lady who works at
the computer building and I always say hi to her when I see her and
today was no exception. Only difference was today, she needed this huge
white plastic box that someone had thrown in a dumpster. The dumpster
was so deep that she couldn't jump in herself and retrieve the box so I
made the leap and waded through the garbage until I found the box she
needed. Nothing like sifting through a bunch of trash, eh?
After that, I did some more work and then headed over to my friend Matt
Loper's place. His girlfriend Kathryn and him graciously invited me
over for dinner and my unkempt stomach was happy to oblige their offer.
Kathryn had prepared some kickass pizza from scratch, Martha Stewart
style. Good stuff Martha though you really gotta work on being more
clever with the inside trading y0! As the pizzas baked, I played a
little guitar for the two of them and I even got to hear Kathryn play.
After dinner, we had some coffee ice cream (yummay!) and played a board
game named Carcassame. It was the strangest board game I've ever played
but very interesting. It was kinda like a really stripped down version
of the old computer game Civilization. Well anyway, we played that for
a few hours and then I also saw some videos from Matt's home in
Virginia. He's got a pretty fun loving family and I can see where he
gets his zanyness!
Well, all in all, a great day. I wish all my summer days in Providence
had been like today. But I guess it takes the end of a stay somewhere
to really appreciate the good times. | | |
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