My first presentation ever!

Though it isn't a long time that i wrote my last post, but in terms of what all has transpired here at CVIT in these few days is a hell lot to describe about.

The only thing i value is time, because it is the only thing i have really to offer to and it cannot be neglected. There was a talk by Prof. Manmatha from University of Massachusetts Amherst on OCR and about a startup by himself called SnapTel which was later bought by Amazon. The talk was so pristine that a person like me with no prior knowledge of character recognition could make sense of the talk. Although it was out of my ken, the OCR talk gave me a few great ideas which could be extrapolated to Computer Vision. But, the most striking feature of all about that day was that, the talk was scheduled for 10 am and it started at 10 am sharp. I really like the people who value time, not only just their but everyone who is influenced by their presence.

It was a Thursday, i was working hard to integrate function pointer and callback concept to my research problem, it was taking a bit longer for me to grasp the titillating concept of callback as i had a little working experience with high level concepts of C. It was around 11:30 am and Rajan drops an email saying that all the interns should meet at the intern work area at 4:30. Now, this was the moment that started jitters, i hadn't presented before, and i hadn't even started on my presentation. So, i started to work on the Presentation, and made a decent enough presentation of all the work i had done in the first week. As i was a little nervous, i expected that i would wiggle about somewhere during the presentation. It turned out, the three page presentation i made just lasted 3 seconds, the real presentation started when Prof C.V Jawahar started to question about my approach, provide his suggestion. The moment was awesome and my first that is completely ineffable., i cannot describe in words what that first presentation has done to boost my confidence. I am looking forward to a the next week presentation where i need to get done with two problems. Hope this week and week coming may be more exciting than before.

Day 4, CVIT

Today, sunday was supposed to be an off day for me, but as it turns out i had to come to lab to get done with openCV installation and i am eager to apply a few algorithms i learned yesterday from O Reilly's book on OpenCV. I have dual booted my system and in the process of installing openCV. I hope to get going on the real problem of gesture control by tomorrow.

Day 3 , CVIT

For the last two days now, i have started to learn openCV algorithms with C++ as the basis language. I have started to understand small pieces of code on openCV now, but i am not able to compile it practically as the linking of IDE with openCV is giving me huge trouble. I have tried at least 3 different versions of Visual studio with at least 5 different versions of openCV with all the instructions given on the wiki page of oepnCV yet the integration/linking is not happening and my programs are not running. I need this to be done fast so that i can move towards the actual problem quickly with the next group presentation coming on Wednesday, i dont want to be standing there and saying implemented Gesture Recognition using Matlab on Day 1 and since i am working on Opencv. I dont have that much time to align to a single thing. I will try it once more with Visual studio 2012, and if it still doesn't thaw, i will partition my computer and use it instead on Linux.

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Update: I have finally decided to work on Linux now, as each and everyone on the same parent project as mine is working on Linux, it is better to start on linux rather than trying later how to integrate all the different stuff on different OS.

Day 2, CVIT

The second day was jittery as i had to step out of my comfort zone (MATLAB) into something flabbergasting looking open source software. Yes i am talking the very next thing after MATLAB one uses if he into researching Computer Vision, OpenCV. Once i got a gist of what the labyrinthine code meant, i was easily able to skim through learning tutorials of OpenCV available online. The most difficult part was to get hands on with the software on which to run OpenCV algorithms. I started thinking about MATLAB, it was  a easy fix, just a mex -setup required and one was good to go. But as the project demands, i have to do this on C++ based IDE. I am thinking Visual C++ . I will carry on with the same tomorrow and aim to be fairly functional with the language by Monday so that i can get going on the real thing.

The most striking feature of today was the group meeting with Prof Jawahar today. I was totally bamboozled with the kind of projects my fellow interns presented, although they were into their second month of intern and I was  a couple of days old at the lab,  but still the kind of work that was presented was exceptional. I really look forward to work on something great and make full use of the time i have here as an intern.

Day 1, Computer Vision Lab at IIIIT-Hyderabad

My first day at CVIT, IIIT-Hyderabad was truly one of the great so far. I was given a research problem to work on. The project is a subset of a project for better accessibility for blind. My aim in the project is to implement Gesture Recognition on audio-books developed for blind performing different operations on it.

Here is a video of the task of Gesture Recognition i accomplished during my first day at CVIT.

I am hoping to learn a lot and improve my current skill set. To the summer! Cheers!

SEMCCO 2013

Whoah! I have atlast submitted my paper for Conference at SEMCCO 2013. It was really a humongous task, i mean it took me almost 15 days to edit and proof read before i was ready to submit my the best i could offer. So, one thing is ticked off my to do list and lets see, only a doze more remain to be done before the end of this year. Actually, i am on the right track with the right speed and have done almost everything i had thought i would have completed by this time.

Summer Break: Well planned

I have finally done with my exams, after what seemed a hiatus after the last end-term theory exam and ending today with the last practical exam. I am really very excited, not because i have got a breather from the vegetated period of rote learning during my exams, but to the internship i was so dearly longing for. The time has finally come for my internship at CVIT, IIIT-Hyderabad, and i leave for it day after tomorrow, that is on 12th of June. I am really very eager to be there and be amongst people who are like minded and strive for the aim i want to achieve in my academic career ultimately, i.e excellence. I can say it without any qualms that   the Computer Vision lab is amongst the top 3 labs in India, and boasting of such standards of research.

Though i am very excited about the prospect of the internship at IIIT-H, i am also very jittery as i have to do loads of work apart from research when i will reach at CVIT, the other top priority works being, shortlisting universities for my MS, start writing to the professors at different universities, and to cap it call, decide whether i have to my GRE again, as far the situation now stands, i would be writing it again unless some sort of miracle happens, and with my type of luck, i can imagine it to a prospect of same viability as me becoming the President of India (pun intended!). So i have to carefully plan my stay at IIIT-H beforehand so that i am able to accommodate most of the the facets i am looking forward to cover. It has been quite a onerous year so far, but with the prospect of my internship at one of the best computer vision labs, i am eased off a little bit now.

PS: A queer behavior as i saw today in my college, as my fellow students were departing from the college today after the examination, most of them were in the race of collating as many TV series as they could cadge to watch over the summers, well i don't need those, i have my "TV series" already waiting in my laptop. I am talking about almost 3 Online courses which i dearly wanted to do on coursera.org , but due to the time refrain, i just downloaded them for later view, and to start with, i would be completing the last week of Image and Video Processing from Duke University, and start with a course on Computation and Data Analysis fro University of Washington.

I am really gonna enjoy these two months! To the brighter future! Cheers!   

Finalizing the manuscript

Just finished with my end semester theory exams, though i have a couple of practicals remaining on 7th and 10th , but i think those will be cinch as i have thoroughly done with the theory part. I have to cover a lot of work in this week before i leave for my internship at CVIT, Hyderabad on 12th. First up is to finalize the manuscript of EMT paper and get the first copy submitted for the SEMCCO conference. Secondly and equally important, i have to do some experiments on EMT datasets further and write back to Prof Oleg with the results. It has been dragged too long because of my involvement in myriad of things and i should be able to check this off my list. Cheers to a great next week!