After a very hectic week-end, I am now back to the Golden Towers to continue our project.
I am now placed in IBM and that is what is a real relief.
The interview was fine. The moment they came to know that I was doing a project at IBM, they stopped interviewing me! That was cool.
Out of popular demand, I had to put this up.
And for those of you who don't know what I am talking about, I am talking about my experiences of working on a project at IBM.
The project is part of IBM's Extreme Blue project and of course, the project that we are doing a very very small subset of it.
The first day, we had some problems in getting ourself registered. We were asked to come to a place called Embassy Golf Links near the Airport Road center and later were supposed to go to Bannerghatta center of IBM, which is about an hour's journey from Airport Road. The registration process went on till 3 in the afternoon.
We were back to Golden towers at 3:30. We were immediately told what our project is (in very simple terms of course).
We later had problems in getting individual systems and also access to their labs. This is almost sorted out now and we are on our way to 'starting' the project. Meanwhile the other group has already got a deadline!
Right now, we are studying Java and XML most of the time. The mentoring is good and that is a really good experience. We are supposed to attend meetings, give formal presentations and also present papers as part of the project. It is not just about coding. We will be doing design, implementation and testing as well. (Atleast that is what they say :))
We don't have any formal dress code or stringent timings. Life usually starts at 9 in the morning and right now goes on till 7 in the evening although I love to continue working for a little time more. We are given a lot of online material to digest. We are supposed to digest about 50 pages per hour. And that they say, is just the beginning.
We would soon have to do things at a faster rate.
The other group (Thejas and Kote) are to finish a module (very much like our lab cycle) for which they require to know core Java and XML and the deadline is this weekend! (And mind you they say things will become even more difficult as time progresses!)
Anyways, I am enjoying it, because the project seems to be challenging.
I just created a new community in LJ. It is called englife. You can access it at http://www.livejournal.com/community/englife.
This community will be talking about anything related to tech. We found that we ramble a lot in college but sometimes it is not fruitful. All of us come up with some questions and no one comes up with an answer. Usually such ramblings are found to be useful. We thought this should be extended. Why just ramble in the college? Why only 4 of us? Why not extend this to the entire world.
For more info you may visit:
http://www.geocities.com/becausewedontknow.
Please feel free to browse the page and tell me what you feel.
Have you noticed this? Whenever you write a very long blog in LJ, you never get people to comment on it. And then you wonder what might be the reason. People around are getting so busy that they hardly read all the mails (let alone the spams) in their own mailbox.
I recently gave a seminar on this topic in my class, and people were shell-shocked to hear that new word – infoglut. But it didn't take them much time to realize that they were going through the problem themselves.
And to wind it up, tell me one thing. How many MB's of Pdf's and other files do you have in your systems? And how much of it have you digested? 10% or more is really great…
Any one out there with a solution?
People working at IISc beware. Your work is at stake. For students in engineering colleges are already into research work and are doing things in less than 6 months, things that you took more than 5 years to complete.
Shocked?
I am. Students in engineering colleges are already presenting papers and doing research work, that too within 6 months! Is it that the “Homo Sapiens” have evolved into some new class, “Homo Sapiens II”, whose new identity is that they do things at an alarming rate? Clearly, the problem of info glut is showing up.
Students in engineering colleges particularly those in computer science are shifting from one domain to the other more rapidly than politicians changing parties. They start off on a new domain today and within 6 months I hear that they have won a prize in a paper presentation contest.
How can this happen? How can a person, who is new to a domain, learn the subject and then present a new idea in less than 6 months? Is it humanely possible?
Anyone listening?
It all began like this…
I and my friend Arun were chatting one day about the way our projects were going on. Each one was trying to tell the other that his project is tougher and more time consuming.
Finally, Arun sighed, “If only we had done the projects together, we wouldn't have had this problem.”
I replied, “Ya, but our interests are different and so is our approach.”
Arun is a very hard-working guy, full of passion to succeed. We had earlier decided to do a project in networking and had actually started learning it. I am a person, who likes to start from the basics and then reach the top. I never believe in starting a project without knowing head or tail of it. I believe that one should be strong with one's basics before starting off on a project. Before starting off, I analyze the job in hand, check it if it is feasible and then start off. Arun has a totally opposite attitude. He is of the opinion that we should first start from the top, with only slight initial knowledge. He agrees that the work we do will have a lot of flaws. Then as we proceed we should eliminate these flaws as we encounter them. He says my approach will take a lot of time and is not feasible. But what I feel is that, Arun's approach will make us reach the top, but we will never be strong enough with our basics. Is that okay?! Arun says, his approach is better, because we can achieve anything in the shortest possible time. But I feel my approach is better because it is more systematic.
It was this difference of opinion, which prompted me to add this to my journal. For I am slightly confused now. Is Arun right or am i right? I agree that for some jobs, Arun's approach is better than mine. But can it be applied to anything? Arun is optimistic. But I am not.
Please comment.