My Blog

Me and my daughter were at a fruit shop at ECR, near the University Gate. It was around 9:30 pm. There was a hotel nearby. It was not an expensive one. A normal non-vegetarian hotel that you can see anywhere in Pondicherry and Tamilnadu. I saw a man aged about fifty walking by the road. He was wearing a torn shirt and pants which might have never seen water for a long time. He was untidy and un-bathed. He was looking very dull which was evident from the way he was walking.  As he passed by the Hotel, there was a voice from the hotel,  "Will you eat Briyani?".  This was a voluntary question from the hotel guy.  This person said "Yes".  Shortly they gave him Briyani. It was properly served on a neat and clean plate. This man looked at the quantity of food and he said, "I don't need this much".  The hotel guy encouraged him to eat but the man denied it.  This man insisted to take away a portion of Briyani and give it to another hungry person. When this ma...

Our smartphones have become like an extension of our physical body. Last week in one of my lecture sessions I asked this question to the students,  If you leave to the department without your smartphone, how many of you will go back and get your phone even at the risk of missing sessions or meetings? It wasn't surprising that 100% of them said we will go back and fetch our phone.  When I replaced the phone with an "assignment paper" in the same question, the percentage dropped significantly. What I am trying to derive here is that smartphones have evolved into an unavoidable dependency. In the entire human history, was there any such device or thing on which almost the entire human population was interacting day-in-day-out with utmost attention. I guess the answer is a BIG NO. In this backdrop, it becomes essential to have a basic knowledge about "Do's and Don'ts" on our phones. This post highlights a currently evolving security threat targeting our Andr...

Artificial Intelligence is Everywhere. In our smartphones, e-commerce sites, entertainment apps, e-learning, recommender systems, maps... Literally everywhere.  Imagination and the art associated with it are also now within the boundary of AI. Should we call it Artificial Imagination? Though image construction with algorithms has a proven track record, the recent wave of tools to create artistic images has captured the attention.  With AI-assisted Art winning the first prize in a competition, there is a debate on the role of algorithms in Art. Navigate to this article for more information. (Image is sourced from the linked article page).  There are various tools available for processing and styling images. The following two tools seem to be capturing lots of attention in recent days: MidJourney DALL.E Midjourney Midjourney has a powerful state-of-art algorithm to convert the textual descriptions into beautiful artistic images. You can try a demo with their bot at Discar...

Teachers' Day is always special. Its an opportunity to show gratitude towards all of those Teachers who have played a phenomenal role in shaping our lives.  I wrote a blog post on the same title "One the Eve of Teachers' Day" on 2013.  https://kskuppu.blogspot.com/2013/09/on-eve-of-teachers-day-2013.html It was an attempt to recall the memories associated with all my teachers right from the First standard to Ph.D.  To each batch of students, at least once, I ask this question,  How many of you want to become a teacher? If yes, Why?.  Particularly in subjects such as computer science which is very volatile, a teacher need to posses certain specific qualities. In my opinion, the following are the must have qualities to be a meaningful teacher: Cutting-Edge : The shelf-life of ideas in computer science is very very less. One of the most important requirements is to be updated with whats happening in the Industry. This is essential to make the students get a taste ...