My Blog

If i make a blog post saying "today we conducted an exam" then most of you would laugh and think whats the big deal of conducting an exam in an university department.  But the change that we did here is that the exam was "on-line". This time around, we have conducted Part -A of the end-semester examinations online. This consisted of 20 questions in each subject and today's exam was of 100 questions.  The "experiment with truth" was conducted with the I year M.Sc students. Let me narrate the background story as well. Many weeks ago we decided that the Part -A of the end semester would be an online exam, as a step towards utilization of technology, reduction in the usage of paper there by following the green energy principles.  Kudos to the thoughts of Prof. RS. Every time I talk with him, the glimpses of IIT-D would emanate which I have found as a source of inspiration.  The hardware / software stack responsiblity was given to me by him i.e. I have...

Today (06- 09 - 2010) our university celebrated  teachers' day in an unique way.  They have selected the best 25 teachers of the university (marking the silver jubilee). The selection has been done on the basis of students' feedback based on 20 different metrics. I feel very happy to share this information that I was also in that list of distinguished teachers. The award was presented by His excellency Lieutenant. Governor of puducherry Dr. Iqbal Singh, today morning. (Me Receiving the award; In the image: Our Vice Chancellor Padmashri Prof. JAK Tareen, His excellency Dr.Iqbal Singh, Ltn. Governor Puducherry )      More than me getting the award I felt proud to score a place for computer science department in that list. It was indeed a great honour.  With this event I was happy for one more thing: I realized that there are many happy souls around me who really cherish my success.  In my parents face i saw that cari...

A small story: Long ago, (Not so long ago) there was a Guruji who had few students. He used to take his classes under a tree. One day when he was taking class there was a Cat roaming around that area disturbing the concentration of students.  So the Guruji decided to tie that cat to a near by tree and gave it some milk to drink so that it would keep quite. The next day Guruji had to visit some other place. So he asked one of his senior students to handle that day's classes. As per the words of Guruji, that senior student was ready to take the class. But he seemed to be disturbed and worried. His friends asked him the reasons. And he replied: " I am ready to take the class. But what to do? The cat is missing. Our Guruji used to  tie the cat to that tree while he was taking the classes. So i also need to follow the same thing. But to my worry the Cat is Missing". Most of our modern day activities are like this only. We have forgotten the soul of the concepts and simply stic...

" < minutes / > " : A new component in my regular "Internet Programming and Web Technologies" Lecture session. In each session 10 mins will be allocated to one student. He/she has to utilize that time to present a recent innovation/happening/event in the field of Web Technology. The idea is to enrich both the communication and technological updates of the students in a participative manner. Thought of recording it through digi cam. Need to execute in a professional way, the recording. An another decision that I have taken is to utilize the "Google Moderator" for publishing the class room queries and discussions. Have allocated one enthusiastic student for that purpose as coordinator. Well... Need to wait and watch how these things would shape-up. PS: The naming credit " < minutes / > " goes to Jayarathna Madharasan, an another enthusiastic student of IPWT class.

The announcement of GSoc 2010: "Google Summer of Code  (GSoC) is a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects. We have worked with several open source, free software, and technology-related groups to identify and fund several projects over a three month period.  Since its inception in 2005, the program has brought together nearly 3,400 students and more than more than 3,000 mentors & co-mentors from nearly 100 countries worldwide, all for the love of code. Through  Google Summer of Code , accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor or mentors from the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios and the opportunity for employment in areas related to their academic pursuits.  In turn, the participating projects are able to more easily identify and bring in new developers. Best of all, more source code is created and released...

Announcement for June 2010 NET has come. Refer the following link: http://www.ugcnetonline.in/ The general perception about NET is that it is the second toughest examination next to civil services. Being the passport for entry in to the academia of higher education, the test need to be of that sort only.  This year there are few changes in the pattern of the test.  One of the welcome change is the facility to apply on-line.  Choice (50 out of 60) questions in Part I ( Of course this is there from Dec 2009) Have a clear look at the pattern of Paper III. I thought of listing few tips about clearing the NET (or so I feel): Don't lend your ears to those who say "It is impossible to clear the NET in first attempt". In fact it would be easier in the first time becoz you would be currently studying the papers.  There is no short-cut to this test (Unlike your so-called other tests conducted by corporates) Selection of Elective is the Key. Go for the ...

This is the fourth year for me at Department of Computer Science, Pondicherry University. The programmes for which I handle courses are Masters in Computer Science and Computer Applications. Though my area of specialization is Web Technology (or so i believe) , below is a list of few courses that I have handled successfully(!!). Visual Programming (Windows programming, VB, VC++ etc) Artificial Neural Networks Architecture of UNIX. Internet Programming and Web Technologies (my favourite one..) Information Technology Introduction to .NET Framework (C#) Programming in Java In the above list you would have observed, mostly the courses I run are programming based. Trying to transfer the "Gyan" that i got from Geeks in the industry to the students.. One common element of all of my lectures is the discussion about the current trends. The very core of my lectures is mostly regarding "keeping track of the happenings in the industry". I strongly feel that my role i...

Every year there would be ~ 6 students under my supervision for their final semester project. The students are from Masters programme in Computer Science and Computer Applications. This year too I have six students with me doing their project. Just thought of listing the project domains in this post. Web Search Mashup - A project on novel search result visualization. Semantic Search - A project associated with RDF , Jena  etc... Semantic Recommender System - A recommender system based on semantics!! Web Site Filtering using Artificial Neural Networks Web Services Mining Framework Online Image Processing tool... You might have noticed all these projects are on web platform.. The idea of giving these projects is to make the students familiar with SDLC and lastest Technologies...  Their implementation platforms are any of the following three : J2EE,  .NET & LAMP Lets see how good these projects shapes up...