Last Course

Its done. The semester is over. I did my graphics final project demo yesterday and handed it in last night. That was the last step. Now I'm through courses. All I have left is a year of thesis. I got to find a topic now and follow it through until I graduate InshAllah.

Now I can fully focus on work and manage my own time a little. I'm looking forward to my thesis year. Its back to the time in your life when your searching for that big wave to ride. I feel if I carry on looking for that big thing I'm not going to end up picking a topic. I'm going to try and discover what I love best. So far I'm thinking of combining AI and graphics, but I still need to take an in depth look at things. Its going to be a tough time ahead. Working and masters isn't the easiest thing in the world i must say.

We will see what happens and hope for the best...

Application of Mathematics

Its really awesome when you finally learn why you took all that mathematical crap quite some time ago! Calculus, Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry.....you name it. We science and engineering students have all seen them! We have seen some applications of these cool equations but the majority of them we haven't or maybe I've just forgotten with the overload of this semester coming to a stressful end. :D

It's only through these two courses that I'm taking this semester that I realized the power of mathematics. Well obviously I knew all along the importance of math and that it is like a universal language but my thoughts have been lingering about this for sometime so guess what, I'm here writing up a post about it.

There are actual courses that we at my university haven't probably heard of. At MIT they have a course called "Applying Mathematics" or something like that. Its a whole freaking course. Luckily for me and the rest of the students, we have an agreement with MIT which gives us MIT OpenCourseware. It's really profound to get an insight into the stuff they take there.

Anywayz thought I'd share the pico-second of inspirational thought that went through my neural net of a brain. I need to get back to studying Backpropogation, Hopfield, Kohanan and bla bla bla. Need to comprehend all the work these great guys including mr. backpropagation (:p) brought to life and pay tribute to the research and dedication that they have given us. "Ay kalam tahn".

"Who among us shall change life, time shall tell" - Anonymous
"Where there is a will, there is a bill" - K. Sohano
"Where there is a will, there is a hill to match that will. Only those who challenge the hill shall see the greener grass on the other side" - from the book "Wind of Sway"

An Interesting and Inspirational Read

I came across this read as I was fiddling around on the Internet and dreaming of days to come instead of studying for my final exam tomorrow. Its called "Advise to A Beginning Graduate Student". Check it out HERE

ScribeFire

ScribeFire is an interesting extension for firefox that allows you to blog. This is the first post I'm writing using it. Im not sure yet if it makes a difference to the conventional way of opening up the blog via URL, logging in and then writing. Maybe it is a few clicks faster. Actually it must be. To start blogging with ScribeFire you use one click and then you may have to select the blog you want to publish to. In my case most of my blogging activity is on one blog so its one click. With the conventional method, it takes you about three. It actually depends greatly on how you have your browser configured. If you use automatic login using cookies in your browser then it saves you time of logging in. Anywayz, just thought I'd try out this new feature. I think I will use it in future.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Bifurcation

I'm being tormented by two paths in life. Its an awkward situation being stuck between two opportunities, each quite different from the other. They could collide in the end actually, which would make a very interesting combination. Now its just a matter of weighting the pros and cons of each and querying my heart for answers. A wise man once told me, "Do what you love, so that you love what you do". It turns out to be a quote from somewhere. It is very important to do what you love, and its no easy task finding what you love to do. You can read an interesting but hell of a long article here. I didn't read the whole thing, but skimmed through highlights. Seems interesting. Anywayz, I'm fed up of writing. Need to get home. I'm still at work and what seemed to be an ever simple task turned out to be a pain in the back but thank goodness I'm finished now.

I bet your thinking, "what kind of gibberish is this guy speaking?". Well the answer to what your thinking is that I'm speaking the normal gibberish that haunts peoples' minds as they approach huge decisions in life...

Its the end of the week and the weekend is just about to begin. I have a long one coming up. I have to finish my A-Life neural net by Sunday. Hope all goes well as the final two weeks of the semester are upon us. May God have mercy on all our souls...

Particle Systems

This graphics course has been one of the most enjoyable course I've ever taken. It is something else when you can see what your creating and fiddling around with.

My final project is going to deal with particle systems. Particle systems are what are used to render what are called "fuzzy phenomena". Examples of fuzzy phenomena are: fire, smoke, liquid...etc. These are all quite difficult to render using the conventional rendering methods. The simplest and most basic particle systems is where you represent each particle by a pixel. More complex particle systems represent the particles by 3D meshes or metaballs.

Here are examples of particle systems:



I hope to create scenes like these...

Alife

A term referring to Artificial Life. I'm working on a project for my other course (Neural Nets course) which consists of a neural net that acts as the brain of a creature in an environment. The neural network controls the creature's actions through out its life. I've tried this before in an undergraduate course. I was so close to creating a neural net optimized to use PSO as the backpropagation algorithm. Unfortunately that project didn't quite work properly. I think I had a couple of days to do that project and I decided to be cool and do everything from scratch. It was a gallant attempt and I think I was a scratch away from making it work. Anywayz, with that behind me, I now have a week left to finish this neural net project.

I probably told you before that this is my last semester taking courses. The next and after next will be dedicated purely to research. I still haven't found a topic or field for that matter. I talked to my probably-to-be adviser and we brainstormed for ideas. I left the office with the intent to do more research and find a topic where I can combine graphics and AI. Of course as the semester is coming to an end, there isn't much time left and I'll be up to my neck in work. I'll even have my job to attend to.

This is an update of recent events. It's almost dawn here in Cairo. Its 5:47 am and pretty cold. I'm sure its nothing to what its like in Vancouver, where a friend of mine immigrated to. There right now, its highs of -6 and lows of -8. Shit! Thats cold. Anyway, I slept early and woke up at 4:00 am. I have work in a few hours but decided to use this time to work on the project. As usual I get carried away with searching for a thesis topic and haven't been focusing that much on the project.