Thesis homepage

M.Tech Thesis homepage:

Explorations on a neurologically plausible model of image object classification

http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/vision/sourabhd/

A soulful ghazal

Jis taraf jayiye ... hain khokle lafzo ka jor... (2)
Kaun samjhe yahaan awaaz ki gehraai ko ? .... (2)

Shehar dar shaher liye phirta hoon tanhai ko ....

A excellent ghazal by Hariharan and Ustad Zakir Hussain .... what an apt description of life !!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAkeM5hgMZk

Indic languages : is transliteration the simplest solution ?

NLP researchers at Google and other places have done a great job in transliteration from Roman script to Indic scripts. Now transliteration feature is available in GMail.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/email-in-indian-languages.html


However, there is a simpler solution available.




Just click on on the menubar (or some keyboard shortcut) and change you keyboard layout to India. Your keyboard then starts emitting Unicode (ISCII) symbols for Indian scripts (eg: Devanagari). These layouts have been standardised long back. Only thing missing in the present setup is that Indian characters are not printed on the keyboards. ( Of late, you can find Indian charecters printed on some cell phones though)


The Japanese,Russian, German, French and many other coutries have such keyboards. (Its not a difficult task anyways). Hindi, for example, is the 4th largest spoken language in the world. Yet, why there is no demand for such things ?

I personally believe Devanagri is a better script for Hindi (and Sanskrit and Marathi) as it is very precise. What is the point of writing these languages in the not-so-precise Roman script such that your transliterating software produces the correct Devanagari (or for every word you have to select from drop-down box) ? Why not write directly in Devanagari ? Would n't it be much simpler ?

Stopping by the woods

Cold winter in Kanpur brought memories of a beautiful poem by Robert Frost that I had studied in school.

Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening
-- Robert Frost
========================================
Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village though.
He will not see me stopping here,
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer,
To stop without a farmhouse near,
Between the woods and frozen lake,
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake,
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep,
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.