MasterWorks

Interesting! I just attended the master projects of MIT students. There were really interesting small pieces of works spanning (electronics, communication and computer science) : optimizing the eletricity consumption of home appliances with small chips, neonatal care for babies with deficiencies in birth, attribution in artworks on the Web by using Semantic Web technologies, error analysis on feedback collection from sensor networks (fusion centers and sensor devices in the form of daisy chains), oblivious routing, new file systems for distributed environments for security and many studies on speech recognition. 

More info here : http://www.eecs.mit.edu/masterworks/

Dedicated to one of the most important person in my life

I feel really stressed recently. I don't know why and I don't know how to solve it. Probably, because I am getting towards the end of my phd. Or probably because of the pressure. I ask myself, how difficult the things became. Although I used to think that "I like the difficult things not the easy ones", I started saying there are really difficult things. I know complaining doesnt help and it will never. I am looking for an example to inspire.

I have a great example in front of me. That person had the worst stress ever for over a year and a half non-stop. I remember those rough times as I witnessed with my eyes. I try to do some empathy to understand how difficult would it be in that situation. How hard would it be? I don't even have 10% of the difficulties he had. He is a strong person. And a very strong one. He is just in front of me. He is my father. He survived from that difficult situation. He didn't only survive from that situation he also kept us together. He united us. He raised us. Yeah that is my father. The best father ever.

Iyi ki varsin baba...

Working Depression

I am right now visiting MIT, W3C group and really busy with the work. So a valid excuse is at hand for long entry breaks on the blog. From now on I will try to update more frequently because it seems like I have a short memory and this place can serve as a flashback for the future.

At the beginning there were pains of getting used to the place, environment, people and missing the things left behind. Now they are almost ok (after almost 3,5 weeks). Now the time is for productivity and fun. There are thousands of things to discover. I like learning but I realized I am not efficient in learning may be because of the quick focus loss. I have to heal this. But I am learning very much.

And I realized the importance of being a decision maker. I was complaining about making decisions especially with the rough ones. Now I see that being a decision maker is just great. I mean you have the choices first and you select first. You have your own responsibility, you know what is better for you. It is all about the perspective. Yeah I am the great decision maker.

It has been many different environments I have seen till now (with fairly long periods). They were totally different environments from what I had used to. I think now I have a better picture of the world. But I have to go to Asia more (Japan, China, India), some Africa (Maghreb countries) and Australia.

Lets see and discover...

Stay tuned.

Back in a Google Time

Back in September... We, in Google Labs...

Google is going amazing. I don't remember a day passing without using Google. They created one of the most prestigious brands in history. Now almost every 2 days, I read a short article announcing a new Google product (tool, gadget etc). It would be really interesting to work in this company to see how the things are working internally. How do they keep the energy alive, how do they let the development as core part of their business.

Here you can find the list of tools (Graduates of the lab :)) came out of Google Labs : http://labs.google.com/


It, Google, is a trademark of Google Inc.

Interesting (Electricity)

That is not easy to catch up how the electricty moves in object tips...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-WApocVMcQ

May be one day we can use electricity to wake up instead of coffee.

Decidability & Non-decidability, Monotonicity & Non-Monotonicity

The following definitions are my interpretations of the corresponding terms.

Decidability refers to a conclusion of a function (or formalization such as logic) that has meaning in the function domain (or true or false in logic). There are different problems either decidable or undecidable. For example, checking if a number is odd or even is a decidable problem. However, Turing machine halting problem is undecidable problem.

Monotonicity is a feature of a function which refers to the maintenance of the relationship between parameters of the function and the results. For example if funtion f is monotonic then this must hold if (x<=y) then f(x)<=f(y) for every instances of x and y. If it doesn't hold then it a non-monotonic function.

Refs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_problem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotonic_function

Yellow Ox

Now I am gonna narrate a typical story we have in Turkey. I will not comment on the conclusion so that whoever wants what can get it in the way they want/understand.
Once upon a time, in a wild land, there was a herd of oxes living in peace as a group. Everything was perfect, the rain, the food and no illness...
However one day, a group of lions came to their region escaping from rainless lands because of the drought. The lion attacks were so tiring for the oxes. But they could handle it as when they are together they can easily defeat the lions. One day, when lions started thinking to move to another land, the weakest, puniest and the lame lion came up with an idea by saying

- We are not moving! I will handle this.

He went to the oxes with a white flag saying that he came for the peace. He started explaining why they had attacked the herd so many times. He said:

- Dear Oxes!!! We attack you because of the yellow ox (the only one with that color in the herd). Give us that one then we will stop attacking you...

The leader of the herd returns to the herd for discussing the offer within the council... They all had found it reasonable with only exception, the wise ox. Anyway they had given the yellow ox for the peace. Truly, there had been a peace for a while after giving the yellow ox. However, lions had started attacking again because of the hunger and the taste they got from the yellow ox. This time, the same lion came with another offer to the oxes. He said:

- Give the long tailed ox, then we will stop attacking your herd.

The council of oxes joined again and they decided to give that one too. After this, the same scenario had repeated so many times day by day, causing the lions to get stronger and stronger and oxes to get weaker and weaker. After this, the herd even started offering by itself, saying :

- Let's give this one and don't attack us!

This had kept going for a long time till the oxes can't say no. Then, they had understood that they had made a mistake somewhere. The conclusion was simple :

- WE MADE A MISTAKE BY GIVING THE YELLOW OX!!!

Hope you enjoy it...

Stay tuned.