New year in life and new job

A new year in life started a couple of days ago. Sharing the birthday with Einstein brings some disadvantages and advantages at the same time. One of the advantages is the constant nagging urge to learn more about the universe and see it the way the my illustrious birthdaymate did. The disadvantage is realising that if I were ever to invent a time machine and move in this extra dimension he conjured up, I will have to keep looking for clues that I have left myself - damn you predestination paradox.

As part of my continuous Brownian motion through life, I started a new job. No organisation (organism) is cool without a scientific name or acronym, the previous one I worked for was a mouthful - CSIRO, the current one is shorter, just AMX (Aerometrex). Doing multiview geometry mapping and point cloud collection. Calibrating lots of cameras in Agisoft, Imageiron, PhotoModeler etc. The approach here is very pragmatic, we will go with whatever is available off the shelf to create the product and my job is to develop an efficient production chain using the right mix of automation and human intervention.

The first order of business was setting up the development environment including - Python 2.7 64bit goodies and implementing Python image calibration (with some changes to account for the new cv2 API which makes numpy arrays and OpenCV images identical). I read through Zhang's core paper on simple flat checkerboard based camera calibration, implemented in OpenCV to estimate 2-3 radial distortion parameters and 2 tangential parameters (Brown's model), as well as the X and Y focal lengths and principal point (which can be different if the lens has astigmatism). Staring at these calibration targets for a while tends to give you optical illusions as the eye and the brain aim to iteratively approach a calibrated view of reality.



OpenCV needs to be told how many corners to expect, so a simple histogram equalisation and mean transition count is required on the checkerboard. Then simply populate the camera ( remember the corner element is 1) and distortions matrix and undistort. Writing calibrations and undistorts with higher order polynomials and even piecewise linear functions will be required for wide angle lenses. Otherwise I am also looking at the 3 rotations degrees of freedom we have in spaceland and their methods of representation via Rotation matrixes, Quaternions and Euler angles. Is there rotational degree of freedom in space-time land ?

Traveller's tales - waiting at airports

Kolkata(way out) - Waiting alone in the upstairs lounge of the rather ramshackle Netaji Subhas Airport. Calcutta seems to have gone to the dogs since the center of power shifted from here to New Delhi in 1912, or may be it was when Netaji's army got trounced (according to General Slim of the "Forgotten 14th army") in the Burma campaign. The viewing gallery upstairs is rather empty and desolate, there is vomit on the floor, I remember coming here nearly 20 years ago to see my father off to Kenya. The will to do something on their own among Bengalis seems to have been broken when they saw their hero fail at liberating India, or it might have been the last 35 years of communist rule which has exposed how the state functions to the people. The Catch-22 of modern economy is that the state puts the currency in place, yet it is supposed to let the market control it. In Bengal people simply aspire to join the state in controlling the market and take home a fixed salary every month, they endlessly sit for the exams to land them government jobs or serve as party cadres in hope of a reward when their candidate gets elected.


Kathmandu(way in) - Paid the price for being unprepared with a visa by jumping through Visa-on-Arrival hoops. Some enterprising locals charged me NPR 400 for a couple of photos printed from a Canon Selphy CP800 (I had left mine in Kolkata). Met some interesting people in the queue, a Baptist volunteer looking after the welfare of Nepalese women repatriated from India after working in the prostitution industry down there. Seems like exoticism is in demand everywhere. And a mother-daughter duo from Brazil who graciously lent me a few US dollars in exchange for NPR's and a sketch.

Kathmandu(way out) - Flight to Kolkata was canceled due to Bandh (Strike), there would be no people to pick up in Kolkata. So they put me on a flight via Delhi which would arrive late at night and depart the next day. While waiting I met a Dutch lady doing strange no gaps/black areas crossword, need to get one of them in English or design one for myself. To pass the time I drew some people listlessly waiting for the often delayed flights, out of the window was the unwritten rule for asking people before drawing them. Met Mr. Morning Agarwal and discussed demand of steel and coal in India and the mining business, apparently his family is from a mining background. Much has changed since wildcatting early days of mining in India, but as is the case elsewhere the wealth and assets from the early days persists. He was interested in Aerial survey and selecting right areas for ground survey since permits are expensive and requires lots of palm greasing.

Delhi - We are greeted by an Air India employee gathering all the passengers going to Kolkata in a pile to ease hopping the barriers which are in place to prevent rather irregular use of the transfer facilities we were about to make. The mudras in the entrance hall and concave and convex mirrors, made an impression about the culture India wants to portray to the rest of the world. Altering the Air India bookings and getting past airport security without boarding passes produced jokes from the IT folks. Mr. Zeus Beater was holding the magic Manifest with 9 names on it. I chatted with someone attending weddings in India as part of a business deal. Here you do not get married to your wife, the marriage is a social and economical transaction. Words floated about Kidd street being a bad area. I tried to explain how aerial survey can help locate aerials which allows Airtel to stay on air, I think I tangled it up as people joked about bad reception in the terminal.


Kolkata(way in) - We are back to base, strolling out of the airport is easy. Everyone from Kathmandu got their luggage together. I walked outside and waited for my new acquaintance to arrive. He rode with us to his large property near Ballygunge. Few acres of land in a prime location in Kolkata, guards at the gate and rows of rented shops outside - the tenants have long stopped paying rent. The reality of holding land and economics in the city.

In and out of Magical Nepal - Poonhill Trek

Nepal is a Magical place, a great place to visit and just walk around aimlessly. There is always a great panorama at the top of every hill you climb and at the bottom of every river valley and the shores of lake Phewa.

Yet those born here are eager to get out. Kathmandu and elsewhere is full of language schools for guides and those who want to pursue education in - Korea, UK, USA, Australia, Japan, India and anywhere but Nepal. By my estimates there are 4 ways out : Matrimony, Magnanimity, Military and Money.

The last is brought in my the steady streams of tourists taking Visas-on-Arrival at the airport (they only accept foreign currency) or paying in dollars at the trekking agencies for hikes, helicopter rides or a splash down the Trishuli in a raft. The government money concentrates in the hands of the Chhetris (who hold political power) and the tourist money in the hands of the Bahuns (who hold economic power). This sends their sons and daughters to the language schools and eventually abroad. There is nothing wrong with this, just how things operate. I went to Calcutta Medical College with the daughter of former Interior Minister Khum Bahadur Khadka - Irena Khadka.

The hills people particularly the Gurung, who live in the Poon hill - Ghandruk - Ghorepani area which I trekked in get recruited by armies worldwide particularly the British. A lot of the infrastructure around this area is funded by them. The electricity(solar and hydro) and water in these remote areas much more consistent than in the towns - Pokhara and Kathmandu. The bridges are solid and a picture of a retired military patriarch adorns every tea-house. In such a tea house I met Jimmy Woods, a wild and weird man from Banff, Canada who has spent the last 30 years learning traditional Nepalese skills and teaching them to Commando units. He speaks nearly fluent Nepalese and spends half his time in Canada and the other half in Nepal. The martial history here runs deep and lets the people leap beyond the borders of their country.

The other source of foreign currency is donations, some to individual children being sponsored - like the kid I met on top of Swyambhunath, who said his Canadian sponsors had promised to take him to Canada if he aced his SLC (school leaving certificate) and insisted that I buy him some English books. The other lot of donations go to orphanages which tend to sprout up everywhere and attract foreign donations and mostly act as grand swindles at the expense of the kids. Luke, a fellow traveler, tried unsuccessfully to locate the orphanage his parents support. Anyway some magnanimity serves to pull the Nepalese out of Nepal.

The first option I am all too familiar with, as the never ending phone calls my parent keeps receiving after putting up my profile in a local website, of what nature I have already gone into before. When all is considered Nepal is a beautiful place and everybody wants to go there, but the Nepalese want to have a go on the outside. Grass is always greener on the other side, the entire economic system functions on people having different value systems. May be we should sue CocaCola for not providing adequate recycling and causing the accumulation of garbage everywhere including the Annapurna conservation area. The Nepalese are used to biodegradable packaging and are having a hard time adapting to rubbish that does not just rot away in the rain, instead stands around in brightly coloured heaps.

The Himalayas are a rare place and have enormous value in their grandness and breathtaking beauty, they will keep existing for a while and watch the flow of people in and out of Nepal.

The Tea Pot PhD in Arts vs Engineering

On one of my many trips to MONA, I was introduced to the term "Tea Pot PhD" by several pedagogy researchers travelling to the museum. They hold PhD's in humanities and the tea pot PhD is defined as one in which someone makes something apparently trivial (from a modern day mass-manufacturing perspective), say a tea pot and expounds in detail regarding the artistic and technical processes involved in making it in the body of their thesis. The term is used in a derogatory sense implying lack of originality and critical thinking. Such an approach is considered a short-cut to being awarded a doctorate.

As an engineering PhD student, the tea-pot PhD sounded like one of the most difficult sort of PhD's to undertake. As I have seen numerous PhD candiadates take the long arduous road towards a practical application oriented PhD as opposed to a complex numerical/analytical modelling based solution where they churn out bits of Matlab or Python code - which ever is the flavour du jour. The arrival of rare components such as materials for a Terahertz oscillator, dielectric for a special patch antenna or a bunch of antennas and digitiser cards for a Noise MIMO radar can hold up progress for years. In my particular case I had significantly alter my research path since the Single pass Quad-pol airborne L-band interferometric radar I proposed to work with did not materialise, and eventually the small company I was working for had a sad demise.

Performing field work, coordinating satellite data takes and finally closing the loop using theory and experimental validation takes a quite a bit of effort. This can be compared to preparing and pouring tea. As opposed to designing the teapot/radar instrument itself. I am surprised that fine arts which are supposed to encourage creativity and aesthetics is biased against the creative process itself and focuses on the critical aspects instead. Engineering is all about creating working systems and transitioning pure science to more applied aspects, creating products which are of real use to the society. Admitted a lot of the engineering I indulge in is like playing with early days of X-ray, we get a different view of the planet, but we haven't quite worked out how to diagonise the fractures using the imagery. This does not automatically imply that the building such systems is pointless.

After all I am only doing a PhD in - "watching grass grow from space using flash photography with microwave ovens".


“Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.”
― Brendan Behan

Five favourite things - Mate selection criteria

Being a citizen of the world is nothing new in my generation. I was born in Kolkata, India, grew up and went to high school in Juja, Kenya and I have spent a great deal of my later life in Adelaide, Australia. It however does make it difficult to have a cultural identity and the answer to "Where are you from ?" takes about 5minutes. Lately my parent has been on my case to get a traditional girl from my community. Being rather untraditional and free-wheeling, while appreciating the depth of knowledge  in the rather ancient culture(this culture is rife with philosphers and mathematicians - students of the zero) I was born into is hard work. It is so much like another old culture, the Egyptians, where the Pharaohs only marry within the family. So I have resorted to setting little tests for prospective partners. Here is one a girl had set in the Hobart Art school (it could have just been a griefer).

A while ago a friend showed it to me. So I have listed 5 of my favourite things (Modern States of Matter - Classical Elements):

1. Plasma - Fire
2. Gas - Air
3. Liquid - Water
4. Solid - Earth
5. Bose-Einstein Condensate - Quintessence

If your 5 favourite things match with my 5 favourite let me know. I so do not want to get into the Pharaonic tradition of having to marry only within your family.

Big Bang Theory - The Trouble with Physics

"Big-Bang Theory" - the TV Series stereotypes physicists (theoretical and experimental), jews and engineers, indians and astrophysicists, artists and comic book fans. In spite of all the hilarity, it continues to provide valuable education to the masses concerning the nature of science and the pursuit of loftier goals than scoring digits in a system of value put in place by previous generations, also called the financial system. Bits of science exposed in the series tend to focus attention and promote question from the masses who are addicted to technology (and passive entertainment).

In the current age, technology is understood by very few of the users. We behave like priests or wizards and wave a wand saying it is too hard for you, sometimes the ignorant population has no choice to simply believe you on "faith", or burn you at the stakes as a "witch/wizard". It has come to a point where we might need to start creating technology courts for all the frivolous law-suits brought by patent trolls, where the jury is selected from those in the know, rather than the general population. We techies are becoming something like the Morlocks. A sub-culture on its way to becoming a sub-species. But again according to "Big-Bang Theory", there is hope. Once in a while a Morlock can kidnap an Eloi, and the current Morlocks are still building the machines that make life simpler for the Eloi. Dystopian projections from authors travelling into possible futures in their mind based on current social scenarios may act to change the sequence of events and human evolution, even more than actual time machines. Some diversity is always going to arise, we are Darwin's Finches.

Above all though there is the lingering discontent among physicists, The Trouble with Physics brought this to public attention for a while. The trouble is still brewing, we have not had experimental validation of the mathematical house of cards a lot of theoretical physics rests on. May be the LHC will lead to the construction of a time machine and put everything to rest by sending a message to the Mayans in Mexico.


“Because time travel is limited to these special particles, it is not possible for a man to travel back in time and murder one of his parents before he himself is born, for example. However, if scientists could control the production of Higgs singlets, they might be able to send messages to the past or future.” - Thomas Weiler

Charity begins at home - Compassionate Fatigue

An NGO worker used the words "compassionate fatigue" the other day. I am still coming to grips with the term. Last few days in Kolkata is giving me a real understanding of it. There is so much imbalance in the world that looking at it gives as vertigo, so we would rather look away. We slowly step away from the cliff and look up towards those who seem better off (left side), so that we don't have to look down the cliff into the abyss (right side).

Kolkata is the city of my birth, visiting it after living in Australia for the last 10 years is giving me real perspective on the systems of the world. So much is determined by causality or what I call the "Luck of birth". No wonder many Asian cultures obsess over astrology and the alignment of the planets at the moment of birth. In reality a new mother needs to do no more than look around the place they have given birth and the epoch of history to get an appreciation for what her child's life is likely to be like. The bastis (slums) are next door to new apartment blocks made of steel and concrete, commodities for which the modern Indian gods (Cricket players and Movie stars) act as posterboys. A child born in Kolkata today can choose to be a base jumper or a climber, of real building or of the social pyramid scheme.

Yesterday was Valentine's day, St. Valentine has finally made his way to Kolkata from Rome. Couples were sitting in the garden outside Dakshineswar (God of South) Temple. Exchanging sweet nothings, plotting the continued exponential growth of the Indian population, perpetuating the pyramid scheme of the world by building more bricks at the base of the pyramid. May be one of those bricks will grow a few wheels or sprout wings and hop off to the top tiers of the pyramid, if only to act as a sentry to block any other bricks trying to work their way up.