IIT Kanpur

Let me first introduce myself. I am Abhishek Verma. I am doing my BTech in CompSci in NIT Trichy.

May 11: I am finally in IIT Kanpur. The dream place to be for an engineering student. Here all the facilities are the best you can get. The mess is the best. Hostel is very good. I have 2 chairs, a fan, a computer table and a LAN slot, free net proxy account(I have the SQUID proxy account),.. but no computer. I have packed it and kept it at my senior's room (Sameer Gupta) in Emerald Hostel in NIT Trichy. I am missing it dearly.

I have joined in IIT Kanpur under SURGE - Summer Undergraduate Research Grant for Excellence.
Toady was a tough day. I have been frustrated for the last two days. I was given the topic of Reconfigurable Microprcosessors by my HOD Mr. Ramasubramanian Sir. I filled it and sent it here in IITK. I got selected here mainly on my GPA which is good.

My mentor is Dr. Phalguni Gupta(refered to further as PG). He is the head of the Computer Center here. He suggested to change my topic to Biometric Image Processing, which I gladly did. I came here and was asked to join the Biometrics team here working under a Central Government funded project. I was happy. The head, as it seemed, is Hunny maam. She is intelligent. There are other people I dont know their names. One paticular maam is Richa, who did CS graduation from a college in Lucknow. I could see about 8-9 people working on the project. All doing different traits of image processing.
There were 4 major sections:

1. Face Recognition
2. Iris Recognition
3. Fingerprint Recognition
4. Signature Recognition

I was happy to see all the charts, presentations in the Biometrics Lab. But the team is in the middle -> ending stages of their project. On the first day morning, I was given the job of testing a piece of java code for image recognition. I had to note down the HAAR(An algorithm for face recognition) values and Hamming Distance values in my notebook for each and every image seperately. I thought it OK in the beginning. But then I thought to myself, what have I come here for? do this peon work (I call it hamali (in marathi) or coolie's work). I came here to do research. Then I just told myself to relax, it was my first day. After lunch, I thought there will be light at the end of the dark tunnel..

Ya, there was light indeed, but of the incoming train... I was given a GUI in Matlab for Face recognition. All I had to do was to run it, Click on few buttons, copy paste a few files here and there, then click on the center of the eyes and the lip of the photograph.. The same thing in a seemingly infinite loop. So the whole day, I was doing the testing part of the project. While going out of the lab, I met PG Sir. I told him that testing was really boring. He replied that it was like ragging on the first day and will get better.

Next day arose, and I had to complete the left out work of yesterday. Same clicking on the eyes and lip of each photo. I told Hunny maam, that I did not want to do testing anymore. She is very kind and understanding. She asked me what I would like to work on... I was given Offline Signature analysis.. I thought that it will be a good challenging thing. A Sir.. (I dont recollect his name) gave me a fine introduction to it, and explained that I had to do the identification part. He explained the Range Search Algorithm and the Dynamic Time Warping Algorithms. I understood most of it.... and the rest is left to the reader as an exercise... The next day I was given the source code of the Verification part. I read it and found a flaw in the implementation of High Pass Filter code. Even sir agreed to it, but that library wasnt written by sir and that filter was luckily never used anywhere,..I guess. So my job was left to understand it and make it. I met PG Sir. He asked me how everything was going on. I told him everything frankly. I also told him that I wanted to do something challenging. He said,"you have just completed 2nd year, and you are here for just two months. You cannot do much. It is better if you just assist these people in their work." He suggested some work, but then he disagreed with himself, and said that, it was too young for me. Those were the words that would keep ringing in my ears the whole night. He asked me to come on to Face detection, ie automating the part I was doing manually, finding the face in a photograph. I thought that will be challenging and I slept off.

Next day, the 10th, i.e- yesterday, I was given 2 algorithms for face detection, one was based on the 2D Discrete Wavelet Transform and the other was some Averaging algorithm. Both already implemented in two Matlab files. I also had this GUI of clicking. My work was to pipeline one or both of these algorithms into that GUI. in short, I was made a plumber here... I read some stuff on Discrete Wavelet Transform. It was very interesting and I tried to understand it. But then, Hunny maam said that I need not understand the Algorithm, I just need to do the plumbing part. I continued to do the work. Had a bit trouble with it. At night I got frustrated of all this work.

So I decided to meet PG Sir today.

"Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore"

Well I am in turbulent waters now. I did not beat around the bush while talking to PG Sir. I said that I did not want to work in the Biometrics team, and that they were in their ending stages. I could not find proper work. All algos were already implemented. Just the joining part was remaining. He made two valid points:

• The team was not in their final stages, they had been working for 3 years, and more work lay ahead
• All algos were not already implemented. There is no perfect algorithm for eg: finding where the face of a person is in the photo.

I agree to these points. But I find it unlikely that I will do, or atleast help in doing these works. So I asked him to give me a try, give me a new topic. He warned me that I will be losing my seat in the Biometrics Lab if I quit this. I will have to work in the Computer Center(cc).. (He is the head of the cc). I agreed to it. So he gave me the topic of massively parallel sparse direct matrix solvers for linear equations. I told him I was happy with that. I asked him what the procedure was to get a login ID. He was the cc head. He could have given me an acc there itself. But he insisted on first completing all the formalities.

So here is where my Frustration adventure kicks off. He asked me to get a letter from Mrs. Vibha Gupta (She is the coordinator of SURGE) stating that I required a Login ID so that money could be transferred from SURGE to cc account. So I came out of the office to go to her. But I did not remember her office as she had taken me to her office in her car last time (after the inauguration ceremony of SURGE). I remembered it was related to Dept of Resource Planning and Generation(drpg). I wandererd around there searching for Mrs. Vibha. Then somehow I found the correct location in another building. I went to her and told about this. She asked me who my mentor was. ( I was in a soup, PG Sir had asked me not to mention his name in this). I replied PG Sir... She smirked a bit. And then asked me to meet Shakeel sir in drpg. So I went to his office. He was nowhere to be seen in it. I later found out that he was in the front office, busy with his work. I went to him and explained him.. Vibha maam had already phoned him. So then he asked someone on the phone the formalities to be completed and then got to know that I had to meet Mr. Savitha in cc. I went to cc and explained him everything. He gave me a form, I filled it, I had to fill in the Project Investigators name and get it signed. I went to PG Sir and got it signed from him. I attached xerox of my offer letter with it, and gave it to Mr. Savitha. He said that the drpg has to forward it so that the money transfer can take place. He tried to call up Mr.Shakeel but he wasnt picking up the phone. I again went up to drpg to Mr. Shakeel. He talked with the dean of drpg. He signed my applicaion and asked me to tell PG Sir to give me an account immediately while the dean would talk to him and settle matters with him. So I again went to the cc and spoke with PG Sir. He had an important long meeting next up and was leaving. He said that he could not give me the account unless all the formalities were completed. He asked me to go to the library. I did not have a temporary I Card to get into it. I went to the library. I showed the library guard my offer letter. He asked me to get a pass from Madhu maam. I went to her, and she told me to go to Deputy Librarian Bose. I went to him and asked him about the pass. He said that he wanted a written application from PG Sir, only then he will give me a pass for a fortnight, depending on my behaviour, he will extend it. I asked him to speak to Vibha maam, maybe she could explain. He shouted, who is Vibha?? She is nothing..Ok..Now get out. So I exited the library, and went to Vibha maam. She couldn't do much except agree with me that Bureaucracy in IITK is very rigid.

She tried all means to help me and asked me if I wanted to change my mentor. She asked me to come back at 3 pm. I went back to room, had my lunch, slept, and went to her at 3 as she had told. She couldn't do much and then asked me to wait for a day or two. So I went back to room.

Later around at 4, Manas came to my room( from home) and I explained to him everything. He gave me the solution. Our SQUID proxy ID did not work in Windows Lab, but worked in Linux Lab( and that is what I like more..). So I am here, hapily blogging and chatting for 4-5 hours... I took so much pains to get a LoginID while I already had it...
(I wonder isn't the cc head supposed to know that the SQUID proxy ID works in Linux lab..)
Bye.
(I must leave or else I will miss my dinner.)