Blow to Utd and England

What a night it was at the Allianz Arena!! Wayne Rooney scored his 34th goal of the season inside 90 seconds after some shoddy defending inside the box by Bayern. But the home team kept pressing and scored two important goals via Ribbery and Olic to take a lead in the first leg reminiscent of the scenes at camp nou in 99' only for Man U to be at the recieving end. As Ribbery had touted Man U is a one man team and so it proved. After the opening goal, Man U sat back and were pushed deeper and deeper by Bayern Munich. Ribbery was a threat every time he had the ball and Neville was no match for him. Neville's mistake cost red devils dearly as his hand ball created the first goal and a opening for Bayern. Ribbery's free kick ended in the back of the net via Rooney's deflection. At the closing stages Evra was robbed of possesion by Olic who ran into the box and put the ball in the net cooly beating Van Der Saar. Fergie would be more concerned by the other incident during the final minutes of play. Rooney got injured and got of the stadium on clutches. Man Utd and England depend heavily on their striker and it reamins to be seen as to how serious the injury is. He looks certain to miss the clash against Chelsea on saturday and looks doubtful for the home tie against Bayern. It remains to be seen as to who will step for Man U and England should Rooney miss rest of the season.

H.NGVC / H.265

H.265 or H.NGVC (Next-generation Video Coding) is a hypothetical future ITU-T recommendation for video compression coding under study for potential development by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG). The study of potential technology advances which will enable creation of H.265 is a major part of the current work of VCEG. H.265 is a long-term video coding standard, launched by VCEG. As indicated in ITU-T SG16’s homepage, VCEG plans to complete the requirement definition and begin the detailed algorithm design for H.265 in the study period 2005-2009, and if the progress in contribution technology is sufficient, H.265 is expected to be finalized in 20010-2012.

Currently, H.265 hasn’t been formalized and VCEG keeps seeking proposals and information regarding the possibility of a major gain in performance to justify the step from H.264 to H.265. Though the necessary scope of H.265 is yet to be determined, it is agreed that among the goals will be [AA01]:

• simplicity and “back to basics” approach
• high coding efficiency, e.g., two times compared with H.264
• computational efficiency, considering both encoder and decoder
• loss/error robustness
• network friendliness
• other considerations as necessary

Backward/forward compatibility is not assumed to be required for H.265, as H.265 is a brand new standard instead of an extension of H.264. Although some agreements about the goals of an H.265 project have been reached, e.g. computational efficiency and high compression performance, the current state of technology does not yet seem mature for creation of an entirely new H.265 standard, and all contributions are modifications to KTA JM11, a reference H.264 encoder by the MPEG/VCEG Joint Video Team. In April 2009, the scope of the project was changed to H.NGVC, with a H.264+ standard being the most likely outcome.
The preliminary requirements for NGVC are bit rate reduction of 50% at the same subjective image quality and computational complexity comparing to H.264 High profile, with computational complexity ranging from 1/2 to 3 times as that of H.264. NGVC should be able to provide 25% bit rate reduction along with 50% reduction in complexity at the same perceived video quality as H.264 High profile.

Features:

1. 2-D non-separable adaptive interpolation filter (AIF)
2. Separable AIF
3. Directional AIF
4. "Supermacroblock" structure up to 64x64 with additional transforms
5. Adaptive prediction error coding (APEC) in spatial and frequency domain
6. Adaptive quantization matrix selection (AQMS)
7. Competition-based scheme for motion vector selection and coding
8. Mode-dependent KLT for intra coding

References:

1. http://www.h.265.net/
2. http://tvbeurope.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=358

$45 for 16 years of wrongful imprisonment

I just read this story on CNN http://preview.tinyurl.com/ycy4rwe and it has given me creeps. Greg was imprisoned for a murder of prostitute that he did commit and has spent the last 16 years in the prison. Last month, he was exonerated and freed. During the last 16 years he has lost his wife to divorce, lost track of his friends some of whom would not visit him to the jail after being convicted and missed seeing his daughter grow. I have a 1 1/2 year old son and not seeing him for the next 16 years just gives me creeps. Excerpt from the news "When Taylor left prison, the state of North Carolina gave him a $45 check. It was intended to get him a hotel room and back on his feet. The amount makes him laugh." $45 for being wrongfully convicted in a crime and jailed for 16 years. Is this a joke or what? Greg needs help as he says, he cannot stay with his daughter and grandson for the rest of his life. He has been struggling to get a job. I do not know what is more horrifying, the states check or being wrongfully impriosned for 16 years for someone else's crime.

All the best Greg.

Best EPL Season ever!!

This has been the best EPL season ever!! The battle at the top and and the bottom of the league has been immense. Chelsea, Arsenal and Man Utd have been playing musical chair for the top spot. Each have had their time at the top of the table. I thought Chelsea had the best chance to win the league after the departure of Ronaldo and Tevez. Rooney's form of his life has saved them and they are in a strong position. Arsenal suffered in the begining and mid of the season due to injuries and lack of form. They now have easy run-in as they dont have to face the other big clubs for the remaining of the season. If they can beat Man City, Spurs etc in the remaining matches then this could be their season of glory. Chelsea strated impressively like every season but have stutured in the last few weeks like every other season since Jose left the club. Most of the first team members are beyond 30 and they tend to get tired near the end of the season. This has led to inconsistent performance and rested their challenge to the top. Curently lying second in the table with a point between them and red devils. If they have to win the league then they need to win their rest of the games. The challenge for the fourth spot could go down the wire. Man City, Spurs, Villa and Kop's are all fighting for their ticket to champs lge. I firmly believe pool are out of the race. City and Spurs are the one dreaming of european action and are in drivers seat at the moment with 2 points between them. The relegation battle has also been quite pulsating. Pompey are guaranteed of relegation after their 9 point deduction. Hull, Burnely, Hammers, Wolves are fighting to avoid the other two spots. In my opinion Hull will be relegated this season with other team being one of the three above. In my opinion this has been one of the most openely contested season in EPL. I believe that EPL is the most fiercely contested league. If you look at any other league the gap between the top two and rest is quite astounding. There have been many a upsets and surprises this season. So nobody is guranteed of the top spot till the last minute has been played out.

May the best team win.

AFRICA - Land Of Annihilation

What has become of one of the most beautiful land. One of the most successful and powerful dynasty (pharonic civilization) ruled this part of the world. To say the state of affairs of the second largest continent is pathetic will be an understatement. Although rich in natural resources, Africa remains worlds most poorest and underdeveloped continent due to various reasons like, spread of deadly diseases, corrupt governments commiting heinous crimes, failed planning, high poverty, high levels of illiteracy, malnutrition, civil wars, tribal military conflicts, genocides, and lack of access to foreign capital. People like Yoweri Museveni, Idi Amin, Kagame, Al-Bashir and Mugabe have been getting away with commiting heinous crimes against humanity quite easily. The number of people dead in Uganda, DR Congo, Somalia, Darfur, Kenya and Zimbabwe due to civil wars and genocides is quite astonishing. The genocides of the past decade have almost wiped out a generation. What is so disturbing is that Hundreds of thousands are massacred, maimed and displaced daily by their own government’s troops. Some governments regularly arrest people as rebel suspects while raping girls under the age of 15 is used as a biological weapon to kill them with AIDS. These are the reasons coupled with unstable governments that has made Africa a fostering ground for terrorist recruitment bases. Africa is one of the most sought out lands by Al-Qaida and Taliban. If developed countries really do want to fight against global terrorism then they are fighting in the wrong places (Iraq & Afghanistan). They need to help rebuild this continent. A properous and successful Africa will serve everyone's interest.

Code Quality Vs Time To Market

It is one of the most viciously debated question in the software industry. Do I spend more time on the quality of code or should I just release the working code with some defects to beat the competitors. Both have its pros and cons. But the thing to remember is that there is no "perfect product" or "defect free product" which exists today. So do I keep reviewing the code inorder to reduce the time on fixing the bugs or release the code and fix the bugs later to beat the competition?
Having been in the software industry for quite some time, here is my take on this. There two kinds of companies working on softwares Product companies and Services companies. Product companies generate revenue by timely releases of their product to beat competitors. Although quality is important to them but it is not so important that they can spend months/years together to imrove the quality and there by lose their market share. Their strategy is to release the first/alpha version of the product and then fix the bugs based on customer experience. Services companies tend to rely a lot on the code quality as it is their measure of experience. Services company make revenues by servicing the clients and their profit is usually governed by how efficiently they can deliver the product thereby reducing the support/warranty time. This can only be achieved by making sure that the code passes all the acceptance criteria and has undergone several rounds of tests. To make sure that the above goes well, mainitaining the code quality becomes important.
If you have any thoughts on this please feel free to share the same.

EPL - Weekend Roundup

Another great week of soccer action over the weekend. The FA cup and the EPL featured tremendous matchups.

Match Of Week: Portsmouth V Birmingham City - What a game it was. One side struggling in the EPL and the other flying high in its return to top flight. One side having seen going through the worst financial nightmare having entered administration and the other having found new moolah. Yet the Portsmouth battled and came out as deserving winners. The FA cup win two years ago started their downfall, hope this time around it will lift the club as they look certain to get relegated.

Hero Of The Week: Fredric Piquionne - Scored a brace against city that booked Pompey's place at Wembley. The first one was a scratchy goal. City unable to deal with a corner conceded by Hart that was unncessary. The second one though was sublime. The way he sidefooted both the golie and defender and then drilled the ball through the gaolie legs showed his class. Apart from this his attitude was brilliant. On loan from a club (Lyon) doing well to a club that hasnt paid his wages on time 4 times this season yet showed how much the goals meant to him. He will certainly be a hero in pompey folklore for taking them to Wembly.

Zero Of The Week: Nic Bendtner - Lost the count of chances he missed. He could have easily scored a hat-rick and Gunners would have been on top of the table on goal difference. It just wasnt his day. His misses almost cost Gunners as Nugent scored against the run of play for Burnely. Burnely have really been poor this season on their travels.

Come back Of The Week: Theo Walcott - What a player!! What talent!! He was under tremendous pressure coming into this game. He has been criticised unfairly I feel. He has just come back after a injury layoff and would need time to settle down. But his performance over the weekend proved he is well on track. He provided numerous assists to Bendtner but he just couldn't finish off. Arsenal's second goal courtsey of Walcott was brilliant. Bendtner fed walcott outside the box and the way he came inside box and shot across Jensen into the bottom corner was brilliant. If Arsenal are to finish at the top of heap he needs to score goals in the remaining matches.

Play Of The Week: Nasri-Fabregas Linkup - The first goal scored by Gunner's was absolutely masterful. Fabregas puts the ball to Nasri who holds up play, Fabregas runs towards the goal and Alexander loses him, Nasri spots the run abd promptly sccops the ball inside six yard box and Cesc puts it through. Superb move and finishing.

Writing a Research Proposal

I have been trying to write a research proposal for applying to PhD course for sometime now. Have digged many a sites for that perfect proposal structure which would impress a guide. So in this post I am giving a brief of what I think would be a good research proposal. In the next 1-2 years if you do not see my status as PhD student recommend to ditch this structure :)

The proposal should ideally be limited to 300-500 words. This might change according to the university you apply. Each sentence and paragraph in the proposal should be to the point. The research title is important and should refelect the contents of the proposal.

The first para should state the problem that you intend to investigate. It should be concise. Remember if there is no clearly defined problem statement your proposal will become less focused and hence more descriptive.

The second para should define the causes and extent of the problem. Also include some background. It should also be clear as to who faces this problem and under what circumsatnces.

In the next paragraph justify why your topic of research is important to this field or how it will solve the stated problem.

The following paragraph should clearly state the aim of the proposed research. This should a specific statement of intent rather than generalised one.

This section is one of the important of all. In this para you should define the methodology you would follow to complete the project. Will the project involve literature survey, experiments, testings etc?

Finally the proposal should end with stating the expected outcomes of the proposed research.

List all the references at the end of the proposal.

All the best for your research proposal. Share you thoughts and let me know if that could be included or excluded to refine this structure further.

What a Weekend Of EPL!!!

Its the first time ever that I have supported a team to beat Chelsea. The whole terry-bridge saga has divided blues supporters like never before. I personally sympathise with bridge and have to admit that he has not lost his cool in this whole media circus. The way he avoided shaking hands with terry @ stamford bridge and got on with his job was brave and admirable.
Tevez and Bellamy scored a brace for the manchester blues to leap frog the spurs for the coveted fourth place in EPL. The first goal on the break by tevez was freakish to say the least. But this man is just amazing. Having been back in england only 24 hours before the kick-off and having spent most of the time by his pre-maturely born baby girl says a lot about this mans determination and hard work. Great loss to the reds and a great gain for the blues. Bellamy has been sublime this season. I thought he would head towards the exit door after few training ground bust-ups with Mancini. But he has been putting on good shows and is very popular with the city fans. Hope Mancini can persist with him for a long time.

Arsenal v Stoke was another match filled with controversies. I guess Arsenal sweat whenever they concede a throw in with-in the range if Delap's missiles as they don't have a clue to deal with his amazing throw-ins. Stoke scored on the 7th min comming from a peculiar source...yep Delap throw..showcross cusion header and pugh bungles it home. That was the last cheering moment for the home fans. Arsenal got back into the game with a beautiful header by Bendtner. Then the horror tackle on Ramsey by Shawcross (who had been picked into Capello's squad only hours before) which saw him being sent-off. Shawcross is not a malicious defender (shows by the way he his his face under the jersey after the tackle), but the timing on this tackle was horrific. It bought back the painful memories of long-term injuries to Eboue and Eduardo through such tackles.

Aaron ramsey will be out of the game atleast 6 months. This will give tremendous head ache to Wenger as Denilson (injured) and Wilshire (onloan @ Bolton) are not available. Arsenal did win the tie comfortably in the end but their travel back home would not have been that comfortable.