Friday, May 8, 2009

Maximum Entropy

The previous post had a nice time sitting at the top, many factors like End Semester, then pressure to get a project and the society work have lead to a lag in the blog roll! Let's let it roll :D

These few weeks, mabye 1 or 2, have been pretty random in terms of the activities I have done. Ranging for complete fart to some real research mathematics. But yeah I am not sure how things will converge till the month's end when I plan to leave Kgp and join my frnzz back home.

I'll take you through a detour of the activities I pursued during these few days, not chronologically but logically :P

1. Well the first thing that I always had in mind was to do something in Web development. I've been pretty much scared by it due to lack of information and having done no server programming! Having your own society and working for it is turning to be a cool detour. But as you might guess web was never a single handed task... you need to design the backend, the fu**** html code and ofcourse use a connecting interface like php!

Cut the crap pple, who does all the suff nowadays, and being a vigilant open source follower I had heard about a Python web Framework called django( www.djangoproject.com ). It's a MVC( Model View Controller ) type of architecture. MVC is a fancy Jargon which imposes a clean and modular way to build applications. In our case the Database( Model ), Html( View ) and the logic( Control ) part are force seperated from each other.

The coolest thing about Django -> you never need to see database programming<- totally :D. And the hottest thing... the admin interface is already there, a template good enough to populate your blogs or file upload lists. Of course, programmers are most reluctant to build cool admin interfaces for themselves :P, you cant have your cake and eat it too. Django comes to your rescue and gives u a default interface!


Django Admin Interface( database layer developed my me )
I am strongly going to use this framework for the future development of the site, python is the future and anything that flows with it becomes gold!


2. Voila I started poetry again, well this is a very unlikely part of me, but I do write some very gross poetry! I wont go into the details because poets have long and tragedic detours... anyways. So I have started again and thats what counts... though have written only one, I hope to gain pace as time progress... it's tough to get solace in hot and humid Kgp :P

3. Literature again, I am scoring pretty high ;), Dan Brown! Yes the master plotter is back with all his wits and enthralling display of writting skills. I have got hands over the "not" so celebrated book.... Digital Fortress... having completed 90% till date I hope to gobble the remaining part in nick of time. But he totally rox ;).

4. Mailing list and Admin work: If you have been a part of a google group or a "mailing list" to be more professional, you might have observed the simplicity of idea but the great utility. Well some of the department seniors had suggested to establish a local archive of mails and discussions via a mailing list server. I am onto it right now and can be found sitting in my cabin in the research lab of CSE department ;) ( Seriously pple ! ). Havent actually got a great hint of how exactly I would be doing it, but challenges is what I think are common and there's nothing you can do avoid them... so just live with them.... hehe...

But tweaking with the Dns and understanding the priciples behind the "Firewalls", that, so often stop breach of malicious code is very enlightening! Kudos to CSE deptt for being supportive( so far ) :D

5. Last but not the least... the reason I am rubbing my Ass on 45 deg celcius and 90% humidity. God yes a dammed project. Comming to the domain, it is in the field of Natural Language Processing. The work is pretty straight and I feel it'll turn out to be very interesting to implement the ideas. The best thing is that we've got a target and that too short termed. This helps up to see the direction and gain motivation.

But why did I name this post "Maximum Entropy". Interesting enough the project on NLP ( Nat Lang Procseeing ) is aimed on working on a method of modelling called MaxEnt( Maximum entropy Modelling ). And a brief definiton of the same will enlighten the reason for this post being named so :)


"When trying to model an environment, try to take all factors into account but assume nothing about what you are not sure. Thus you maximize the entropy, or freedom, of the system. Such a model is perfect as it'll never give strong and incorrect result. It might refuse to give a affirmative answer, but never an incorrect answer"

Well in my article I think I didnt concentrate on any one topic... rather jumped and bounced over Literature, Web Devel, Mailservers, Poetry and Mathematics! Thus gaining maximum entropy :)

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