A few events and Torsten's first milestone

A lot have happened in the past few days and I thought it is a good time to jot them down.

1.  I tried my hands (and legs) in indoor climbing with Greg and Dmitry.  Dmitry did a super splendid job for a first-day climber.  I did average.  This was expected because I really have bad forearm strength.  That is the reason why I can't do chin-ups in the gym.  At first you think rock climbing about climbing or lifting yourself up with your hands, but that is actually wrong.  Thankfully towards the end of the practice session, I realized that a LOT depends on your legs.  Though Greg (a semi-expert climber) was telling me this all the time, but it took me a while to get the grasp of it.  But once you start concentrating the placement of your feet, the hands are really a lot relaxed.

But you can't apply the same into "bouldering".  Or let me put it this way -  you can put this into bouldering, but you need great strength in arms too.  For a big guy like me, it really take a lot of strength to perform bouldering.  I failed to do it, as expected.  But I must say, I enjoyed climbing more when I was belayed by Dmitry than the time I was belayed by a machine.  How can I forget the first time when I had to let go and jump backwards with the belief that the belayer (the machine in the first case) will stop you.  It was really difficult to let go this fear. Here are some pictures:

Dmitry

Me (left) and Greg (right). Don't get carried by the fact that I am a bit higher than him ;)

Dmitry bouldering.  He did great!

My "try" at bouldering

2.  Greg left the lab.  Yes, the only guy who knew some music and seemed a bit chilled out ( a bit like me), left the lab.  Though he had a top tier publication (In SPAA) and his static analysis may be the major reason that our paper gets accepted in ASPLOS, he left.  He told that he did not find anything cool to do with polyhedral model.  I don't now who took the decision (whether he left or Torsten fired him), but that's that.  BTW, Marius is also on the verge of leaving.  Tomorrow he will talk with Torsten and decide whether he is staying or not.

3.  There was a department bbq in the restaurant top floor.  It was fun. Here are some pictures.

http://www.gallery.ethz.ch/inf/view_album.php?page=1&set_albumName=album12

4.  Yesterday Torsten presented the progress of his lab and he was greatly accepted.  That means he is only 2 more steps away from getting a tenure (3 presentations had to be there before you get this).  I was a bit surprised by this because I have seen people fighting so much about this and also heard dreadful stories but for him it seemed like easier!

I haven't told Torsten yet about me going to Canada.  Probably I will tell him that during our meeting this Friday.  Tomorrow is some religious holiday.  8 more days to leave for Canada!  Can't wait to meet my parents.

PACT paper accepted, first in PhD

One of the happiest days of my life.  A lot was depending on this, and I was fortunate enough to be bestowed with this really cool research topic and also to find out some quick answers.  Though a lot to be done still, it was so satisfying to find out that my paper got accepted.  PACT is a good conference and having a paper at the beginning of your PhD really helps a lot.

The result was supposed to come out on May 19th, but it came out really early.  One more cool thing is that the conference will be in University of Alberta!  And Dr. Amaral is the chair.  This is insane!  I am so excited.  I was also excited to receive an email from Dr. Amaral congratulating me.

My Canadian passport application has also been processed and it's on its way home.  I was a bit tensed when after 5 days, the France Visa office did not acknowledge the receipt of the passport and I also lost my postal office receipt.  Anyway, hope the VISA is approved and then I can finally prepare for my visit to Edmonton for my convocation and then USA!  Yes, USA... FINALLY!

Phew, lets try hard for the ASPLOS paper now!  If it gets out, I will be overjoyed, but it's too soon to comment.

Always wanted to see this

Got some inspiration

Just when I was in the process of going low about my research topic, something wonderful happened in the last two days.

1.  I got good reviews for my PACT paper and there is a very good chance that it can be accepted.
2.  Today two guys came to give talks.  It was one of the busiest days SPCL.  One of those guys were Edgar Solomonik, a kind of genius from UC Berkeley.  At the age of 24, he is almost finishing his PhD and hoping to join as a Post Doc in our group.  I should tell that if he joins our group, it will be really a feather in the cap.  But his talk was so fast and so dense, we made a lot of jokes about his "super intellect" and how we will quit PhD and become "pizza delivery boys" after he joins our group to save ourselves from depression.

The other guy was Satoshi Matsuoka, a professor and big name in the area of supercomputing in Japan.  His talk was mainly on the future of big data and it covered many other topics.  It was one of the longest talks ever and he really gives LONG answers if someone asks questions.  But I like his flawless english pronunciation.

But the big thing is, both of these guys were interested in the generation of performance models.  Edgar mentioned in the talk that "I know Torsten that you are looking at machine learning methods to generate performance models automatically..."  I then exchanged glances with Torsten because I was the one working on it.

After the talk by Dr. Matsuoka, Torsten told me to have a conversation with him.  And this conversation really made my day.  They were working on a VERY similar topic on the generation of performance models and he was REALLY interested in my tool, PEMOGEN.  He told there is not a useful tool on this topic and a good tool is necessary.  He also invited me to work for some months in Tokyo (which will be one thing off my bucket list , Visiting Japan).  We exchanged email IDs and when I told Torsten this, he told me that this will be a great collaboration.

After this conversation we were gossiping in the la when Timo also mentioned that the research on performance modelling is really cool and one will be really famous if it comes out.

Today I found one use cas eof my research and trust me, this is a great motivation for my PhD.  Looking forward for the final PACT answer.