Ravit's Blog

It's summer, one of my favorite times of the year! It's a relatively relaxing and stress-free time of the year, and I have the chance to work on things I enjoy doing. Here's a rough breakdown of my schedule each day. 7:45 AM - Wake up, Brush, Breakfast, etc. 8:00 AM - Begin work on internship/other activities (usually with several breaks in between) 12:00 PM - Lunch 6:00 PM - Walk my dog and play outside 8:00 PM - Go to the gym (past few weeks I've been doing 5K, 100 situps, 100 squats, 100 pushups) 9:00 PM - Shower 9:30 PM - Dinner 11:00 PM - Go to sleep As I mentioned, this is a very rough breakdown, and I don't adhere to this schedule strictly; usually however, my day entails the aforementioned activities. I've found so far that it's been an exciting mix of work and play, and I hope to maintain a similar schedule throughout the rest of the summer.

I think self-reflection is important and gives me the opportunity to be grateful and take on a more positive outlook on life. Today, here are a list of 16 things I'm grateful for in general: Ample food, water, necessities and luxuries Salubrious physical and mental health Wonderful friends who brighten my day A comfortable and fun lifestyle The opportunity to enjoy nature Tasty food The opportunity to work The opportunity to learn Access to an environment conducive to learning The library My dog My brother My parents Happiness The opportunity to relax Familial and social security

Sometimes, I really don't like writing about myself. To show someone else the kind of person I am, I'd rather just meet them in person. In writing about myself, I am forced to think about how someone else might view me. Writing does not carry the uniquely personal set of emotions, quirks, and genuine responses that can be communicated through speech. I worry about the image of myself that I convey to them, as reflected in my writing, overqualified or underqualified. In writing as such, I communicate not who I am but who I think I am--my self image. It is part of human nature to value others' opinions about you, which frames how you communicate yourself. Thus, writing about oneself is a test of writing ability and self-assessment rather than a true measure of one's personality. I feel more comfortable talking about something other than myself, maybe something that I learned. This draws the attention away from myself, away from the author, and toward a given topic. Most ...

There are two types of people: those who believe in God, and those who don't. (Well, at least until someone makes this issue non-binary.) Religiosity no doubt has had a significant impact on the lifestyles and morals of people all over the world. I just want to express my thoughts on the nature of religion and its role in society. Over the course of the past few decades, religion has generally gone into decline, along with the rise of science. I think part of the reason is that people now have more reliable, trustworthy answers; they have discovered aspects of life previously thought to be supernatural: how and why planets rotate about the sun, what life is, why people get sick, how to cure disease, what causes lightning, among many others. In addition, people have challenged the nature of religion, which is a sensible thing to do. They take a logical perspective, claiming that there is no scientific evidence that God exists. The opposition to this claim is weak, if even present. ...

This is yesterday's post; I'm publishing today Today, I will share my work and fun life (informally). My name is Ravit Sharma, as you probably know. I was born and raised in a two story house, where I still live. I was brought up being taught I was smart, that I was the best. Looking back, my accomplishments were pretty remarkable. I could read at two and a half, and I knew my multiplication tables till 12 when I was four. These accomplishments make me feel happy; who doesn't like to be praised? But I've realized that there is something more to life than just accomplishments. Working hard gives me a sense of true happiness, more so than does a free A. Today, I feel like I didn't work hard; I can't explain it, but it's just something inside me that nags me, making me feel bad about not working hard. It's almost inexplicable, and doesn't necessarily correlate to the actual number of tasks I finished. It's about the effort I put in, something tha...

Me attempting to describe myself in 5 words. I wrote this yesterday, but am publishing today. Unsure how to describe myself Trying to always learn more Non-conforming Striving to become a thinker Obsessed with Holland as Spiderman Prone to off by one errors Trying to outdo my competition Eagerly awaiting increase in height Typing speed of 80 wpm Current height of 66 inches Current weight of 135 pounds Like relaxing outside at night Goofing around with my brother Learning from my past mistakes An Indian (that's not unique) Pretty cool and rad bro Really bad sense of humor I am a human being Trying to be cool sometimes (and failing miserably) Redundancy in expression of ideas Redundancy in expression of ideas Guided by my moral compass Love when work is fun Unable to think of ideas Want to be a spy Dream of ability to fly Dream of being a superhero Procastinate on tedious but necessary tasks Blind to my own weaknesses Sometimes arrogant and self obses...

This evening, I had the chance to attend a medical wearables event hosted by IEEE. There were two presenters, who presented an overview of applications and their involvement in the design and feasibility of such solutions. The field is interesting because it's at the intersection of two orthogonal fields: computer science and biology, more specifically medicine. The first speaker, Don Aoki, presented an accessible solution for consumers for diagnosis of sleep disorders. The solution presented an accessible and convenient product individuals can use for sleep monitoring. The product leverages existing measurement devices, such as EKG, EEG, pulse oximeter, among others, in the assessment of an individual's sleep. These measurements are a subset of the more comprehensive range of measurements made by a polysomnograph made in a clinical setting. However, by making an in-home, affordable solution, the concept bypassed the financial and mental inconveniences of the latter. The solu...

Find x. Final answer: x is 7. The beauty of my response is that no one can tell me I'm wrong. If someone challenges my answer, I can just as easily construct a scenario in which x is in fact 7, such as x + 2 = 9. Over the years, I've come to realize that sometimes the solution space is indefinitely large (pardon the linear algebra reference), that there is no one right answer to the problem.  When presented with insufficient information, we have to start somewhere. There isn't always one proper thing to do or one optimal decision to make, but rather a span of actions that satisfy the said criteria, out of which you have to pick one. The idea that we can make choices, each having an uncertain output is thrilling but simultaneously sobering. Ultimately, it is this freedom, this ambiguity, this choice that makes us all unique. In this scenario, such criteria was not laid out; x was not defined. I found x. I made a choice based on incomplete information, and it is one I...

The letter w is so weird. So is x, but w is weirder. Why in the world would anyone with a working mind want to call w as "double-u"? For starters, the shape of the letter w doesn't look like two letter 'u's, which is what would be expected given the name. Why not call it "double-v"? Or better yet "upside-down m"? These two would better communicate the shape of the letter. The letter does not fit in with the reset of the alphabet. First, it is the only letter pronounced with more than one syllable. In terms of sound, the letter 'w' doesn't sound anything like two 'u's. Think about it. And why "double"? What is there in 'w' other than the shape? If I said the word "water", it would sound nothing like "uuater" (ooh-ooh-a-tur?) Maybe I should go around calling m as "double-n". Like spell "Mary". Okay so "double-n ... a r y". In addition, the pronunciation of ...

I really don't want to write a blog post right now, but this is a goal, and I must stick to it :) Since I didn't write a post yesterday, I will write two today. The first is a question I've had for a long time, but one that I remembered yesterday at 11:15 pm while folding my laundry. Okay, so I did my research, and I have a history on the emoji. Originally released in 1997, the emoji has become a universal component of texting, informal messaging, and almost all forms of electronic communication (hey, even this blog has an emoji button). Due to their ability to concisely and conveniently convey emotion, they have risen in popularity, earning their own place on most smartphone and tablet keywords. The origin of the word emoji is from the Japanese words e (picture) and moji (character). Emojis are part of the Unicode Standard and are treated as text, explaining why they may appear differently on different platforms. The second most popular emoji is "Face with Tears of ...

Hello everyone! Hope you are doing well. If you are not doing well, I hope you will be doing well soon. I don't know what that means. A couple days back I found an old library book I didn't return. I don't have fines on it, but I will probably return it anyway. Anyhow, I want to try that thing where I just write down the next random word that comes to my head. I will try that for 5 minutes starting now: dog cat elephant zebra africa continent ocean blue globe ball plastic ocean seagull dolphin chirp bird fly wing egg nest twig tree root soil dirt nutrient vitamin amino acid protein peptide carbohydrate sugar sweet milk cow moo sound decibel measurement logarithm exponential e constant variable change delta acceleration differential derivative graph slope hill mountain rocky rocks volcano lava magma core crust sun solar flare space asteroid belt escape velocity projectile motion newton principia mathematica leibnitz calculus integral derivative taylor series polynomial log...

Following is a (fictitious) interview with Sal Khan from Khanacademy. As in he interviewed me, not the other way around. Sal: Hello. Me: Hi. Sal: Thanks for your time. Me: No worries, it's only $130 an hour. Sal: Tell me a little bit about yourself. Me: My name is Ravit Sharma. Sal: Tell me more about yourself. Me: Okay then. I just woke up about 10 minutes ago and am writing this blog to get it out of the way for the day. Yesterday I learned stuff, so might as well flex my knowledge. So I learned about different algorithms for object detection, including YOLO, RCNN, and Mask RCNN. Let's go through each one at a time. So let's start with YOLO, which stands for You Only Look Once. I'll be discussing YOLO v3 since it is the most recent version. So here's how it works. The image is divided into SxS grid cells. The algorithm takes a sliding window approach to output at each grid cell, an output in the form for each of 3 anchor boxes: the probability of there...

I'm pretty much out of ideas to write about, so why not write about pineapples? Pineapples. P-I-N-E-A-P-P-L-E-S. Why is the word apple in pineapple? They don't look like each other, and definitely don't taste like each other by any means. Oh ok, I see on the dictionary that it was named because of its resemblance to a pine cone. Okay that makes more sense. A pineapple looks more like a pine cone than an apple, at least in terms of texture and maybe color. Pineapple contains bromelain, an enzyme which breaks down proteins. The enzyme bromelain (and papain, found in papaya) are used in meat tenderizer because they are able to break down the extracellular matrix found in animal tissue. This is the same reason that jello with raw pineapples does not set; the gelatin degrades the collagen that makes up the gelatin, preventing the jello from setting (I'm not sure of how exactly jello sets.) But if you denature the enzymes in pineapple by cooking it, it no longer holds the sam...

Third post (yes I realize I missed a day, but I'll write two to make up for the missed one)! So not much has been going on. I finished editing the videos for the Linear Algebra Series and uploaded them onto YouTube. Surprisingly, a video about linear algebra jokes was by far the most popular, with so far almost 200 views. There, I got my first comments. Today, I'll be learning more about object detection and segmentation, and the various ways of doing so quickly for processing data on the edge. It feels so cold at night and in the morning, even though it's summer. I think I'll have to start sleeping with a quilt or at least a sweater. Anyway, today's supposed to be rather warm (but not hot), in the low eighties, so looking forward to a nice summer day. It is a few minutes before 8 am right now, and I woke up around 7:00. I'm on my second week of summer vacation. This year's summer solstice, the longest day of the year, is right around the corner. Although it...

This is my second day streak; my second post this summer. My goal is to continue posting once a day throughout summer. Since I can't seem to think of much interesting to talk about, I'll just talk about what I'm up to this summer. First, I've started a YouTube channel, where I make videos about academic topics. So far I've posted two series and am working on the third. The first one was about local sequence alignment, and the second one was about deep learning. The third one I'm working on right now is about Linear Algebra. The whole process of making a video series typically lasts about three, maybe four days. The first day is planning, where I work out the details of what I'll cover in the series. The next day is filming, where I set up the camera and lighting, and record myself teaching the concepts. The last day is the most tedious, where I have to laboriously go through all the footage, add an intro and ending scene clip, and speed up or cut out some pa...

Hello there! As you can probably tell, I've fallen out of the habit of writing blogs regularly. Looking forward, I seek to make blog-writing a regular habit, a tool that I can use to preserve my memories rather than a burden or obligation. On this blog, I'll write about the topics that come to my mind, and spend about 10 minutes a day to pause and reflect. I will not edit this post unless I want to. I think that editing blogs for readability detracts from my experience writing, which is for fun. After all, this blog isn't another English assignment. So let's make it a fun place where I can convey my status, random thoughts, and simply reflect upon my life. (I realize I'm being repetitive, but once again, I don't feel like editing this post.) If you don't like the way I write, don't read it. But once again, I think, "Do I have a standard to hold this blog up to?" At the moment, I don't think so. The purpose of this blog is to capture who I a...