Joy Dutta’s blog

Having a hitch rack on my goldwing, I was very reluctant to remove the wheel in the traditional way, for the extra time to be spent removing the hitch hardware. I considered raising the rear a bit with help of 2x4 wood pieces but that too sounded not-so-easy.

Susan Coles of our CA2Q goldwing chapter shared a cool video of GL1800 wheel removal. Some guy laid the bike down on the right side, with the front and rear crash bars resting on mats. He then raised the rear wheel by deploying the centre stand while pushing down the bike more on the right. Then it was a 5-minutes-5-nuts job to get the wheel out.

Here is the video: http://home.comcast.net/~pidjones/t2.wmv

It worked out perfectly for me. I used two pieces of 8"x8" scrap laminate wood on some cardboards. It did not even feel scary to let it down and also to get it up. I made a small mistake though, I should have done this with the tank near empty. While the bike was down, some gas leaked out. It was a bit scary but after the bike was upright again I let the gas dry out and it started just fine.

This summer we decided to finally embark upon our long cherished motorcycle adventure - a coast-to-coast-to-coast trip in 30 days. We have no fixed route, no hotels booked. We will camp almost all the way. The plan is to take a northern route through Yellowstone and Glacier NP, then head to New York via Chicago. On the east coast I want to show Priti around my graduate school at Stony Brook and visit my favorite lighthouse at Montauk. Then, maybe a short hike up to Maine via Boston. The return is either the quickest central interstates or a longer southern route through Florida, depending on available time.

We are leaving on 3rd July. Piyush, our roommate will come along till Yellowstone and Glacier NP with shiny new hard bags on his red VFR.

Here is a gps-tracker-on-a-map to follow us along the trip: Spot us on the map. It needs a password, please ask me about it.

We will keep updating facebook with text status and pictures using iphone, so we can be tracked there (needs signing up):
1. Joy on facebook
2. Priti on facebook

Another option is following us on twitter with same updates (text only) without signing up:
1. Joy on twitter
2. Priti on twitter

In the year of recession I did at least one wise thing - buying an annual pass for US national parks on a short trip to Yosemite earlier this year. We planned to ride across the US on my goldwing so I had to have one. Ironically, our cross country trip plan got replaced by an equivalent riding trip in India since Priti has to visit again for her final viva for the PhD.

I thought the $80 pass was a waste.

Then my parents came and we did a 4-day trip to Utah covering the following parks ($ indicates fee required which I didn't have to pay):

1. Arches NP ($)
2. Canyonlands NP ($)
3. Monument valley
4. Antelope Canyon (separate fee)
5. Horseshoe Bend
6. Lake Powell
7. Zion NP ($)
8. Bryce Canyon NP ($)
9. Capitol Reef NP ($)

In the coming weekend I am planning to take my parents to eastern sierra covering the following:

10. Sequoia NP ($)
11. Kings Canyon NP ($)
12. Yosemite NP ($)
13. Mono Lake
14. Ghost Town Bodie
15. Tahoe Lake

As another boost to my traveling momentum after parents are gone, we are planning to ride in 8 states for a week:

16. Glacier NP ($)
17. Yellowstone NP ($)
18. Grand Teton NP ($)

Maybe there will be more. Stay tuned.

When you have to force shutdown your mac due to the sleep-wake hanging issue, the MAMP stop servers button stops working as well. Here is the fix, works perfectly: http://www.imventurer.com/2008/04/02/mamp-stop-servers-button-doesnt-work/

In my digital photography workflow, I often need to use a shell in a directory fairly deep from the home dir. For example, I am at ~/Pictures/photography/portfolios/priti/2009-05-30-sf in the finder and want to cd to this folder at once. Found out two delightful options from: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/420456/open-terminal-here-in-mac-os-finder

1. Copy an item from the finder using command-c, jump into the Terminal, type 'cd ' and simply paste with command-v

2. cdto

The second option is working out perfectly for me.

I am writing this in regard to the recent completion of my wife's PhD, the turn of events surrounding it and the general reflection of how our perceptions of reality played out. This is going to be solely an uncensored brain dump and not guaranteed to be pleasing for some academic folks. You are warned.

I have a 4 year engineering bachelors, 2 year masters and a collective 5 years of IT industry experience. My wife has a 3 year science bachelors, 2 year masters and a 7 year PhD (6 of those years apart). I believe I have learnt enough to put down some informed thoughts about how educational degrees work and how one should take career decisions that would affect the whole life.

So, what exactly is the value of a PhD ? Who should do it ?

As far as I can understand, a PhD is a mandatory "certification" for any academic career, regardless of how much bullshit is involved to get it done. Bullshit is unfortunately everywhere in our lives, especially in industry, and academia is not spared either. Now the question is how to know if it is worth to you. What do you really want to do with your life ? Be a dedicated academic with triple post doctoral degrees and keep producing a gazillion grant-money-inducing papers which no one will read except peers looking to fill the "related work" column ? Be a scientist and work at a research lab ? Or just be a college professor ? If either of the above appeals to you, by all means enjoy 6-10 years of grad school, and not to forget, phdcomics. If you think there are better or different things to do with life which I think is the case most of the time, then get some real degrees needed to get into industry and grow there! I can't even stop emphasizing how important real life experience is, and how money talks and bullshit walks. A well-planned and well-executed project in the smallest of the companies can really mean a lot than just another paper published in IEEE talking about a vague idea laden with unrealistic assumptions, no matter how "crisp and articulate" the writing is. We should not forget that academia depends on grant money coming mostly from government and using it produce 99% bloated publications is by no means fair. If you are not discovery-channel-crazy about pursuing science, please do your country a favor and get a real job which will contribute to the GDP at the least. I know it sounds like a hate-article, but trust me I have facts. I have a few friends from grad school doing excellent work in their fields and I am genuinely proud to know them. But consider my own batch, a bunch of 20-25 students who came to the US with dreams of a PhD. Except for a few, nearly everyone figured out what PhD actually meant for them (and ran in the opposite direction as fast as they could, including me) - a mechanism to read 10 papers and produce the 11th by just a small tweak in the collective idea. Just an epsilon, cause you can't just have an invention or an earth shattering idea every week or month or even a year ! It is more an exercise of articulate writing, which is actually a great thing, but it defeats the purpose. And then the most well written papers get accepted in international conferences, where you get to meet more researchers aka future "citations". I wish I had been to such conference at least once. Free trip, free food, and touristy pictures in front of the vatican or the Eiffel tower to post on facebook or flickr; what is not to like ?

A regular job on the other hand may not be a total dreamland. Most of the time it will probably suck. Corporate bullshit is abundant in large companies since not everyone has their hands full with real work. But it pays the bills and leaves extra. With just the right amount of education you can land a job that you like, with very good prospects of growth, both in terms of position and income, and all that matters in industry is competence. Making functional (positive ROI) products and services under time constraints is in my book more accomplishment than producing an almost-functional cool prototype for sake of doing cool work which can't even be productized due to negative ROI.

Now, If you wanted to have activities on the side, a well paying job makes it all the more feasible. If you have wild dreams, make them come true using the money you can earn from the right job for you, and the earlier you realize it the better.

A friend of mine makes a legendary example of how life can be made exciting minus the bullshit. Repeated failures in college on subjects outside his interest did not deter him a bit. He chose to work on side jobs of odd hours and low pay alongside getting his necessary minimum degree. He dreamt big, but kept his steps simple and realistic. Today he flies airplanes and manages IT infrastructure of a small firm all by himself. His wife, coming from an equally simple background and education, is doing really well in another small firm. Being an efficiency-zealot myself, I am really really happy about the equation of output vs effort that is reflected in their lives.

In the end, I think life revolves around Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. You can't measure something if you can't experience it. And once you experience it, the measurement gets severely altered. But I am also hoping that this should not be the case for everyone, if someone wise enough cares to share some enlightenment.

Having a PhD is awesome, but only for 1% of the those aspiring for it. Ok, I made up that 1% thing, I know I overestimated. So decide whether you belong to that gifted slice, or just get out and thank me later for saving your life.

This is by no means a generalization, but just a copy-paste from my tired brain in one of those rare moments when I "see" a glimpse of the big picture, complete with humor, satire and the works. If you feel like pelting a tomato or a rotten egg, please do so, I will be glad, 'cause this cost me a freaking Friday morning to write !

And no, I don't hate that my own beloved wife got a PhD. Only we know what we went through and I am dead sure we can make up that 6 years of lost time, even if that means making some hard sacrifices in the future. I would be really, really, really happy to be proved wrong that we let all those years of our prime age wither away for nothing.

My gut feel always wins.

When Priti had to visit India for her thesis submission and defense in January, she was certain that everything would be over by end of April. The logic went like this - thesis submission deadline in January end, and in best cases the report comes back in 2 months, add one extra week for defense and 3 weeks to visit family and she would be free. But come on, a PhD in India which takes around 7 slow-motion years, we can't expect deadlines and best cases to work back to back, can we ?

So in the back of my mind I thought if I had booked the ticket from January to September, it would be MUCH easier to prepone when she would be packed up to fly immediately. Rather we hoped everything would be over by April end, maybe a little later which could be adjusted once free of penalties. But postponing is always an uncertain thing to do than preponing, as our luck turned out. Thanks to her irresponsible advisor who decided to take a summer trip out of country in May, being fully aware of our plight and timing hell. The defense can't happen without her, she comes back in August, and the validity of the already postponed ticket is till July first week.

Lesson learnt: For a trip out of country with uncertain return dates, book longer than you will possibly need with provision of one free adjustment.

The fault is mine to not follow my instincts.

Picked up a mint Nikon F3HP with a Nikon 50mm/1.8 Series E for a song, thanks to craigslist. This is a legendary 35mm film SLR with everything manual except a battery dependent shutter. Not that I had to have a 35mm film SLR again, but with the throwaway prices of these beautiful instruments in this digital age I figured maybe it won't hurt to keep one.

I am pleasantly surprised with this camera, especially after going through the manual. To discover the removable prism was fun, now I can use it like the mamiya on the streets and can get some pleasing candids. The mirror vibration and shutter noise is much smoother than the FM3a I had, so my days of regret are over. Moreover, the 50mm lens is thin like a pancake which is cool as well.

Looking forward to using up the Ilford hp5+ bw films I have lying around since last year.

I just set up my brand new git repository at github: http://github.com/jdutta. Don't know what took me so long to embrace git but I am glad to be ready to move out of my CVS based workflow for personal projects.

A quick look at the tutorial was all I needed to convince myself towards this change. Now I can work on my personal projects from anywhere without worrying about merge issues later on. I just published my favorite config files under repository dotfiles. Could not be an easier backup/version-control mechanism.

Some good resources to learn git:
1. http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~blynn/gitmagic/book.pdf
2. http://git-scm.com/documentation
3. http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~cduan/technical/git/