Of Projects and Presentations

The final year of engineering. For most laypersons, it would mean endless hours of fun, frolic and the works. For LAYPERSONS, that is. Well, actually it would mean all the funning and frolicking in the world had it not been for the blasted project. For a year now we have been working on it, and for some reason, Providence has decided to let light shine on people who shell 3000 bucks to get theirs completed.

On the outside, the name is one of the most eye-catching: Content Based Image Retrieval. “CBIR” we tell people who ask, knowing full well that they either don’t understand, or don’t care. For those who dare to ask further, a simple “arre, it’s about Image Processing” suffices. At this point they either don’t understand, or don’t care, again. All said and done though, things are not as smooth as they should be. The “code” that we so proudly claim to be ours (original) is full of snags. So full in fact, that we might as well rechristen our project “Snag Creation and Detection”. More importantly, the scheduled dates of completion is nigh, and we need to complete the project by hook or by crook. At the rate at which it is progressing (Oops! Did I say PROGRESSING?), “crook” seems to be the more probable solution.

…which brings me to paper presentations. National Conferences have become the in-thing it seems, and students are flocking left right and center to present their findings. Some people present other’s findings too, but who am I to get all judgmental? Anyway, now it appears as if half the college is about to present technical papers. The other half either don’t understand, or don’t care. So now, there’s this mad rush to get the respective papers completed, checked, and sent. Soon, the college will be abound with proceedings (those little book things you get when your paper is published), and the owners will be beaming as if they have the World Cup. So then, what’s the point in it all? Who is responsible for this mad rush for conferences? The answer: a certain professor. Apart from “professing”, the major aim is to get papers “authored”. The person has it easy: just inform students that there is a conference, and get yourself to be an author. Nice little “gurudakshina”, isn’t it?

So there we are. The year seems to be drawing to a close faster and faster, and my project seems to be headed in no particular direction. Conference papers are being made out of what little we have managed to achieve, and there are issues about presenting it as well. Things seem to be bleak , but then, when have they ever been rosy with me? And as always, things will work out. All it takes is a little “engineering manipulation” !! :P