An afternoon spent on Egyptology.

Ever since we read about mummies, my almost six year old son bombarded me with questions. Some were relatively easy - Where is Egypt? and Can we go to Egypt?. Others were philosophical - What happens after death? and What do mummies do in their after-life?. The colorful inscriptions on the mummy cases in the book raised yet another plethora of questions, ranging from What do all these inscriptions mean? and Why do they have to write it down?. The tomb robbers were even more intriguing - Why do they not keep mummies of the tomb robbers? Of course, the associated ethical issues were hard to interpret for the youngster.

Well - there is only so much I can do to even partially answer these questions.

The family headed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY to spend an afternoon with the mummies and learn about the Egyptian civilization. While I vaguely remember reading about it in high school history texts, the truth is that Egyptology has intrigued me, too. I had never ventured to learn more, though [other than visits to local museums and observing some of the artifacts].

The MET, NY on a warm summer day.

We are generally, however, not too fond of visiting museums. Travel to the city, maneuvering the traffic on 5th Avenue, long walks inside the museum all contribute to the unwillingness of spending part of the day there. Only this time, there was no respite.

I will not be able to do justice to the innumerable Egyptian artifacts stored in the museum by describing them in this blog. They are displayed chronologically over 39+ rooms (including study rooms). Nonetheless, some exhibits caught the eye.

Papyrus in honor of goddess Hathor found at her shrine in Deir el-Bahari.

Royal funerary procession 

Remnants from the tombs.

Mummy cases. The Egyptians carved the faces of the dead on the case containing the mummy.

The temple of Dendur was impressive. The government of Egypt gifted it to the MET in 1956 and it had to be dismantled and removed from its original location to avoid Lake Nasser from submerging it due to construction of the Aswan High Dam. The task was accomplished with the help from UNESCO.

The iconic room in the MET and details of the hieroglyphs on the walls of the temple at Dendur.

My son decided some study of hieroglyphs would help. So he asked Now do you understand what is written there? Well, Sigh. How do you explain to a six year old, that the task of computational linguistics is much harder than just examining artifacts? 

Back at home, we poured over publications of the MET which explained the calligraphy. Hours spent trying to interpret them were not frustrating. Here is what we came up with!

Many of these are not described in the publication from the MET. So we invented some of those! My son felt the second hieroglyph was a pyramid [and had to do with burial] while my interpretation was a ship (or boat) with a sail. We both could be wrong. The horned viper was misleading, too. The young man preferred calling it a snail, probably because of the horn-like structures. The semi-circular disks could be baskets, but the hieroglyph typically used for representing them seemed to have handles on them. The ones we were reading did not have them. Most importantly, we did not understand whether they were telling a story or just depicted some objects that were being kept in the tomb.

Want to help us? We would love to hear from you.

We learnt also, that reading papyrus electronically is not as easy as one might expect. The letters are faded. The material fragmented. What a pity that these ancient manuscripts, after being recovered from the pyramids and having survived the tomb robbers now lie in the museum, without being interpreted! 

The Ancient Lives project is a recent venture of papyrologists from Oxford and the Egypt exploration society which is using crowd sourcing to scan and interpret (if possible) Egyptian hieroglyphs. For all those with young kids (elementary and middle school?) interested in Egyptian hieroglyphs - here's an excellent way to spend those long hours away from school!

Review of The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway

The Old Man and the Sea. Ernest Hemingway.

A story about the pursuit of resilience. An old fisherman has not been 'lucky' at sea. Without a catch for forty days, [and feeling desperate] he decides to take off on his skiff far away into the sea.
Alone. He grapples with loneliness.

"He looked around for the bird now because he would have liked him for company. The bird was gone. You did not stay long, the man thought."

Finally, there is a tug on the bait. Somewhere miles and miles beneath the surface a large fish may have eaten it. He does not know what kind of fish it is, how big it is or even whether he should wait for it. He decides to wait it out. A few days pass without food (except raw fish he catches from the sea such as dolphin and flying fish) and very little water. What follows is a relentless agonizing battle - observing the behavior of a fish, waiting in anticipation for it to tire out and then pull him on board. The soliloquy of the old man sweeps the reader away - for example, when he convinces himself that it is important to take rest, just as perhaps the fish down below needs some rest too.

"Rest now old man, and let him work until your next duty comes. [Pg 76]"

After the battle is won, he realizes the catch is too big for his skiff.
"Then his head started to become a little unclear and he thought, is he bringing me in or am I bringing him in? If I were towing him behind, there would be no question. Nor if the fish were in the skiff, with all dignity gone, there would be no question either. But they were sailing together [the huge marlin had to be fixed up on the side of the skiff] lashed side by side and the old man thought, let him bring me in if it pleases him. I am only better than him through trickery and he meant no harm."

The conclusion that the battle was but won through 'trickery', leaves the reader numb. The notion of what makes one person 'better' than another raises philosophical questions on morality, values and existence.

And the climax " 'But man is not made for defeat', he said. A man can be destroyed but not defeated."

===
Notes on why I found this book so appealing:

Hemingway has played a crucial role in the formative years of my life. The first book I read was from my school library at Loreto, Asansol. 'A Farewell To Arms'.
I remember reading 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' with my husband at our regular haunts to the 'Landmark' bookstore in Chennai. Along the way, I have read several other books, but 'The Old Man and the Sea' with its simplicity of language and diction leaves one mesmerized. I have probably read this earlier. With age, the appreciation for this Pulitzer prize winning novella has simple increased.

I wanted to re-read this work, ever since we happened to take a trip to West Palm Beach Florida. Not only did we wander on the beaches, play in the sand, pick up giant sea shells, watch turtles, and glorious sunrises - our resort faced the ocean, giving us an opportunity to listen to the music of the sea. The fishing trawlers would leave early in the morning and I was lucky to wake up early and watch them. One followed another as they headed deep into the sea. Eventually, the family decided to go fishing! And while we were not expert fishermen - it left an indelible impression on our minds - including the then three year old who got to see live 'sharks'.

Savory Crepes

I love crepes. Easy to prepare and useful when bored of sandwiches. The basic recipe involves mixing together an egg, a cup of flour, 1/2 cup of milk and 1/2 cup of water, a teaspoonful of vanilla extract, salt to taste. Stir to make a flowing batter - Ladle it out on a hot pan after spraying with oil. When one side is done, flip. Top with cheese, greens (sautéed spinach or coriander), green or hot peppers to taste.

I have now learnt of several restaurants specializing in crepes in Western NY. Favorites include (1) Break'n Eggs Creperie, Williamsville. (2) Desert Cafe, East Amherst. (3) Poppleton Bakery, Corning NY.

A Hidden Gem: Mulakunnathukavu Temple in Thrissur District - Learning and Creativity

A Hidden Gem: Mulakunnathukavu Temple in Thrissur District - Learning and Creativity: A journey through the mesmerizing beauty of Mulakunnathukavu Temple in Thrissur District, one of the lesser known temples of Kerala. By Haimonti Dutta.

Project Showcase - Large Scale Image/Video Search System.

My course on 'Distributed Computing' (MGS 655 at the University at Buffalo) requires students to do a hands-on project. They are allowed to propose a topic of their choice (of course pertaining to distributed computing!) and work in group(s) of not more than two students. Several interesting projects were designed this semester.

This post is the first of a series of blog-posts that will showcase the systems they built. Your comments are very welcome - both to motivate the students and also suggest ways by which they can improve / develop their work.

Abhinash Behera and Vijay Lakshmikanthan designed a large scale image/video search system. Here's a description of their project.

Description:
We built a search system that can retrieve appropriate video files based on user input. The user input is assumed to be in the form of an image. It is a Query By Image Content (QBIC) information retrieval system. Such a complex system can only be realized by the use of distributed computing for storage - analysis and retrieval are highly resource intensive processes. Since this is a search based system, the query processing time has to be minimal for achieving high ‘precision’ by returning highly relevant videos.

We have divided the project into three parts - (1) presentation tier  (2) application/processing tier and the (3) database tier. To handle the demand for compute power, we have used four virtual machines including our own systems.

We developed the database tier based on MongoDB and were able to successfully store and retrieve the video files. The logic for processing the image and video chunks have been handled using the OpenIMAJ library, a Java based open source multimedia content analysis tool. We developed the application layer in two parts - the business layer using Java and analysis layer using Apache Hadoop.


A design representing the above description has been presented below.

Architecture Overview: We have used a decentralized architecture for designing our application. The business tier is divided into two parts - the Java implementation of the image comparison algorithm and the Apache Hadoop framework for frame processing. The primary advantage of this architecture has a separation of the analytical and processing tasks. The analytical layer of Hadoop helps in parallel processing the individual frames of the video thereby providing a boost to the existing processing power.

Algorithm Overview: We ingest the videos into the MongoDB GridFS system which helps in fast retrieval of the videos when requested by the client. Next the Hadoop system works on these videos and generates color histograms. The color histograms are stored in the MongoDB database. The business tier makes use of this information for image comparison and producing intermediate image matches. The videos containing these intermediate images are picked from the database and displayed on the UI. 

Meritt Island National Wildlife Refuge

The Meritt Island National Wildlife Refuge along with a narrow barrier island forms a large part of the Canaveral National Seashore in Florida. Sharing a border with NASA's Kennedy Space Center, this refuge provides buffer area for safe launch of space shuttles, rockets and the like. What is mind boggling though, is the variety of the flora and fauna in the region.

The swamp

Trees near the water at the refuge

Home to alligators, manatees, dolphins, sea turtles, bald eagles, pelicans, roseate spoonbills, anhinga, ibis, herons, egrets and more - this refuge provides a feast for the eye not only to an avid bird watcher or wildlife enthusiast, but also to the layman and those wanting a quiet holiday away from the madding crowd.

A manatee under water

A 'frisbee' like tail of a manatee feeding on sea weeds

The sea cows or manatees prefer warm temperatures and congregate in shallow waters. Often they are watched from above by fearless American black vultures.

On the prowl, American Black Vultures

A lone vulture posing for a picture

The wading birds on long legs move through the shallow water searching for fish, frogs, insects and other creatures. Each bird has a unique feeding habit - some using the bill as a probe, others like a spear or scissor.

An ibis in the swamp

An egret

An anhinga basking in the sun

Collard parathas

We had a surplus of collards this Fall. I experimented with them quite a bit. Several indian side-dishes were tried-primarily, by replacing spinach with collards. Learnt that the somewhat wild smell of collards was well masked with garam masala. My newest experiment involved making collard parathas, much like one makes methi or spinach ones. The collards have to be chopped and pressure-cooked before hand. I threw in a bunch of cilantro, chopped onions, ginger and garlic paste and some chopped green chilis along with whole wheat flour. Kneaded the dough and rolled them out exactly like rotis. The pictures here show the finished product. A successful experiment I'd say.