End of a journey

It's been a long and tiring journey, where we tried a lot of stuff, many of which cupped, few of which succeeded and lots of which cupped! But, eventually, the idea, in our view, succeeded. The SOE, the Spirit Of Engineering project, about which I had talked in a January post, is on the verge of completion. As in, the implementation is over, and all that remains is displaying it during Shaastra.

It has been a very good learning experience. A decent start with neural networks, then a detour into Matlab, followed by some proper C++ Coding, and also some good Open Source programming, apart from which we have also learnt dealing with networks through some Windows SSHing, and some Virtual Machine work. The euphoria was attained when I got to see a Linux machine running, with a Vista wallpaper at the background. The feeling was just unparalleled.

As for the teamwork, I think making a large team work is a difficult job in itself, and full credit to CJR for that. I think the guy mobilised the entire team, and gave everyone a sense of responsibility in the project. The plus points were essentially the amount of work we covered in summer, and over the weekends. The weekends were goal-based, and work was achieved by accomplishing the needed goal. I must also thank my other colleagues for all the backing through out. Whenever I felt extremely down about the project, and even considered quitting it at some point, it was Team Prabhakar which kept me in, pushed me and made me work in the positive sense. I think it was an awesome team effort in the end and that was what made it click eventually.

I don't know if this has been a successful project in the sense of the relationships between the people involved in it, but it has taught the guys involved in it, a lot about maturity, and about taking responsibility up. There is absolutely no point in claiming A did more work than B, or anything of that sort, as after all, it was a team, and the team accomplished the project. I definitely wouldn't mark this as among the happiest projects I've been a part of, but surely it was among the ones with the most satisfying outcomes. I would again take this opportunity to thank Vasuki, who started the idea of the project initially with me, Shaileshh, the guy who kept us in with inputs every now and then, CJR, for being the guiding light throughout, Ram, for all the positive energy and extensive coding, and Prasad, the guy who never put a no for an answer to any request of ours, and worked extensively towards the success. I would also thank Prof. Srinivasa Chakravarthy, our guide professor, whose brainchild the entire Touch-Talk idea was, Prof.C.S.Ramlingam, for his text to speech fundaes every now and then, Vinod, the CS department masters student, without whom the TTS engine, and its working would have been impossible for us, Foil, our Godfather in CFI, who was backing us throughout, and kept talking to us time and again about how a SOE had to be done, and was also a major source of inspiration who we wanted to follow, S.K.Anirudh, the man behind all the eventual ideas of interspersing Windows and Linux side by side, and was with us, providing voluntary help inspite of his busy schedule of making Shaastra events run, Ravikanth, the CFI head and a constant supporter of making it all work. I would also thanks all our wellwishers, including all my co-Pampa junta who kept pushing me to work and get the SOE done successfully through out the time of work. Thbak you everyone. The monkey is off the back.

P.S: The fangs can go to rest, the screams can no more test, the tusks don't bristle anymore, we are going on floor!!!!