Carthik Sharma

I am going nuts!! Each time I talk to Dr.Demara, he offers new questions, and totally new avenues for exploration. Being the novice that I am at research, each of these paths takes hours to explore, and at the end, I find a dead end, or more questions. I ask him these questions, and his answers to the questions are more questions that lead to more options, more open roads. This would have been fun had we not been trying to write a grant proposal. Now its been two weeks, and I dont even have an idea _what_ we are going to attack/address in the proposal. From using reconfigurability to enhance security across a network of computer with reconfigurable co processor we have come to, among other things, a system consisting of a single chip that can eliminate insider attacks. Now i have to
1)decide what to do with the old, rejected proposal
2)decide whether to write an entirely new proposal
3)decide which problem to address in the new proposal
4)investigate the options for that proposal
5)write the first draft.
all over this weekend, i promised myself. Now i must be looking like an oaf. Each day i meet him(and i meet him once or twice a week), he asks me what i have been doing with regard to the problem, and i say this is what i have been thinking, what we thought all along is not quite good, this is what i think about it. Well really, what i say i think makes it look like i havent being doing anything, i guess.

absolutely no paper work so far, which is a bad thing. some things happened today, and now its final, he is going to be my advisor, and i pray to God i can think up something original, soon enough.

It is so difficult to come up with anything new. Its all been done before. Implementing an algorithm in a way that makes it run faster by 10% or even 100% is not my idea of a well spent three years. High hopes, are they too high?

Somehow I am stuck to this childhood notion that the best solution is often the simplest, and most beautiful. For example, the only know “unbreakable” crytographic algorithm is the vernan algorithm, which is as simple as using a random string of bits as long or longer than the data to be encrypted and then XORing the data with it. The random string of bits (the key) should never be used again, and the next time, another random key should be used. Neat, but done! If the simplest solution tuns out to be the best, then there is the obvious problem of extracting money from sources of funding. Complex solutions end up getting more funding, since it takes more to build/realise a complex system. I think thats why most research is cryptic.

I am tired, and i needed a break. the perfect break is reading and replying to , say, a dozen emails. But no, today, surprisingly, i havent got a single email.

I have a cookie in my pocket to sufficiently delay dinner.

Filed by Carthik at 9:47 pm under Livejournal

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