Last week, I have found that Abbas El Gamal (in collaboration with Young-Han Kim) published the book “Network Information Theory” which is based on his lecture note he already put it on arXiv. This is a really great book as it covers both classical and recent results in information theory and network information theory. This book was missing in this field and I am happy that an expert gathers some of the most important results in a book and present them in a unified manner.
Jesus said, “I took my place in the midst of the world, and I appeared to them in flesh. I found all of them intoxicated; I found none of them thirsty. And my soul became afflicted for the sons of men, because they are blind in their hearts and do not have sight; for empty they came into the world, and empty too they seek to leave the world. But for the moment they are intoxicated. When they shake off their wine, then they will repent.”
[ The Gospel of Thomas: verse 28 ]
عيسی گفت: «من در وسط عالم جای گرفتم، و با جسم گوشتين بر آنان ظهور يافتم. همه ايشان را مست ديدم؛ هيچ يک را تشنه نديدم. و جانم برای پسران انسان‌ها غمگين شد چون آنان در دل نابينايند و ديد ندارند؛ چون تهی به دنيا میآيند، و تهی هم میخواهند از دنيا بروند. اما چند صباحی مستاند. چون از مستی شرابی که نوشيدهاند به خود باز آيند، توبه خواهند کرد.»
[ انجیل توماس: آیه ۲۸ ]
پی‌نوشت: جمله آخر خیلی برام آرامش بخش بود!
You might have heard about Stephen Boyd who is a professor in the department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He came here to EPFL about a week ago to give a talk about “Convex Optimization” problems. I had already heard that he was a great lecturer but his teaching abilities were beyond my expectations.
During his talk he mentioned to one of the toolboxes which have been developed in his group to solve Convex Optimization problems. I have found this package sometime ago to solve a rate optimization problem and fount it quite convenient to use. After the talk, I thought that it would be good idea to introduce it here. The name of the package is CVX and it is written under MATLAB.
As an example, in order to solve the following problem
$latex \mathrm{minimize}\ ||Ax-b||_2$
$latex \mathrm{subject\ to}\ l \le x \le u$
one can simply write the following lines of code in MATLAB:
10 cvx_begin
20 variable x(n);
30 minimize( norm(A*x-b) );
40 subject to
50 l <= x <= u;
60 cvx_end
For more information and documentation you may want to refer to the CVX Research page.
P.S.: One thing I’d like about Stephen Boyd is that all of his books and softwares are available online for free.
I’ve decided to write some short posts about technical stuff from my work. I don’t have very clear idea about the things I want to write yet. But maybe it is better for me not to be very specific at the beginning to see how the things will go.
When this idea came into my mind, I though that it might be a little bit bizarre to write about technical stuff in a personal blog. Yes it can be! However I don’t think I am going to write very often, so it won’t be worth to start another blog! 🙂
P.S.: I’m in middle of writing my thesis; tired of writing, rewriting, and editing, so I’ve decided to start this small project as a refreshing task!
P.S.: I am not very good at writing in English, so your are more than welcome to correct my mistakes!
P.S.: I’ve added a new category named “Work” for these kind of posts.
And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.
[ Old Testament, Deuteronomy 8:2 ]
و بیاد آور تمامی راه را که یهوه، خدایت، تو را چهل سال در بیابان رهبری نمود تا تو را ذلیل ساخته، بیازماید، و آنچه را که در دل تو است بداند، که آیا اوامر او را نگه خواهی داشت یا نه.
[ عهد عتیق، سِفر تثنیه، فصل ۸، آیه ۲ ]
In the beginning there was the Word, And the Word was with God, And the Word was God.
[ St. John 1:1 ]
We feel that there is a vacuum in us and we don’t want to confront it. We don’t like being so busy, but every time we have a spare moment, we are afraid of being alone with ourselves. We want to escape. Either we turn on the television, pick up the telephone, read a novel, go out with a friend, or take the car and go somewhere. Our civilization teaches us to act this way and provides us with many things we can use to lose touch with ourselves.
[ Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step ]
I never trust anyone who’s more excited about success than about doing the thing they want to be successful at.
Click on the image to redirect to xkcd page.
1. Pointed by one of friends, I have found the lecture notes of Abbas El Gamal on Network Information Theory on arXiv. The first thing that impressed me was that it covers a lot of topics in Network Information Theory while it contains many of the recent results.
2. Finally, our paper titled “On the Capacity of Non-Coherent Network Coding” got accepted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theory and it will published in the special issue of “Facets of Coding Theory” which is a tribute to Ralf Koetter.
3. I am still working on the nightmare paper!
A few days ago, I watched the “21 Grams” for the second time. I liked the movie this time more than before and I had the feeling that I understood it better now.
The principal characters in 21 Grams are in very complicated situations and the way that the movie is narrated helps to depict these difficulties. The story is unfolded almost in a random way where the viewer has to complete a puzzle in his/her mind. However, this fractured chronology technique used in 21 Grams is not something only for entertainment but it really matches the story of the movie.
Among the main characters, I like the story of Jack who is an ex-convict the most. He has turned to religion to clear his past and made a new normal life. However, he encounters some difficult moral dilemmas after having an accident with a father and his two daughters and escaping the scene. This event makes him almost hopeless about being good and uncertain about the existence of God.
Finally, I like the scene at the end of the movie where Cristina (the woman who had lost her husband and two daughters) turns and looks at Jack. Although it is very short, this look conveys the feeling of understanding and forgiveness. Now Cristina see Jack as a human with all his faults and pains; not a guilty convict who corrupts her life.