Lance, again!

He did it again! Not that anyone was surprised, of course. Like the duracell bunny that keeps going on and on, Lance Armstrong keeps going on and on and on. Six times now - the number of times he has won the Tour de France. Isn't that something?! His is a story that one cannot help but love. Here's a man who beat testicular cancer that had spread to his lungs and brain and went on to conquer one of the most challenging sporting events in the world - a record six times! When I hear of such great accomplishments, physical or mental, there is a part of me that whines "If only I could do something like that ..." Is that a bad thing? I wonder...

With such glory comes suspicion. There have been several allegations of illegal drug use by colleagues and peers and if I recall correctly, he tested positive once a few years ago. And people have been making the same noises yesterday and today. I say to them, give it a rest! The man has earned his place there!

What do we know?

About a week ago, I was at this year's CVPR (IEEE Intl' conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition) that was held in Washington. It is one of the premier conferences in the field and expectedly, there were many good papers in the main conference and in the more-focused workshops. Some of the workshops like the one on GOR(Generic Object Recognition) had some professors sounding a cautious note (case in point: Professor Michael Tarr's talk entitled - "Do we know more than we did 20 years ago?" His answer - "Not really!"). But there were others that were more upbeat. For instance, people were a little more hopeful in the Event Recognition workshop - which is good news for me, since I'm working in that area.

My only peeve about the conference? You see, due to a ban on skyscrapers, many of the buildings in DC - including the conference venue - the Grand Hyatt, has several underground floors. Everyday, descending three levels below the ground to reach the conference venue was like going into a bunker of some kind. Of course, given that we were in the midst of some very smart people from around the world, it might be a good idea!

More technology-related stuff: They are saying BPL could be the new mantra. No, that's not the company that makes TV's in India (or used to, at some point in time). BPL stands for Broadband over Power Lines. I remember during my senior year at REC Surathkal, one of my classmates was working on "Internet over power lines" as his final year project and it was exciting stuff!