My Supervisor Dr.Christopher Anand

he is a nice guy... i really like to work form him .. i don't know why but he might not be able to continue teaching in McMaster anymore. there is a comity who judges and rank Professors based on the reviews and comments given by student(mostly undergrads) and it seems that his was not good enough...
his grad student including me, made an on line petition to show our objection toward this decision... nothing is for certain now, and i hope he would stay in McMaster.
here is what i submitted:

filling this petition is the least i can do to show my support for Dr.Anand`s tenure application.

i think the word supervisor is not only about the courses, classes, thesis and grades, it`s about the relation between people, the way you treat others, it`s about moral issues.
before mentioning academic stuff i want add that as a new comer to Canada, having Dr.Anand as my supervisor was one of the most important reasons that made me not to feel so hard dealing with a new foreign environment while being away from family and facing lots of unexpected problems. he is so humble, knowledgeable and respectful man. in each student gathering in our department it makes me feel proud to be Dr.Anand`s student.

Unlike many professors, he doesn't put pressure on his students, but the interesting is that all his student love to do what they are assigned to, and that's because of the friendly relation between students and him. therefor, they do their best.

in the course i took with him(CAS 750), i feel that i really learned something that i can use in practice. he was always ready to answer questions, present new up-to-date references and he specify time to find a better way to help each student in specific at anytime. Another thing i do admire about him is that he is always on-line on Jabber(instant messaging) so he is always there if you need any assistance.

He brought me and few other students (Grad and Undergrad) this opportunity to work for IBM as CAS Fellow in IBM`s CAS (Center for Advance Studying).
it worths mentioning that most of the Universities in Ontario have lots of students and faculty members in IBM CAS ( U of T,U of Waterloo, University of Western Ontario, Queens and York) but not McMaster. he is the one who made this connection between McMaster and IBM, not only by preparing opportunities for students but also by presenting a very good job done by himself and other graduate students( theCoConut Project). i was there at the time our team,leading by Dr.Anand, presented our amazing results which showed a way better performance than the previous job done by IBM employees. I`m sure IBMers now consider McMaster`s Department of Computing and Software in higher position and if other professors from McMaster wants to send student to IBM they definitely have this meritorious preview in their minds.

when i compare the way he treats his student to other supervisor it makes me totally consent with what i had so far during last year, and if i were about to apply to McMaster once again and choose a supervisor, that would be definitely Dr.Anand again.

i believe before deciding about anything the comity must also talk with graduate students who was in contact with him mostly and ask their ideas.

Mehrdad Mozafari

CASCON 2007 Toronto (IBM)

CASCON is an annual computer science conference hosted by IBM that is held in Toronto, or more precisely Markham, Ontario. It is run by the IBM Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS) in Toronto.(from Wikipedia >:D<) Working at CAS (Center for Advance Studies) during summer as a CAS Fellow, gave me a great opportunity to work in a very professional environment, which includes dealing with students, faculty members and many good experienced employees (mostly holding PhD degree in Computer Science ). i have been working on the new MASS library for new Cell processor which includes elementary function approximation in single and double precision.... there we go THE SWEET FLOATING POINT NUMBER STUFF ! but seriously it was a very good compensations for my unprofessional knowledge regarding this issues. i have to confess that i have all these from my nice supervisor Dr.Christopher Anand that assign me to this position. the CASCON was a good opportunity to present the project our team was working on. the CoConut project presents a new DSL(Domain Specific Language) embedded in Haskell (a Functional Language) that performs a suitable platform for mathematicians with novel ideas. it`s because of simulated Cell`s assembly function embedded in Haskell, so fair enough for those who know nothing about Cell`s assembly language :). we also have our own scheduler in order to produce optimized and efficient cell assembly language and job was to finally make it ready to run on target architecture (Cell BE). anyway!!! lets forget the details and talk about the conference a little bit :D. the conference was located at Sheraton Hotel in HWY7/Leslie in Toronto , quit a well known place, however the hotel was not as prestigious as i thought before. we had a poster in middle-ware section of the technology show case in the conference. each team have a section with a huge poster indicating the project`s name and the author names. so this is what we had on the board: CoConut-Optimizing code generation on Cell Arcitectur - McMaster University
Mehrdad Mozafari
Shiqi Cao
Christopher Anand
Wolfram Kahl


i think they were about 40 to 50 posters in the that area and all were sponsored by IBM so imaging what a huge funding is beside this whole story.

the hotel`s service was good enough . each day they gave breakfast, lunch and a snack at the evening. i met few Persian students mostly from University of Waterloo. There was a workshop for Compiler at the first day. and something weired happend in one of the presentation a guy (aged 25 to 27) was presenting his project and after 10 minute s the audience asked him few questions and he couldn't answer them i mean couldn't satisfy them , so he stopped to talk and then it seemed that he was overstressed in a way that he couldn't continue the talk. i thought he was about to fall down but few people went and help him sit and the talk manager gave a break right at that moment.

( in CASCON writing the blog, with a good feeling )
the workshop are so hard to understand unless you have a clear knowledge about state of the art, few things that draw my attention are:

-nobody tried to self praised
-nobody tried to impose his/her idea upon others, it was just a suggestion or a comment, thats all.
-they were all professionals, more that i imagined.
-at the end of the workshop there was a panel discussion mainly about about vague and unclear aspect of the cell that was going to be worked on in future.
- they were really trying to learn from each other in a humble way...
-being in a big, well known conference make you more motivated on the job you are working on(its because you know lots of more people had a similar point of view as you do)
-beside all the academic atmospheres is was kinda geeky environment, every body was talking about a shitty thing about compiler, algorithm complexity..... lol
-thats it

Mehrdad

US Immigration Visa-Montreal Oct, 2007

yooo Mister,
ok lets be honest now it`s all done ... let`s go for a flash back
my feeling : so now, what the heck !!!!! lol
i really mean it!! having or not having US green card is not a big deal for me now ( it was few years ago but not now ). thought, beside all these, you have a pleasant feeling after the completing the whole process...
ANYWAYS!!!!!
i start from the very first moment:
part1:getting the acceptance letter
it was my last final exam ( Software Engineering) in April 1, 2007 and the exam was really hard and i didn't feel good at all , so i came out of the classroom wondering what a gay exam and went for checking my mailbox. it was a weird one i open the envelop and the firt line was exactly this:
Congratulations! you are among the randomly selected US Diversity Visa Lottery applicant ...
i didn't get the point at the moment but i found it interesting after a while so i start having a mystic smiley face in the way that you could even see my cheerfull face frm a long distance...

part2: friends reactions
friend number 1: youuuuu Bastaaaaarrrredd.... Jesus Christ you are so lucky
friend number 2: you are so damn lucky you MASHADI ( it`s the city in Iran that i born in )
friend number 3:congrats Mehrdad ... مردشوره قیافت ببرن مرتیکه خر شانس
friend number 4: when should i apply for Green Card Lottery for the next year ...???
...
..
.
but i have to confess they were all nice and happy for me ;)

part3:receiving the appointment letter from US General Consulate in Montreal,QB
it was 20 day ago (September 19), again a new letter from Kentucky Consulate Center, addressing me: hey you Joe... come visit us in Montreal in 20 days and bring the noticed documents with your self.
Mehrdad: What the hell :(( i have lot to do and i`m so short of time...
ANYWAYS!!! i have to do the Medical Examination, prepare some letter, Translations, Support Statements... and more....

i have this feeling that okay, i`m begin selected randomly and there are the one who is after me not me after them !!!! so relax... they should not be as strict with your case comparing to others .
part4:Going to Montreal, Visa Interview and the Result
i rent a car cause i couldn't even think of going there by bus, beside the price for both were the same. 5, 6 hours drive from Hamilton to Montreal was terribly boring. the worst thing is you the SPEED LIMIT you have to obey in the highways (100 Km ) it sucks. though, no one cares about it and driving up to 120 was Okay, thanks god. i arrived Montreal at 8 pm, and directly went for the hotel in San Dennis Rue, nice not so luxurious hotel but good enough for a night.
after checking in i went for checking the place were US General Consulate was located. it was really close in Saint Alexandre Rue and Stain Cathrine Rue.

the day after i went to Consulate at 8:30. there were a line in front of a 30 floor Building.
the security measurements were good enogh, knowing you are from IRAN ... so they did their best to make sure i`m a morally accepted person and physically okay.
the consulate located at 19 floor, the only access was weired elevator having only one bottom..lol
there was a waiting room with about 30 people waiting for their turn. there were 3 more Persian among them ( God Bless Persian , overtaking Chinese these days ;) )
when my turn came i went to a window and a officer asked for few documents :
(to be completed )








few things to raise:
1-before winning the Lottery i always though if someone in my situation wines the US Green card Lottery, that person is devinly blessed from god ( nazar karde khodast hatman )..... now i understand its not a big deal....

2-i wish i won the Lottery before i get my Canadian Permanent Residency

3-it`s now a really hard decision whether to stay in Canada or completely move to US !!!!

4-i always dreamed of having job somewhere in US ( NY City or Silicon Valley ), now it`s really a good opportunity to make it come true

5-Montreal is so very different from Toronto, people or mostly more cheerful but you can slightly feel the European racism ...

6-taking a trip lonely is not that bad as i thought

7-i wish i new more French .. i promise to learn more ..... I DO

8-


- as i always believe : There is always the hope to meet an angle far far away........

Biomedical Imaging and Computer Vision Symposium (Universiy of Waterloo)

Today me, my supervisor(Dr.Anand) and 2 of our grad students went to University of Waterloo located at Waterloo in Ontario which is about 1:15 drive from Hamilton. there was the annual Symposium of BICV, which included presentation and posters. it was a grat opportunity to meet with academic people (mostly from UWaterloo,U of T, York ) in the same field of interest as mine. i found some of the talks to very interesting , the one about breast cancer detection by Dr.Tizhoosh which include different techniques of image segmentation, data acquisition from Ultrasound scans and Mammography, poster for active contour (snakes) and Mathematical Modeling and Image Representation was quite impressing.
the Department of Computer Science located in a very big arc shape building and the interesting thing was i meet LOTS of Persian student during a one day visit.

Taylor Series

god bless you Wikipedia.
here is a simple definition for taylor series:
it is a kind of representation of function as infinite sum of the terms that calculated from different degree derivitiev of the function at different points,
check the picture blow and keep it in your mind for ever:

Live at the great Roger Waters` consert-Toronto(Roger Center)

Hey You !!!

after two months of anticipation for the great day finally i made it to the concert. Ther he was live at the stage, what a feeling what a temptation.

Me, Ardavan, Aida and 2 of my fathers friend went together to the concert.
we get there 10 minutes before the start of the concert but the line up was unimaginable and it caused to miss 30 minutes of the concert. we could hear the sound inside the stadium and in made me even more exited and tempted that i start to run to get the show.i finally reached to the gate wooow ...
just imagine all the weird feeling before seeing something that have been a dream for all your life, suddenly i entered the stadium with a top view to the stage at the balcony.



the people were huge in number. the top view to the stage and the visual effects of light, woow and finally there he is the black dressed man tall handing the bass guitar, in the middle of the stage under the focuse of volume light...
after sitting in the second row i finaly find my self in a huge stadiom filled with people all singing the song with Roger word by word.
we were at the closest row in the balcony so we had the top view but straight in fron of stage.
the stage had a huge background monitor with two symmetric monitor at both sides. in the main monitor we could see the back ground pictures, some video clips related to the song being preformed. the title of the concert was 'Dark Side of The Moon' which is the title of one of pinkfloyd`s album. the second part of the concert was playing all the song from dark side of the moon. songs like Breathe, Money, Time. and ended with Eclipse.

he made a goodbye but after that all the audience applaud him and the band came again. and start the good part of the concert, the song form The Wall album like another break in the wall 2, Vera, and at the end the show ended with comfortably numb.
few things to mention:

- the audience average age was approximately 22 to 35 which shows the populariuty of pinkfolyd even after 3,4 decades.

-the stadiom filled with smell of weed, it was so ordinary for everyone to smoke their grass while watching the show.

-roger water looked very tall and handsome in a black t-shirt. at the age of 63 he he still had such a preformance the same as what he did 10 years ago.

-the back ground monior made such a bridge between the song and audience ( specially in the song leaving beirut), in the instrumental song On the Run it made a great impression on everyone with the perfect dolby sound system and the astonishing visual effects.

-being in the top balcony in the stadiom, it made an impressive impression.

-finally seeing some one who has been a dream for you in a life time feel really good and calming. it`s some thing i would never tought of while i was in iran.

- the band was a professional selection of musician, specially the guitarist who was substituted for David Gilmour
i think it totally worth it .. nice evening nice memories >:D<

main background

flying pig

great drum playing (song Time )

alah in the lyrics

she had such a powerfull voice


laser show

stage

goodbye

visiting Montreal July 2007

after a year being in Canada, Montreal was the next large city for me to visit. The city has nothing in common with Toronto. You can obviously feel the European style of living there. The downtown has many gathering places like squares parks. The stores are open till 2 3 AM. However, if you wanna live there, make sure to learn French. its because people prejudice behavior of people in daily affairs. Being there for these few days made me regret why i quit learning French, here is a very good tutorial and a usefully radio for those interested in learning French.
Nice experience, sweet memories.

rue Sainte-Catherine, one of the major street in Montreal

Saint Joseph's Oratory is the largest church in Canada. it is located on a mountain(Mount Royal) with a great view to the city.

Montreal Biosphère,76 meters in diameter and 62 meters high ,located at saint Helen`s Island ,was built in n the building of the United States pavilion for the 1967 World Exhibition Expo 67.

Olympic Stadium, was the major gathering of 1976 Summer Olympics. the structure of stadium is one of the tourism attraction of the city.

Diving School at Saint Helen`s Island. the most joyful sport in this hot weather. you should have seen the joy in children faces.
Casino Montreal located on the Ile Notre-Dame.

Montreal International Jazz Festival is the largest jazz festival in the world which is annually held in Montreal in July.

first yet best most precious start

try to write what you believe in .
try to express yourself.

write to envision yourself form other mystical thoughts !!!

Mehrdad
مهرداد مظفری

-Write!. Whether it's a letter, a diary or just some notes as you speak on the telephone but write!

-If you want to understand your role in the world better, write.

-Try to put your soul in writing, even if no one reads your words or worse, even if someone winds up reading what you did not want to be read.
-The word has power."

(part of Maktub by p.Coelho)