I gave a presentation titled "Cybernetics and Intelligent Search", as I had mentioned earlier, at the Faculty of Management and Computing at the Maldives Center for Higher Education in late September this year. The presentation went as planned and went well but I'm not too sure what impact it had on the attendees. The presentation was attended by about 20 or so students of FMC but they all kept awfully quiet throughout and especially in the Q&A slot. The only time anyone reacted was during the demonstration of some A.I systems in practice. I guess I have to take comfort in the reassurance by a FMC faculty member present that this was standard response by students!

I am very thankful to Adam Khalid (Assistant Coordinator, Bachelor of IT) and the Faculty for hosting my presentation and arranging it all. I am also grateful to the students who attended the presentation and sat through the entire hour and I sincerely hope that they found it interesting and informative.

I've put up some photos of the event here.

I will be giving a presentation on cybernetics and (more specifically) artificial intelligence at the Faculty of Management and Computing (FMC) of the Maldives College of Higher Education (MCHE) on Monday 24th of September and will run from 11.30am - 1.30pm. I've titled the presentation "Cybernetics and Intelligent Search". Students at FMC (or elsewhere at the college, I suppose) are invited to attend.

My presentation will include a general introduction to cybernetics (and it's sub-fied of AI), notes on some important intelligent search methods and finally some information on the various aspects of my intelligent search-related project at uni this year. I (hope to) have some interesting demo's and simulations packed in as well. There'd also be a Q&A session at the end to wrap things up.

I am doing this presentation towards fulfilling a requirement for my study programme at the University of Reading where I am currently working towards a MEng in Artificial Intelligence and Cybernetics. I hope that I'd be able to take this opportunity to fulfil my university obligations and at the same time impart something of value to everyone who attends.

(Please feel free to pass the message onto any of your friends attending FMC or MCHE. Thanks!)

There I was gazing up aimlessly into the sky last night when this brilliant white dot showed up out of nowhere. This object was much larger and much brighter than any other object in the night sky these days. I paused for a split second, discounting the possibility of it being an airplane, before I settled on what it most probably was: a meteoroid!

I stared at this relatively rare sight, as the meteoroid moved rapidly across the sky painting a short but very strong streak of light on the dark sky which we usually call "shooting stars". What was really amazing is that the meteor exceeded all the stars in the sky, both in size and brightness, by several magnitudes. The brightest object in the Maldivian night sky these days is Jupiter which can be seen right overhead around 8-9pm local time - imagine something brighter and atleast thrice larger! The famous Perseid meteor shower occurs this month and I suspect this one I saw was among them. However, the peak of the shower (July 25 - August 18) passed earlier this month.

The last time I saw a sizeable meteor was about 10 years ago. I vividly recall that meteor as being very blueish, extremely large and bright and traversed the sky in a blink of the eye to disappear into the horizon - it might have even crashed into the sea somewhere in Male' atoll!

Meteoroids are space debris in the solar system - essentially tiny bits of dust and rock left in the wake of comets in orbit around the sun. The Earth regularly comes into contact with these when it crosses the path of these debris during its orbit around the sun. The debris burn up almost entirely when they hit the Earth's atmosphere leaving that tell-tale streak of light commonly referred to as a shooting star (or "ginihila" as known in Dhivehi). Some of the larger debri may not burn up entirely and pass through the atmosphere to hit the Earth's surface as meteorites. Well, that's the scientific explanation...

They say time flies when you are having fun but I reckon time flies even faster when you are bored shitless - like when I've been since arriving back from Makunudhoo two weeks ago...

I had a terrific time in HDh. Makunudhoo, exploring the island itself and the neighbouring three uninhabited islands, all of which lie within the same 17 mile long reef. Makunudhoo is amongst a natural geographical atoll called "Maa Makunudhoo Atoll" which sits situated all by itself in the North of the Maldives, displaced slightly to the West from the typical Maldivian North-South stretch of atolls (see map).

Makunudhoo is famous for being the home to President Maumoon Abdul Gayyoom when he was sentenced to banishment during President Nasir's rule. The owners of the house he stayed in then, infact, now proudly hang pictures of him on their walls! The island also played host to the infamous Bodufenvalhugey Seedhee who gained country wide fame for his supposed supernatural feats and healing powers - abilities which led to the "Seedhee" title. He is (still) well-respected by the elderly for feats as "walking on water" across the seas, instantaneous travel, healing the sick, "helping" the infertile conceive etc. His long abandoned house in Makunudhoo now lie in ruins.

The sea, the reef and the lagoon of the atoll were nothing short of being deliciously exquisite and as a Maldivian who'd been away from these beauties for a number of months, I was simply overwhelmed! I hadn't seen starfishes, jellyfishes, different kinds of rays, turtles, dolphins, eels, sea cucumbers and multicoloured fishes and numerous weird sea creatures for ages and it was a thrilling experience to see them again while snorkelling in the reef and/or while strolling along the beach. Most notable was the presence of turtles in and around the atoll. We even sighted turtles cruising in the shallow waters near the beach. I also got to travel to the west-most piece of land in the Maldives - which is one of the uninhabited islands in the Maa Makunudhoo atoll. Exploring along its beaches and lagoon made it clear that the island was slightly different from the typical rest I'd seen (but then again, I haven't seen much of Maldives!).

I was pretty sad to hear that the island people still do catch turtles, which are a protected specie in the Maldives for fear of extinction, for food and that too on a regular basis. I'm not a particularly big supporter of the animal protection schemes but these animals, if they do disappear, are something I would miss indeed. There were other sea animals that had depleted significantly as well - including sea cucumbers and "raakani" (English name?) - which were aplenty in the atoll when I visited the place 10 years so ago!

I've uploaded some of the photos from the trip to Flickr. Check 'em out!

UPDATE (18/08/2007): Azeem has uploaded a lot more beautiful pictures from the trip to his Flickr gallery as well.

I left for Makunudhoo earlier today to do some work and try have some fun at the same time (or vice versa!).

The jump upto Haa Dhaalu atoll (Hanimaadhoo), for the sake of cutting down travel time and cutting down on sea-sickness of my trip mates, was taken on a plane and another jump from there to Kanditheemu (via Kulhudhuffushi) done on a speed boat and the last leg upto Makunudhoo completed on a traditional "Masdhoani" admist rough sea.

There's no bloody publicly available Internet here except via GPRS on my Dhiraagu mobile, which turns out to be extremely slowwww. I've just given up after trying to post some pictures of the day.

Adios for now...

Last week, my mum found a caterpillar ravaging her young lemon tree. It had, like most caterpillars, camouflaged itself and blended in so smoothly that it managed to live unspotted right under her nose for days before the damage to the plant was too apparent to be missed. The caterpillar had eaten much of the leaves and shoots in a span of just 2-3 days and so my mum considered the fellow to be more active than any of the other caterpillars that we occasionally find on the plants at home. But that wasn't what caught my curiosity when she called me over to show it - the caterpillar was different from any that I had seen anywhere in Male'! This caterpillar was larger (~1cm across and ~3cm in length) and really sinister looking.

I decided to put the caterpillar under observation, afterall a caterpillar is just the larva stage of a butterfly and should go through the various stages over a few days to become a full grown adult butterfly. Over the course of almost 2 weeks, I watched as it first continued to consume leaves all day and then go into stasis for the pupa stage and remain apparently lifeless for several days, before (quite suddenly and unseen to me) the pupa metamorphosized into a beautiful large adult butterfly. The fellow had red spots/blotches on the hindwings, few white streaks on the forewings and was black everywhere else and sported wings with a wingspan of ~10-14cm.

The butterfly was of a specie I had not seen here in Male' previously, though its existence does necessitate that a butterfly laid eggs on the plant recently - quite unlike the way of the sudden-uncaused-creation ("gudhurathee ufedhun") of caterpillar larvae that some of our visitors and neighbours claim(ed)! I still am not sure what these butterflies are called but from all the web searches and butterfly indexes that I've gone through since, I am pretty sure this butterfly belongs to the Swallowtail Papilionidae family in the Papilionoidea class of butterflies. The most similar looking butterfly that I could find was the Common Rose butterflies which bear striking similarities. It might also be related to the Citrus Swallowtail specie too since the larva was found on a citrus tree plant and the caterpillars look very similar but the adult butterfly looks different while the Crimson Rose family has adult butterflies that look very similar but different caterpillars. This is, ofcourse, all just speculation simply based on my (very) crude and limited phenotypic observations and I could be wayyyy off mark...

Here are some pictures I snapped in keeping up with the development of this beautiful insect. The latter three stages (of the total four) of a butterfly have been captured to my best ability: the larva, the pupa and finally, the adult. Enjoy!

Yippeee! The results are out and I'm through to the next year. Best of all, my grades met the criterion required for switching my study programme to the MEng version - MEng Artificial Intelligence and Cybernetics - as I had been hoping for. The MEng means I have to work harder and do more in the future and also adds an extra year of study at the university - something I actually quite look forward to!

Now to bore my head out with "the art of doing nothing" for the next few days, atleast...