Kaushik Ghose
("kou-shik gho-sh")

I am Bengali.
You may have been looking for my main work page.
I'm interested in animal behavior which results in fun ways to depict data.
Here is some open source software I found useful.
I'm trying to kick the Matlab habit by learning Python.
I am collecting random things on a blog (one must try to be hip).
Some signposts to the bureaucracy at UMCP.
Some pointers to life in College Park, Maryland and around.
xkcd is the best geek webcomic around.

video

Bats (1999-2007)

Infra red camera shot of bat catching up with flying insect

Video of bat chasing and capturing flying insect (wmv, 2.2 MB)
Data animation of bat sonar beam patterns (avi, 1.1 MB)

NSnB (2005)

The Neural Systems and Behavior course is run by the Marine Biological Laboratory every summer. I had an insane amount of fun at this course. The following are videos made at the course. They are encoded using the free open-source XviD codec (install for windows, mac).

Animation of the electric field of steatogenys duida. Done by Jennifer Talley and myself. Thanks go to Len Maler, Eric Fortune, Moe Chacron and Jay Leno Middleton. Electric Fish rock, eh?
Videos of a tethered fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster taken under a microscope. I'd like to thank the crazy Dickinson fly-lab people from Caltech - Michael Dickinson, Michael Reiser and Mark Frye for leading such a fun section, and for getting us that very expensive high speed camera to play with, not to mention the fly flight simulator.

Flapping: side , rear and front. 10000 frames per second.
Haltere motion: front, side and rear. 3000 frames per second.

open source software

citation management	RRiki	A web-browser driven notes and citation manager software, uses Ruby, Rails and MySQL.
		Successor to RA (obsolete)
bengali	Lekho	made obsolete by WinXP and latest releases of Linux.
authoring	MikTeX +	Latex on windows!
	TeXnicCenter	An editor/compiler for LaTeX on win with spell check.
editing	SciTE	A fast, lightweight configurable text editor for coding with syntax highlighting
	KompoZer	WYSIWYG html/css editor succeeding NVU, using mozilla's gecko engine
drawing	Inkscape	Vector graphics. Like Adobe illustrator
	Ipe	I now prefer Inkscape
video	Virtualdub
audio	audacity
data analysis	python +	beautiful object oriented language. Here are my adventures with it
	ipython +	interactive python shell
	matplotlib +	python replacement for matlab (2D graphics great, 3D graphics suck)
	vtk	3D visualization for python
versioning	tortoiseCVS/SVN	nice windows interfaces to both that integrate with explorer
compression	7-zip	best archiving tool out there, does zip and many other formats
backup	unision	backup tool
	Cobian	Backup software automatic (periodic) or manual backups. Incremental zipped backups.
Security	keepass	Password manager. Encrypts file with master password, can have categories and subcategories of passwords
	truecrypt	Store encrypted volumes on your hard disk

python

polyexpl.py	This is a little module with a class that enables one to modify coefficents of a nth order polynomial and see how that changes the plot of the function on the fly. Use it as follows: `import polyexpl ex = polyexpl.Explorer(norder = 4)` This code shows: classes in Python matplotlib's basic plotting commands how to grab and use handles to figures and axes how to use ioff to switch off interactive plotting the use of connect to link mouse clicks to actions

umd (~2007)

UMD has at least two computer farms for number crunching.
LaTeX templates for UMD dissertatia.
Are you a full time student ?
UMD digital repository (theses etc).
May be that online form they told you about is here?
Do you have any over due books? Did you know you can renew them online ?
The academic calendar.

college park (~2007)

A list of places to eat around college park.
ALDI's is an inexpensive grocery store.
Besides the obviously touristy things to do in Washington, visit the National Geographic Society (Green line, branch ave to Gallery Pl, Red line to Farragut North, L street east to 17th, 17th North to M street). They have a working bubble chamber where you can see particle tracks. See all the alpha particles from cosmic radiation. Wonder what they are doing to your DNA.
Visit the air and space museum - Green line to L'enfant Plaza (at L'Enfant plaza, you are looking for Independence Ave).
Go down to Georgetown, walk down Wisconsin avenue and pop into a restaurant, or walk by the old canal system. (Green line to Gallery Pl, Red line to Farragut North).
Go ice skating at the sculpture garden.
Bike trails!
National gallery of art.
The baltimore acquarium is very fine.
If you need to do a Vehicle Emissions test, if you live in college park, the closest test shed is at 2121 Industrial Parkway, Silver Spring MD 20904. It is offUS29, 3/4 mile north of New Hampshire Avev

Kaushik Ghose ("kou-shik gho-sh")