The Noughties' XI

It’s nearly been a decade since I started following football. For someone with considerable football viewing experience, I still find myself fumbling for cheeky one-liners when posed with questions ranging from the history of that " wee club in the north-east" to who scored the winning goal in Arminia Bielefeld's first win of the 2007-08 season to what Henrik Larsson believes is in store for him after retirement (I know the answer to that last one, by the way). I do find these pieces of information quite fascinating in their own right, but fail to understand the reason behind allowing oneself to be stranded under the debris of statistics. I find myself more interested in those deft touches, those subtle flicks, those passes which have accuracy written all over them, those periods of play where all else loses meaning, consuming you with its overwhelming nature, considering the perspective wherein football is billed as being just a game. That and the emotional tumult (i.e. all the howling and scowling and fervent abusing) that is associated with being a Manchester United fan.                                                                                                                         
 This column is intended to render itself as a platform to showcase the travails of an ordinary guy with Jogo Bonito- the Beautiful Game. The analysis here should not be expected to be of a clinical nature. It would be rather normal to expect that these articles would be overflowing with views of a lopsided nature. And to further add weight to this contention this first piece is based on the most rudimentary of football related articles- a fantasy team.  This team includes only those players whose footballing prowess I have witnessed (on TV of course).  Attempts have been made to refrain from picking players solely from teams whose footballing styles I admire. This is evident from the fact that 2 French players and quite a number of players who have represented Real Madrid at some point in their careers, whereas I harness feelings of indifference towards the French national team and truly despise the Real Madrid school of thought. Here is the list of players I would have loved to see play as a team:

  

·      Gianluigi Buffon: The recent Roma vs. Juventus match, which ended in what has to be said was an embarrassing defeat for the defending champions, was a vindication of the fact that Buffon is still the best goalkeeper around. On a rare day when his teammates were totally at sea, Gigi Buffon held the fort like a true leader. His technical finesse, his commitment to his team’s cause and his obsession with winning make him one of the finest players of his generation.

·     Paolo Maldini: Truth be told, I haven’t seen Maldini at work as much as I would have liked to. And admittedly I was unaware of the fact that he spent most of the better days in his career at left-back. But whatever glimpses I have had of his genius were at centre-back partnering the next player in this list. It wouldn’t be much of an exaggeration to say that Milan’s pages in history would lack much of its sheen if it were deprived of the services of this legend.

·    Alessandro Nesta: I had lost interest in Italy’s 2006 World Cup Campaign on learning of Nesta’s injury. Although posterity would label this as a foolish decision, Nesta’s value to any side he appeared in was beyond quantification. Arguably the greatest centre-back of the previous decade, his partnership with Maldini made for delectable football viewing.

·     Philipp Lahm: I am not a huge fan of the workhorse-like efficiency that German football is famous for. But Lahm, the true embodiment of this footballing philosophy, is just too remarkable a player to be excluded from this list. The German’s impressive work rate is only matched by his astute ability to foster attack while ensuring his defensive duties are not neglected.

·    Roberto Carlos: The man, who is renowned for his mind-blowing free kicks, was adept at forging key partnerships in offense. His incredible track record speaks for itself and he is one of the greatest Latin American left-backs of all time.

·  Claude Makélélé: Zinedine Zidane remarked on learning of Makélélé’s sale and the subsequent buying of David Beckham by Real Madrid: “Why put another layer of gold paint on the Bentley when you are losing the entire engine?” Such was the influence of this player, that pundits have dubbed the defensive midfield   position as the ‘Makélélé Role’. Without Makélélé, all this hype generated over the greatness of players like Lampard and Terry by the Chelsea faithful would have found no basis whatsoever. A player who truly deserved greater recognition.

·       Paul Scholes: Ok I’ve got to put this out there – Scholes is without even the slightest iota of doubt the greatest United player, if not the greatest Premier League player of the Sir Alex Ferguson era. Scholes is a midfielder of the most unique genesis – his footballing capabilities make his role difficult to classify, his calming influence on his teammates speaks volumes of his genius, his ability to hold the ball for long periods of play is unequalled and the quality of his passes is the stuff of legend.

·   Ryan Giggs: Wikipedia describes Giggs as the most decorated player in English football history. For anyone who has even a speck of doubt about his talent and influence, the goal he scored against Arsenal in the FA Cup final of the historic treble winning season for United should silence all such opinions. He has played in all positions in midfield and the depth and vision he possesses is of an exemplary nature.

·      Zinedine Zidane: The complete player. No one, in my opinion has ever controlled a football better than this man. His ability to read the game and skillfully turn matches on their head with his unique vision ensured a treat for connoisseurs of the game and a nightmare for defenders. Zidane could create, score, pass the ball around beautifully, hold the ball if needed and conjure sheer magic through set-pieces. The greatest player I’ve had the fortune of witnessing.

·      Luís Figo: Figo was an incredibly gifted player whose abilities as a winger and a playmaker saw him rub shoulders with the best of his contemporaries. When in full flow, he overshadowed them all tearing apart the best of defenses single-handedly. I consider him a player of greater quality than his compatriot Cristiano Ronaldo, since he encountered defences of a more competent and complete nature in his time.

·       Raúl González: I haven’t seen anyone who was/is as well-rounded a striker as Raúl was in his prime. This guy could literally do anything – his killer instincts, his aerial prowess, his ability to shoot from tight angles and his clinical finishing posed some serious problems for defenders. Whenever critics started doubting Raúl the player, Raúl the champion emerged stronger, each time sending out fitting replies to these cynics.

I have decided to refrain from naming a manager for this team as the task of choosing a manager for this set of players is way more difficult than choosing the final XI, and therefore beyond me. And as for substitutes, in fantasy need there be any such thing as injury or fatigue?

-Shankar R

Trying To Be Mr.BrightSide?

(Slice of Life)

The idea to live every moment does seem charming at the first thought, doesn't it? But, seriously I mean how is it even possible to be guggly-bubbly at every moment? I know most of you have actually felt the need or rather I should say the urge to do something like that. I would say that these kind of thoughts come in mind when you undergo introspection and take a look back at the 'crime scene' that brought you distress earlier. The first train of thought will surely be led by "Ok..alright I've just gotta be calm...and live every moment and not allow depression to take its toll over me! " But trust me, you will not get far with that optimistic burst of energy. Even a little bit of seriousness, fear and sadness in the mind is enough to dunk your so-called resolve when another tribulation comes your way.

Let us investigate the whole scene. First, the situation that arrived and made you restless. In this, you might as well include mom's shouting over your mistakes, a monster called exam burning a hole through your back, getting a precious thing stolen and the list goes on and on; there is no shortage of reasons in this era.

Well, I think we should lift the spirits up a bit and give you a little reason to charm about by telling you one thing,  that there are people in worse conditions than yourself. Believe me, I've seen people who are always in rusted bones for their jaws never smile. Some people are just too afraid to loose to this world, the fear of failing has literally swallowed them. But then again, one would say living in the moment is the best solution to the problem, and I don't blame them.

It seems too hypothetical a situation, rather I'd say we create a moment to live. One's mind needs to relax in a tough situation and the best and obvious way to reverse the gravity is to entertain yourself. Well, I don't think that I really need to tell you about such resources but lets say for now you know nothing. So, here is the list- video games, blogging, movies, music and 'the ultimate pleasure', if you know what I mean. Don't yell at me, I am just quoting the experts.

The other solution to the problem will be to include enjoyment while doing your stuff. The feeling of seeing yourself achieving success even when you are just on-board, does soothe the eyes but to really live your dream, you have to enjoy all along the way.

So remember and guess who said these lines in which movie-"There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path."

Your Friend
The Mango Man

Gesture Recognition

(Byte The Chip)

Understanding human motions can be posed as a pattern recognition problem. Humans express time varying motion patterns (gestures), such as a wave, in order to convey a message to a recipient. If a computer can detect and distinguish these human motion patterns, the desired message can be reconstructed, and the computer can respond appropriately. Constellation method and Hidden Markov Model (HMM) are some of the different methods of gesture recognition. Both methods have their special features and used according to appropriate situations.

What is Gesture Recognition?

Interfacing with computer using gestures of human body, typically hand movements is known as gesture recognition by computers. For example, a person clapping his hands together in front of a camera can produce the sound of cymbals being crashed together when the gesture is fed through a computer.

Basic Hand Gestures of American Sign Language

One way gesture recognition is being used is to help the physically impaired to interact with computers, such as interpreting sign language. The technology also has the potential to change the way users interact with computers by eliminating input devices such as joysticks, mice and keyboards and allowing the unencumbered body to give signals to the computer through gestures such as finger pointing. Gesture recognition technology also can be used to read facial and speech expressions (i.e., lip reading), and eye movements.

A basic Block Diagram for Gesture Recognition Systems

Gesture Recognition Techniques:

1)  The Constellation Model:

The constellation model was developed by Markus Weber for distinguishing between types of objects, e.g. faces vs. cars in 2-D images. When trained on multiple images of a certain object, for example on human faces. Weber’s algorithm learned a constellation model for the object type a model based on the arrangement of important features, such as the eyes and nose for human faces, and how they co-vary spatially. For any test image, the algorithm would extract the features from the image and compute a probabilistic score using all its learnt models. The highest scoring model was declared a match.

Gesture Recognition using the constellation method:

The basic approach is same as that of Weber. Effectively, each gesture sample datum is processed and its features are extracted. The features can then be used to learn a new model (in conjunction with many more samples of the same kind) or can be classified as one of the models the system has learnt. The main features of this technique are as follows.
a.Unlike Weber, our task is to recognize different movements of the same object, the hand. We consider the motion of the silhouette of the hand ignoring fine details like knuckles etc.
b.The motion of the hand can be in any of the 3 dimensions. Our approach is far more expanded than that of Weber.
c.Since we don’t know which part of the hand will generate the gesture, we develop clusters for various detections with each cluster referring to a particular distinct feature. These features are used to compare the learnt gestures of training period and test input by assigning a probabilistic score. The gesture with closest score is the one recognized.

      2)     The Hidden Markov Model

Hidden Markov Models (HMM) are one of the most common forms of probabilistic graphical models. They are used to model time-invariant models that have both an underlying mechanism (hidden states) and an observable consequence. They have been extremely successful in language modelling and speech recognition systems and are still the most widely used technique in these domains. HMM is basically a probabilistic method. Such types of methods are required in signal processing. There have been other fields of interest that HMM are utilized for computational biology, bio-medical signal interpretation and also for image classification, segmentation and de-noising.

What is HMM?

An HMM is a Markov chain (a mathematical system that undergoes transitions from one state to another, between a finite or countable number of possible states. It is a random process usually characterized as memory-less: the next state depends only on the current state and not on the sequence of events that preceded it) where each state generates an observation.

HMM is a finite-state machine that changes state once every discrete time. At discrete instants of time, the process is assumed to be in some state and an observation is generated by the random function corresponding to current state. The underlying Markov chain then changes states according to its transition probability matrix (a matrix used to describe the transitions of a Markov chain. Each of its entries is a non-negative real number representing a probability). Only the observation of the random function is known, but the underlying Markov chain is hidden, hence, it is called hidden Markov model. Although, HMM is statistically strong and computationally efficient, it requires large amount of training data and many calculations.

Future:

In the real world, applications abound. Gesture recognition systems can be used for much more intuitive, rapid interaction with machines. Some versions, especially electronic glove-based ones, are already being used in virtual environments, such as 3-D modeling of molecules. Gesture recognizer(s) can provide a great interface for the vocally challenged by responding efficiently to sign language. Furthermore, we might even be able to create a system that responds to voice and gesture cues, making it even more effective at interacting with humans. 

- The Processor