Summer was Finished!

After a long delay, hello once again! Summer was finished (at least in Sweden :) ) and many things happened during summer for me. I wanted to write about them but since I used to be very lazy in blogging :) always I was postponing it to another occasion. But what's up?
First of all, in July issue of JSSC, my first journal article was published. This was the good news that I had written about after my ESSCIRC/CICC post. Then I had a conference trip to Canada to attended MWSCAS/NEWCAS joint conference in Montreal. It was also very useful and in addition, our paper got the best student paper award that is actually surprising. Montreal was also very nice city and I enjoyed visiting many nice places and meeting new interesting people during conference sessions. The following picture has been taken in Montreal in front of McGill University.

Finally, since 2 weeks ago we have started new semester and I am involved with teaching of digital integrated circuit course. It is my 4th year that I am assistant for this course; however always there are new things to learn about. I hope you have had also great summer vacation and now you are ready to start your job/study with more energy. Good luck!

300 (2)

As I mentioned earlier, I was really interested in watching 300 to be more accurate in writing about it. Last week, I could do that and here is the summary of what I think about it:

1. From history point of view, the movie is about the battle of Thermopylae on 11 August 480 BC, in which 300 Spartans led by King Leonidas blocked the pass of Thermopylae in central Greece against the massive army of Iranian king Xerxes I. The following picture is today's view of Thermopylae pass in Greece.

After 3 days of resisting, a local resident named Ephialtes betrayed the Greeks and showed the Iranian army a path which led them behind the position of Greek army and it helped them win the battle. To get more information you can refer to the following reference:

J. B. Bury and Russell Meiggs, "A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great", 4th Edition, Palgrave Macmillan, page 271.

2. In this movie to show the extreme power of Iranian army, many strange things are shown (like strange powerful man, different kind of animals attacking to Spartans and ...). However, it is not something bad for Iranian army because it just show that they were really powerful in that time which makes sense.

3. In the movie and during the battle, Iranian army consisting of many ethnicities like black Africans, Chinese, Arabs, ... are just fighting and doing their duties but these are Spartans who behave wildly and unfairly. Some examples of wild behavior of Spartans in the movie are:

i. Killing the babies to improve their race

ii. Hitting the child to train him

iii. Killing the Iranian messenger

iv. Creating a wall using the bodies

v. Throwing spear to Xerxes by Leonidas to kill him while Xerxes never tries to kill Leonidas unfairly during their meetings.

4. In the movie Xerxes is not shown with a weak character or weak body. Even in one of the secans, his grandeur can be seen when he is talking to Leonidas and putting his hands on the Leonidas's shoulder.

Considering these facts, I can't see anything in this movie that tries to tease Iranian ancient empire. Of course, always in all movies there are some exaggerations which make the story attractive but it does not mean that the movie maker tries to humiliate a nation. At least in this case, I did not have such a perception. Finally, I would like to mention the professional computer effects of the movie and also it's nice music.

300 (1)

You can't write your blog without paying attention to what is happening around you. On the other hand you don't want to enter to political or national discussions. What should you do then? Everybody has his/her own way of thinking about different things and in some fields people are very sensitive to what they believe. Religion, nationality, politics and ... are some of those fields. For example in Sweden, it is very impolite to ask about one's religious belief or political view. I agree with all of these sensitivities but they should not prevent us to accept correct thoughts.

The movie 300 is a new movie by Zack Snyder based on a novel by Frank Miller. It is about a battle between 300 Spartans and Iranian King Xerxes and his enormous army of more than one million soldiers. Because of some reasons which I don't like to discuss about, this movie provokes the mentioned sensitivities among some of Iranian people. I have not seen this movie but I am really interested in seeing and writing more about it. But I believe that recent reactions against this movie by some people not only will not result in any kind of positive consequences, but also will increase the popularity and the total gross of it. Last week, this movie was ranked first with a total gross of 71 M$.

In many situations, the truth is not something that needs to be proven. When you become angry, it means that something is wrong with what you believe as the truth. Then please calm down and try to behave more rational.

Happy New Year

In the last minutes of 2006, I wish a nice and happy new year for you. I celebrate it in Turkey.

Lazy Blogger!

I am very lazy in writing my blog. It makes some of the invisible readers! angry, when they always see the same page coming to my blog. Sorry about that! I think the reason is the volume of responsibilities which a Ph.D. student should take care of.
As I promised here I try to write a little bit about my trip and then in the next posts I continue to write more about my research. The long trip to the USA and Switzerland was very useful. Two world-class conferences (CICC and ESSCIRC) are worthy enough to accept many problems related to a long travel. Many good presentations which were more from US in CICC and more from Europe in ESSCIRC. But the nature of research in Europe seems to be more analog and RF related while in the US you can see good digital papers too. I think it has been become a tradition because of the existence of strong cell phone companies in Europe. In ESSCIRC, Asad Abidi gave a very nice presentation related to SDR (software defined radio). I enjoyed it so much. Also there is good news which I prefer to postpone the writing about it for 1-2 months later. It was very good news for me after coming back from ESSCIRC. Then wait for it for a while!

The Last Day in the United States

After a long trip, now it is the last day in the US and tomorrow I have flight to Switzerland to attend ESSCIRC. It was very useful conference travel and I will write more about it later on. Now I should do my best in ESSCIRC presentation. It seems that the session is quite interesting although other papers are not so much related to mine.

CICC and ESSCIRC 2006

Among different conferences in our field, IEEE Custom Integrated Circuit Conference (CICC) and IEEE European Solid-State Circuits Conference (ESSCIRC) are two conferences which have created very good balance between academic and industrial research publications. Despite ISSCC and VLSI Symposia which have less academic nature, in CICC and ESSCIRC you can find many original ideas purely originated from academia.

Interestingly, the deadline for these two conferences are at the same time, but ESSCIRC is started one week after CICC. Two weeks ago, the results of these conferences came out and we were notified that our papers (three papers) had been accepted for publication in these conferences. Right now the technical program of CICC is available but for ESSCIRC no program has been published yet. Looking at CICC technical program, the most interesting part for me is that I have found three papers in Wednesday sessions which address somehow the same topic as that of my paper about injection locking phenomenon modeling. Two of these papers will be presented after my presentation (session 24) by Abidi's group (UCLA) and Roychowdhury's group (University of Minnesota). The third one (Mutual Injection Pulling Between Oscillators) is the last paper in session 22 and will be presented by Prof. Razavi (UCLA).

Our second paper in CICC is related to "resonant clocking" research which we have started since last year.

I think I will have a great time in CICC this year because of attending to many good sessions. Unfortunately, I have no information about ESSCIRC program and consequently nothing to say about it right now, but when it is published I will write more about it.