It has always amazed me how human beings can take whatever form they want. In fact it amazed me when I learnt to ride a bicycle and discovered what it meant to be one with the machine. Imagine a kid controlling a bicycle. He doesn’t really have to think. He can steer, power, and maneuver the machine as if it was an extension of his own body as he had taken its form. Whether the kid is put on a bike or in a car or in a fighter jet, it’s the same. The vehicle becomes an extension of you and your subconscious mind just takes over the mundane task of driving, leaving your conscious mind to wander at will.
Lately I have been learning about modern electronics. (Well not so modern. Just the humble op-amp and 8085) Using certain physical properties of the materials these are made of, one can make a circuit ‘think’ and ‘decide’. It is just basic logic that we use to solve our daily problems. Using true, false, maybe inputs to decide what it is expected (or programmed) to do. Basically its just an extension of our own brain and uses the same algorithms that we use, to come with answers much faster than our biologically constrained brain can.(without other unwanted distractions that too!)
While executing a program, a computer executes a code written by the programmer. And takes steps the programmer wants it to take while calculating the answer. Even though the computer can do it faster and a million times over without trouble, the ‘thinking’, was done by the programmer and the credit should go only to him. Not the ‘smart’ computer whose speed of calculation is greater thanks to the speed of electrical pulses.
Electronics engineers have become one with their ‘machines’ and come up with the marvelous phenomenon that is modern electronics. Hats off to them!
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Night Out in Trichy
it was the weekend before diwali of 2005. trichy was flooded. not because it was raining too much here. but because it had rained too much in karnataka and the kaveri was swollen. so we were in a rather dry flooded city with only a few depressed regions near the banks actually submerged and the rest of the town bone dry. since it was the weekend me and six of my friends decided to go out for dinner.
we caught a bus in the evening and went to a reasonable but decent restaurant in town.after our dinner,we discovered that because of the flood situation there were no buses to get us back to our college, which is situated about 19km from the town itself on the tanjavur highway. it was obvious by now that we were not going to make our 10pm hostel curfew ( this was first year, we dont have any curfew in senior years).a choice lay ahead of us. either stay at the bus stop waiting for a bus and reach the hostel late and get fined, or spend the whole night in the town and get to the campus next morning (which surprisingly no one cares abt as long as u don arrive during the curfew period!). as adventurous teenagers with not a care in the world we obviously chose the latter.
we decided on watching the ten pm show of a tamil movie called gajni.and thus a qatari, a bong, a maharashtrian (or ghati as one is called in nit lingo), a gujju, an odu, a tam bram and a kashmiri ended up watching one of the most senseless copies of a good english movie called memento with extreme amount of blood, gore and obscenity put in for god knows what reason! it was also the first time we all saw an eighty kilo tractor performing an item number supposed to be in the first year of her college! the movie went on to become a huge hit in tamil nadu leaving us amazed and generally stupified.at around 1am the show was finally over.
the sight of the hero's head bein smashed by a sledge hammer still very much fresh in our brains, we decided on having a coffee.hotel sangam has a 24 hour cafe and we started making our way to the place. we had to walk our way and got lost several times. but noone cared. it was only more time killed in the quiet cool air of the night and there was a lot of conversation going on through out the walk.finally we found some orientation and reached the place. we had to wake up the waiter who had made a wonderful bed for himself on one of the couches and looked at us with absolute contempt for breaking his beauty sleep in the air-conditioned cafe.but he didnt exact his revenge while making our coffee. it was probably the best coffee i had had since coming to trichy (south india is famous for filter coffee but somehow i dont like the taste, its too throaty). after coffee it was around three and we still had some time kill. but we decided on checking out the central bus stand to see if the bus service had resumed. it still had not. one person suggested we could try the chatram bus stand. so we got on a local bus to the chatram bus stand. it was on this bus, the incident occurred that shook all of us, and probably will remain with us through out our lives.
on the main road, the bus was probably doing 50 kmph when there was a mild bank in the road. now if the speed had not been considerable, one probably wouldnt even have noticed the swerve. but this speed produced enough centrifugal force to send a 12 year old girl who had nodded off in her chair right out the door( or rather the entrance opening as there are no doors on buses!)! i was unlucky enough to be sitting in the leftside window seat to see her rolling right out smashing her head on the road and hitting her neck on the footpath. all this happened in less than a second!we immediately stopped the bus and rushed out to see what had happened. her two sisters were shell shocked. so were we actually. she was lying in a pool of blood, unconscious. now we all think that if somehting like this ever happened to us, we would have our presence of mind and have our wits about us. i thought so too, until then. but right then, at the moment of truth, i remember my weakness. i just wanted to vomit.i waited. waited for someone to take control of the scene. and then, to my great surprise and to my greatest pride, two of my friends siddharth and shehjar still had their wits about them and ran to the girl to check the situation. thats when the nightmare really began!none of the local adults who were also in the bus were willing to help. none of the autos we waved at stopped. one auto guy whom we forced to stop and get a u turn ran away as soon as he saw space. by this time i had come to my senses. i tried reaching some hospital on my phone. but couldnt reach any for some reason i dont clearly remember. but fortunately someone noticed a couple of 24 hours- on- duty ambulances right on the opposite side, in a small lane. we ran to those ambulances. one of the vans had a sleeping driver. the driver was all too reluctant to get up. we frantically explained to him how urgent the situation was and how we needed his help. he still refused to budge from his posture. finally noticing a mob building up around him he decided to get out of the ambulance and made feeble excuses about his van not starting in the night. all this for a 24 hour ambulance service! all this while the girl was losing blood and losing her life and her sisters were crying and shouting out hysterically! finally he realised we would get physical with him if he didn't get in the van. he finally did.. and just as he said, his van refused to start. we had to push his van to make it start and then he cruised slowly to the opposite side of the road.we ran back as well.shehjar and sidd got the stretcher out and then the three of us put her on it. our hands soaked with her blood.we put her in the ambulance and told the sisters to get on as well. they had no clue about what to do.they were too dazed. they wanted us to come along as well, but we realized that all seven of us will have to go and obviously there was no space in the ambulance. also beyond this point we were not sure how we could be helpful. so the ambulance left without us.
in the mean while another bus had stopped and most ppl on our bus had gotten onto this bus. when the ordeal was over we got on this bus as well, slowly making our way to chatram bus stand. the whole incident sinking in. i remember i was shaking. the whole thought of a person losing his or her life just because he or she dozed off on the bus absolutely freaked me out. not only that but the absolute negativity of the response from the others made me more cynical about this place than i already was. also i was thinking about my own incompetence in crunch time. how i had no clue what to do. this incident had left me dumbstruck.finally we reached chatram and quickly got on a bus that left us at BHEL ( 3kms from our campus). we had to walk the last three kilometers. which again noone minded. we kinda needed to be together and flush the whole thing out of us. there was casual coverstion. it was cooler and the sky was clear and starry. with good friends it was a soothing walk. we all needed it. we finally reached the campus around 6 am. we spent some more time together and decided on keeping the whole thing under wraps. noone wanted to tell unpleasant stories again and again.coupla days later, someone read the newspaper and the word spread amongst us that the girl had in fact died. because she had slept off on the bus. probably because the autos didn't stop, or the ambulance didnt start. the only thing positive that came out of it was that it left an unbelievable bond among the seven of us.
we caught a bus in the evening and went to a reasonable but decent restaurant in town.after our dinner,we discovered that because of the flood situation there were no buses to get us back to our college, which is situated about 19km from the town itself on the tanjavur highway. it was obvious by now that we were not going to make our 10pm hostel curfew ( this was first year, we dont have any curfew in senior years).a choice lay ahead of us. either stay at the bus stop waiting for a bus and reach the hostel late and get fined, or spend the whole night in the town and get to the campus next morning (which surprisingly no one cares abt as long as u don arrive during the curfew period!). as adventurous teenagers with not a care in the world we obviously chose the latter.
we decided on watching the ten pm show of a tamil movie called gajni.and thus a qatari, a bong, a maharashtrian (or ghati as one is called in nit lingo), a gujju, an odu, a tam bram and a kashmiri ended up watching one of the most senseless copies of a good english movie called memento with extreme amount of blood, gore and obscenity put in for god knows what reason! it was also the first time we all saw an eighty kilo tractor performing an item number supposed to be in the first year of her college! the movie went on to become a huge hit in tamil nadu leaving us amazed and generally stupified.at around 1am the show was finally over.
the sight of the hero's head bein smashed by a sledge hammer still very much fresh in our brains, we decided on having a coffee.hotel sangam has a 24 hour cafe and we started making our way to the place. we had to walk our way and got lost several times. but noone cared. it was only more time killed in the quiet cool air of the night and there was a lot of conversation going on through out the walk.finally we found some orientation and reached the place. we had to wake up the waiter who had made a wonderful bed for himself on one of the couches and looked at us with absolute contempt for breaking his beauty sleep in the air-conditioned cafe.but he didnt exact his revenge while making our coffee. it was probably the best coffee i had had since coming to trichy (south india is famous for filter coffee but somehow i dont like the taste, its too throaty). after coffee it was around three and we still had some time kill. but we decided on checking out the central bus stand to see if the bus service had resumed. it still had not. one person suggested we could try the chatram bus stand. so we got on a local bus to the chatram bus stand. it was on this bus, the incident occurred that shook all of us, and probably will remain with us through out our lives.
on the main road, the bus was probably doing 50 kmph when there was a mild bank in the road. now if the speed had not been considerable, one probably wouldnt even have noticed the swerve. but this speed produced enough centrifugal force to send a 12 year old girl who had nodded off in her chair right out the door( or rather the entrance opening as there are no doors on buses!)! i was unlucky enough to be sitting in the leftside window seat to see her rolling right out smashing her head on the road and hitting her neck on the footpath. all this happened in less than a second!we immediately stopped the bus and rushed out to see what had happened. her two sisters were shell shocked. so were we actually. she was lying in a pool of blood, unconscious. now we all think that if somehting like this ever happened to us, we would have our presence of mind and have our wits about us. i thought so too, until then. but right then, at the moment of truth, i remember my weakness. i just wanted to vomit.i waited. waited for someone to take control of the scene. and then, to my great surprise and to my greatest pride, two of my friends siddharth and shehjar still had their wits about them and ran to the girl to check the situation. thats when the nightmare really began!none of the local adults who were also in the bus were willing to help. none of the autos we waved at stopped. one auto guy whom we forced to stop and get a u turn ran away as soon as he saw space. by this time i had come to my senses. i tried reaching some hospital on my phone. but couldnt reach any for some reason i dont clearly remember. but fortunately someone noticed a couple of 24 hours- on- duty ambulances right on the opposite side, in a small lane. we ran to those ambulances. one of the vans had a sleeping driver. the driver was all too reluctant to get up. we frantically explained to him how urgent the situation was and how we needed his help. he still refused to budge from his posture. finally noticing a mob building up around him he decided to get out of the ambulance and made feeble excuses about his van not starting in the night. all this for a 24 hour ambulance service! all this while the girl was losing blood and losing her life and her sisters were crying and shouting out hysterically! finally he realised we would get physical with him if he didn't get in the van. he finally did.. and just as he said, his van refused to start. we had to push his van to make it start and then he cruised slowly to the opposite side of the road.we ran back as well.shehjar and sidd got the stretcher out and then the three of us put her on it. our hands soaked with her blood.we put her in the ambulance and told the sisters to get on as well. they had no clue about what to do.they were too dazed. they wanted us to come along as well, but we realized that all seven of us will have to go and obviously there was no space in the ambulance. also beyond this point we were not sure how we could be helpful. so the ambulance left without us.
in the mean while another bus had stopped and most ppl on our bus had gotten onto this bus. when the ordeal was over we got on this bus as well, slowly making our way to chatram bus stand. the whole incident sinking in. i remember i was shaking. the whole thought of a person losing his or her life just because he or she dozed off on the bus absolutely freaked me out. not only that but the absolute negativity of the response from the others made me more cynical about this place than i already was. also i was thinking about my own incompetence in crunch time. how i had no clue what to do. this incident had left me dumbstruck.finally we reached chatram and quickly got on a bus that left us at BHEL ( 3kms from our campus). we had to walk the last three kilometers. which again noone minded. we kinda needed to be together and flush the whole thing out of us. there was casual coverstion. it was cooler and the sky was clear and starry. with good friends it was a soothing walk. we all needed it. we finally reached the campus around 6 am. we spent some more time together and decided on keeping the whole thing under wraps. noone wanted to tell unpleasant stories again and again.coupla days later, someone read the newspaper and the word spread amongst us that the girl had in fact died. because she had slept off on the bus. probably because the autos didn't stop, or the ambulance didnt start. the only thing positive that came out of it was that it left an unbelievable bond among the seven of us.
Favorite music albums
This is a list of all my favorite albums. It is not implied that all the songs in these albums are my favorite songs. I am only talking about the album as a whole. The artists have managed to be very creative while making these compilations. At the same time they have not lost the general sound or the theme of the album.
Album IV- Led Zeppelin
Kill 'em all- Metallica
Stadium Arcadium- Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Ten- Pearl Jam
What's the story? (Morning Glory!)- Oasis
Master of Puppets- Metallica
Taal, Dil Se, Bombay- A. R. Rahman
Awake- Dream Theatre
Steal This Album- System of a Down
Audioslave-Audioslave
Rage Against the Machine- Rage Against the Machine
Youthanesia- Megadeth.
Album IV- Led Zeppelin
Kill 'em all- Metallica
Stadium Arcadium- Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Ten- Pearl Jam
What's the story? (Morning Glory!)- Oasis
Master of Puppets- Metallica
Taal, Dil Se, Bombay- A. R. Rahman
Awake- Dream Theatre
Steal This Album- System of a Down
Audioslave-Audioslave
Rage Against the Machine- Rage Against the Machine
Youthanesia- Megadeth.
Insanities of a jobless mind
My Engineering semester lasts for about four and a half months. Which is about 18-19 weeks. Because of the grading system and the kind of academic environment we have, we do not spend more than 5-6 weeks with our books actually studying. That leaves us with about 12-14 weeks of totally free time. Well not exactly free. They keep us occupied with boring classes that have compulsary attendance. And also the beautifuly creative concept of labs. The labs are a perfect way to keep us occupied with their absolutely pointless experiments and of course the tons of submissions that follow. Basically, for 12-14 weeks we are just pretending to be doing something academic.Frankly speaking, all students can easily cover the whole sem in about 5-6 weeks, if only the course was taught a bit student oriented if not industry oriented.It should be anything but the 100 year old facade of theory they put before us!
Now being forced to be mentally jobless for 12 weeks out of 18 is not as nice and comfortable as it sounds. So what do we do in the 12 absolutely mentally vacant weeks? What do we do with our brains after all those hours spent in labs? spent in writting observations for those labs? And writting the same observation again, even more elaborately this time, in a note book with a cover called a journal ? Also what is done with all those hours after classes end at 4 pm? So many hours to be spent in a place like trichy where recreational avenues like cafes,english movie theatres, sports clubs, libraries and any other places of socialization and\ or entertainment are totally absent.U might think we are a very bored and frustrated lot by now, engineering being a sort of a painful exile for us. But thats where i m happy to say u might be thinking wrong. i have had the craziest time of my life here. Never before had so many things been happening around me all at once. Even though my parents dont restrict me from doing anything except drugs and stuff, never before had i got absolute freedom to do whatever i wished with just the sort of ppl i wanted to do them with!
Within the campus, we have student clubs for all possible activities that the college resources and\ or student resources can afford. All college infrastructure can be used by students for any purpose whatsoever as long as it is not damaged.From parties to robotics workshops. We have all the sports fascilities with separate, huge, grounds for football, hockey, cricket. We have a track,a swimming pool, a well equipped gym etc. We have a very efficient computer centre with a pretty decent lan and good internet connectivity. This is the stuff that the college provides us for time pass.
Now, the absolute creativity with which students kill time here is, in itself, a case study.:) There are all night CS and DOTA tournaments.There are midnight basketball games under floodlights. There is a cup with 12 hostels going head to head for the ultimate gully cricket glory.Lol. There is stuff to do for the ppl who prefer to stay in the hostels too. There are late night intra hostel lit events like quiz, whats the good word etc. There are TT Tables, monopoly and other board games, there are books, there are a zillion movies and almost all seasons of all watchable sitcoms on the lan, there is all the music on the planet and what not. All this stuff is put together and maintained by students.Eat outs are a canteen, a 'snacky', a juicy and a row of dhabas outside our college entrance which compensate for the terrible mess food. Socialization inludes midnight coffee sessions at the Nescafe and Bru stalls. There are late night boozing sessions. Sometimes there is simply nothing to do and there are 'bakar' or arbit talk and gossip sharing sessions.lol. There are at least a few ppl in every year with whom you r simply destined to become best friends with. :)
There is other non campus related action too..From almost getting stuck on a mountain trail 80% of the way without food and water, to getting high with friends after unit tests sharing the craziest stories of each other's lives. From having a girl friend to the first absolute heart break. From travelling for 20 hours sitting next to the bus driver just to get home, to making the return journey flying back by business class. So many things i know i would have never experienced if i had stayed at home, in pune.
Its been a really awesome ride for the last 22 months of my 'engineering' life. As cynical as i get about the course and the pathetic town i live in, i wouldnt want to miss these four years of my life for any comfort or fascility any city or my home could offer. I guess thats why they created our college in this hellhole and made engineering as bad as it is! :D
Now being forced to be mentally jobless for 12 weeks out of 18 is not as nice and comfortable as it sounds. So what do we do in the 12 absolutely mentally vacant weeks? What do we do with our brains after all those hours spent in labs? spent in writting observations for those labs? And writting the same observation again, even more elaborately this time, in a note book with a cover called a journal ? Also what is done with all those hours after classes end at 4 pm? So many hours to be spent in a place like trichy where recreational avenues like cafes,english movie theatres, sports clubs, libraries and any other places of socialization and\ or entertainment are totally absent.U might think we are a very bored and frustrated lot by now, engineering being a sort of a painful exile for us. But thats where i m happy to say u might be thinking wrong. i have had the craziest time of my life here. Never before had so many things been happening around me all at once. Even though my parents dont restrict me from doing anything except drugs and stuff, never before had i got absolute freedom to do whatever i wished with just the sort of ppl i wanted to do them with!
Within the campus, we have student clubs for all possible activities that the college resources and\ or student resources can afford. All college infrastructure can be used by students for any purpose whatsoever as long as it is not damaged.From parties to robotics workshops. We have all the sports fascilities with separate, huge, grounds for football, hockey, cricket. We have a track,a swimming pool, a well equipped gym etc. We have a very efficient computer centre with a pretty decent lan and good internet connectivity. This is the stuff that the college provides us for time pass.
Now, the absolute creativity with which students kill time here is, in itself, a case study.:) There are all night CS and DOTA tournaments.There are midnight basketball games under floodlights. There is a cup with 12 hostels going head to head for the ultimate gully cricket glory.Lol. There is stuff to do for the ppl who prefer to stay in the hostels too. There are late night intra hostel lit events like quiz, whats the good word etc. There are TT Tables, monopoly and other board games, there are books, there are a zillion movies and almost all seasons of all watchable sitcoms on the lan, there is all the music on the planet and what not. All this stuff is put together and maintained by students.Eat outs are a canteen, a 'snacky', a juicy and a row of dhabas outside our college entrance which compensate for the terrible mess food. Socialization inludes midnight coffee sessions at the Nescafe and Bru stalls. There are late night boozing sessions. Sometimes there is simply nothing to do and there are 'bakar' or arbit talk and gossip sharing sessions.lol. There are at least a few ppl in every year with whom you r simply destined to become best friends with. :)
There is other non campus related action too..From almost getting stuck on a mountain trail 80% of the way without food and water, to getting high with friends after unit tests sharing the craziest stories of each other's lives. From having a girl friend to the first absolute heart break. From travelling for 20 hours sitting next to the bus driver just to get home, to making the return journey flying back by business class. So many things i know i would have never experienced if i had stayed at home, in pune.
Its been a really awesome ride for the last 22 months of my 'engineering' life. As cynical as i get about the course and the pathetic town i live in, i wouldnt want to miss these four years of my life for any comfort or fascility any city or my home could offer. I guess thats why they created our college in this hellhole and made engineering as bad as it is! :D
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