Coming soon..

Okay, contrary to popular perception that I perished in 'The Pool', I am very much alive and have been unable to blog due to hectic study schedules, general laziness, and a one and a half week viral fever (presumably contracted from the water I greedily gulped down while I was drowning in 'The Pool'). The third reason (Grr..) wrecked up my last and best prepared-for paper, which was today morning. Wracked with weakness and stuff during the examination.. took lot more time to solve even simple problems. Anyhow, I'm not going to mope about stupid stuff like that on the blog.

The post is entitled "Coming soon..", so let me justify it. This is intended as an annoucement of the forthcoming series of posts called "Interesting Projects". Sorry, can't think of a better name. You may wonder why I'm announcing this thing a second time, since I've already done that in my previous post. There are two reaons, a technical reason, and the second, a tad bit smarter. Technical but stupid reason, I just mentioned in the previous post that I had 'planned' to start something of this sort, not actually concretely decided anything. :-) The other reason is because I wish to tell you a bit about what my first "Interesting Projects" post is going to be and how it works. Don't say "awww". This is not a thriller movie. The interesting project I'm working on right now is making my own simple Wireless LAN connection between computers, from scratch. I'm not making it using any existing standards, nor am I using any device or ready-made stuff. I'm figuring out the hardware circuits, software and the logic. Loads of fun..

I'm not targetting efficiency or stuff like that, and since my first baby-step is intended to be a basic chat-program between two systems, I am going to use my favorite code: Morse Code. :-) I've already developed the software to encode and decode. Concept is simple:

"The person types a message in plain English, then the encoder first converts it into a modified Morse code I've devised, and then it sends through the Parallel Port (Printer port) a signal to the transmitting circuit I'm building. If an on-signal is sent to two pins in the port, then the circuit generates a high-frequency wave, and if its a one pin signal, then it generate a low frequency wave, each of the same time duration.

(Side Note: This is, in my opinion, better for computers since this way it can send all alphabets at nearly the same speed, and computers can differenciate between frequencies very well. Common way is to send a short pulse for a 'dit' and a long one for a 'dah'. This takes longer due to obvious reasons)

Now these waves are transmitted wirelessly, caught by the reciever circuit which works exactly the reverse way, and the computer will show the decoded English message."

:-) Very elementary, but I intend to chuck Morse code and start becoming a bit more ambitious by transmitting in 8-bit ASCII later. The hardware is still a little buggy. I'll post the final circuit diagrams later. Again, I assure you nothing's going to be too technical. I'll mark the paragraphs that are going to technical so that you can skip them. :-)

Swim-lessons Saga: Part I

I planned to write a post about how I almost drowned in the deep end yesterday, but then thought it something too trivial and stupid to post, but then decided that since this was sorta like a personal blog, and since I didn't care if people read my swimming sagas and giggle, here it is.


Scene: Swimming Pool
Time: 4:45 PM
Location: 6 feet end of the pool

I bloody well drowned yesterday.. not just the first time fear of the deep end, but really. We were starting that part of the pool yesterday.. diving in from the sidewalks one by one, and the trainer was supposed to be in the pool, watching us and pulling us out after we exhausted our air supply. I know, an experienced swimmer can go across the pool in one gulp of air, but I'm hardly a swimmer yet. Anyhow, when my turn came, the trainer suddenly got distracted and went off somewhere when I dived, and unfortunately in that very dive from the sidewalks, I sort of made a bad jump and lost my so-called balance in water and starting going 'into' the 6 feet deep water head first and rotating along the body axis, instead of floating flat. And the stupid Goggles get yanked off my head each time I dive in because of the sheer force of the water hitting the face. So I somehow managed to push myself up against the floor and barely managed to float to the top somehow. And then that guy comes over and 'pulls' me out again. I drank a bit of that dirty (chemical) water, as I was out of breath by the time I came out, I was at the bottom for almost 5-6 seconds, swinging my hands and legs to and fro like a madman. ;-) Hand and leg movements take a lot of your breath away.

As for my progress in swimming, today was my 5th day, because I was down with some fever and cold for 2 days.. possibly due to the pool. As of now I can sort of swim and get to the other end of the shallows in one breath.. I've finally begun to float across the pool quite decently, though my swimming style presently is more like a crazy ballet of a mad-man. If I did it outside the pool, I'd probably get lynched and taken to a mental asylum.

I'm really bad at talking about my experiences etc, so sorry if I've disappointed anyone reading this blog with some hopes of a nice post. I enjoy writing technical posts and talking about technical stuff or music. :-) I'm planning to start a series of 'Interesting Projects' that I'm currently doing once my DCE paper gets over on the 30th... so that might be something that is worth reading, rather than stupid banters of a lousy beginner in swimming. Don't worry, its not going to be too technical.

Floating across the pool humming Rammstein

Yeah, today was my first swimming lesson, and by the end of the one hour session, I was lazily floating across the pool like a corpse, humming Feuer Frei! by Rammstein and re-playing VH1-MTV's Midnight Headbanger's Ball in my head. That's the only neat thing I've seen on VH1 apart from their occasional Classic Rock programmes. Most of the time they show only stupid Rap & Pop music, can't bear it. As of now, Headbanger's Ball show is the best source for people who can't download videos from the net due to *grumble, grumble* stupid data transfer limits and general disinclination to pay like 900 p.m just to be able to download some song videos. Let it become Free, then I'll switch over plans. :-) The show comes on VH1 at an excellent unearthly (sort of) hour of 12:00 AM every Friday-Saturday joints, that is, it comes from 12:00 - 1:00 AM on early Saturday mornings.

Presently I'm sort of cursing myself at rejecting the swimming goggles and opening my eyes all the time underwater, which was highly chlorinated. Net result, I had such an eye-irritation that I had to sleep for 3 hours instead of the planned study in order to be able to keep my eyes open now. I enjoyed swimming of course, one gets hooked up to semi-weightlessness after a while. I would have kept my eyes closed underwater had small kids decided not to continuously collide with me mid-way as if simulating the Kinetic Theory of Gases. I wonder if there exist equations for root mean square speeds inside a swimming pool.

States of Matter: A glaring misconception

I was just discussing matter and fundamental particles with a friend when I realised that something has begun to go wrong and the ignorance among people shows it. They know that what I speak of is true, they've always known it. Yet their minds have decided that matter actually exists in three different 'species', believe it or not.

Classification is the basic and fundamental property of abstraction. It makes life easier, and is invaluable. But, some people begin to believe that the artificial *wall-of-division* between each group is quite concrete. In a similar fashion, many people, especially children have lost touch with the fact that Solids, Liquids and Gases are nothing but atoms with different ranges of force of attraction. There is a very elegant graph, a potential energy vs. distance one, which explains the region of solids, liquids and gases very well, which I shall not go into here.

The point is, everything is made up of a fundamental entity. As of today, we are made to understand that atom is the abstraction that is the fundamental entity. It comprises of sub-atomic particles, but essentially, the atom as a whole is what is a repeating unit. Logically quite strange, since atoms vary in sizes, which immediately discards that repeating-unit property. Hence the logical reasoning is that there exists an entity which is elementary. I am not in a position to give you the Truth. In the Age of Reason (circa Aristotle), we were made to believe that whatever cannot be divided any more, say by crushing repeatedly, is the fundamental Truth. In the Age of Science (circa Dalton), we were explained atoms scientifically. And it goes on till today. Now, the terms Solids, Liquids and Gases were created for the sake of abstraction of physical & chemical behaviour since mostly all gases showed nearly similar properties, with just a few variations in quantification of properties. But the essence, that everything is just atoms is true. Hence people who say that Solids 'convert' to liquids and so on, blindly thinking it to be one independent species converting to another are not justified in thinking so.

Marooned with a computer in Noida?

Yep, that was the experience giving the BITSAT-2006.. driving for 1 hr 15 mins, and then sitting in a desolate, barren locality for another 1 1/2 hrs in vaporizing temperatures with two stupid fat books to revise and then staring at a computer screen for 3 hours as it wags a fat finger at you, while shooting questions.

First thing I found as I walked into the centre was that we were required to bring a proof of identity along. It was apparently mentioned in some instruction-sheet which was apparently something that was supposed to be read by all of us. I was mumbling something about me not seeing anything written about instruction sheets anywhere and therefore clearly not being mentioned anywhere, when he pointed at a line in my admit card which said: "You should print the detailed instructions and read it carefully before appearing in the online test".. I sort of tried to slink away in embarrasment from him into the centre when he generously gave me a form which said: "I have brought my admit card, and did not bring my identification papers due to >Insert some stupid reason here<. Please allow me to enter." I grinned to myself as I walked in, wondering if he liked my face and long hair and became large hearted, when I noticed that nearly everyone I saw carried similar sheets. Moral of the story: Everyone's dumb. Don't worry. And the guys at BITS know that. Smart guys.

Anyway, their software was very well designed, and the center was, for a change, well maintained. For once, I worked on a computer system for 3 hours without it (*trumpets ring*) crashing or hanging. That too on a Windows machine. Test was good, I think I'll make it inside the cut-off lists. Only complaint is that it doesn't allow you to uncheck an answer once clicked. C'mon, everyone knows that HTML has provided for a RESET option almost since it was created. It has even hard-wired into its core functions. God knows why they never thought of putting one in this test. I think I got 3 questions wrong because of that.. attempted them and then remembered that I could not remove them (I could change it though, not remove, but that forces you to attempt a question that you're not sure of entirely). And therefore negative marks. I can see no reason why they can't put it; it's my paper and I can do whatever I want with it right?

Not end of story if you wanted to escape. Then I stomped out angry with myself at poor performance etc etc, and then found that I had been abandoned in God-knows-where in Noida by my family who were supposed to pick me up and go off to dinner at someone's house nearby in Noida. For nearly 1/2 an hour I patrolled the gates and yet no sight of anyone. I think even the guard there had gone home by then.. maybe he thought that since I was doing such a good job patrolling that it would be a shame to ask me to leave. (Note: My exam was from 4:30 pm - 7:30 pm). Finally these guys turned up, I had really spicy food which is still hurting my oesophagus, and writing this post wondering what the heck's wrong with my speakers.

(Image by Steph Lehman)

Yeah yeah, two posts in a day!

Yeah yeah, I'm really bored and have begun to develop a base dislike for my books now. Who wouldn't, if you were forced to stare at the same books for 13-14 hours a day for a period of now almost 6 months.

The previous post is not actually a fresh, new post. Its quite an old post from my personal blog hosted on my computer.. which serves like an idea-book plus notes collections. The tag about this theme being dark and broody made me express my feelings about being trapped and forced to give exams and still keep the motivation up, as these exams decide where I study and what I study for the next few years, and possibly my career too. But it gets hard after a while, trying to motivate yourself to just sit on the damn chair and study for 3 hours at a stretch without walking out in boredom.. motivating myself with just the thoughts of more study. Ironical isn't it?

Trouble is the steam runs out, the drive and passion to excel and do better than others runs out, and once that happens, God save me. Presently, I think my steam's running out.. and I've got three more weeks to go. So what if my dear relatives and friends say those stupid words that even they know are untrue: "Don't worry, take it easy and everything will be fine, you'll get admission anywhere". Take it easy, that's very easy to do, but will be the end of everything. Relax? If you mean be calm and study in a planned fashion, that's what I've been doing for the past 6 months, and I fail to see how one can get worked up at that fact. The problem is boredom, not tension. I can do well in whichever field I study. Boredom leads me to wander around the house and waste my time doing things like playing the guitar and not studying. That makes me feel guilty and leads to the feeling of being a soft jelly. Occasionally I get really charged up somehow and I put in study like from 9 am in the morning, through the day, and till 2 am the next day. I just feel my adrenaline rushing when I do that. But then again I collapse into the jelly-like state and get bored again. This is what leads to this black and dark state of mine, hence the dark and broody theme of this blog. Quite a lot of explanation for a simple color isn't it? ;-)

(Image by Aron Bothman)

Me and my BIG Mouth

Okay I have a problem keeping my mouth shut. Succeed most of the time, but often fail causing some rather stupid pain-in-the-necks.

This post is inspired by yet another blabbering-mouth thing, this time in frustration at what I like to call soft-spam. Hard-spam is like that unsolicited XXX kind of messages or "Buy This!" type things from unknown people. Soft-spam on the other hand is from your own friends or from people who know you. Mostly its just stupid 'cutesy' forwards, and the infamous "Forward this to 20 other people within 45 minutes to get luck or else.." type messages. So I felt pretty pleased with myself when I implemented a simple filter in my mail account that would move every message with the subject starting with "Fwd:", the web standard for forwards which gets attached automatically to the subject field when you click forward in any mail provider's service, to a separate label/folder and skip the inbox, so that I would never need to read them or have stupid messages enlisted in my inbox. And soon enough, my separate folder was brimming with "Fwd: Take this 'Are you Hot?!' test" etc etc things. Only 5 legitimate forwards were present in it, like a forward from my comp teacher regarding some programming competition in Chennai and stuff. Small price to pay since there was a ratio of 1:4 of legitimate to nonsense stuff. And I keep checking my forwards folder to ensure that nothing of value is left unread. And obviously I never bother to read these stupid mails anymore. I don't even have to take the effort of deleting them now.

This said, I need to come back to the basic point.. my Big Mouth. I was feeling so pleased with myself, that I told one of my friends about my filter since he too complained about being soft-spammed a lot. Dumb person.. now he's joined the soft-forwarders gang too, and ensures that he removes the "Fwd:" thing from the subject (it can be edited always.. it just gets inserted automatically. Can be removed), hence effectively beating my system. He does that purposely, since nobody likes their messages unread, however dumb they may be. Even if its not their own message. And I can't filter with keywords since the chances of a keyword being legitimately present in a message is high too.