Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Hey!

I completed another two games last weekend.

Call of Duty 4: Modern warfare
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series is must for any game freak. Playing them, I got aware of many technologies and jargon military uses. Though its old, I found it interesting and had great time playing. The best part is you get hit from blocks away and can't spot who did that soon. I don't know how far the gameplay is close to real life combat but the game tests your reflexes well.

Also it had the best music tracks I ever found for a game till now!

The story line and its twists are amazing esp. that of MW2.

Goutham

The Analemma

Hello!

In past, I forgot to mention something exciting I did. It was a time taking experiment suggested by my astronomy mentor back in 10th grade. I am really proud of this super attempt I did back then.

I showed exceptional interest in astronomy at my high school. I was well known for it everywhere. Once I had video conference with my club members at Hyderabad. The other end was speaking from Delhi, from an astronomy club called SPACE. After my presentation was over, they suggested me to try something out that would make be feel great exactly an year after.

The actual thing to do was simple. Fix a sturdy pole on flat surface for undisturbed for a year. Mark the tip the shadow it casts once a week at a fixed time. Here I did it every Sunday at 1 pm and 3 pm. It sounded easy, but maintaining the excitement constant is not.

I made a checklist for ticking all things like 'done', 'bad weather', 'postponed to next day'. You can do it the next day if you miss. All we need is the continuous pattern at end of the year. Enamel colors painted with soft brush are best as they start peeling only after two years. Below is my success captured.

1 pm Analemma in red and 3 pm in green along with the checklist. The right top is north pointing.

Top view: you can see the dates and months with 3 pm. The same dates correspond with 1 pm also. The top is north pointing.

The 3 pm Analemma. This is huge. The top is north pointing.

The trick is to follow position of the Sun in sky at a fixed time every day and see how it changes. The changes are due to virtue of rotation and revolution of earth and this is why we get summer solstice and winter solstice every year(Earth's rotational axis remains fixed while revolution carries on, thus north and south hemispheres face the Sun turn by turn). For instance, notice June third week at the bottom. this is about when we have summer solstice. Similarly for December third week at top for winter solstice.

Talking about equinoxes, since I stayed in Hyderabad then (latitude: 17.36N) and equinoxes come twice a year i.e. March 20 and September 23, you can notice that these two dates are northward from center by the same distance (by center I mean intersection of '8'). Cool! Isn't it?

Goutham

Something is wrong

Hello!

Again I am feeling the same loneliness I was 2 months ago. This is
real torture since you feel like doing something but won't be even
able to move away from your couch. Your body remains motionless for
hours, you sleep for 12 hours (did that last night).

That's why I am writing these disturbing thoughts down. I had four
holidays. The first two days went excellent with lots of activity. the
next day went by in room itself with useless thoughts. Today is fourth
day and I am trying to cope with it. Efficiency is key to life.

I have all resources to do anything, time to spend without any hurry.
If I like what I do then why am I hesitating to do that?

I agree that lethargy affects even astronauts as a symptom of
prolonged absence of gravity. That is why they keep exercising and run
treadmill with bungee attached to waist. Let us not give in to
lethargy. Its the ultimate enemy of human worth on this planet.

#FightLethargy

Goutham

12 days after

Enough vacation updates

Now I am 15 days into 4th semester and have many things to do. Now I
am feeling more serious about life. There is no time to be wasted.
Every minute is precious.

Along with this I am collaborating with a aero-enthusiast friend of
mine, Biswadip to make a dream come true: a homemade RC plane fully
made from scratch. I will soon upload the fabrication photos here.

Project Quadcopter is underway. for that I am learning embedded C bit
by bit. It will take sometime for me to write my own firmware needed
for stabilization through PID method.

Goutham

Vacation update #3

Hello!

The new year has kicked in a new level of excitement in me. This is me
writing on last day of the one-month vacation and now I am back in my
college hostel. Its good to be back.

This time I have no resolutions to speak about. Everything and
anything will be implemented and done quickly. Let me update you of
what happened since the last post.

My parents approved budget for making a quadcopter, so I bought a
Hobbyking 6 channel 2.4GHz transmitter and receiver along with USB to
UART converter. It has to be programmed through computer, so I tested
it with DigitalRadio software, It worked. Next I need to learn the PID
algorithm from someone in my college experienced with this stuff.

Still learning AVR C and arduino programming along with several
protocols to download all data from sensors to microcontroller and
even display them on serial interface on PC.

I am proud to be a part of my team competing for the annual Cansat
competition to be held in Texas this year.

Always learning
Goutham

Vacation update #2

Hello!

The cut in right toe is healing with flesh grown and it takes five to six months for the nail to grow back. Three weeks went by and I am walking free. Bought another Atmega328 and USBasp programmer. Had to troubleshoot several issues. 

In this gap since last post did lot of reading about PCB layout and fabrication, sensors, interfacing, avrdude. Now learning EAGLE and need to run few programs in the chip and buy some stuff.

Goutham

Vacation update #1

Hello!

Good things happened till this point of time. I learned few important aspects of AVR MCUs like fuses, code efficiency and makefiles. I had to struggle with making makefile to compile and get the hex file out so that it can be uploaded to the chip with AVRDUDE. I also made a permanent 'seat' for my atmega328. Inserting and removing the chip from breadboard endangers its pins.

Had a minor surgery on right toe today at my hometown. Doctor commanded bedrest for 10 days. That is really bad but still I can read something. Now I am on quest to learn AVR C. That is all I can do for the next couple of weeks. I also need to allocate budgets for some projects yet to be done like kvasar, Piano tiles machine, waking machine, USBasp and quadcopter.

Much yet to do!

Goutham

Plans for the vacation

Another chance is coming and this time,

I am going to be the busiest being on the planet

At least for a month.

Seriously........

That's my one month vacation which comes once in a semester and I've got lots and lots of plans. Before discussing plans, let me update you with what happened to me recently.

After the post 'Hitman Blood Money', interesting things happened. Two months ago I bought a microcontroller board called Arduino. It's a PCB board with all support hardware needed to do physical computing, more specifically building embedded systems. These can be classified as computers for real life application as they need very little memory and few megahertz of clock cycles at very affordable cost to develop. The software to program Arduino can be downloaded free of cost. The best thing about Arduino is its wide spread fan community and hardware support from many third party vendors. 

Surprisingly after a month I stumbled upon a book titled 'Make: AVR programming' in books section of Arduino site. Before this I spent few weeks reading about how to program and how this board works. I also know that the chip they say is its heart is Atmega328. This chip does all core functions whatever the board does. This means you can simply use the chip and without any need of the board. Best thing about dealing just with single chip is bare minimum cost of the chip and its support hardware. 

Then I decided to get into this transition from third party-aided development to bare chip development and started learning embedded C(variant of C language structured for microcontroller purposes). Two weeks ago I had to head out of campus to buy an AVR chip and breadboard(I am still angry on my teacher for not returning back the semester project which I did on my most cherished breadboard). Also I bought inertial measurement unit(IMU) for my upcoming quadcopter project(I may face funding problem here...... I am not rich).

The above mentioned book is really great and it opened my eyes. I started right away and the night after returning back, I 'flashed' my first C program into the chip's memory. Below is the result. LED next to the chip was blinking and I jumped. Next step is following the book and learning to get to know everything that can be squeezed out of this microcontroller. Doing this can help me create whatever I can imagine. There are no limits for Imagination.

Here I use Arduino to act as communication  interface between my AVR microcontroller and computer 

Now we come to plans. Yeah plans....

>Learn AVR programming.
>Make an ISP device to replace Arduino in the picture above.
>Make and test induced lucid dreaming machine what I heard being called Kvasar.
>Learn to make custom PCB designs with EAGLE and try my hand in PCB fabrication.
>I have problem waking up at right time. A waking machine can help me do that.
>Build head mounted magnifying glasses that magnify using motor control. Fine adjustment.
>Make a prototype of something that solves piano tiles android app, substituting human fingers.
>Quadcopter(should go smooth if there is no funding problem).

These should keep me busy for a month I guess.
I will keep updating about the progress here.

Goutham

Internet of Things

        Before we start discussing the above topic I want you to realize that we as civilization have advanced very rapidly in the last decade, mainly in fields of telecommunication, healthcare, composite materials, automobiles, efficiency and cost of electronics, etc. There is plethora of technologies surrounding us that we take for granted. All these made and continue to make our lives easier in making and managing huge amounts of data. Without our knowledge, data like calendars, email and memos in our smartphone gets synchronized with data on internet which prevents us from updating once again on keyboard. This collective system of knowledge is now referred to as “cloud”. Cloud computing is ubiquitous now. It is the backbone of every large organization. That’s why more attention is being given to a ‘secure’ cloud since privacy and security come first.

The cloud apparently is a part of internet. Internet is now a widespread thing. Back at starting of 2000’s, having a LAN connection at home used to be a privilege. Now, a decade later we get data allowance of 25MB on mobile phones for a day at five rupees. It has become a necessity for everyone to stay connected.

Now, we just have devices like mobiles, tablets, servers and PCs interconnected across vast networks. These devices have input-output capabilities in a very limited way. Your laptop can derive input from human interfaces like mouse, keyboard and joystick, networks and protocols like Bluetooth, WiFi, Ethernet, etc. and data storages like SD card, Compact disk and hard drives but cannot seek input from real time events like reading temperature, recognizing sign language, sensing human presence. In a nutshell, a microprocessor cannot directly interact with the beautiful analog world. It needs special devices primarily Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) to sample signals from real world and this is where signal processing, microcontrollers (uC) and physical computing come in. A uC is designed to be robust and for low cost applications where you need just low power 32KB, 16MHz rather than an excess 2GB, 2GHz.

Connecting the world

We have been hearing things like smart homes, smart grid and smart traffic. Now we are about to know what makes these to be prefixed ‘smart’. The above mentioned low cost and minimal power devices can change the way we live if they are interconnected and programmed to behave in a way to communicate and cooperate with other devices. Many Facebook users skip breakfast but don’t forget to check number of likes the last uploaded selfie got. What if a box called ‘like counter’ is build which takes feed from phone’s FB app in background via WiFi and shows it in a mechanical odometer display? You now need not log in again as you observe the digits turning up by themselves. A RFID tag can be placed inside pet dog’s collar. With this thought there are many possibilities like tracking movements with receivers placed at fixed spots, opening an automated door just when the dog near its tray so the food doesn’t get spoiled and even tweeting whenever the dog barks with piezo microphone placed below its jaw.

The picture below gives rough picture of what ‘Internet of Things (IoT)’ means.

There is a well known contemporary relevant saying. “Don’t just keep staring at the screen. Shut it and look up. The world is much more real and beautiful”. The purpose of today’s technology is not to engage us more in gadgets but to reduce time in managing data and save time to build real relations and focus on our jobs. To achieve this aim more effectively, IoT is the next technology revolution which connects objects right from books in library to vital monitoring wearable computers of health conscious morning walkers, from pickle jar lids to toilet seats. Kevin Ashton, editor, RFID journal quoted “The Internet of Things has the potential to change the world, just as the Internet did. Maybe even more so”.

In large scale and more serious applications like integrating Bluetooth enabled pacemakers in heart patients, log their activity and upload them to a huge database where surveys and studies can be made. In worst case, the nearest ambulance can be alerted if a person suffers from a cardiac arrest. In other case, temperature and moisture sensors inside soil of a greenhouse powered by this technology can be fully automated where sprinklers and thermostats can target specific plants to be watered and maintained based on their location.

As of now IoT is only confined to specific environments such as homes and electricity grids in Europe and America. With microcontrollers and wireless networking devices, we as individuals can develop prototypes and devise special protocols for Machine to Machine (M2M) communication and be at forefront of this second wave of internet(of objects rather than computers) which may have greater impact than what (first) internet did.  

Hitman Blood Money

Hello!

I recently copied this game from my roommate. I was always a Hitman
fan since I played Hitman 2:silent assassin in 4th grade and this game
not like those run and shoot games like Call of duty, Counterstrike
and Medal of Honor. This is a stealth game which means logic comes
first before action. Great game it is and I completed it in one
week(very easy mode). Next I wish to play the next game of the series,
Hitman: Absolution. But that will take a long time from now I guess.

RIP Mandolin Shrinivas

|| Mandolin U Shrinivas (1969 - 2014) ||

If you ask me whose recent death has left me bereaved....

I would answer "Mandolin Srinivas".

U Shrinivas was unique in many ways. He was a gifted child. He started playing Mandolin when he was just six years old. He gave his first concert at age of nine. He was awarded Padma Shri at a young age of 29. He is regarded as one of the geniuses in Indian classical music arena.

Before mandolin stepped into Carnatic music, only violin was considered to be comparable with the vocal sound. This is because of the fret less freedom it gives the player to make transition from one note to another, also called Gamaka. But when Mandolin came into picture, Shrinivas jaw-dropped skeptics with awe and wonder. Everyone asked "How can a child play like that?".

There is a great saying, "Fear not the weapon but the hand which yields it". Same applies here. initially this European instrument was considered fit just to play harmonics and film music. The stringent requirements of Carnatic music made even violin take close to 200 years to get adopted into it. But Shrinivas made it for mandolin under 50 years. 

I came across this person in my ninth grade when my mother bought a CD collection set featuring famous Indian artistes. One of them had well known kritis played on mandolin. My interest in him started and also I came to know that he is the one who brought and modified mandolin, a western instrument by making it five-stringed, electrified it by adding pickup and a custom amplifier.

Links: (http://www.carnatica.net/sangeet/mandolin.htm) (http://www.carnatica.net/sangeet/mandolin2.htm )

I listen to his mind blowing solos for Remember Shakti band. Most of the time I feel a form of electricity like ecstasy flowing through my body. Here I close my eyes and spiral towards heaven thinking "This is music of Gods, This is music of Gods".

Here are few links I suggest:

Bombay Makossa, probably the last album recorded featuring Mandolin Shrinivas:

http://mio.to/album/Chingari,+Etienne+Mbappe,+Ranjit+Barot,+Mandolin+Srinivas/Bombay+Makossa+%282014%29 

I get chills watching this:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB95clOd6v0

Just lie down and listen;

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5__bzQ8oDuE

Shrinivas leads the band with fast paced mandolin:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1lWRfiSVls

Upcoming stuff

Yes

I wanted to mention about things that went on for last two months.

I listen Remember Shakti, a band which plays Indian classical Jazz(watch this full concert at the link http://youtu.be/UfjxtcNYKz4). First time when one of my friends mentioned about this band, I watched the above video and that was when I decided to learn a string instrument and it was when I really got interested in music and its depth of knowledge. Its how the music of this band has inspired me. Its simply awesome. As I commented on the video, it is the music of Gods.

Upon asking, father rejected my proposal of learning classical music on violin, though my mother supported me(she is a very good Carnatic vocalist). I was told to concentrate on my studies and prepare for upcoming competitive exams like GATE, GRE, etc.

Since I had a bit knowledge of how a Guitar works(from first semester), I decided to craft my own Mandolin(I am a big fan of Mandolin Shrinivas, Carnatic classical mandolin exponent. He is the pioneer in  introducing Carnatic music on mandolin, a western instrument). Crafting the body is easier than neck part on which fretboard is positioned. It simply cannot be made without crafting skills and good expertise. It needs perfect curvature and correct positioning of frets(metal wires of correct alloy embedded on rosewood slice). I even tried sourcing it from custom string makers but in vain(actually no one sells just a fretboard, that sounds ridiculous). But it was worth trying.

My other interest that I recently developed was towards micro-controllers and single board computers. One of them is Arduino (www.arduino.cc), which I always wanted to own. It is a micro-controller board which gives you the power creating computers that sense and interact with external physical environment, unlike your personal computer which just interacts with you. I read all the documentation and things related to these IC's and software that is used to program the IC. This IC is heart of the intelligent system which accepts ,stores, processes and gives output as it is said.

Now I have one. Received it yesterday by courier. Overwhelmed by number of things possible with the green thing shown below. Its Arduino Uno R3:-)

My new Arduino Uno R3 with laptop computer
Compare the two processors. The board's and that of the computer's.

I will keep exploring and never stay still. Staying still is a nightmare.

Goutham