Bhim Nirula - Next post teaser

Next post discusses about this guy:

 

BTW this is the 100th post of this blog. Hurray!
Watch out for it
Goutham

New year bash!

Hey!

Lately I found this advertisement in a reputed newspaper a week prior the start of new year:

Its showing a telugu movie star called 'DSP'. That means Digital Signal Processing to me and to someone not aware of this guy, it means he is probably going to take classes on this subject at
Gachibowli stadium in Hyderabad. That is funny!

I know I am posting this too late to wish you a very happy new year. I was engaged with exams and laziness for a week(they don't mix well). Now that I have three more to write and there is a lot more to experience this semester like
*Tight schedule
*Minor project
*GATE preparation
*Cold nights
*Pillow assisted sleep(Yes, I bought one)
*No Android phone & WhatsApp


I never made a new year resolution before. This year I made three
*Ordered behaviour
*Delayed gratification
*Avoid comfort zone

I feel these three will make this year surely a great one. First let me share how I started the year.

It was my cousin's wedding on 1st January(nice date to have wedding anniversary) and we all cousins cut a cake at strike of midnight. We murdered(stabbed it many times) the cake and few faces even got cream-smeared.

Foreground: Abhilash; Middle(from left): Vasista, Bharadwaj, Goutham, Vaishnavi, Anusha, Divya(seated); Behind: Abhishek

Its been two years since I deleted my Facebook account and Macbook Abhisek today made me feel good in LinkedIn(started using six months ago). He became the first person to endorse my skills and recommend me by saying this:

"One of the most calmest and the patient person I've ever worked with. I don't think I've met anyone more able than him when it comes to electronics and soldering. He is always my electronics guy. "

I felt great reading these words in a email today evening. Thank you Abhisek! You can have a look at my LinkedIn profile here.

Last week I've decided to do away with my Android phone as its tending to go crazy at times. It switches off without my notice and even enters command mode out of blue. This may even go to the extent of self-destruction someday in my pocket. So I have planned a fitting 'goodbye' for it this week. Kritin, Biswadip* and myself will dissect it for technical knowledge purpose. Hah :-D I will not forget to cover the autopsy here.

This is the notice released by my college regarding the upcoming even semester I was talking about:

You can conceive how hard it is for someone used to having lot of free time to blog his heart(sarcastic mention..... I know)

Now it is time for some random pictures:

 

Alan V Oppenheim: Confused

Captain Price(Retd.) speaking at a conference

* = I never mentioned Biswadip before. I will focus a post on him sometime later.

That's all
Goutham

Filler vacation

Hello!

Let me describe how the vacation went, like I do every time. The title gives you some idea... it says "Filler vacation". So it was not so exciting, 'twas just a filler between two semesters.

I have four days to catch my train and a week for the exams to catch me. Speaking frankly, I had two months of full free time. Academically lot of time was lost and it was up to me to use it wisely. Did I or did I not? Hmm... Let me come back to this one later.

Lately I was emphasizing on interpersonal relations. I went and met people this time for I was feeling isolated from the world all the semester. I talked like never before(I suppose). I had habit of keeping mum in front of others most of the time. I always feared the future without living in present. I often regretted for my past. Timescale being plus/minus 4 years(Phew! That is a lot to fear/regret). But this comic from Zen pencils: The Dalai Lama answers a question changed me. Please read the comic to understand what I mean.

"Living in present"... I still have no idea how it feels to live like that because when all lights go off and I lie on bed at the end of day, I cannot mentally stay still. Instead I dance to the music of never fading fears inside my heart. When will this stop? When will I stop regretting for what I didn't do? Concentrating for weeks couldn't be possible as I had to take break for a while. I had an "agenda" for this vacation as well which included MATLAB programming, Antenna theory, Signals and Systems, LaTex and transmission lines. Apart from some of these I learned how television, radar, binaural recording and sound surround system work(thanks to the newly bought 5.1 channel home theater at home). Although I focus for short periods on different things, I find it difficult to pursue just one for days.

Things done this vacation:
Newspaper- Did not miss the national politics this time(was a morning addiction)
Milk- Glass full Horlicks every morning
Youtube- Stand up comedies and fun videos
Email- not to miss
WhatsApp- Every morning and evening
Teasing my younger brother!
Reading- Art of electronics, Signals and Systems and Wikipedia
Over usage of WiFi- crossed data limit many times
School visit- Met my teachers and old friends
That's it!

Now I am bracing myself for exams and the next half of third year at college(Winter is coming.... so is even semester). Now you got a picture of how I did this vacation.

Goutham

My brother's golden words - Scientists are Gods

Hi!

I have one younger brother, 14 yrs old. His name is Bharadwaj. I call him Baby. The following words were written by him when he took my laptop and started typing in Word. I feel this has got much deeper meaning(if you ignore his erratic grammar)...

"Hello, my name is Bharadwaj. My regular activities are going to school, going to Sharma(extra tuition), coming back to home eating supper and going to bed but this time I want to do something that no one does. Believing in god and I believe what some priest says this is my ideology. I used to belief that god helps us to do become what we wish to become but according to the 21st century scientists there is no god but that is all our belief. As per my ideology god is there but I cannot show them the proof so what I meant to say is that scientists are nothing but GOD. The similarities between god and scientists is that of same kind i.e help. Now I can show the proof with my simple hands with no papers in my pocket when any one asks that show me the god I can hover my hands towards that person as people are nothing but scientists"

Thanks for reading!

Rain rain go away.... come again never(atleast for a few months)

Hey fellow citizens!

I am writing this sitting comfortably on sofa in my home. This post got here because I am safe and connected at all times. Because I got away in time to escape the hell downpour and swift floods of Chennai and surrounding districts. The previous post was written as we were asked to vacate the hostels asap and holidays declared for atleast a month. Me and many of my friends got tickets booked in time, enough in time to be well out of the cyclone's reach. We are now feeling lucky and safe.

But what about others? There are people in my college as I write, stranded in hostels and waiting to go home with neither electricity nor healthy food. They are helping each other for basics like food, water and medicine. Some of them have showed their struggle through whatsapp by sharing pictures and distress messages. News reports poured in this evening saying that northern Tamil Nadu will get heavy rain for next 3 days. This is terrible! All those whom I have blamed, sorry. Its not your fault.

This is a natural disaster! All India Radio news reported all the three armed forces along with NDRF(National disaster response force) are working tirelessly to move residents in city to safety. Army is distributing food near my college. This has never happened ever before. In a city like Chennai, where monsoon just reminded heavy traffic and overflowing drainage. Now we are talking about overflowing rivers and lakes. This was never expected.

I have no idea how this is going to end with few more days of heavy rain warning. I pray for the people of the submerged areas. I pray for their health and comfort. Lets be hopeful... lets stay strong...
#Chennaifloods
#Chennairains

Goutham

Good news and bad news

Hey folks!

Let me share. There is good as well as bad news.

Good news is my winter holidays start from now, highly unexpected.
Bad news is all end semester exams are postponed to post-vacation i.e. exams to be written after returning from home.

All this happened because the city near my college, Chennai was drowned since two weeks and situation is still very bad. The next semester will be the worse because time will get wasted up in conducting exams and lessons are to be rushed up in short duration. Even semesters are shorter than odd ones.

So whom to blame?

It is certainly not my college. Lets not blame it this time...

Two culprits:

1. Chennai metropolitan development board (CMDB): key people didn't take care much about desilting the city's drainage pipes and lied that the underground network is 'fit' to take heavy downpours to gut inspite of being warned from meterology department.

2. Climate change: This time weekend rainfall broke all previous ten years' record(to 243mm) flooding all streets of Chennai and other cities in Tamil Nadu. This unusual pattern can be attributed to climate change(my opinion).

All of us at hostel have got mixed feelings. Exams being postponed made us a bit relieved and also angry at same time. We waited for three weeks, preparing ourselves mentally to face all exams but only to know that we have to leave for home without writing even one.

As I write Kritin is pressing his fungus filled clothes while Tanishq is watching some hollywood movie. We three will clear in next 48 hours. Home awaits us, our next asylum.

Read me then
Goutham

Quotes that I stuck around

Hi!

Everyone likes staying motivated rather than doing something motivating. Either way, motivation comes first. These are quotes I have been sticking around since two months to help myself stay motivated.

Top motivator nowadays is Call of Duty. Yes! Call of Duty! The game says it all.

>The only easy day was yesterday
>Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of light!
>Hey Goutham! You have all the time on this planet to do anything you wish. Just do it!
>Start the ground work
>The life you knew before is gone. Today, we fight to bring it back - Captain Price
>All it takes to change the course of  of history is the will of a single man - Vladimir Makarov

A word about Captain Price:
He has become my new inspiration.

Posters!!!

These posters are made by me for my college projects. Let me archive them here.

Goutham

The month's roundup

Big things happened this time!
.
.
Really!

I switched over to Nokia 1100(that old.... phone, just phone) from Samsung Star. Android in small phones sucks! There are no developers taking care of smaller models and as time passes, the OS crashes these phones every now and then and there will be a time when people realize the need for a basic thing called "phone".

1100 is great! Since the time I started using it, avoided momentary data connection (also balance cuts), no battery crashes(it needs to be charged only once in four days) and it slips easy into my pocket unlike those big 'galaxies' that break when you sit with them in your back pocket.

The best part is it is robust. Survives fall from great heights.

Nokia 1100, The 'phone'

This android shows itself charging in spite no
external connection. Courtesy: Kritin

Kritin and myself took part in a biology quiz 'Mind Vs Wild' this technical fest at SRM University. Though we have non-biology past, we could make it to finals. Now I explain what happened: Eight teams; each of two, made it to final round. Through all the quiz, we had score multiplier cards(2x, 3x & 4x) along with negative marking answering wrong. With these cards you can shoot your score up or bring it down. Since its eight questions and 3 cards for each team, the cards had to be used somewhere. We all had great time till last question. Astonishingly, four teams scored 56 and other four teams scored 10. It was a tie. Another question(this time any card choice) to go and we decided to use 2x. We didn't want to take risk but we answered it correct. The last two teams took 4x and their answers were also right(Noooooooooooo!). Since it was another tie, one of them won and carried away 6000 INR. The next team carried 3000 INR. We carried nothing(Uh! we must have taken 4x and made it forward). We both learnt a lesson: take risks.

Another highlight during the week was 'The Eye'. It is a prop human eye(ignore the size) Kritin and myself made for Arvind(the committee head) of the ongoing fest, Aaruuushh(Yeah it sounds kinda awkward but lets face it - AAARUUSHHHHHHH.........., the non-technical management fest of SRM University [Hehe, just kidding...]). Here is footage of Kritin and me with The Eye:

The next day we had 'Kanan Gill' show in our campus. Had good laugh over things we often listen to!

Then came project time. Time to test our skills, creativity and passion towards electronics(seriously) under two subjects: microprocessors and communication systems. You can take a look at communication systems project report here. It is a simulation project which simulates....well, take a look as I said.

In the microprocessor one, we use a microcontroller(to those MBA guys: both don't differ much in terms of productivity). Kritin made a robot. The video above explains it all. "The robot is intended to make noise, wake man, make him chase and switch it off. Thus ensuring he is ready for the day's work with nice warm-up" said Kritin. The irony: on day of submission, he had to wake up early to prepare the robot. The next day he woke up at 8 only to realize that he switched off his phone when it rang at 6. He needn't bunk a class if he'd prepared that thing a day earlier:(

I made this:

I call it Electronic Tape. As you see the board itself is not the project. It has microcontroller at top, three counters driving 7 segment displays below with red reset button to set the measured distance in meters back to zero. How do we measure? You can see a glass blob with blue and red wires coming outta lower right of the board. Its called photodiode. There is a glowing LED positioned opposite to photodiode across a slotted wheel which is rotated on ground with a long holding support. The controller counts number of times photodiode is blocked and for every meter certain number corresponds, it sends signal to decimal counters to increment the displayed value by one.

  E-tape as described above 

Shit happens. Even to me. Few call me Bhagwan(God) for what I do. I deny. Because God has no form i.e. no physical body, hence no hands and legs. So he is jobless. I am busy(writing this post). So I am not God:)

Hence shit happens.

I went into low the day before project demo and ate junk outside that night. Came back to room and checked the battery. It was discharged! This charged me to change the battery and got me work till 5:30am to make the board shown above. What a night!


I heard my calling earlier this month. It is just one word. It is GATE, Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering. It is my GATEway to my future. From now I have 15 months to prepare well. 15 months to prove that even a loser can have an awesome career. 15 months to prove myself. Let me prove it.

I was having financial problems(you call it miserliness) lately. Couldn't even afford to buy a new bucket(handle broken) and pillow(don't know why).

I made changes to the site-
>Wider content
>No G+ profile
>No 'freedom' picture
All these do not matter much. I was just trying to reduce the blog's loading time.

About Kritin: You must have noticed a name which I mentioned thrice(third at this sentence' beginning). Kritin is an electronics hobbyist, my friend and roommate. "I want to do research, teach and win Noble prize" he says. He is ready to sell the above robot. Ask for a quote by commenting below if you are finding it difficult to wake up early.

Now its time for some random pics:

When intellectual individuals are given time to do just one thing - waste!

Eleven displayed on seven segment display. Error!

Best battery in the world.


















The Boogeyman
courtesy: Kritin

Foreground: Green LED(on)
Background: Blue LED(off)

RBG mix on my palm


















Thanks for reading!
Goutham

Some pics I wanted to share since the start

Hello!

These pictures are taken with my phone camera. They are of my random interests...

Hanging coin chain with magnet in vicinity. Courtesy: My friend Kritin

Happy Birthday tune played by Arduino PWM trick on my B'day
courtesy: Kritin

Longitudinal cutaway of a bad battery
Courtesy: Shivam Prakash

My highest score in Google chrome dinosaur game:912

So many female headers strips!
Courtesy: SRM VAIMAANIX

Bus tickets of a solo adventure to Mylapore, Chennai on a fateful midnight.

Red and Red match!


Goutham

My new earphones

Hi People!

I am posting things very late nowadays. I call this procrastination.

Now let me stop bitching about myself and come to the point. A month ago I bought a new pair of earphones. This one was much expensive compared to what I used earlier, but it is worth the cost.

What led me to buy new ones?
Ans: No quality sound and no more hacks left.

I ordered my first pair on Flipkart in the middle of 2nd semester when I forget my Samsung ones at home. Yes, Samsung was good then. A friend of me suggested Philips SHE1360 and it costed me 150 rupees. It had really good bass but less efficiency as my roommates could hear what I can(half the sound escaped from behind). As end of fourth semester was near, the left can stopped working. since using just the right one was uncomfortable, I brought another failed earphones from home whose right can was damaged, then I cut off the defective ones and connected male jacks to their respective females.

These two females are marked L and R. Now the corresponding Left and Right signals come from a male header, with common ground which goes into phone/computer. Essentially I made two different pairs of earphones to work as one(after clipping off dumb sides). The awkward part; this earphone's left one is in-ear and right is on-ear. These is again a problem since in-ears have lesser sound loss, hence needed to manually balance sound levels in system's settings.

This hybrid style served till almost end of exam week. Now there are no partly scrape earphones left as both sides failed at once. Now I have a real excuse to buy new pair. All my friends talk about Skull Candy, Beats and Bose(The starting price is Rs.5000). I was then looking in range of Rs.500-1000(with parents' consent). At home during summer, I used my mother's Transcend. It has excellent sound clarity.

After returning back to hostel, I often turned music loud(laptop speakers are a horrible way, they give you wrong impression of whats being played). Till then I didn't spent great deal on earphones. One day while I was studying, my roommate lent Sennheiser CX180, asking me to try it.

BHAM! Those sounded with incredible clarity, ear-thumping bass and priced reasonably. I already had good image of the brand. So I proceeded to order one the next night. I spent Rs.948 and no regrets till now.

 Goutham

My DRDL project

Hello!

I am posting this after a long time.

My college requires me to do summer training or project for few weeks at any workplace outside to gain some practical experience. I planned to do it outside Hyderabad and live on my own, but my mother insisted that I stay at home and join some place within limits of my reach.

With some contacts through my mom's department and endless pursuing, I finally 'earned' an opportunity to work at Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL) at Kanchanbagh, Hyderabad. Well, very few students get to do their training/internship at reputed organisations like the above. I felt lucky and at the same time, bit scared as how would my first day go.

I joined on 5th June. The campus is really huge. It's main road stretches itself 6 km inside till back gate(never measured it though) and its highly secured at entry points. No electronic devices are allowed inside. The scientist I was assigned to sits in a lab near the back gate. I went there almost every alternate day by taking bus and get to the lab from main gate by asking two wheeler lifts. Believe me, now I can read your mind and make you allow me to sit behind you.

The lab I worked under develops support systems for Bramhos, the hypersonic cruise missile made jointly by India and Russia. At the time I worked, it housed the launcher truck and communications truck. Those were quite big.

My mentor was Mr. Shammas Mohyaddin. He described himself as an electrical guy the first time I met him and was then studying control of seeker's gimbal motors. He asked me if was interested in PID control. I happily said 'Yes!'(That was what I was aiming for with coreless motors of my tiny quadcopter project).The sad thing was I had to be well versed in control system concepts first of all and I opted out computer architecture as my 4th semester elective in spite of having control systems as a choice. Though I realized the latter's importance a bit later, I still regret.

My project was to study and simulate speed and position control of a armature controlled DC motor through Prorportional-Integral-Derivative(PID) control using MATLAB's Simulink. Mentor suggested me 'Control systems engineering by Norman Nise'. I should say, this is a great book. It got me interested in control systems in very less time(Just read the first chapter). I had three weeks time to finish it and my mentor being busy, spent an hour and half with me every time I visit to teach concepts and clarify doubts. Thank You Sir!

Though the staff does not allow you to use the hardware and facilities there at this stage, you can learn lot about things they work on. There is also a library there to help you out.

With this, I almost finished main portions of the book and could learn Simulink on my own to prepare submit my report on time(I could document only the speed control one). I learnt two things from this experience:

1. I have grown up and now it's my turn to learn and do things which I like. There is no time to be wasted.

2. 'I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul', quoted from 'Invictus' is very true.

Thanks for reading!
Goutham