Updates - or the lack thereof

I know I haven't updated the blog for quite some time now. New posts will come.... eventually... hopefully sometime soon.  There's much to write and rant about. My trip to Shanghai and Hong Kong, my final semester of undergraduate engineering education, the frenetic pace of shopping, packing and finally getting shipped off to Georgia Tech, Atlanta leaving my folks, friends and Cactus behind.... and the awesomeness that is Tech itself!

Just getting settled down and getting past the first week or two of class, so yeah blog updates will come someday.

Regards,

A Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech and a Helluva Engineer ;)

College Chronicles : Sector Seven ;)

Now that I'm into the final semester of my Bachelors in Engineering, here's the customary College Chronicles post mentioning highlights of my time at college during the sem gone by.

When the 7th semester began I was juggling the work I had left at IIT Madras and all that was happening at college. The seventh semester being tight as it was didn't quite help matters. Had some friends to help out though:

(OK, so he didn't help out but he joined us on the benches we occupied near the co-op store)

Professional Ethics was one subject which we all took easy. The professor who took it had to leave for Italy on some training program for 10 months. So what he did was hold classes on Saturdays too (which I conveniently missed to continue my internship at IIT). Can't say he had too many fans though, especially with the way he corrected papers. However, this did have a positive effect on the latter part of the sem. He pretty much disappeared after mid-August leaving us with a whole day free.

The other faculty members couldn't leave well alone though, so we inevitably had classes on most days. In the midst of this, a classmate and I were working on a project sanctioned by the IEEE itself (yeah, with funding from them). That took up a lot of my time with welding, metal cutting, frequent trips to electrical and mechanical part shops and some electrical stuff to be done. I guess I was wrong to expect a "free" start to the 4th year. Once my extended internship at IIT was completed, there was the GRE to prepare for with just 2 weeks left on the clock. The kind of English the ETS tests us on is filled with words you'd rarely ever use even if you were a literature major or a lawyer. When that was done with, it was back to concentrating completely on college. Most of us were so engrossed in what was being taught that we didn't notice this dog take a walk through out class.

Now, when I say "concentrating completely" what I mean is enjoying every day to the fullest and preparing for exams on the very night before the test. Some would only study on the morning of the test. While class was on, you'd find most people looking more at their watches than at the professor teaching. When a particular teacher once asked why everyone wanted the class to finish so soon. Reply from our representative Praveen: "Ma'm, Pasikkidhu (hungry)". LOL. Yes, Thalaivar Praveen is a very hungry young man as evinced below.

The next bit of comedy came as a result of a particular report we had to submit each week. Now, this was for one of the lab classes. While some of us did do it sincerely (yes, that includes me), there would always be a few groups rushing to put together a report at the last minute. Code "borrowed" from one report, theory from another, calculations from yet another. A composite report so to speak. :) Why, some reports would only differentiate themselves from others in the kind of font they used.

This year was also the beginning of a new phenomenon during Dr. PK's classes. Some diagrams from Petrochemical Instrumentation are, strictly speaking ;) , just insane to say the least. And not all of us can depend on our quick rough sketches which are quite often far from accurate. So I took the initiative and asked him if he'd let me photograph the board after he'd drawn it. Contrary to popular belief, he was more than willing to oblige. Ever since, it is his wont to put forth a sly "Gaurav, don't want a photo?" every few diagrams :P

One of the staircases was declared off-limits 'officially' this semester.

Beginning at a 019019, frequent trips to college helped me breach the 20,000km mark on the car. Besides the work on the new Metro lines in the city was creating traffic snarls all along the route to college and driving me nuts. And when it rained hard, oh my, the roads would be flooded. At such times, especially when an exam was close by, we'd resign ourselves to eagerly keeping watch for this announcement courtesy of Mr. Ramanan.

(It reads "Chennai schools and colleges are on leave today thanks to heavy rain")

On the home front, Mum thought it'd be a good idea to change out the old mats and put something more..umm... colorful... there to say the least. I knew there was something fishy going on.

This hectic timetable had me tired and bored. For reasons unknown, my scratch support chief (like tech support, except you scratch him when you have a problem and you feel better) seemed much more tired than me throughout the semester. Yeah, Mr. Cactus:

It's common to hear the expression "Padichu kizhichitten" when referring to the intensity of one's preparation. However "Padichu Chair e odachen" is a new one. Broke it and fell flat on the ground during one of my pre-exam night study sessions. Might have had something to do with the fact that I was falling asleep sitting....

Birthdays were celebrated with pomp and splendor as always in class. And yeah, with cake and plenty of ice-cream too. Observe how one of our daredevil class representatives spits in the face of danger and licks cream off a knife. Mr. Vigneshwaran attempts to recreate the effect albeit in his dream world with his finger.

This time around, we also hit a few big malls and went to the movies to celebrate the majority of us securing employment offers.

Our intra-college festivities took place as always in the form of Sivaranjini 2010 as well as the intra-college technical fest LiveBeat held by our department (hats off to my classmates who worked pretty hard to make this a success). Some posters (concerned with other events happening around  campus) invited us to enhance our electromagnetic properties too, not sure that was quite what they were getting at :P

There was one workshop by National Instruments conducted for our benefit. Only issues were that the class was packed and the microphone didn't work. Didn't help that the guy from NI couldn't really raise his voice either and that we were seated behind our juniors. End result - I slept through some of it despite trying my best (with my fingers even lol) to hold my eyes open. I'd imagine most others were far worse. Props to Topper Harini for capturing this snap.

I mentioned employment a few lines back. This semester we had companies coming to campus to recruit us. What this offers us, apart from a chance to write placement tests, sit for interviews and group discussions, is an opportunity to enjoy a day out with friends without fear of losing attendance. The only placement session I attended ... well the company HR Manager told me that I was "overqualified" for the job with the stuff I had in my resume. LOL. The only thing worthwhile that day was the trip to KFC with my classmates:

(Yes, Santhosh was busy looking at the food tray in Vigneshwaran's hands)

I'd put in a word in my last College Chronicles post, if I'm not mistaken, about a paper of mine that had been selected among the ones to be published in the conference proceedings of an IEEE conference in Shanghai. Well, it was dang in the middle of our end semester exams and that led to a drastic change in the timetable giving us pretty much 9 days worth of holidays inbetween the 3rd and 4th final exam dates. While the guys went back to their native places and the girls revised the remaining subjects' portions 10 times over (no offense meant hehe) during that respite the university afforded our department, I headed to Hong Kong first and then Shanghai where I presented the paper. It was received quite well and I got to see a lot of sights. The university didn't pick up the tab for even a portion of the (considerably large) conference registration fees (or any other expense for that matter) though because I'm not a PhD scholar or professor, and Vigneshwaran, my co-author, couldn't accompany me for lack of time to prepare for the conference and his management exams. So I turned this into a vacation with my parents. Had a wonderful time, really, and I'll be detailing all the sights seen and things we did in Hong Kong and Shanghai (with pictures mind you) in later posts on the blog. Stick around for that, or better yet subscribe for e-mail updates or the RSS feed so you won't miss out on anything. The links are on the left hand side column. You can also get notified of articles if you're in India using Google labs free SMS notifications.

Special thanks to my friend Kaushik and his driver for picking me up on their way to college whenever I hadn't slept enough to drive myself to an end semester exam. Without him, a lot of my last-minute reading wouldn't get done because I'd have to concentrate on driving during that last one hour. Speaking of which, this was my final odometer reading:

21111

And so ends this College Chronicles post. Another 5-6 months and the final part of this tale will be up. The 8th semester has started off just fine, here's hoping it goes well too - especially our final year project. 

Do note that the remaining days of the Egypt trip will be up shortly on the blog, followed of course by a travelogue of the Shanghai-Hong Kong vacation + conference. Don't miss it. :) 

PS: Cheers to you if you got the Transformers reference in the title!

I'm Back

I've been gone quite some time from my blog, I know. This has been one hectic semester at college, not to mention the onerous task of filling in and completing applications to universities for my higher education. Had to pop over to Hong Kong for a bit and to Shanghai for an IEEE conference where I presented a paper of mine. And my most annoying exams played their part in keeping me occupied too.

So now I'm back ... kinda. I still have a few days pending from my Egypt travelogue to complete. Then I'll have the customary College Chronicles post up, to be followed by a detailed description of my days in Hong Kong and Shanghai - what I saw, where I went etc.

All this will start trickling onto the blog one by one after the 11th (that's 4 days away). A little bit busy till then though. I'm happy now that I'm averaging above 1500 unique page visits each month consistently over the last few months too. :)

Apparently, Rorschach has been running around the world - leaking his diary on the net, embarrassing some powerful people and such. Props if you get the reference. ;)

Here's hoping you'll be there for the upcoming posts. Happy holidays!

A temporary hiatus

I'll not be updating the blog much over the next 2 months. My hands are a bit too full with projects, papers and some important examinations in the interim. A paper of mine has been accepted at an international conference hosted by the IEEE too. Yeah, I'm ecstatic since it's a full-on conference and I'm just an undergrad. But it means I'll have to get things ready quick for the paper's publication to be confirmed and book tickets and initiate visa procedures to get things ready for my oral presentation abroad. I'll be back with the remaining 5 posts on the trip to Egypt soon enough.

I've been following the fake Steve Jobs on twitter of late what with the iPhone 4 launch having just passed. Recently he put up "First the iPhone was left in a bar and now the bars have left the iPhone. I hate irony."  Love the way he spins Apple's own words against them in many an instance. With the screen yellowing, faulty antenna design, signal drops, camera white balance being off, 3G problems.... looks like the workers at Foxconn got their sweet revenge on Apple.

Besides, the fact that Jobs is being totally unapologetic about the flaws in the iPhone 4, and blaming it on the customers (a.k.a the maniacs who stood in lines two whole days for a phone.... FOR. A. PHONE) is proof enough of his arrogance. The flawed device won't stop the iPeople from saying "Hey there's nothing wrong with it, just hold it the way Steve tells you to, don't hold it like you would a phone!". And yeah, it'll sell millions and millions while Apple and AT&T rake in billions of dollars despite all the crap they pull on their brainwashed, nay braindead fans.

Thank god for Android.

Ponder this while I take leave of you for 2 months, though you never know when I'll pop an article out of the blue.

College Chronicles - Semester Six

What can I say about Semester Six? Well, it began like any other one, where we thought "Oh goody this sem's gonna be more free than the one that just went." Right before the university decided it'd be better if we wasted another day at college each week rather than waste our Saturdays at home. All we could do was fume. Above you'll find the obligatory "This was my odometer reading on Day 1" picture.

A signboard pointed us in the direction of our department (yes it's always been there but I'd never photographed it).

Barely a few days had passed since reopening before the incessant 'Placement preparations' began. The effect it had on us was profound with people scrambling left right and center to get their resumes (it's pronounced Ray-soo-may oh Plebeians) ready, what with our seniors butchering the same with comments all over.

Mock interviews saw some of us, including yours truly, spend an eternity being asked questions that would determine who won the prize money of a million dollars :P whereas others were pushed off quick by the ones who had the power of mock! (you won't get this one unless you visit a very specific website).  Mr. Vigneswaran and me took off on a short sojourn to Coimbatore where we won a paper presentation contest at CIT (Yes, we did present our own paper, not something stolen off the net). Unfortunately, most of our professors were none too keen on giving us attendance even if we missed classes for such an event.

Back at college, our Faculty adviser and class representatives had been hard at work arranging an Industrial visit to Nokia's Special Economic Zone at Sriperumbudur. The sprawling SEZ had Nokia's own factory for Volume phones (ones that sold en masse) alongside several others like Foxconn (yeah, the suicide company), Jabil and Laird that supply Nokia's OEM components. During the pre-floor visit presentation, one of our company of 60 had the bright idea to spout out loud "No one wants" in response to "Who here wants to work for Nokia?". The ex-Navy man HR Manager wasn't taking any crap and he promptly threatened to stop the visit right then and there lest the "coward [sic] had the guts to own up". After some cajoling from our FA, the trip proceeded with all of us attired like we were going into a biological hot-zone.

On the way back another genius threw a bottle out the window of the bus. Said bottle hit a car's windscreen square center and the driver found the Vice Chancellor's number and reported the class. This later resulted in a Industrial visit ban for the remainder of the semester. Not like we really had the time anyway.

The image on the left spells out MITAFEST, that's our college festival. Apparently it looks the same when read from top or bottom. MITAFEST festivities were in full swing. Didn't quite bother helping out with writing the web page stuff this time around because the previous MITAFEST they conveniently forgot yours truly when it came to certificates.

The show got on the road. Literally.

This here would be our college bus. The one whose driver was condemned to drive us around for our industrial visits. I do NOT envy him his job. :D












My friends got me a cake and loads of other stuff and celebrated my birthday in a grand way. My thanks to them. The photo below shows the cake - after it had been savagely ripped into (no, not by me).

While the rest of the world is in pursuit of cleaner, safer, bio-degradable containers, our Rubber and Plastics Department seems confused!

Meanwhile, the "I shall study and never to the fruit thereof" crowd had their first taste of the joy that movies can bring:

The next photo is Chief Guest Pest Viggy during the prize-giving ceremony for... ohwaitaminute.. that's Anupama's birthday. :)

My odometer reading as the end semester exams approached.

Soon enough all the placement classes had been replaced by the oh-so-familiar feeling of "The exams are upon us, our doom is coming". Last minute preparation really gets the adrenaline flowing. And Mr. Cactus gave me company helping to make the late night study a less solitary affair.














 I, however, ended up stretched across the couch with my book on my head in a pose similar to this guy here:

Towards the conclusion of the exams, I received a notice saying I'd been chosen under Dr. David Koilpillai, Professor, EE Department, IIT Madras for IIT's Summer Fellowship Program. Something that I'd been eagerly awaiting. As is evident from the rest of my blog, the Zombie (that's how I looked after 2 weeks of late nights thanks to the tests) took off on a trip to Egypt. Another part of the holidays I'd awaited with ardor.

Check out the navigation links on the left side of the page or throw me a comment if you want a look at photos from that journey.

Found this on the door of the Professor's room when I went over a bit too early. I expected him to come glare at me, but Dr. David is seriously awesome! You'd never think he was the professor and you the student the way he's so friendly with you despite his repertoire of knowledge and vast experience in the area communication.

Discovered this piece of heaven above in Egypt, and brought back quite a few on the way home.

The Fellowship at IIT Madras is indeed an experience that can vary widely according to the professor you're chosen to intern under. For me, it's been a wonderful time, actually doing meaningful research and contributing in a small way under someone as erudite yet down-to earth as Dr. David.

Below you'll find photos of some of the places I worked in - IIT's Central Electronic Centre, the DSP Lab in the EE Building, and the Intel Wireless Lab to name a few - and some bits and pieces of circuits I worked on.

So yeah, I didn't have much in the way of a vacation. Though this is one place where I've thoroughly enjoyed working the whole day. And having a Cafe Coffee Day within the campus made it all the more worthwhile :) .


A week or so before college reopens for the 6th sem, I find a notification from the IEEE saying that a paper I had submitted for an international conference has been accepted. Didn't quite sleep the whole day after seeing the mail, I was that agog! Only in my dreams had I imagined that any paper of mine would be published on IEEE Xplore and in an international IEEE and IET conference's proceedings. Indeed, there's someone up there in the wide blue yonder looking out for me.

Of course, modifying the paper to make it IEEE Xplore Compatible and running it through the IEEE's PDF-Express.com still remains, not to mention the insanely high registration fee (since this is an event for PhDs, researchers and post grad students, not quite for undergrads). I thank my lucky stars even as I write this little post. There is a bigger hurdle though, the conference dates are smack in the middle of my end semester exam in November. If my university is unaccommodating, it'll be a damn shame if I give a "No Show" in Shanghai, China come November.

So it is with a great deal of apprehension that I end my blog entry, as the class sets forth on a new adventure - the seventh semester.

Thankful for Tech

 We keep saying "Oh I wouldn't be able to carry on without computers", but few of us would be able to elucidate why exactly we need technology so much. So I came up with 6 reasons I'm thankful for computers and associated tech.

1. Information - Now with the entire world connected, any information I want is just a fingertip away. All with detailed write-ups, pictures and graphs to boot. Being a student in this age is far easier than 20 years ago. News from an umpteen number of sources is available at the click of a button.
With everyone putting up guides on how to do pretty much everything there's little chance of being unable to accomplish a task - whether it be repairing an RRoD'ed 360 by oneself, submitting an assignment on pressure transducers, making a DIY touchscreen or cooking up some chocolate mousse. Learning is everyone's right.

2. Gaming - Where would I be without games, and the PC was what started it all for me. Endless hours have been spent letting off steam (pun intended ;) ) on some of my favorite games. All the while they've become far more interactive with computing horsepower increasing exponentially and technologies like 3D vision enhancing the level of involvement in the game.

3. Staying connected - I can stay in touch with my family halfway across the globe, share pictures and videos. No more expensive phone calls to another country either, when voice-chat is just a tab away. With all my friends on twitter, orkut and facebook, it's easier to find people you wanted to catch up with long ago but never were quite able to find. On top of this apps like Dropbox help me keep up to date with work, especially collaborate with my project mates. Portability and mobility, thanks to our smartphones and other networked devices is also a welcome change from yesteryear.

4. Entertainment - I remember the hours I spent browsing through music store shelves as a kid trying to find 2 good discs and I couldn't really mix and match all the tracks I wanted. Now it's so easy to listen to the track or see the video on YouTube and then go onto one of the numerous online stores to buy each track or video or movie individually. Besides, with video quality ever increasing the sky's the limit when it comes to satisfying those of us who love bigger displays on our PCs.

5. Paying bills and shopping - There's no substitute to paying bills in the comfort of my home. Movie tickets, train tickets, flight tickets - you name it, they're all online with discounts! I also love shopping on the Internet, helps to grab all those awesome deals that pop up around Christmas and Thanksgiving and around Cyber Monday, even if I'm half a world away. 

6. Simulation and Design - Yeah this is a bit more in the line of work, but anyway with computers, we can test every situation we wish to, thrash out every scenario we want without having to build a complete model and THEN find out that the design doesn't work. These days it helps that the processing power of a supercomputer of a few decades ago is encompassed within most high end processors. The same goes for drug testing too, the effect of drugs doesn't need to be directly tested on animals or people, not to mention the fact that computers have been a great tool in sequencing cures for several diseases.

Exams are still being a pain in the behind for now, so I'll be back with some posts, along with College Chronicles Part 6, when they're done and dusted.