Saturday, April 30, 2011

My Summer Wishlist

MANGOES!!!
Beware all you delicious mangoes, cause Ankit is going to chop you, shake you up, sandwich you, and search all possible ways to gobble you into his stomach....

First and foremost PUT PEACE!!!
   This semester has been a hell of sorts. All of my weekdays in class, well, most of it, Saturdays in labs, and Sundays, Ummm ummm umm I need to refer to the dictionary, does anyone remember what a Sunday is/was??? Well, let me define Peace for myself. As soon as I reach home, my schedule is going to be a simple four step process, wake up at 11, have lunch, go back to sleep, wake up at 6pm, have dinner and sleep by 9, oh that was just two steps wasn't it?? (In case you are thinking, why do I need to wake up for lunch and dinner as well, well, that's one of the core reasons, why I would be in home, besides, my mother won't let me do that, I hope she doesn't know about my eating patterns here in insti...)

MOVIES!!
  This summer is seriously going to be freakin awesome in this regard. Sequels to some of my favourites, and some of the most anticipated movies ever are coming up this summer. Here's my list of musts:

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (May 20th)
Kung Fu Panda 2 (May 26th) (First day show for sure)
      Awesome as expected. The furious five and the dragon warrior save Kung Fu. And I love pandas.. :D 
Ready (June 3rd)
      Hilarious, action, filled with Salman's crazy stuff.
Cars 2 (June 24th)
Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (June 24th)
     Teaches you life man! One of the best movies I have ever seen. And I am seriously going to follow it. I am going to forget all my worries, fears and live my life. The thoda kaam, thoda discipline and lots of masti, happy life I used to. After all, Zindegi definitely nahin milegi dobara so what's the point carrying all those worries on your head! Just forget them and say cheers to life.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon (July 1st)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II (July 15th)
      A fitting end to the biggest saga of our generation. What more, Harry potter and Ronald Weasley have kids now.
Ice Age 4: Continental Drift (July)

Any other Friday left?? oh yes there are vacancies... help me fill them as well :D
Any more suggestions??

Go Fish
  No seriously. I want to go fishing!!, well, literally, fishing. Fishing used to be my favourite past time at my grandfathers place, back in Orissa (oh no no we are not fishermen by the way, we have a small lake, and it has fishes in them). But its been more than five long years since i have done that last!! This time around, I am determined to stay a bit longer than the usual 2 day trip in the past few years... lets see if I can get this done...

IPL:
  It's the fourth season already and I haven't watched a single live!!! This time at least I hope to watch one..

Now for some serious stuff:

Internship:
   I hope I can make my internship a learning expedition of sorts, and make it a great fun filled experience. I hope to learn the real world applications of all the stuff I have done in theory as yet, and try and innovate something by myself...!!! pretty high hopes... but you never know... This is going to occupy my first 50 days of summer.

Shaastra Circuit Design Challenge (SCDC):
  The very fact that I am the first 3rd year coordinator ever for this event (previous coords were all 4th years, since this event has begun), straight away hangs a sword over my head, to try and maintain its standards, if not better. Its one of the trademark events of Shaastra and the flagship event of Dept. of Electrical Engineering at Shaastra, with cash prize worth 40K!! (I am sorry if I am sounding like publicizing my event already...) Stay put for the problem statements...

Projects:
  The last month of summer, I ll be back here in Chennai, fulfilling my commitments to all my current projects. I hope to do a lot of progress during this interval and step closer to the final goal. True that this means I ll be all alone on my 20th birthday something that has never happened to me before..., but when at profession, personal errands come later.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Heat Index

  The other day, after 6 hours of continuous work on an insane project, I was absolutely drained. I was working in CFI, cursing for the first time that Sunday was a holiday, cause if it weren't, labs in my department would have been open, and I would have been working at 21*C, <10% humid environment instead of 37*C and somewhere around 90% humidity!! After I came back to room, I had a bath, a 500ml of Grapo fizz, and 1L of glucose, and yet was feeling bad, dehydrated, and sort of feverish. This made me wonder, was it really 37*C, cause 37*C on any other day, I could have taken it with pleasure, oh not really but still wouldn't have been this bad, afterall its my body temperature on any normal day. A little googling gave me the answers.

 And the answer is the Heat Index. As I am writing, Chennai's thermometric temperature is 86*F or 30*C but the apparent temperature is 99*F or 37.222*C. So why is it so??!! Here's the answer:

  Our body loses excess heat in three ways — radiation, convection and evaporation. If the blood circulating just beneath the skin is at a higher temperature than the surrounding air, heat is lost through the first two ways. When the outside temperature is higher than the body temperature, evaporation is the body's way of losing heat. We start sweating and the evaporation from the skin keeps us cool. The problem is that the capacity of air to hold water vapour is not finite; it can only hold a particular amount at a particular temperature. The term used to indicate how much of that capacity has been used up is relative humidity — the ratio of vapour contained to the maximum the air can hold, expressed as a percentage. So, the higher the relative humidity, the lower will be the capacity of air to hold any more water vapour. That means evaporation slows down and hence its cooling effect too is slowed down, making us feel hotter.




Fig: A screen shot from Weatther underground. Click on pic to expand.

Courtesy: Google, Times of India & Weather Underground

Saturday, April 2, 2011

The force that unifies India

Well, what else can it be, It's Cricket!! Whenever I see the whole India celebrating, on TV, after a huge triumph on field, I get reminded of two particular lines from 'Madhushala';

मंदिर मस्स्जिद बैर कराती 
एक करती मधुशाला 

     How true!! And it very well applies to cricket as well. It sees no religion, no caste, no status, no regionalism... It's all the same for everyone, the emotions, the sudden rush of patriotism, the sense of pride, and of course the warm blood getting warmer. 
     It's really great watching Delhi going to one of those mini Diwali modes, Kolkata getting drowned in the syrup of the sweet Rasogullas, Chennai getting frenzy in one of those Rajnikant styles, and Mumbai well, celebrating with all the Tare Zameen Par. You see images of Bhangra pouring in from Chandigarh, all the folk singers, with their tweaked versions of the ever romantic Rajasthani folk songs, to fit to the occasion, from Jaipur, the actual heros of the nation, enjoying themselves in the most weird fashion ever from Srinagar, or may be even from the most dreaded sectors of Drass, Kargil and Batallic. If the images from the rest of the country are mind boggling, the images from just outside the venue of the game are even more so. You see people dancing in a form called, well I don't know, may be a mixture of Kathak, kuchipudi, and Odissi!! ; with the tricolor proudly clutched in their hands.
    Now that India is in the finals, and playing Sri Lanka today, I just hope that these celebrations continue even after 11 O'Clock tonight. I just hope, I get to see all these, ummm!! get to hear all these through all your pings on to my g-talk. I just hope.........
Go India!!! 1.21 Billion (1,21,01,93,422 to be precise) people will be there cheering for you tonight....