April 28, 2005

After a while...

Only two exams left. I took one on signal processing yesterday. My set (paper) was the toughest one. I managed well though. I’m a bit scared about the last exam which I will be taking on the 5th of May. It’s an advanced course in my chosen field of technology – Advanced control systems. We studied control systems in the last sem. And, this is not the end of it because we have Adaptive control systems in the next sem. Good god! - Whoever designed these courses.

Laxmi told me that our internal marks were on display the other day. But before I could get a glimpse of my marks, they were taken off the board. Thank god! otherwise it would have been another scary day for me. I never understood this particular gesture of displaying everyone’s marks in front of the examination cell by our college for everyone to get to know one’s marks. If they are outstanding or par excellence in academics, then its pretty fine and it’s also something which you can, for a while, take pride in. But, what if they are scaled down the list? Who ever will enjoy such statistics or situation?

This time I didn’t want my Computer networks’ marks to be displayed in public; I couldn’t manage to score well in it. And, any guesses on what my next exam is? – Computer Networks!! So, let me make this blog rest for sometime while I go and take on the mighty networks.

April 22, 2005

హరివిల్లు...

నిండు హరివిల్లు నేడు దిగివచ్హెనా,

నన్నెంచి, అలరించి పులకించెనా;

మదిలోన ఓ వాన కురిసేనిలా,

స్వప్నమో, సత్యమో తెలిసేదెలా?

April 19, 2005

computer wiz!

That's what I am going to become if I open my computer again. My system broke down for the umpteenth time. Every time it goes down and I keep opening my processor to find the fault. Now my mouse isn't working. It says some USB device failure. I think now there's some problem with the mother board. So, I've to open it again. Just a couple of times more and I would be ready to build a new computer myself becuase I've almost got used to each and every hardware component on the chips. Let me see if I can do that in a more economical way. :D

April 14, 2005

Short journey

Back after a two day journey to Nellore. It was a long journey by road. If you go by a bus or train, it will take around 3 ½ hours to reach there. But, we hired a sumo. So it took us just 2 hours to reach Nellore, mainly because we preferred NH5 (national highway 5). We encountered three toll gates in our one-way journey. So, on the whole a total of six toll gates for the two-way journey and we ended up paying 20Rs/- at each gate.

Though we hadn’t much to do, we managed to spend our time in a better way. We visited ‘venkiah swami’s Samadhi (coffin or a sarcophagus, being precise). As far as my knowledge is concerned, he was a singer who had won the hearts of the people through the magic in his voice. It is also believed that he often used to cure the ailments of those who came to him with belief. I really wonder when I hear such things. Can someone do any magic with his/her voice? Anyways, my voice isn’t so great that I can make wonders with it. I also heard before that Balamurali Krishna, the great classical singer down South made the skies rain with his voice. I remember seeing few movies on these lines as a child, where the hero had to light the lamps (guess what… he had to do that without touching them!!) in a temple (or some foolish place!) in order to have the consent of the heroine’s father for their marriage and in the end he lights them up with a senti-song. When will the Indian cinema raise its standard?
:(

April 09, 2005

మనిషి

మనిషిలో కరువయింది మానవత్వమేనా,

మంచి, సహనం, సద్గుణం కూడా


తనచుట్టూ చేరినది మలినమొకటేనా,

ఆకలి, బాధ, భేషజాలు కూడా


తనను నడిపించేది ధనమొక్కటేనా,

గర్వం, అహంకారం, ద్వేషాలు కూడా


మనిషన్నది మంచి పంచేది లేదా,

పంచేది తనవద్ద వున్నప్పుడేగా


రాజవ్వు, పేదవ్వు ఎందుకీ భేదాలు,

కడతేరి చేరేది ఒకచోటికేగా



Wish you all a very happy new year.

Shortest time interval measured!

Scientists claim they have measured the shortest interval of time ever.

Researchers used short pulses of laser light to produce images of electrons leaving atoms and recorded what happened to within 100 attoseconds.

To imagine how long this is, if 100 attoseconds is stretched so that it lasts one second, one second would last 300 million years on the same scale.

Scientists used the technique to record the dynamics of electrons in atoms and report their findings in Nature.

The research team employed extreme ultraviolet (XUV) light pulses to excite atoms, prompting them to emit electrons, the small negatively charged particles that are a fundamental part of every atom.

"We accelerate the electrons spinning around the nucleus. Some pick up so much energy that they leave the atoms forever," Professor Ferenc Krausz, of the Technische Universitat Wien, in Austria, told BBC News Online.

Future clocks

At the same time, the scientists used a device called a Few-Cycle Laser to capture "tomographic images" of these electrons that gave information about how they behaved with time.
This allowed the scientists to distinguish events within 100 attoseconds, the shortest interval of time ever recorded.

THE ATTOSECOND-
An attosecond is one quintillionth (10 to the power of minus 18) of a second
Caesium atomic clocks are accurate to one second over many millions of years.

-source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/

Timely quotations

'What is time?'
we often hear this question. Here are different views given by seven famous people from all over the world.


"What is time? I know what it is, but when you ask me I don't."
- Augustine of Hippo

"Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so."
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel,
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.

- Riddle about time by J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

"Time is money."
- Benjamin Franklin

"Time is what prevents everything from happening at once. Space is what prevents everything from happening to me."
- attributed to John Archibald Wheeler

"I confess I do not believe in time."
- Vladimir Nabokov

"Truth is always new, therefore timeless."
- J. Krishnamurti

April 08, 2005

Exams again!

Exams are fast approaching. Now, you might ask what I’m doing here instead of studying for my exams. God only knows how I’m able to cope with my acads. I was never interested in technical fields like engineering. It was just a traditional choice (this is what I call conformism). Now that I’ve made that choice by myself, I’ll have to stand by it whatsoever. And, I think I’ve been successful at that to some extent- I didn’t flunk any course till now. Thank god! I can’t even imagine an F grade on my marks list. Though, I managed to pass a few (very few) of them with a small yet a visible margin. Courses like electronic measurements, operating systems etc. which I hated studying. But, I always got cent in mathematics. We studied engineering mathematics for three semesters.

I’m trying really hard to give my average a big push. It’s decent enough, though. But, I’m not satisfied as usual. And, I really hope my programming skills get improved. Programming and languages are a big no-no with me. I just hate it. But, as I said, a choice made once should be justified. That’s what I’m trying to do- justifying my choice, reasonably.

I heard many people saying that justifying something which you yourself don’t believe in is wrong. I don’t think so. The choice I made may not be in my favour. Yet, if not to prove myself, at least I’m trying to justify my expectations and decision. Good or bad- I made a decision. It’s my duty to stand by it and see through it successfully because if I fail, I’ll never be able to make any decision again in my life with such stability and confidence.

April 06, 2005

Spoken...

When a question has no correct answer, there is only one honest response.
The gray area between yes and no.
Silence.

- Robert Langdon, a character from the book, ‘The Da Vinci Code’.

Life

When you open your eyes- its birth
When you close them- its death
The single moment timed between them is Life!

April 04, 2005


మా తెలుగు తల్లి


మా తెలుగు తల్లికి మల్లెపూదండ

మా కన్నతల్లికి మంగళారతులు

కడుపులో బంగారు, కనుచూపులో కరుణ

చిరునవ్వులో సిరులు దొరలించు మాతల్లి

గలగలా గోదారి కదలిపోతుంటేను

బిరబిరా కృష్ణమ్మ పరుగులిడుతుంటేను

బంగారు పంటలేపండుతాయి

మురిపాల ముత్యాలు దొరలుతాయి

అమరావతి నగరి అపురూప శిల్పాలు
త్యాగయ్య గొంతులో తారాడునాదాలు
తిక్కయ్య కలములో తియ్యందనాలు
నిత్యమై నిఖిలమై నిలిచియుండేదాక

రుద్రమ్మ భుజశక్తి, మల్లమ్మ పతిభక్తి

తిమ్మరుసు ధీయుక్తి, కృష్ణరాయలకీర్తి
మా చెవుల రింగుమని మారుమ్రోగేదాక
నీ పాటలే పాడుతాం, నీ ఆటలేఆడుతాం

జై తెలుగుతల్లీ, జై తెలుగుతల్లీ

~శంకరంబాడి సుందరాచార్య


Poetry

I'm not pretty sure about my readers but ask others who witnessed my poetry skills. They never ask whether I've written any new HIndi poems or not. I don't understand the reason behind it- they could either not understand them or not interested (?) in them. You (blog readers) also might find it difficult to digest my Hindi poems (how many did you publish, by the way?). Hey! that is the reason why I'm not publishing them. I like poetry- be it reading others' poems or writing my own. I published only one of my Hindi poems (Talaash)in this blog.

Though, my mother tongue is not Hindi, I manage to write poems in Hindi. (I may not be as fluent as I am in Telugu but I can read, write and speak in Hindi) Thanks to my 3 years stay in Delhi. Comparably, my Telugu poems are better than my Hindi ones. I write small poems in Hindi without much vocabulary requirement. :D

I wanted to publish my Telugu poems directly (i.e. no transliteration) but had to face some technical problems and lack of time to solve them. Finally, I've been able to solve them. And, from now onwards I'll be posting my Telugu poems now and then (whenever I feel like). But, my best poems will always be with me. If you are someone whom I know, then you can read them personally. :-)

April 03, 2005

unrivaled images...

Found this blog while surfing. At the very first sight, I liked its look (not simplicity as I usually define it) but something which cannot be expressed through words! (at least, not by me). But, there was some kind of abstractness added to it. (What?) Forget it. Just take a look at the pictures.

My eyes fixated on these pictures uploaded in the blog. I found only two of them worth mentioning. First, the one by Neelambari- 'Lullaby Lost' and the other by Ahir Bhairav- 'Strains of Loneliness'.

http://theinspiring.rediffblogs.com/

April 02, 2005

Link

I've found an interesting article titled, 'Why is the US indulging Pakistan?' at this link-

http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/apr/01ram.htm

Some of you might find it interesting. It also includes some sensitive matters like why Washington is keen to give Pakistan weapons which can only be used against India and the sale of F16s to Pakistan etc.

Now, it's a thriller!

After nearly three weeks, I’ve started reading a book. I haven’t time these days. I think it’ll prove to be a good one. The book, ‘The Da Vinci Code’ by Dan Brown, is supposed to be the bestseller in New York and other parts of U.S. It is considered to be a pace-thriller and a pulse-racing thriller. Let me see, how far it can raise my pulse rate and my adrenaline level. From now onwards, I’ll try to give a review of the book that I’ll read (of course, only those that I like). If I like this book, I’ll write a review on it later.

Win or lose?

Sometimes we expect unexpected things from others, just to prove ourselves correct. We expect them to do something wrong which we usually anticipate. But, somewhere in our sub-conscious mind, we hope it never happens. Take the example of our being searched at Kasi for cameras and mobile phones. I had mentioned this in one of my earlier posts- U.P. journey briefed-II.

I always felt that most of the Indian police are not duty-minded and sincere courtesy the corruption that is growing day-by-day, knowing no bounds. I was pretty sure that the security personnel will fail to take notice of our camera. I expected them to fail because I didn’t want them to defy conformity and win against me. Yet, I desperately wanted myself to be proved wrong because I always had this pseudo-image of police in mind wherein, they never fail.

It was like a catch-22 situation. If I had won, they would have failed (which means my failure because I wanted them to win) and if I had lost, then they would have won (which again leads to my failure because my expectations would have gone wrong then). It was neither a win/win nor a win/lose situation, but was an absolute lose/lose situation. No matter what they did- whether they succeeded or not- I would’ve lost, anyway. However, I would’ve felt happier had it happened the other way round, i.e. getting my expectations proved wrong. But, then, not every time one can win or lose. Sometimes it happens like this too.

“We expect things to be wrong. But, in the end we realize that it is not the things that went wrong but it was we who were on the wrong side of the game.”