During my schooling most of the time we did not have watches. It was difficult to tell when the periods would end. I was tall enough to be entitled to back bench I was luckier to get a window seat, overlooking Nandu’s compound (He was a petty part time farmer who grew vegetable just outside our school boundary. Window had grill and we used to have sunlight coming in till the lunch time. Hence I used the Jantar Mantar style to track time. Probably it was the best thing to find when the boring classes would finally come to end. It used to be pretty handy if there were crux situation and knew that I will be in receiving end of teacher’s wrath. So the periods were neatly marked with the pencil, ready for the minor alignment for summers and winters can be incorporated. A real trivial thing to substitute the watch but did mean a lot to me those days.
After 10th grade I got the opportunity to study in a residential school near Chennai. This required a long travel in a normal class. It used to painful especially when you were near the destination. I used to be glued to the window all the time. Ticket collectors used to be annoyed with us as all the time we used to ask him how far we are from the destination and how much time it will take to reach there. So there was a big necessity to find the way out without speaking a word to anyone. In this process I found a way that by mere watching and with help of a pen and a watch, I could tell how far is the destination, expected time of arrival and the most important the speed of the train. No rocket science, just the power of observation.
If you have electrified tracks you will see that there is a numbering mechanism where in on the top is a larger no for example say 252, and then on the bottom there a number system which goes like this 1/16 . This 1/16 keeps on changing per pole and it becomes with the second pole 2/16 and once you cross 16/16 the top line number will change to 251. Hence the conclusion is 16 poles are equal to one kilometre. The top line number reduces because it indicates the distance to a major station or junction where the train will get terminated.
Hence all you have to do to calculate the speed of the train is to time the kilometre travelled. You keep jotting it at regular interval and then the simple mathematics to roughly predict when you will arrive to the respective station. Trivial isn’t it?
In my final year of graduation I finally gave in to my ambition of being an entrepreneur. I always wanted the attire to be also of one and hence came my challenge with the neck tie. To this date I am a regular with the neck tie and have a good collection of the same. But not many know the science involved in wearing a simple thing like tie, A truly a trivial matter.
When I started wearing a tie it used to never perfect. All the time one or the other end used be larger than the other. If the inner thing was large it could be tucked inside the shirt but it also resulted in the other end too short and would look awkward to wear. Hence a formula was derived to sort the matter out. All you need is stand in front of a mirror and adjust the tie with the desired length from your neck to the belt. Once done from that point you need to measure from the thumb to the end of index finger fully stretched. This is the point you have to start tying the knot and you will arrive with perfection to the desired length. Thou minor adjustment might be required from tie to tie and that you can gain that from experience or you can ask the expert and inventor of this science. The calculation is simple the length from ones starting point of the thumb to the index finger is what it takes for the knot to come in and hence it is always perfect. There might be other way around but to this date I carry on with my trivial innovation.
Walking is passion for me, even after I met with a nasty accident where I almost lost my right let knee down. That was the time when I did not even hear about pedometer and I wanted to calculate the distance I walked. Calorie burned was not the there in my mind but calculating distance was surely some interest to me.
Luckily Internet was there to offer me a quick solution. I downloaded a converter and tried to see what a step would count for. Roughly a step we take while walking is about three feet long and 3 feet = 1 yard. Now all I had to do is to find how many yards are equal to one kilometre, and it is 1093.613. That means if I take about 1100 steps it is a kilometre of walk and those interested in calorie count can proceed forward or if you want to save hassles just buy an inexpensive pedometer. Till this date whenever I take a new route for my daily walking I count it thoroughly to be sure of the distance I covered on that route.
This is as trivial as it can get, but you cannot carry the pedometer every time with you. I had one of this equipment but lost it as it is too small and it can easily snap away from the belt. This calculation came handy to me once when few friends were debating over the length of walk in our colony football field. To end the debate all I required is to count the steps and arrive at almost perfect numbers.
Finally a project which I think is still viable. During my graduation days with help of my friend Mohit, I did meet a HAM Radio enthusiast. He was a retired army man in probably in end of the eight decade of his existence. He painfully explained us what it is all about, with his over sized radio tuning in his Morse code device in a tiny room he had earmarked for his hobby in his apartment.
Those days Internet has not found its way to my ears, must be in quite nascent stage with the US army. He explained us that he could talk to anyone in world fee of cost. Once the interesting part was over he went into a caution mode where he started mentioning details that the misuse of this device was impossible. He did mention that government gives licenses and kept a keen watch on what was transferred. Matter almost ended until I met another friend of mine, to whom I did explain about my findings probably to sound more intelligent. This guy was even more keen to assert his intelligence and told me that the data transfer is possible thru this, and one of his friend in US is also into it and is already been able to do 300bps (Baud per second) data transfer using Ham radio.
Hence my project started, as others all in my mind. I thought 300bps is quite less we already had 1200bps modems in market by that time, but was enough to do text based transfers. Hence I started dreaming about my own version of today’s Blackberry. The advantage was I could send message to any part of the world. Integrate the solution with the computer etc. The plus was that like internet it was almost free and had even wider reach to every nook and corner of the world. To this date this advantage still remains with this technology, you really need not worry about the connection any where even in the deepest of jungle with any inhabitants.
Later with the advent of Internet I thought of further integrating it with internet with a gateway solution anywhere in the world. There were problems and I had solutions too for them. Like since this service was free and worked in broadcast mode what could be done if we had huge traffic once launched in commercial real life world. The solution was that Ham could be used as technology demonstrator and for commercial thing a new frequency or a satellite transponder could be bought. Probably if miniaturisation of this device is possible it can be part of any handheld device. I still somehow get excited thinking if this technology is feasible there can be many advantages and add-ons example global Bluetooth kind of technology. Well I need to end here as this part too is getting quite big.
There were many other but I did try to choose best amongst them. Well what else I just wait for your feedbacks and most importantly I do want you to share some of your own experiences, please do.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Trivial Matters ( Part - I )
In life people keep on inventing or discovering few things on their own. This might be quite trivial for one and important to another. I did have fair share of these discovery moments. I thought to pen some of them which I think were great moment when I found them out. Some of them were larger projects and I had my share of setbacks on them. I leave it to your judgement how trivial they are.
My first moment was when I was about 6-7 years old. In hot summers some time we used to sleep on roof of the house along with our grandfather, it was spectacular site to watch the clear sky, those days it used to be clear sky. I could cite the moon in all its glory winning and waning. While it is to wan I could see crystal clear the rim of the moon on the darker side. I concluded that this phenomenon was due to the earth shadow. All I know by that time is that the moon reflected the suns light and did not have its own light. I remember confirming form my grandfather and it was one delightful moment for me to find this out all be myself. It is truly a trivial matter if I look back but was a great moment for me those days.
Life becomes serious as you grow up. Sky was replaced with a fan to gaze at. An idea stuck me that a perfect automobile can be build using this motor. I used to dream of building an automobile using it someday or even better driving one. Till this day I do not know driving probably waiting for my dream cart to ferry me wherever I want. So the research started with one of the encyclopaedia in my grandfather’s collection. Gosh, I now understand how much I missed internet those days. What I found out was no breakthrough in the technology itself but I found an enhancement for the same, a perfect renewable energy concept. What I saw was a simple diagram still fresh in my mind that of a U shaped magnet and a coil running thru it, explanation was while you turn the coil it will produce electricity. Now this was the bingo moment which started the stint of my day dreaming. What I thought was the battery could power the motor initially for the vehicle to move and then I could have four of those generators attached to the four wheels, what I thought it was enough to power the car once in motion. Even more I thought of the wind power, if the electricity generation was not enough I thought of putting small fan blades with the small generator in multiple no’s to close the gap. An accelerator was going to be a simple knob they use for the fan and hence to be contended with 5 speeds that it could offer.
The first setback this project suffered was when I watched a electrician repairing one of the fans in the house. He could hold the fan blades easily while the power was flowing to the fan, and as soon as he left the fan it wormed to its top speed. It worried me that how it could take the starting load of the dream car if it’s so powerless. It was time to get a mentor and hence I confided it to the best help available, hence my mentor was “Deba Bhaiya” our car driver. He heard the project with great interest and then put a lot of technical jargons in front of me like, What about Clutch? And Gears? Etc. I became too much for me to handle and I realised that I would need some formal education to start this project hence the project was shelved and it still remains there. Well now I just keep watching “Reva” on road as if they have stolen my idea and implemented it in very unprofessional way. The nearest that I came to the prototype of this car was much later in form of a line diagram using GW Basic and a PC with say 4.7Mhz speed and two floppy drives, those days there were nothing called hard disk to my knowledge. This was the last of my effort towards this direction.
It was exciting to know that water is made of two molecules of Hydrogen and one molecule of Oxygen, but more than bonding of Hydrogen and Oxygen what interested more was there separation. Electrolysis was of great interest and thought that this experiment can be tried at home. Motivation was to collect the Oxygen do administer it to my friends who were sick, no matter what the ailment is Oxygen would be good to heal the person was the thought. Hence started the process, since we did not have access to test tube in home first an empty glass jar was organised. Then the in second part two pieces of wire were organised. An afternoon time elders used to have a nap and hence was a perfect time to do this test. Wire was put in the plug on the one end and dropped to the wire, what happened next we did not have a clue as it cut the power supply to the house. Hence the major setback to this project happened. I still remember the task of putting away everything away as if nothing has happened was the bigger challenge.
I knew for sure that it will work and hence decided to repeat this with much more saner way. The Big jar was replaced with a small empty bottle of Homeopathic medicine. Source of power was the battery from my grandfather’s torch. To my joy it worked. I could see very tiny bubbles from one of the wire. But it was a partial success as it was the unwanted Hydrogen to which I did not have any application whatsoever. So I did know that the negatively charged wire was emitting Hydrogen twice the capacity that of Oxygen. Hence this safe experiment remained an experiment and I could not go ahead my intention of administering oxygen to my ailing friends. I am sure if they know about it now they would be thanking their luck.
Science really interested me but it was one demon everywhere in science which made me move away from it, and that was Mathematics. We used to have our mathematics teacher who was a ambidextrous (Person who can write with both the hands), short and stout (people who know him and if they read this will think I just called him skinny). All he did was stand in the middle of the blackboard and start solving sums from one end of the board to the other end without even mincing a word. We students used to have gala time chatting at the back as if no one is there. Hence the interest in science was mostly fuelled by magazines like “Vigyan Pragati” a quite inexpensive one, if I remember correctly thirty rupees was the annual subscription and seventy five paisa was the per issue cost of this weekly publication. The most interesting thing it contained was do-it-yourself project it used to have. In one of this project there was one to make a radio station.
It really caught my fantasy and started day dreaming about having my own radio station. More application was that we can spy (not sure on whom) and communicate with friends (Fellow spies) on their portable transistors. Hence the Bill of material was neatly copied in a piece of paper to be taken to shop which vended electrical components. Once beating the crowd to the main counter at “Burma Radio Ghar” reached out to the sales men to see if he had all the components and it’s pricing (funding was another challenge). Finally once the sourcing and funding problems were solved the project was already delayed by two months.
Then came the time to put the things in place, did everything carefully to the book but the thing decided not to work for me. Then came the right time to find a mentor for this project one of my friends uncle came to rescue we used call him “Raja ka mama”, we actually never bothered for his actual nomenclature. He did the setup in just an hour and the thing started working. This was the last exciting thing in the project as the range was pathetically less which refused to go beyond few meters. Actually I was still not ready to give up and made the TV antenna work as the radio station antenna but there was only a marginal improvement in the range. So that was the end of the spy and his team there.
My first moment was when I was about 6-7 years old. In hot summers some time we used to sleep on roof of the house along with our grandfather, it was spectacular site to watch the clear sky, those days it used to be clear sky. I could cite the moon in all its glory winning and waning. While it is to wan I could see crystal clear the rim of the moon on the darker side. I concluded that this phenomenon was due to the earth shadow. All I know by that time is that the moon reflected the suns light and did not have its own light. I remember confirming form my grandfather and it was one delightful moment for me to find this out all be myself. It is truly a trivial matter if I look back but was a great moment for me those days.
Life becomes serious as you grow up. Sky was replaced with a fan to gaze at. An idea stuck me that a perfect automobile can be build using this motor. I used to dream of building an automobile using it someday or even better driving one. Till this day I do not know driving probably waiting for my dream cart to ferry me wherever I want. So the research started with one of the encyclopaedia in my grandfather’s collection. Gosh, I now understand how much I missed internet those days. What I found out was no breakthrough in the technology itself but I found an enhancement for the same, a perfect renewable energy concept. What I saw was a simple diagram still fresh in my mind that of a U shaped magnet and a coil running thru it, explanation was while you turn the coil it will produce electricity. Now this was the bingo moment which started the stint of my day dreaming. What I thought was the battery could power the motor initially for the vehicle to move and then I could have four of those generators attached to the four wheels, what I thought it was enough to power the car once in motion. Even more I thought of the wind power, if the electricity generation was not enough I thought of putting small fan blades with the small generator in multiple no’s to close the gap. An accelerator was going to be a simple knob they use for the fan and hence to be contended with 5 speeds that it could offer.
The first setback this project suffered was when I watched a electrician repairing one of the fans in the house. He could hold the fan blades easily while the power was flowing to the fan, and as soon as he left the fan it wormed to its top speed. It worried me that how it could take the starting load of the dream car if it’s so powerless. It was time to get a mentor and hence I confided it to the best help available, hence my mentor was “Deba Bhaiya” our car driver. He heard the project with great interest and then put a lot of technical jargons in front of me like, What about Clutch? And Gears? Etc. I became too much for me to handle and I realised that I would need some formal education to start this project hence the project was shelved and it still remains there. Well now I just keep watching “Reva” on road as if they have stolen my idea and implemented it in very unprofessional way. The nearest that I came to the prototype of this car was much later in form of a line diagram using GW Basic and a PC with say 4.7Mhz speed and two floppy drives, those days there were nothing called hard disk to my knowledge. This was the last of my effort towards this direction.
It was exciting to know that water is made of two molecules of Hydrogen and one molecule of Oxygen, but more than bonding of Hydrogen and Oxygen what interested more was there separation. Electrolysis was of great interest and thought that this experiment can be tried at home. Motivation was to collect the Oxygen do administer it to my friends who were sick, no matter what the ailment is Oxygen would be good to heal the person was the thought. Hence started the process, since we did not have access to test tube in home first an empty glass jar was organised. Then the in second part two pieces of wire were organised. An afternoon time elders used to have a nap and hence was a perfect time to do this test. Wire was put in the plug on the one end and dropped to the wire, what happened next we did not have a clue as it cut the power supply to the house. Hence the major setback to this project happened. I still remember the task of putting away everything away as if nothing has happened was the bigger challenge.
I knew for sure that it will work and hence decided to repeat this with much more saner way. The Big jar was replaced with a small empty bottle of Homeopathic medicine. Source of power was the battery from my grandfather’s torch. To my joy it worked. I could see very tiny bubbles from one of the wire. But it was a partial success as it was the unwanted Hydrogen to which I did not have any application whatsoever. So I did know that the negatively charged wire was emitting Hydrogen twice the capacity that of Oxygen. Hence this safe experiment remained an experiment and I could not go ahead my intention of administering oxygen to my ailing friends. I am sure if they know about it now they would be thanking their luck.
Science really interested me but it was one demon everywhere in science which made me move away from it, and that was Mathematics. We used to have our mathematics teacher who was a ambidextrous (Person who can write with both the hands), short and stout (people who know him and if they read this will think I just called him skinny). All he did was stand in the middle of the blackboard and start solving sums from one end of the board to the other end without even mincing a word. We students used to have gala time chatting at the back as if no one is there. Hence the interest in science was mostly fuelled by magazines like “Vigyan Pragati” a quite inexpensive one, if I remember correctly thirty rupees was the annual subscription and seventy five paisa was the per issue cost of this weekly publication. The most interesting thing it contained was do-it-yourself project it used to have. In one of this project there was one to make a radio station.
It really caught my fantasy and started day dreaming about having my own radio station. More application was that we can spy (not sure on whom) and communicate with friends (Fellow spies) on their portable transistors. Hence the Bill of material was neatly copied in a piece of paper to be taken to shop which vended electrical components. Once beating the crowd to the main counter at “Burma Radio Ghar” reached out to the sales men to see if he had all the components and it’s pricing (funding was another challenge). Finally once the sourcing and funding problems were solved the project was already delayed by two months.
Then came the time to put the things in place, did everything carefully to the book but the thing decided not to work for me. Then came the right time to find a mentor for this project one of my friends uncle came to rescue we used call him “Raja ka mama”, we actually never bothered for his actual nomenclature. He did the setup in just an hour and the thing started working. This was the last exciting thing in the project as the range was pathetically less which refused to go beyond few meters. Actually I was still not ready to give up and made the TV antenna work as the radio station antenna but there was only a marginal improvement in the range. So that was the end of the spy and his team there.
To be continued . . . . . . . .
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