Sanchit's Sphere

Yahoo Hackathon

2011-09-25T14:28:00.000+08:00

Just yesterday, I had my very first hackathon hosted by Yahoo @ Wozniak Lounge.

The hackathon was to last overnight but obviously i couldnt last THAT long without sleeping and I also had to consider that I have a midterm coming up on Tuesday.

I entered Woz at around 6.15ish and it was totally against what I expected. Normally, Woz lounge is a very clean and organized and prim and proper type of place. This time round, BAM! Laptops and iMacs and desktops all over the room. There was literally insufficient space to move around. I never expected such a huge turnout.

Nevertheless, I saw a familiar face from CS and Math class to I went to ask him if he had any project and if i could join his team. He and 2 other members planned to make a game using python (leveraging pyGame). I thought it was interesting but little did I know what was coming up.

pyGame took forever for me to install and when I tried to run the sample game that utilized pyGame, it said "pyGame module not found". Wasted another 2 hours on it and I was still getting the same error message. Finally, I decided that I did not like this project and left the group (I felt really bad but I din want to waste my night also!).

Then, I started to mess around with Facebook API. I was always curious on how to get data through the Facebook API. Thankfully, I had a small breakthrough in this and managed to get my user id on facebook to show up at least.

At this juncture, Kush entered. The previous week, we had lunch together and decided to implement a game using the Corona SDK. Corona SDK's promotional video was mind-blowing. The physics was so easy to implement that it almost seamed too good to be true. As such, we decided to build using the Corona SDK.

We left the Woz Lounge and came back to my room. (It was around 10pm by now). We started working through the Corona tutorials till around 12+. Confession: Corona SDK has been the easiest-to-use interface and implementation that I have used till date. By 1.30, Kush and I had a partial game running. WE MADE HALF A GAME IN 1 HOUR!!!

Both of us were exhausted and thought that we had done enough work for the night so we decided to go off to bed (and I also din want to stay up till too late as it would mess my system up and I may not be able to prepare well for my midterm on tuesday.)

That's all for now!

2011-09-12T12:41:00.000+08:00

It has been a long time since I last posted and a lot has happened since.

From Feb to Sept, my life has basically changed.

Here is a list for myself to keep track of what I have done so far since Feb:

1. Won Special Mention at SAFMC - nothing great, is equivalent to a sympathy award
2. Learnt iPhone programming and released ITCrowd.
3. Got OpenCV to work on iphone and making an app using that now. All code was copied to get opencv to work.
4. Watched a ton of movies and went out with friends almost everyday
5. Released Flypn.com which can be considered my first 'start-up'
6. Travelled half-way around the world (that's right, I am in Berkeley, California, US)
7. started doing homework in school (trust me, i got a lot of it)

hmm... photos will be coming up soon. so have fun till then! I hope to be able to make it a routine to blog every week at least.

2011 New Macbook Pro Release

2011-02-26T22:32:00.000+08:00

It has been slightly over 24 hours since Apple refreshed their premium line of notebooks (Macbook Pros). First comments: OMG for the utterlyinsanelyhyperlyextracool hardware upgrade. A Quad i7 in a laptop? Dude. Seriously, DUDE?

PC's will need to play catch up for a while. Also, they made it so incredibly affordable. The 13-inch entry-level Macbook pro is available from SGD 1648/- (1498 if you are a student) and you get a free wireless printer rebate with every purchase of a mac (if you actually bother filling out the forms to get it for free).

Check out CNET and other websites for proper reviews. Meanwhile, I am feeling really sad about my outdated and about-to-be obsolete Macbook pro.

The multitude of wealth

2011-02-19T23:45:00.000+08:00

Why are some rich people not happy? Obviously, wealth isn't the only thing that makes us happy. My father always talks about the different types of wealth but lately, I got an email from an anonymous source(most likely it was spam email that evaded google's filters) describing 7 types of wealth.

1. Inner wealth

2. Physical wealth

3. Family wealth

4. Career wealth

5. Economic wealth

6. Adventure wealth

7. Impact wealth

I won't deny that money isn't important in life but it surely isn't everything that your life has to be about. The other types of wealth can also make one successful, stress-free and satisfied with life.

Inner wealth is associated with your outlook of the situation around you. Do you think positively or negatively? Thinking positively can greatly enhance your life quality. However, many of us feel (at least I felt like that when I was young) that positive thinking was just small talk. There wasn't really any science behind it. Turns out, I am wrong! Positive thinking affects your subconscious mind and works in the same way as hypnotism. Think of it this way, if you think positively all the time, it is equivalent to hypnotizing yourself to believe in the specific positive outcome.

Next is physical wealth and as the adage goes " Health is wealth". Would you be happy if you had everything in the world except that you were bed ridden? I would be swearing and cursing out loud!

Family wealth is really about emotional support. Nothing feels better than family love and care. After all, they are the only ones you can trust who will be there for you no matter when you ask.

Career wealth is about attaining a sense of fulfillment while economic wealth is about earning money. Economic wealth is not all you want. This reminds me of an anecdote: You don't want to spend 50% of your adult life earning money and the remaining 50% on spending on healthcare bills!

Adventure wealth is about meeting new challenges and overcoming them - could be in your day to day life or in your lifetime!

Finally, we have the impact wealth. Many adults like to complain about how they can be easily displaced by any other employee. This is where impact wealth plays a part. Do you want to leave a mark at your work place or just go there and perform the job you are assigned to like a robot? Similarly, many of us want to do something for the society at large.

With this, it is about time for me to sleep and sorry for updating after such a long time. I fell sick last week and was busy with SAFMC before that.

Adios!

Ripping apart my Dell and meddling around with Gumstix

2011-01-26T16:24:00.000+08:00

So over the past few days, I have meddled around with a numerous electronics. Microcontrollers, IMU, breakout boards, CMOS sensors, range finders and a couple of other stuff. I started to wonder, if all these electronics are so small, why is the laptop so big? Below are a few pictures to give you a perspective of how small things can really get and why there really is no reason for laptops to be so huge.

The Dell's internal electronics. I have removed the CD drive and battery and LCD and keyboard and touchpad and whatever other peripherals you can think of that are directly accessible to the consumer. The large silver metal casing you see right beside the intel chip is the PCMCI slot. Surely, that is taking a lot of space and no one ever - EVER- uses a PCMCI card now.

The intel chip. This chip is directly beneath the wifi and bluetooth card. See the next picture.

I have added the wifi/bluetooth card here and removed their antenna.

The fan with the heat sink. I have removed the heat sink here to make it clearer.

The top part of the laptop. The LCD and the upper casing.

This is a Gumstix Overo Fire board with a Gumstix Summit expansion board. It comes with all the ports you can see in the picture. Do not be deceived by it apparently large looks. To get a perspective of exactly how small this board is together with the expansion board, check out the last picture. It literally comes with everything the macbook air has.

I have separated the gumstix fire board and the summit board here. The fire board goes over the summit board (using the 2 70-pin connectors you see on the summit board)

Just to give you an idea of how big is the laptop.

There are a few reasons why the laptop is so much bigger.

Firstly, the laptop has a separate GPU for processing graphics. And since there are so many components, there is obviously a larger power management board.

Secondly, the laptop uses a hard drive instead of a memory card(like on the gumstix). In the macbook air, you will recall that they use flash memory for storage which is essentially a fancy way to say that they embedded multiple memory cards onto the main board. In the process, they save a lot of space, a lot of weight and also a lot of energy (the hard drive actually spins as opposed to memory cards).

Thirdly, you have stuff like PCMCI card slots, a CD drive and a ton of ports (some of which no one use today). The CD drive surely is heavy.

In comparison with the Macbook Air, one reason why the Dell isn't able to last so long on battery is because: 1. the battery requires a casing and 2. the Dell uses a Li-ion battery as opposed to the Li-Polymer battery in the Macbook Air. Li-Polymer batteries have a significantly higher power density and thus for the same weight and same number of cells, the Li-Polymer battery is able to provide more power.

On a side note: if you are interested to know more about the SAFMC project and gumstix and electronics in general, you can visit my team's project page here.

Team dynamics

2011-01-14T21:08:00.002+08:00

Have you wondered what makes certain teams tick? Why is the Paypal mafia all that great? There certainly are some ingredients that help in bolstering the dynamics within the team. From my own experience in working in projects in high school, I have tried to identify a few of these ingredients myself.

1. Hurling expletives at each other helps to break the ice

Believe it or not, all the $^%* and &@*^ you shoot across the room at your teammate helps to improve your communication with them. Contrary to popular belief, vulgarities helps to melt the ice quickly. Nevertheless, do not - I repeat - DO NOT say too many at one time. If not, it could destroy the entire relationship that you are trying to build. One or two profanities - that too CASUALLY - will help ease the tension in the room and help in creating the open environment (where people are not afraid to ask each other anything even if they are stupid questions) that many people envision. So much said, this tactic usually works with Gen Y and Z age group only. If everyone around you are Gen X (which is rarely rarely rarely the case in an engineering/com sci project), you have to deploy other, probably more conventional, means of breaking the ice. As long as 40% of more of your group members are within the same age group as you, I am almost sure that this tactic will work.

2. Having breakfast/lunch/dinner together, play games with each other

Building a team where you can rely on one another for completing work goes beyond being friendly with each other in the office. People trust each other more when they realize that they share a lot of similarities with their colleagues. This usually means that teammates need to spend time with each other and talk to each other about such "external" stuff either over a meal or game. It is probably a good idea to have lunch (and if possible dinner) together and take one weekend off every month or two for a retreat.

3. Allow your discussions to digress, but do not let it interfere the work you are trying to achieve

It is inevitable for your discussions to go off topic. However, I would recommend you allow the conversation to digress BUT bring back the conversation to the main point after a while. This way, you build a personal rapport with all the teammates and at the same time, get your work done. It may waste a bit of your time but such small time wasters sure go a long way in getting to know one another better.

4. Depending on the type of project, decide wisely between an open office concept or a closed cubicle style workspace.

Basically, if the project requires a lot of interaction between each other, you will want to chose the open office concept. And if the project requires a lot of individual thinking, you may want to give all the members a cubicle. As for most of the projects, you will require a mixture of both the concepts. It would be good to have an area - like the lounge - where you can do work together with a few cubicles so that people who want to focus and get some privacy can use them. Experiment with various styles and see which suits your project best.

First impressions: Mac App Store

2011-01-07T12:30:00.001+08:00

MAC APP STORE

Last night (singapore time), Apple released the mac app store. Frankly, there is nothing innovative about it - they have had the music store and iOS app store for ages now. Coming out with a mac app store is a no brainer; they should have released this together with the iOS app store.

UI wise, nothing new - exactly the same as iOS app store. Easy to use and discover apps. I only wonder how long Apple will take to implement the Genius feature for this. Downloading is a single click. And as all software packages on the store are single bundles, they become highperlysuperlyextremely easy to both install and uninstall (just chuck it into the trash).

I have a major qualm though: why didn't Apple implement the mac app store within iTunes? They have all the other stores there and it would make it a lot simpler for me if I could just download mac software within iTunes too. One problem could be because iTunes is available on Windows too and therefore, it may be hard for Apple to maintain two different versions of iTunes.(but think again, I am not sure if it is really THAT hard to maintain 2 different versions - they probably already are maintaing 2 diff versions right now).

I have a second more minor frustration: I will now be downloading a ton of "small" apps and as such, I have more application names to memorize. It would be cool if mac created a separate folder for these "small" single-package apps.

LCD screen projects

2011-01-05T01:48:00.000+08:00

As SAFMC(Singapore Amazing Flying Machine Competition) is just around the corner (slightly more than 2 months left), I decided to learn some programming for electronics. Yesterday, I managed to run some simple programs on an Arduino (my friend gave it to me!) and wanted to move on to the next step today. As such, I managed to set-up the LCD screen (also given to me by my friend) and print my name onto it! Pics below:

After accomplishing the above, I started to think about what I could do the following days with n Arduino, LCD and prototyping board.

The simplest of course are
1) Clock (which I have made so I i do not need another one)
2) GMail notifier (but too many people have done this)
3) Show Room Temperature
4) Indicate the number of articles I have left to read
5) My next meeting

Most likely, I will try to do as many of the above as possible just to get a feel of programming on this board.

That's all for now!

Handmade iPad folio - DIY

2011-01-02T02:07:00.000+08:00

Recently, I got an iPad and I was rather annoyed by the lack of styles available in the market for the covers/cases to protect it. And when I found the iPad case that I liked, it was overpriced (300 over bucks!).

The problem with most cases are that, they don't really protect well. For those that do, they do not conceal the iPad well enough. However, the most surprising part is that I can't find even a single decent looking case for below 60 bucks. It feels like as though all the manufacturers colluded with each other and overpriced the cases.

Finally, I decided to make my own iPad case. First, I made a few designs on paper. Then, I tried to design one on Solidworks but it did not turn out as I imagined. After all the hassle, I decided to just modify one of my existing folios that I had been bringing to school for ages. It is a rather simple case that allows you to fit your notepad, business cards, loose A4 papers and a pen. As I have the iPad now, the area allocated to keeping the notepad became less useful.

Idea strikes!

Attach 4 iPad 'gripping stuff' at the 4 corners to hold the iPad firmly. (See pictures below if not clear).

Final Product. Took me almost 8 hours to stitch the 4 corners as I had never ever stitched before.

Different angle

with the iPad switched on.

Bottom right corner. For this corner (and the bottom left corner), I tore apart my old school bag(which i was going to throw away anyway) and cut out some material for this.

noob stitching.

I decided to use velcro for the top 2 corners. Easy to manage yet holds the ipad firmly.

without the iPad, it looks rather ugly. I am going to stitch 1 end of the velcro so that they do not come lose.

My next step will be to stitch one end of the velcro to the folio such so that I will not have to take care of them.

the other side of the folio. business card holders + A4 paper holder.

from the outside when closed. Conceals the ipad nicely.

Although I am quite satisfied with my cover, there is one major drawback. After stitching everything in place, I still have to cut out a few holes(which I haven't done) so that the speakers/on-off button/volume rock/mute buttons/earphones port/microphone aren't covered. Hopefully, after another hour of trimming and polishing, I will get an industry standard folio (essentially for free as all the parts I had were useless individually and I had gotten them for free anyway).

Before making my own case, I had done a bit of research about the other DIY cases. Check out the links below for cases other people have made on their own.

1.) http://www.themoderndaypirates.com/pirates/2010/06/how-to-make-a-moleskine-ipad-case/

2.) http://www.carrypad.com/2010/04/15/how-to-make-an-ipad-booksafe-case/

Multi-tasking in real life

2010-12-30T21:59:00.000+08:00

In today's technological environment, the notion of multi-tasking has been deeply ingrained into our minds. The first thing we ask ourselves when we get a phone is "Can this device multitask? Can it play music in the background?". Similarly, in our own lives, we try to accomplish a ton of work while blasting Rihanna or Katy Perry into our ears and in the midst of all this, we try to update our Facebook status and check for new emails. You may think that it is efficient but think again. Have you really achieved the concentration you hoped to achieve before you started your work? Did you ever feel like you lost your sense of time?(if no, it means you haven't really focussed enough)

Anyways, here is the fact. Humans C-A-N-N-O-T multi-task.

In fact, what we refer to as multi-tasking is purely the shifting of your focus quickly. When checking our email, we focus all our concentration on the email. When we are listening to music, we pay attention to the lyrics. When finishing a project, we are rechecking the minute details. Our brain in reality is shifting focus from one object to another at lightning speed.

For some tasks, they can be extremely hard to achieve both at once if both the tasks are of the same type. For example, you are unable to chat with someone while talking on the phone as both the activities are fighting for attention from the "communications" part of your brain; you can only do either of them at one time - not both. The first video below is an interesting explanation of why we - humans - can't multi-task. The second video emphasizes more on the differences between the way the male and female brains work specifically in the area of multi-tasking. Caution: the second video may or may not hurt your male/female pride (depending on the way you like to operate).

One way to not fall into this modern day "multi-tasking trap" is by focussing. Now you might be thinking, "Isn't that obvious?". My question is, why don't we do it then when we all know the answer? The key is in getting the distractions away from us. Depending on your work, the online chat may be a distraction, the hard drive spinning on your may be a distraction or the TV in the other room could be your main distraction. Think about it carefully, analyze your surroundings, and then work on eliminating all the unnecessary background hindrances.

Recently, I was watching some TED videos and found a video related to the topic at hand. The TED video below suggests us ways to be more productive at office. For management guys, some of the suggestions below might be completely against your believes. Nevertheless, you may want to trust TED guys for once and try this out in your office: do not have your weekly Monday meeting for once and let your employees work for three to four hours continuously on one of the days. The results will be obvious.

Why is there so much suffering in India?

2010-12-14T19:12:00.000+08:00

Recently, a friend of mine and I were chatting online about religion. Out of the blue, my friend asked me, "India is the land where Buddha was born. Why then is there so much suffering in India still?"

Of course my friend is a buddhist himself but the question surely isn't about buddhism only. I got interested in "Why, despite the high religiosity in India, are people unhappy?". I started to ponder upon the subject seriously. Why do some Indians(in India) seem so unhappy?

Well, I think there are a few fundamental problems in India. The two main problems that strike me instantly are 1)Corruption, 2)Internal division

1)Corruption

Politics in India is in a state of mess. Corruption exists at every turn. Right from the head to the clerks. For example, whenever a road contract is given to a private company, everyone tries to get a bite of the money. The government will allocate some funds for the project. So this is how the corruption starts. Firstly, the company that is able to give the best proposal wins the project. However, this is of course done unethically. The minister will eat some money and award the contract to the company that feeds him the most. Once the contract is given to the company, the company tries to eat. They charge an insanely high fee for the gravel, rock and etc. And even after overcharging, they deliver a poor quality road. The workers who eventually lay down the road are the only ones who are not able to get a share of the money(as such, they remain poor) as they do not command any authority. I am not sure if this still happens but the fact that other scandals are in existence do not reflect favorably upon the present situation. You can read online about the recent 2G spectrum scam as well as the 2010 Commonwealth Games scandal.

As a result of all this corruption, the infrastructure in India is still ahem-fill-in-the-blank. Transportation is improving however, it is still in a rather dilapidated state. You will take eons to reach from one end of the city to the other. And you will find that the jams are not real "jams". They are caused because the traffic is forced to slowed down when they meet a pothole (there are umpteen potholes on Indian roads and they never get filled) and as such, a bottleneck occurs. For someone who has to live through this daily, he has drained out half his life and energy and optimism in the traffic itself.

I could go on forever about the list of things that increase the pressure on the Indian's temple...you get the point. In summation, all these small "pressures" add up(if not multiply) and give the perception of "suffering" that my friend mention. The cracked roads, the pathetic sanitation, the daily rumble in the news and etc create an illusion of "suffering". In reality, most Indians are used to such things and have chosen to close their eyes and to live their own lives peacefully.

Here is a simple anti-corruption ad. Hopefully you like it:

2) Internal Division

You can tell this easily if you travel in and out of India often and are friends with some NRIs. If you ask an Indian living in India for his identity, he will say "I am a Gujrati or Punjabi or etc..." but if you ask an NRI the same question, he will answer "I am an Indian". See the difference? Within India itself, people are divided.

There are naxalites who claim that the Western India once belonged to them and are willing to shed blood to overtake their long lost lands(you can confirm from other sources as my understanding on this subject is not very clear). As such, many farmers in those areas lose their lands easily. Given that many of them have more than 4 children, it becomes tough to manage the family (and especially so when the minimum wage law is not enforced strictly). Again, the "suffering" takes reign.

Well, these are my two cents about "suffering" in India (or more like progress in India) and I apologize if it seems a bit disorganized as I wrote this in a rush. I will try and post more often but I am a wee bit busy these few days. Once I am done with my work, I will try and update weekly.

Does our past have anything to say about our future?

2010-11-26T21:54:00.001+08:00

Surely no!

Many will not agree with me about this, but for me, every day of your life is a choice for you to live as you like it to be. Everyday of your life is a crossroad. The way you live it will be how you perceive it but most of the time, we don't make any choices about them. And that is a choice by itself. Because we pick ourselves the "default" choice.

So if everyone picks the "default" choice, most of us end up living mediocre lives. From this perspective then, where no conscious choices are made, your past does tell about your future as we can predict the "default" choices.

But what makes the difference is when people decide to live their life differently. For example, I used to be a very sports kind of person till grade 6. Everyday of the week, I would be participating in some CCA at school and every other week, I would be attending some competition. In other words, I completely neglected my studies and never bothered about my grades. Nevertheless, I always expected to get high grades for every test and for most of the time, I did. Then came the PSLE(a nationwide standardized exam in Singapore taken by all 6th Graders). Typically, a smart student is expected to score 250/300 and above and the really smart ones expect 265 onwards. And as you can guess, I always thought I was the "creme de la creme" and so when I got 237, my mind was just blown. That day, I knew I had to change my lifestyle. Success doesn't come by taking any shortcut. It was then that I decided to do really well for my studies and for the most part of it, I think I have - even though I was never entirely satisfied with my performance.

However here is the key, previously, with a score of 237, any academician would expect me to do not-so-well in life. And if someone were to make a prediction now, they will say I will do well. Not only an academician will say that, even my friends will say that.

The only difference for me really was to make that decision after my PSLE. Similarly, you may predict that a university dropout will do not-so-well in life but if you look at many of the billionaires today, they were *actually* all dropouts from one college or another.

How you spent your past really has nothing to say about how you are going to do in future because all it takes to change that future is The Choice.

Make that choice and change your future now.

PS: sorry for not posting for such a long time. kind of busy these days with college essays and post-school trauma.

Ripping and screwing back my alarm clock

2010-11-14T16:38:00.002+08:00

So lately, I have tried learning some simple electronics. I thought it would be best if I tore apart my alarm clock and examine the works inside it and then re-design my own clock from there - only the face that is, not all the gears and motors and stuff. I have decided to just take pictures of my steps and explain from there. Hopefully, its clear enough! Enjoy!

My alarm clock is completely ripped apart. Here, you see all the parts. The black plastics you see are the casings of the clock that hold the gears. They have a few guides etched on their internal face to make it easier for the technicians to align the gears and electronics.

I have arranged the gears together with the minute/second/hour hand they fit. Basically, every 'hand' has a corresponding gear and later you will see that all the gears are interconnected and driven by a single ingenious motor.

Just to show you how it looks like the the gears attached to the 'hands'. Take note of the different levels of gears. Later you will realize that the gears work in 3D! The gears have teeth on its circumference as well as on its internal spacer.

I now attach the gears to the casing. It is a perfect fit.

Here is the first 3D gear. Although I have put the gear on the top, it revolves both the top gear and the one below it - although at different rotational speeds.

Now, I put another black plastic thing onto the gears. Basically, this is more like a guide to help you place your gears nicely and prevent it from moving too much. Also, it supports the 3D gear design that I talked about previously.

Now, all the electronics come. The bronze coil you notice is what the current goes through. The current is a pulsed current. Although the currect is a DC from the battery, the electronics in the circuit pulses the current to this bronze coil. This help to create a temporary magnetic field which acts upon(check the physics here, pretty cool. I am not giving the exact details of its working and my description is not entirely accurate as well. I am just simplifying it here) the small gear. Surprisingly, the small gear you see below the bronze coil is actually the motor! They manufacturers have cleanly hidden a magnet beneath it which rotate every every time your coil is pulsed. Now, you are wondering 'what about the frequency control' right? Here is where to quartz comes in. The quartz is embedded within the electronics itself and it works on the principles of piezoelectricity - any material under stress releases charges and vice-versa. The quartz crystal vibrates (due to the electric current passing through it) at a very precise frequency (about 32000 if I am not wrong) and this frequency is detected by a mini-detector also embedded in the electronics (the detector actually measures the charge coming out from the quartz as the quartz expands - remember, its piezoelectricity). Now this determines when to release the current to the coil and in turn drive the magnetic gear. How smart!

Now, just 3 more gears. So now you can see how the clock works. The motor explained above rotates the pale white gear which in turn rotates the pure white gear in the centre(this is the one that controls the second hand directly). The gears are all connected using the inner teeth they have. This way, you also can proportionate the second to minute relation and the minute to hour relation. As for the alarm, there is another independent gear right at the bottom layer. The electronics basically checks if the hour hand coincides with the alarm hand and get the buzzer to ring when the condition is met.

I fix the back casing.

Now I fit this whole set to the housing.

Oops, I forgot to show how the alarm works. As you press the white color plastic, it breaks the circuit from within by shifting 2 plates that are touching each other - yes, i saw the structure inside, they were plates and not wires. Pretty interesting.

The front of the clock.

The back.

Here, I bought a simple canvas from the art accessories shop. I ripped out my other clock and changed the housing basically. I will soon paint it once I find a nice pattern to paint on it.

The back of the clock I made.

Cool stuff huh? How I wished my physics lessons were like that. They should give us 3 or 4 hours to investigate how the clock works, describe the mechanisms and do some calculation regarding the frequency of the piezoelectric stuff. Would be fun and you wouldn't realize that you have learned so much in the process.

PS: you can read more about clocks here. I used this webpage while understanding how the clocks worked. (Link here)

Choosing what you want for the future

2010-11-06T22:48:00.001+08:00

For the past 18 years of my life, I have been trying to figure out a way to make decisions - decisions about what I should do next semester or the next year or what I should do for long term growth. Today, I will list down a few methods I have personally adopted to help me in my decision making process.

#1. Follow your heart, not your brain. Identify your passion.

Well, this is obvious, but you will be surprised how many people are out there working on things they DISLIKE. They do it because of the money, the relaxed atmosphere or their unwillingness to change. If you belong to one of these categories, kick that habit immediately. You are less likely able to think with a clear mind.

For me, I have always followed my heart in this matter. I ask myself what I *really* like. You may not find the answers immediately. It took me a few weeks personally to connect all the dots in my life and realize what I am passionate about. You can start by immersing in self-questioning to identify your passion.

What do I like doing? What I enjoyed doing? Is there anything I did without much effort but everyone thought was really really hard to do? Would I want to do for my whole life?

This brings me to my next point.

#2. Make a list of things you like together with the grades you are achieving for it.

This advice was given to me by a professor who taught me. During his first lesson, he told me that the easiest way to decide what you want to do for the rest of your life is by listing down the things you are best at and things you like the most. Now, compare these two lists. You have to find the highest match between the two lists and that would probably correspond to what you are passionate about and have the most potential for growth.

For example:
---------------------------------------
# Score Best # | # Enjoy Most#
---------------------------------------
1. Maths Art
2. Physics Piano
3. Engineering making electronics

Voila! number 3 is the best match. I can do electronics engineering or any related field! Now, create a list for yourself and find your passion.

#3. Do the things you dislike when they are necessary.

Once you have identified your passion, you should never make the mistake of ignoring everything else. Many people tend to ignore everything else that seems unrelated. Remember, what goes around, comes around. You may not see its application today but two or three years later, if you need a particular skill for a project you are working on, you are going to regret real bad.

For knowing what to focus on and what not to focus on, it is best to follow what people in your field advice (professors work out best for me). If they say physics is important for medicine, you jolly well do your best for physics. Pay attention in class. If you really hate it, bear with it and try to understand its relevance to your passion. If you still hate it, at the minimum, understand and do well for your parents at least. You will understand its importance someday when you need it and that is when you go "Hey! I actually like this stuff now!".

#4. Talk to people (especially your parents) about your decisions.

As mentioned earlier, only people in your field can give you the best advice. You should talk to them to know more about the field. What are the opportunities available and what-not. Nevertheless, you should not listen to everyone. Now and then, you will get someone who is pissed with his job and discourages you from entering it. Make your decision on who you trust wisely.

#5. Never succumb to peer pressure.

Lastly, NEVER EVER EVER do something because someone else is doing it. Just because he is doing something cool, you should not follow him blindly thinking you will also be able to do it. Often times, when someone looks cool at doing something, it is because he has an awful lot of practice in doing what he is doing and has become perfect in his work. He probably can close his eyes and do it just as well. Peer pressure gives you nothing other than that moment of pleasure. Your friends will never be with you for the whole life but your passion will. Don't let go of your passion and be strayed to do something else for the sake of your friend.

Hopefully, this note helps you make decisions better. It surely has for me.

First Mover's Advantage and Diffusion of innovations

2010-11-03T17:05:00.000+08:00

The first mover's advantage in chess has been widely debated. It has been contested by many grandmasters and statisticians around that world that if a game of chess were to be played 'perfectly'(god knows what that means), the white will always end up winning.

But of course, that is not what I want to talk about today. In the business world, the first mover's advantage is a widely known business strategy whereby the business that releases a product first gains an advantage in getting a larger share of the market. You can read more about it here. Being an analytical person, I wanted to visualize this on graph. How exactly does this process work? Why when one enters a market first, he gains a larger share? Searching the web around for a while, I came across a rather familiar term I learnt 2 years ago in a crash-course/workshop for entrepreneurs - The law of Diffusion of Innovations.

Surprisingly, there is little research done between how these two concepts relate to each other. The graph and video below explains what exactly diffusion of innovation is all about.

Now, isn't it obvious how first mover's effect and diffusion of innovation are related? The first mover in the market is able to entice the innovators first, who then are able to entice the early adopters and ....Voila! They own the majority of the market. As for the second and third mover and so on, too bad. They have no innovators left to surprise. For example, once you have seen the iPad, would the Blackberry Playbook allure you to buy it? Never! even if the Playbook is actually a better device.

On the other hand, if the innovators that were roped in by the first movers find the initial product unsatisfactory, they will not adopt it straight away. In effect, the first-movers advantage is now a first-movers disadvantage. Now, the second mover can analyze the mistakes of the first mover, improve his product, improve his marketing and eventually improve his market standing.

Time and again, we have seen the first movers effect fail and allowed the second mover to take the lead. Especially so in the technology world - Microsoft, Palm Pilot, Amazon, and now the Apple iPhone.

Such a pity that the relation between these two concepts have not been explored further.

That's all for now folks!

Feasibility, Viability and Desirability

2010-10-23T18:34:00.001+08:00

For the whole of last week, I attended the 9th ASEE Global Colloquium and I can't tell you how much fun it was. For one, I had 5 or more meals a day at Marina Bay Sands (yes, you heard it right, at MBS). Secondly, I had the precious opportunity of meeting new people from all over the world. I can't tell you how delightful it is to discuss your ideas with kindred spirits.

Moving on, in this post today, I want to discuss on my perspective of what engineering should really be like. Over the course of the week, I have had various lectures and discussions with deans of engineering colleges, students like me, presidents of engineering education societies and who not. There are points with which I both agree and disagree but I will only discuss on the framework with which I believe should be the way to go.

Firstly, it is important to understand that engineering is unlike any other field of study. The syllabi for business, finance, econs, arts, social science, humanities and even music remains more or less constant. The rate of innovation in these fields need not necessarily be slow however the basic knowledge required to work in those fields remain more or less the same over time. In engineering however, new technologies crop up almost every day. The repercussions of this faster-than-ever change demands engineers to keep abreast of the latest technologies and understand their methods of constructions and working mechanisms. Take in the automative industry for instance - previously we would only require to know the Otto engine, the Diesel engine and Stirling engine. In contrast, automative engineers now require to know turbochargers, the effect of various bearing sizes and with the onset of Green Technology, I would guess they will have to learn about battery technology, aerodynamics and a whole hoard of other stuff. Can you think of a similar analogy for finances?

Secondly, the many engineering graduates today DO NOT end up in engineering related jobs. Instead, wallstreet gobbles them down and chew them until their brains run out of oil. Engineers everywhere are valued for their analytical skills and highly logical and critical thinking. As such, engineering educators of today not only require the engineering graduates to think as an engineer but are required to instill in them the other aspects of thinking as well to prepare them for future jobs. In other words, it is not longer sufficient for engineers to view the world with the feasibility lens only. Instead, they must - they must - fathom the viability and desirability lens as well.

If engineers were to come up with more inventions, they will need to think beyond the feasibility boundaries. Most of the innovations today in fact occur at the overlap of the feasibility-viability-desirability lenses.

Various lenses

Think of Apple, Ferrari, Gucci, Prada, Chopard, Tesla Motors, IKEA, Canon, Nikon, Samsung and other successful consumer-related companies. The technology behind each of the products require the feasibility thought. The finances require the viability thought. And the design itself demands the desirability thought. Without any one of them, the company fails. The product fails.

Hence, engineering colleges can no long focus on disseminating technical knowledge but they must also build and develop the other aspects of the brain. Many colleges around the world continuously reform their syllabus to meet the industry needs. In fact, an engineering college will need a major reform almost once every 4 years because that is how fast technology becomes obsolete. Isn’t this scary? For a freshman, it would mean that whatever he is learning now will become obsolete by the time he graduates.

In such a situation, the only way forward would be to teach engineers to be life-long learners. Engineering sure is a tough job! And precisely for this reason, many engineering grads shy away from engineering jobs as they get tired of learning new stuff again and again thus explaining why they switch to other fields by the time they reach their 3rd or 4th job.

As for a professional engineer, one of the most important concepts in engineering education then would be abstract thinking. It is customary to have many modules during your freshman year emphasizing the importance of abstraction.

At the same time however, to be good engineers, you cannot just live within your technical boundaries and evaluate the pros and cons of technology A and B. We need to understand what both technologies entails in terms of ease of use (requiring us to have a basic grasp of psychology), we need to realize that implementing the more expensive technology B will place the company in the midst of luxury brands, we need to know that technology B is sexier in design and exudes a certain sense of pride when held in the hands of a businessman. This is what bounds the work of engineers and this is what engineering education should ought to focus on.

With this, let me end of with a joke:

The Equation of earnings

Engineers and scientists will never make as much money as business executives. Now a rigorous mathematical proof has been developed that explains why this is true:

Postulate 1: Knowledge is Power

Postulate 2: Time is Money

As every engineer knows,

Work = Power Time

Since Knowledge = Power, and Time = Money, we have:

Work = Knowledge Money

Solving for Money, we get:

Money = Work / Knowledge

Thus, as Knowledge decreases, Money increases, regardless of how much Work is done.

Conclusion: The Less you Know, the More you Make.

Note: It has been speculated that the reason why Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard’s math program was because he stumbled upon this proof as an undergraduate, and dedicated the rest of his career to the pursuit of ignorance.

Multiple Intelligence and who should teach it?

2010-10-13T21:27:00.000+08:00

After spending the last sixteen years or so in Singapore, I have come to understand a few things about the Singapore education system. For one, the Singapore education system emphasizes primarily on logical or linguistic thinking.

Sadly, in the real world, logical or linguistic thinking is not all that matters. Lately, I have realized the importance of other type of intelligences - the ones that cannot be measured by IQ or EQ or god-knows-what tests. I am talking about Spatial, Bodily-kinesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Naturalistic and Existential intelligence - I read them up on Wikipedia. (link)

In Singapore, the only time such intelligences does come useful in our academic life is during camps, CCAs and times when we chat with our teachers and friends. Other than that, they are all considered 'non-core' to the curriculum. Being social or being a person who is able to analyze himself almost never gains a compliment from anyone around you. All that matters is being smart - being good at grades in one or more subjects; actually if possible, to be good at all of them. I won't deny the importance of of logical thinking, however, I would deny it giving more importance than other types of intelligences. It is just morally wrong to compare and rank the various types of intelligences.

For instance, purely by considering the amount of time one spends learning non-logical thinking compared to logical thinking, I realize that the ratio would be upwards of 5 (I am already being very lenient). However, this is never a good way to quantify or argue for teaching to be social, a good host, to analyze one's weakness or etc as most of the other intelligences are developed on-the-fly. When we are young, we naturally learn to communicate with others around us. When we fail, we naturally want to get to the root of the failure. As such, it would be unfair to compare in numerical terms as the amount spent not immersing in logical thinking would be unquantifiable.

Also, it would be absurd to literally 'teach' how to be intelligent in other ways - 10 or 20 years from now it maybe normal but for now, it is crazy. For most of it, we know the only way to build up our intelligence in other dimensions is by practicing them in our daily lives; by playing instruments by ourselves, by going for social events ourselves and etc.

As such, we reach the conundrum every educator eventually reaches: should the education system groom logical thinkers and trust that parents will develop the other aspects of one's mind? Clearly, the answer depends on the kind of people you are dealing with. If the general education of the parents' in the school is high enough (as to be decided based on the context), the its fine to go ahead with only focussing on logical thinking as these parents would understand how they ought to bring up their children. On the other hand, in the case where the parents' education isn't sufficient for them to understand the needs of the human mind, then, it becomes the responsibility of the school to nourish the brain.

Even then, comes the problem of recognizing talents in other areas. Just by issuing CIP points or stating that one did well for CCA or participated enthusiastically for a camp isn't sufficient. There should be medals given out to recognize maybe the 'Best Host' or 'Best Partygoer' or things like that. Sadly, it would make even those fields competitive and just induce more stress on the child. On the whole, finding a solution to satisfy all intelligences and to give them equal credit is an extremely hard task that will require educators from all over the world to sit down together and discuss about options available.

To end off, I believe that a solution should be sought after quickly to balance the development of all aspects of intelligence.

Idea 002, Idea 003

2010-10-12T13:07:00.001+08:00

For a while these days, I have been thinking of opening a restaurant. I have had a few ideas but I will just write about two of them here today.

Have you ever been to a restaurant which gives you full privacy - as in *really* full privacy where you can control the music being played, watch your own videos being played on the TV (if they provide any), be able to manipulate the room temperature or just be able to work peacefully in a noise-free environment? If you have, please drop a comment stating the name and place of the restaurant. If not, read on.

So in my free time, I thought out of a solution. Imagine if we had separate rooms in a restaurant. Not the pub-like rooms but small rooms where you would have just enough space put in two 3-seater sofas, a 6-seater table in the centre and a bit more space at the sides for decorations. Imagined? Ok. Next, imagine that the table is a touchscreen - pretty similar in concept to Microsoft Surface but bigger in size. The room would have its air-conditioner/heater and music system. Voila! A restaurant concept for total privacy. And if you thought one would feel claustrophobic in the room, you could always change the room walls to be made of a translucent material like frosted-glass.

However, I don't think main-stream consumers will patronize my restaurant as such small things don't really bother them. On the other hand, such a restaurant would be God-sent for businesses that want to hold meetings outside or for people who just want to work quietly. Also, after lunch-hours, when the occupancy is low, some of the sofas could be converted to beds so that people could come in for half-hour power naps (many companies actually want to give their employees some time off during work for them to nap but SMEs don't have the capital to implement such thing) and then we could charge them for every five-minutes of occupancy (minimal charges or course) or alternatively, we could tie-up with companies to use our space. Wouldn't it be so awesome? Some people might pop in just for the experience.

In a couple of days, I will try and upload a Solidworks model so that its easier to visualize my idea.

The other idea I have is really simple. I regularly visit Subway and have always found their service fascinating. Their efficacy is simply unmatched by any other healthy-food fast food restaurant. So just yesterday, when I was in Subway with a friend, I thought of having a similar kind of service for Nachos. It is a really palatable Mexican food that I occasionally have at home. It is fairly straight-forward to make it.

On the bottom layer, you add tortillas or corn-ships. Then you add a few vegetables of your choice. The third layer, you add some beans - any beans/heavy-curry will do depending on what flavor you prefer (I usually go with kidney beans but seriously anything will do - you could even add meat balls and what not but sadly, i never experiment with that as I am vegetarian). The 4th layer, you could add more vegetables of your choice. And finally, top it up with cheese (any cheese that you like) and sauce (any sauce that you like - tomato sauce would be perfect). That's, it! Just place it in the over for 20 to 30s to allow the cheese to melt and you could have an authentic Mexican meal in just 2 or 3 mins. Here is how it should look like:

If you realized, you could have a fast-food restaurant just like Subway to churn our Nachos! The first step, you choose a flavor for your corn-chips. Then choose the vegetables, then your curry, then your cheese and finally your sauce. Simple isn't it? The only problem would be if the public will accept the Mexican food taste. In Singapore, there used to be a fast-food restaurant named Taco-Bell but sadly, it closed down as not many people patronized it.

Okies, have fun thinking about them and drop a comment if you think they are feasible ideas.

End of formal lessons in high school

2010-10-10T17:52:00.004+08:00

So finally, I have reached the end of the road - the real end. For the first time in my life, I can go to bed after my last exam and sleep peacefully knowing that there are *really* no more exams left this time round. But apart from the usual happiness, a weird sense of nostalgia overwhelms me. Yup, I am starting to feel that some integral part of my life is slowly chipping away.

After 4 years in my high school (I spent my first 2 years in another high school), it is now the time to move on. Everyone wishes high school never ends. Despite the fact that a brighter future awaits, these 4 years will always remain in my mind. Over the course of this period, I have made tons of new friends, learnt a whole hoard of new skills and had the most fun anyone could ever have in their lifetime.

I still remember how excited I was when I was admitted into my high school. Right from the first day itself, from the first time I stepped into the concourse, I knew I would find a bevy of kindred spirits. True enough, most of my friends in school have a unique characteristic: they have this rare ability to ignore whatever that is important - like tests, exams, projects, lessons - and focus on their passion. Never have I come across people with such a strong belief in the work they do. They love discussing what they are doing - even if its not a highly looked upon piece of work. The fervor with which they argue for a cause probably matches those of the nobel peace prize winners (this is an exaggeration but at the peak point, it probably does). If one were to enter our canteen, more than being interested in eating food, we are interested in talking about the latest stuff we do or else argue about issues related to the school education/politics/quality of teaching/difficulty of modules/ways to improve the curriculum/developments in the tech world/a lot more erratic stuff (these are just a few of the things that came the top of my head while typing this out)

Apart from friends though, even the teachers are awesome. I have a physics teacher who literally does everything on earth - he has guided me for 3 research projects in com science, been with me to social events, discussed the world's most mundane things and make them sound interesting (he succeeds making it sound interesting most of the time) and other random things. 2 teachers who love cooking (they even recommend us restaurants to go to while teaching). A chemistry teacher who manages to teach in a way such that I never need to revise when I return home. A physics teacher who has inspired everyone who has ever attended his class to do physics. An english teacher who taught me how to write with purpose and actually managed to arouse my love for the subject (i have to confess: I *hated* english for the first 16 years of my life). To top it all up, all of them have an immense sense of humor, fantasiticsuperultraly friendly demeanor and are the most helpful people on earth. I will forever be indebted to them for passing their knowledge to me, building my character and ensuring I have a brighter future.

Friends and teachers aside, I feel the curriculum I have gone through is itself unique. My high school is very focussed on maths and science so everyone expects that students here are nerds. That is so not true. In fact, most are anti-nerds (just like any other school). However, we know when we need to get serious and when we can have a blast. Back to the structure of the program I have gone through, I feel, it has allowed a lot room for innovation and exchange of ideas. Firstly, the discipline is ultra slack compared to many other schools but it is just right for us because we would end up breaking all of them if there were more. Secondly, the school has implemented a modular structure which reduces the emphasis on exams. This way, a student's 'real' understanding of the subject can be accessed as compared to having just 1 exam to decide it all (having 1 exam and doing well for it is easy, but you can also screw it up badly if luck is not on your side on the exam day. at the same time, having various forms of assessments instead of just the exams allows the students to find his strengths in other areas [like presentations or projects] as well and develop them early). Next, CCA in our school is not really counted towards any grade or whatsoever. As such, we end up doing what we really like doing. In other schools, students compete to get into uniform groups or performing arts because they tend to award more points which helps them in their O/A levels. Lastly, by doing away with O and A levels, we save a hell of a time. The only major exams we take are the APs which shouldn't be too hard to get a 5 if you follow through the school's preparation well. On the whole, its all the small differences that have amalgamated to form a whole new curriculum and experience for the students.

On a personal level, I have learnt a gazillion things from this foremost maths and science institution. Other than maths and science, I have learnt the other more intangible things of life. For one, I have realized that the most learning takes place after one fails. To quote Sylvester Stallone from Rocky 6, "It ain't about how hard you hit, its about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forwards. Its about how much you could take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!". Secondly, "we" is always greater than "i". I have done several projects that looked insuperable at first but with the help of my colleagues, nothing is impossible. The capability of a team is greater than the summation of the individual capacities. There are many other things that I wish to discuss but this post would get overly long and boring. To keep it short, I will just summarize my success strategy with a pyramid constructed by John Wooden (Former UCLA basketball coach). Over the years, I have come to agree with all his principles and definition of success. Here is it:

John Wooden's Pyramid of Success

With all that I have said so far, the future of my high school does look bright. However, they have to maintain the culture. Sadly, many changes are set to beset the system. The overemphasis on grades may cause it to drown in its own success. The school may succeed at educating bright minds but they could fail at building the character and instill passion and love for maths and science. This is my biggest fear: too much pressure on grades and medals may displace other virtues that are much more crucial for long term success. Although not all my level-mates will agree with my view about the school, all will concur with me that this is probably the best school they could have been to. There *is* no better alternative.

Won't be posting till mid-October

2010-09-27T10:09:00.000+08:00

Its been a while now since I last posted. Problem is, I have several exams coming up. So, I will only be posting somewhere around mid-October after my exams have ended. For the time being, enjoy the comic below:

Importance of Napping

2010-09-21T12:28:00.000+08:00

Recently I came across an article discussing the importance of napping. Actually, you know all the facts about sleep. You would be lying if you told me you don't feel tired in the afternoons without taking a nap but you are not sure how to get rid of that feeling.

Sleep by itself hasn't been studied a lot by scientists as they are not sure what determines why we feel sleepy. Furthermore, taking surveys wouldn't be accurate as many of us are afraid to declare that we sleep too long or we sleep only after 2am in the morning. (Nevertheless, I shall propose The Energy Audit survey to everyone who is concerned about improving their life/sleep.)

Yet, what we all know that sleep has many restorative capabilities. It somehow 'attracts' all the cosmic energy around you and install it back into your body allowing you to feel refreshed every morning. But wait, do we feel refreshed every morning? Somedays, it seems that we have not gotten enough sleep even after sleeping for 12 hours. We get out of bed feeling so so so tired that we could literally fall back and enter the deep trance within seconds if not for our school or job.

Here is the main problem, many of us are not sleeping the right way and many more are just not sleeping enough. The latter is simple to solve; sleep for at least 8 hours are day. Yup, 8 hours. Not two 0s joined vertically. For those of you who still haven't internalized it, it is EIGHT hours a day. As for the former problem, the key is to ensure you keep a constant routine. Try not sleep sleep and wake-up at different times for every day of the week. It has something to do with your biological clock. The lady below explains it succintly.

Another problem many of us encounter is that we start feeling tired and grumpy by around the afternoon. We have worked at full speed for the first half of the day just to realize we have another half to go. You might have heard the prowess of an afternoon nap but I am sure you haven't tried it before.

The afternoon nap (or some people call it power nap) should ideally last for around 20 to 30 mins. This allows your cognitive capabilities to revive but also ensures you don't fall into too deep a sleep such that you only wake up after 3 hours. If you have trouble sleeping for just 20 mins, try this: take in a deep breath for around 2 counts and exhale for around 4 breaths. Also, don't sleep on your sides or anything, you are just wasting your energy as the muscles at the side will need to flex. The best way to relax is to sleep on your back with your hands by the side. Empty your mind now. Don't focus on too many things. If you want, just remember one problem you really are dying to solve but haven't been able to for the past 2 weeks. Within a few minutes, you should enter your dream state and thats when the real recovery starts.

15 mins later, you are all ready to fight the next half of the day. If you mind feels a bit fuzzy, chant some mantra to clear that buzz in your head. I like to iterate "Aum" but it need not be religious. You can use other mantras like "Ma Ra Na Tha" or "O Mi To Fu". All of these have special powers. Researchers have found that your body vibrates at 18Hz (below your hearing range) when you say it yourself and somehow, this frequency has some special energizing effect. (Read more here) You have to try it for yourself to believe its effectiveness.

A few companies are already experimenting with this idea. Google has installed 'sleep pods' in their office. I am sure the whole tech industry will follow suit soon. I think few banks are also trying it out. All of them have realized that their employees become less productive over time. They are not able to think on their feet - very important especially if you are in Wall Street I believe.

So guys (and gals), don't be afraid to sleep too long. Sleep well to maximize your brain power.

What I always imagined just got implemented

2010-09-18T20:11:00.001+08:00

So i have always wanted a create a UAV that is super stable, hover around anywhere anyhow - even in the most extreme conditions. And my dream just got shattered. Some research guys just stole my motivation to create one myself now. Watch the video below, it is just epic.

Differences in Eastern and Western ways of doing business

2010-09-18T19:27:00.002+08:00

Recently, I have noticed a few differences in the ways the Eastern and Western world do business. But before that, we should understand how these differences arise.

Right from young, in India or China or any traditional society, we are told to study hard for the sciences and maths. We often view law, arts, humanities and other languages condescendingly - or at least that is the case for the majority. It is not that we don't appreciate those subjects, but rather because jobs available in those fields are significantly fewer. For the burgeoning middle class, it makes most sense for them to pursue a career in engineering rather than say geology. Such careers are often left out for the upper class, whose sons and daughters are aware of the applications of such an education. As such, its only the upper classes in traditional society that become lawyers and artists and take up quirky jobs. As for the American education, all subjects are valued equally (I guess their egalitarian views extend to even this space). It is less uncommon to come across students willing to do humanities. This can even be reflected in the American education system where much emphasis is placed on an all-round liberal arts education in contrast to a pure engineering study.

With this, right from the start when the graduates enter the real working world, there already exists a stark difference in viewpoints. Westerners(Europeans included) tend to focus on design while Asians are more concerned with functionality. I can give you countless examples where this is true. Apple versus Creative, BMW versus Toyota/Lexus, Nokia/Blackberry/Apple versus Sony/Samsung/NTT Docomo. The comparisons are never ending. Almost the whole fashion industry exists exclusively in Europe although recently many Asian counterparts have come along. Seriously, there is no Asian city that is viewed equally with Paris or Venice. It is going to take a few more generations for people to even accept that Asian people can do design well(in fact many Western designs are influenced by Asian cultures).

Asians are not unfazed though. Even though the Western world and culture appears cool, Asians are catching up quickly. Globalization has really brought about wonders. Sadly 'cool' doesn't run an economy. Functionality is a necessity while design is more of a value-added factor. (*Coughs* Compares American versus Indian/Chinese economy forecasts) America has realized its opportunity cost for giving lesser priority to maths and sciences. Americans also want to learn from Asians; many universities are setting up overseas campuses in Asian societies. I believe that one day, due to the immense rate of information exchange between Asian and Western communities, our world will homogenize. I guess Indian and Chinese parents will no longer ask their sons to become an engineers or doctors from young. The American education will increase their coursework for maths and science modules. The only thing that differentiates us then is our skin color and our history. After all, we were all born with less than 0.01% of difference in our DNAs. It is the fate of all humans to converge. Another 2000 years and we will also be laughing at our own selves on how we differentiated each other purely based on skin tones. There will no longer be Indians or Chinese but only Homo-sapiens. With this, I realize that I have steered slightly off topic here.

So what are your comments about the Eastern versus Western ways of doing business?

Minister Mentor Lee Kwan Yew

2010-09-13T14:03:00.001+08:00

Recently, Minister Mentor Lew Kwan Yew (MM Lee) gave an interview to a New York Times Journalist that seems to have sparked quite some discussion - well at least when I visit Facebook, I see at least one person talking about it. So here I am actively pondering about this legendary man, the man who made Singapore from scratch, MM Lee.

His words "Never say die" were the first words that attracted me to know more about him. Initially, when I was young, I would think he was just another Prime Minister - like every country in this world has - but it was not until I came into secondary school where I started to learn more about him; first in history lessons and then even in english lessons. The fact that Singapore is the first country that I recall in my memory made me think that every other country in the world would be governed the same way, would have the same standard of infrastructure and all the other nitty-gritty things that concerned me when I was smaller. I did get a cultural shock though when I first went back to India during one of my holidays. The roads were littered with potholes, there were rickshaws(rickshaws are a tourist attraction in Singapore) and generally the surroundings were polluted. That was when I knew that MM Lee had indeed done a miracle. I had learnt that Singapore was no different in its olden days where riots were rampant. To transform a country from that state to the state we are in today is a miracle by itself. This was when MM Lee's words "never say die" truly reflected his spirit. Personally, over the years, I have had some personal hardships also - albeit academic ones and not political ones - but I know that the last man standing would be the person with the "never say die" attitude. In a competition, even if all odds were against you, so long as you can cling on to the "never say die" attitude, I am pretty sure succeed in your goals. So long as you have the belief that something can be accomplished, and if you were to believe strong enough, you will make it in the end. Even if you don't, the mistakes that you made along the way were the right mistakes you made and if you try again, you will achieve your goal the next time.

The next thing that makes me want to meet this man and shake his hand once is his insight on a multiracial society. To my generation adolescents, living in a multiracial society seems no big deal. But think about it, your parents' and grandparents' generation thought very differently. Till today, I have yet to see a multiracial clique among the adults. The Maria-Hertogh Riots have already demonstrated the importance of a racially segregated society. Around the world today, we see people heaping anathema to the Islamists. Seriously, its only the few bad apples in every race and religion that have distorted your views about their community and its only your over generalization that has made you look upon the different races condescendingly (I admit everyone has an urge to view their own society as superior but think about it, all humans on earth share about 99.99% of the same genes. Its only the less than 0.01% of genes that really make is different. If mammals and reptiles can live together peacefully, I don't see why humans can't!). MM Lee's realization of need for an impartial and evenhanded society back then in 1960's is evidence of his towering intellect. If I were born two generations ago, I would be torn between the India-Pakistan breakup and conceiving of a multi-racial society would simply not make any sense to me. I deeply respect his stance on this and would also like to thank him for moulding my view on this. If I were not in Singapore, I would probably never have adopted the notion that "all humans are equal".

With this, I leave you with a video about MM Lee himself who is interviewed by Charlie Rose. You can go online and view more of this videos and you will also then share my respect for him.

The small things in life which I have missed

2010-09-12T19:41:00.000+08:00

Today I decided to make a list of things which I think I have missed out on over the past 18 years of life. Of course I will not be including my grand schemes like building Iron Man, becoming an Industrialist and what-not. These are things that I feel I should have done in my free time but since my free time was stolen, I need to compensate for them. To make things simpler, I will just write what I have already started doing/about to start doing from November this year (from the day I graduate from high school).

1. Revise Physics - this is purely to regain my problem solving skills; not that i have lost them but just to refresh them.

2. Build an autonomous vehicle - have decided to build a UAV/quad-rotor with my friends and will be taking part in SAFMC also.

3. Learn iPhone programming - yup, i have been influenced by my friends plus I need to master C/C++ also.

4. Find other things to trade - so far been trading electronics only. i want to expand it and also find other ways to fuel my (expensive) hobbies.

5. Make 3 to 4 more animations - this time i will be using pbrt and helping out my juniors on a project as well. Hopefully i can make a StarWars-like animations series.

6. Figure out what exactly is Forex trading and stuff - again, i have been influenced by my friends who have already entered university. They always talk about Forex and I always get lost when they do so.

7. Come up with new business ideas for the future - it my past time. right now, i will think about such things only when i go to bed. For around 10-15 mins i will be thinking of how some particular product/service can be improved. maybe weird for you but its fun for me to indulge in such mind-excercises.

8. Visit exotic places - this is everyone's wish man!

I hope this will keep me busy for a few months. i estimate that it will take around 8-10 months to complete everything on the list. So that's how much time i have lost from my childhood. The 'evil' education has sapped so much life out of me.

Philanthropy

2010-09-10T14:46:00.001+08:00

While I was reading the newspaper today, I came across this article about Bill Gates and Warren Buffet going to China to host a dinner for the billionaires. Their purpose? To persuade the Chinese to give back to the society. Philanthropy has been a topic pretty close to my heart. Somehow or other, I feel connected to the poor. Maybe its because of my grandparents.

So here I am today, to advocate philanthropism. Firstly, we all should note of the society we come from. I was born in India (Delhi) and came to Singapore when I was 2. Yet, I can say I 40% Indian, 40% Singaporean and 20% international. Indian because of my parents and relatives of course; Singaporean because of my education; and international because of the diversity of my friends and my annual visits to some part of the world. I am a mixture of all these societies and if anything, I owe them for what I am. They have moulded me into the creature I am today (and of course I am partially satisfied of who I am - its never good to be full satisfied, you stop progressing I guess). The community around us plays a big part in everyone's upbringing. So if I make it big one day, I have to return back to the society I come from because they have had a hand in whatever I become of tomorrow.

Naturally, you should develop your own community so that one day, even they can contribute back to the same community and continue the cycle. That's what Thanksgiving is all about. Anthony Robbins always cites his story about someone leaving food on his doorsteps while he was young, on Thanksgiving day, and how he felt so touched by that act of gratitude. Today, every Thanksgiving, he sends out hordes of presents to the underprivileged in hope that one day, they will grow up to be successful and satisfied people.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are my personal heros though. Instead of giving it to their country's citizens, they chose the children of the world to reach out to. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is trying to eradicate numerous widespread diseases in Africa - Malaria being one of them. Both now want others around the world to follow suit as they recognize their wealths alone won't make a lasting impact. All the (filthy) rich people have to join hands together to perpetuate the trend. Then only will we they be able to extend the trend throughout the populations.

Philanthropy is also one of the few ways to build up goodwill between countries, races and religion. Albeit some would only like to contribute to a specific society, if donating does become rampant enough, I foresee world peace as a possible future. Imagine an African child being told how an American made his life. Imagine how and Indian child would feel to realize that a Chinese angel raised him up. How would a Black feel to be cared for by the Whites? Instantly, you start accepting everyone despite of the inherent differences. Philanthropy, in my honest opinion, will make the world a better world.

Yet, many billionaires fear that their critics will detract their efforts or heap anathema upon their virtuous acts. Some poor would not even want to accept the aids given by the wealthy claiming that the rich got their money through less than ethical means. To such people, I ask, does it matter to them? Are you telling me that you have never done something illegal your whole life? You have never broken a law (intentionally or unintentionally)? Such people have a problem no matter what. They whine when people do good and whine even more when people don't do good. It is best to ignore them as they are nothing more than a barrier to social progress.

So to everyone (not only rich people now), please give back to the society. Make a difference to the world around you. It is good to know that how your time or money can change a person's life. With this, I leave Bill Gates to do the remaining of the convincing:

Differentiating Singaporean Ads from British or Indian Ads

2010-09-08T19:27:00.000+08:00

If you live in Singapore, you may have noticed how boring the advertisements can get. Its very education-oriented, informational and basically, something you aren't really attracted to. What then makes some ad tickle your mind while others turn you off? Ads by Discovery channel, BBC, Apple, Nike and even by Airtel and IDEA(Indian telecomms operators) and some other Indian companies are so much cooler(I shall refer to such companies are A Grade companies here after). They just make want to watch the ad even if you know that "oh, its just an ad and they are just trying to scam me".

The fundamental difference I think is in what they sell. Singaporean ads sell to you to product directly. They tell you everything about the product, its specs, what it can do and what it can't. Very well. Very useful for buyers with the attitude "cut the crap, tell me what it does". A Grade companies on the other hand, don't only sell you the product. They sell you a lifestyle that comes with it. They go beyond informing you what the product does. They subtly enter your unconsciousness and instill a sense of pride within you to own one of the products. For adults, they can easily easily chop out all the extraneous stuff but for the unguarded and innocent minds, this idea catches on like a forest fire gone wild.

Before I blabber on, I would like to share a video with you guys. Its by Steve Jobs of course. This is one of the rare times that Steve actually shares his marketing insight with the public. So, right from the marketing guru's mouth mouth himself:

Did you see that ad? That ad didn't sell you anything. It was just selling you the company's core value "Think Different". Its hard to explain why that is so catchy but mac users (and possibly Ubuntu and Mint) users know within their minds what this means.

Think about it for a second. I used to feel ashamed of owning a Windows (not because it was inferior or anything, because it never ran well on my Fujitsu). Apple on the other hand, you know it will work. And even if it doesn't you have this spontaneity within you to protect its image. You start saying "Oh, because I installed Microsoft Office for a Mac, my boot time has doubled" (i vouch for this - first hand experience).

So next time you watch an ad, think about what they are selling - the product or the lifestyle?

Using animals as an indicator for an impending hurricane.

2010-09-06T13:30:00.001+08:00

As you might have guessed from the topic, I just watched discovery channel. It implied that sharks could be use as tools to help identify impending storms or hurricanes.

How does this happen?

Before a storm, the air pressure usually drops. With it, the pressure underwater also drops. Sharks inherently have excellent barometer-like hair that can sense pressure changes of the environment. Take for instance, sharks like to swim in deep waters, however, when the pressure of the surroundings drop, a 7-foot deep water body will feel like 5-foot deep. This perceived change in water depth encourages the sharks to swim to safer grounds (even away from their homes and to unknown territories).

What scientists discovered is that these sharks have such a good sense of the pressure that they start to make a beeline for deeper waters way in advance of the storm. So far, various storms have been predicted using sharks but surely, none of them were used as the defining factor to evacuate a city.

A quick search in google shows up this article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-544770/Storm-detecting-sharks-weather-forecasters-future.html

I can't find the video that explains it nicely on YouTube. Sorry. Will append it here if I ever come across it again.

So, I was just wondering if other animals had such innate self-defense senses. Have you ever seen your locality free of all animals suddenly? Maybe its time for you to pack up too!

This reminds me of the scene in Harry Potter where all the owls gather outside Dudley's house to post to Harry the letter of admission to Hogwarts.

Rant on Apple September Event

2010-09-04T12:15:00.001+08:00

Just two days ago, Apple revamped its whole iPod line-up and introduced the new Apple TV. The show was fantastic. No words can describe how magical apple events are. I was watching it live from Singapore on the Apple website. The Apple guys were streaming the events and everything was perfect.

Yet, I have a few criticism about the new design. I won't deny that Apple surprised me with the their products are first sight but with hindsight, I think the new designs - particularly the ipod nano - hasn't been all that immaculate.

So, first up is the iPod shuffle. Really nothing great. With time, electronics are bound to reduce in size. To shave off a clunk of metal budging at the side isn't very innovative. Well, maybe their approach was wrong. They have always wanted to make things small. But in my humble opinion, the design was just reused. All they did was to make more efficient use of the space. Thank goodness though, they realized that even though a music player may work without a screen, it surely can't work without button. Buttons are the best way to get feedback - at least we know what we just did to the device. With voice, there is almost no feedback. I can utter some rubbish and it might as well detect that rubbish and try to execute rubbish. Total nonsense from the start. I guess their experiment has failed badly.

Next are the iPod Nanos. Well, this was kind of anti-climax. As soon as Steve Jobs announced that he wanted to remove the click wheel, the remaining was all very obvious. This one, has huge design problem. Firstly, aesthetics wise, the screen looks very sticker-like. I would recommend putting and edge to edge screen to prevent the sticker look. Then again, the screen wouldn't flow the the other parts. Best was to not have a black border around the screen or make the whole iPod Nano black. However, even though I haven't got my hands on one yet, I am rather sure that the texture of the glass and the metal wouldn't feel that good (doesn't give the same sense of pride in owning an Apple product anymore); the disconnect in the materials would be obvious and shatter the whole feel of it. Nevertheless, by making the whole thing black, at least the screen wouldn't like a sticker. The next flaw of the iPod nano is the use of the screen. The icons all look cluttered (4 icons only without a dock looks weird for the start and they really looked squeezed). Even though its multi-touch, the prowess of it wasn't fully exploited. I am not going to go ..."WOW!! I can rotate my screen? Awesome!!". No way. They could have used an accelerometer and make it automatic. I guess better usage of the screen would be to have a the renowned two-finger-scroll to adjust the volume. Not the best way to use a multi-touch interface but could be an option.

On the other hand, the iPod Nano does inspire watch makers to thing bigger. I am sure touch-screen watches capable of doing crazy many things should be out soon. I only know of Sony's Nexstep which has attempted to design a watch-cum-computer. Its really just a design. It looks slick but surely not functional. (pics below)

The iPod nano cum watch looks pretty feasible on the other hand. Someone online did this(picture below) as I was browsing Google Images. Doesn't looks bad!

iPod nano cum watch

Finally, moving on to the ipod touch. Again, everything was expected except for the dual cameras. My friends has predicted the Apple wouldn't release a product that would directly compete with its own gadgets. Apple has proved us wrong. I don't see any benefit of getting an iPhone now, other than the cellular related activities that one might want to indulge in. I think in a few months, someone is going to come up with an extra add-on to the iPod Touch that will even allow cellular stuff and as usual, Apple will ban it. But yeah, I do concede that the cellular connection make a huge difference for various peoples. Nothing else to comment on the iPod Touch. Its all the same with Retina screen, camera and thinner yet boxier design.

I only have one doubt: Why can't they make the iPhone that thin!!! Its seriously super bulky to just add that cellular thing in it. Apple has bungled the cellular connection anyway (the infamous ring antenna - it is new but not pragmatic). I am ignorant of the electronics within but as soon as I graduate, I am going to learn all of mechatronics. In fact, I already have some books on mechatronics in my library. Just wait and watch, I am going to create a few awesome stuff (rather presumptuous of me!)

For the Apple TV, i won't comment since its useless in Singapore without the full iTunes store - no music, no TV shows, no nothing... For a singaporean, its a rather expensive paper weight.

Despite all the disappointments, Apple does rock. They called Chris Martin after all. I have been listening to coldplay ever since the event. Looped Yellow, Clocks, Viva La Vida, etc at least a 100 times each already. No exaggeration. Chris Martin I think completely stole the show with his accomplished singing and jocular attitude. What a way to end the show. I loved every bit of it.

Idea 001

2010-09-01T08:15:00.002+08:00

Buying a cell phone has always been a hassle for me. The waiting process, the buying process and then the service process are all wrong. The waiting takes too long and often times, there will not be enough stock for the latest phones. Then the buying process requires you to haggle - without which you are confirmed to be scammed. And the service process finally; it would force anyone to take at least a half-day leave just for it. Utterly slow. In my opinion, the whole concept is inundated with inefficiencies.

What if we had a vending machine to vend cell phones instead? The population buys handphones more than Milo and Lays Chips from what I see in Singapore (ok, this is an exaggeration, but you get the point). A vending machine would solve all the problems the effete industry faces. No waiting (maybe a little), no haggling, and service is as easy as dropping your phone into the mail box, instead, we now drop the phones back into the vending machine and let the companies handle all the hassle from there.

Isn't it brilliant?

But by the time I have reached here, i feel like doing a google search on this and realize that it has already been invented. Or at least half of it. See it here. The part of dropping your phone like dropping into the mail box is not out yet. I guess the process is not perfect. Furthermore, from the pictures in images.google, none of them seem to have a good design interface. More improvement to be made still.

I will elaborate more on the second part in my next post. For now, I have to rush off to work. Good day!

The Essence of Theatrical Work

2010-08-31T21:40:00.001+08:00

"...turnstile...." was enough to raise my eye brows during the Teacher's Day performance today. The turnstile at our school's back gate is infamous for its demented behavior. It has literally trapped at least a third of the school population and further more, its horrendously slow compared to the hinged gate with a magnetic lock. Everyone, including the teachers (no exaggeration) abhors using this 20th/21st century giant mechanical stainless steel human top. (evidence)

Turnstile aside, the theatrical work today was good. Normally, the drama club would present works so abstract that only abstract people would understand. Well maybe the drama club produces plays only to receive praises from drama producers, just as novel writers write novels to gain critical acclaim from other novel writers. Sadly, not everyone is that cosmopolitan to understand their arcane plays and hence, would never get a thumbs up from me at least. Thankfully, today's play was not by the Drama club but instead by more normal people with whom we can connect with.

So what types of plays do I like? For one, it has to, i repeat, it HAS TO connect to me - be it because of the emotion, the content, context or culture that both the play and I have in common. For today's play, both of shared an understanding that the turnstile is messed up. But more than that, its because they agreed to make a mockery out of it - a rarity in the egotistical civilization I live in (me included, sorry if I insulted you here - lol).

Secondly, is the timing of all the crescendos within the play itself. I have been involved in a couple of animation productions myself (within the school) for the past 2+ years. The animation at the crescendos are the most important parts. They need to be perfect with the beat. Similarly for the play, they have to perform better and better as the plot edges to the climax. In dramas, movies and plain music, the artists have to work extra hard to deliver the final punches. If anything, the audience will remember the best parts only. On the other hand, if your play doesn't deliver as expected, the audience will most likely not remember anything or worse, only have a picture of the worst scenes in their head.

Personally, the above two qualities would suffice to qualify to be a blockbuster. But if you want to guarantee success, I guess the best way would still be to follow Pixar. Or well, you can't exactly follow Pixar. Guy (and gals) at Pixar are just cool because of their existence. Perfection is within their blood. While other production houses try to find shortcuts and even sacrifice quality to save time and money, Pixar doesn't even recognize these attributes as possible pathways (maybe money affects a little, but just a little in my opinion). Pixar is the embodies perfection within the industry. Every of their movies is painstakingly perfected to the minutest detail. They deserve my respect from every perspective. Thank you Pixar for providing such high quality work!

Before I end off, I would just like to wish all teachers a Happy Teachers Day! Its because of you the world survives. We will forever be indebted to you for the knowledge that you have passed to us. You have moulded us like the sculptors who mould their sculptures. Bit by bit, you try your best to make us perfect! Thanks a lot for everything!

Psychological Warfare - Movies

2010-08-30T21:33:00.001+08:00

Today, something interesting sticked my mind. Why is the American Army perceived as superior? I think it has more to do than the number of battles they have won while in war. It has to do with your psychology. To give you an idea of what entails psychological warfare, Wikipedia is defined as:

"The planned use of propaganda and other psychological actions having the primary purpose of influencing the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of hostile foreign groups in such a way as to support the achievement of national objectives"

This means, that movies are effectively the best medium to "brain wash" people and implant an idea into the sub-conscious mind. I think, movies are the most effective forms of propaganda.

Unlike a politician giving a lecture, the movie targets your sub-conscious mind. In lectures, your mind is already pre-prepared to receive pro-government and hence, is well defended against white lies and false claims. In the movie theatre, your attitude would be to enjoy on the conscious level. Yet, if you were to watch a movie with the american army involved in some way or another (Iron Man, Salt, Rambo ...), sub-consciously, you go "Wow! The CIA is so cool." or "I really wished I could join the American Secret Service!". The second this thought even crosses, your mind, the American Army has successfully implanted the fear within you.

Same goes for Russian Spies. Its illustrations in many cool spy movies have made the world think of them as god-like.

With such strong yet subtle 'corruption' of the mind, I think every government should sponsor films that depict positively of its army or country. This way, we, consumers, also get better quality films and more action!

What is good design?

2010-08-29T17:53:00.001+08:00

I have often pondered what constitutes a good design. Is it something that looks good on its own or something that fits well with the environment around it. If you haven't realized yet, I am talking about product design, not the designs painters daub over their canvas. In my humble opinion, I believe good design demands retaining the simplicity of any product, if not enhancing the usage of it.

Any discourse on product design cannot overlook Apple's mention. Apple's design is both intuitive and foster's the use of its products. Its both sleek and cool. But if Apple has to credit someone for its designs, its got to be Jonathan Ive (senior VP of Industrial Design at Apple). He is the mastermind behind iPods, iPhones, iPads and .... He is a genius. Apple never fails to surprise me with their design whenever they update. If I look back at the old Macs, I would not have any clue on the improvements possible. Yet, upon looking at the newer product line, the old ones always look pale in comparison. However, Apple doesn't release how exactly it approaches its design so we shall stop glorifying Apple right here.

Other than Jonathan, there is another guy (slightly less known) who is claimed to be the father of Industrial Design. Thankfully, he is kind enough to write about his work. Before I belabor about him, let me introduce to you, the Design Savant, Deiter Rams!

Its really simple: Less is More.

Design is really about complementing the functionality of the product itself. Its not about just the product, its about what sits around the product, whether is it designing a kitchen stove or a laptop or a cellphone. You have to consider the environments it will be in. For example, for a cellphone, it sleeps in your pocket or on the table for most of the time. The primary purpose is really for you to use it for communication. No matter what, it has to perform this functionality at its best all times. But what is the design in this? Well, this means that your answer button and your hang up button have to be prominent. I speculate that it is for this reason, they are coloured green and red respectively. It catches your eye yet not very intruding into your personal space.

Next comes the keypad. Ergonomics is the key here. Most people have already got muscle memory for the layout of the keypads so its best not to mess around with it. Tactile feedback plays a very important role here - especially so for those who email a lot. Blackberries are famous for their keyboards but Apple recently has made breakthroughs by introducing the virtual keyboard. Frankly, anyone would say they prefer typing on the blackberry. It had the proper feedback and the right amount of spacing between the keys. Apple did it differently. The keyboard didn't provide tactile feedback but the spacing was perfect plus a superb algorithm to correct erroneous spellings. It turns out that for a phone, we look at both the keyboard and screen compared to on a laptop where you only look at the screen and the keyboard is "background". Also, the sound played when a key is pressed is very important. Try this for yourself: close your eyes and type on the iPhone with and without the key stroke sounds. The sound has a lot to do with the feedback itself. With the sound on, typing is a lot easier but without any sound, you will get lost quickly.

This reminds me about the sounds made on an analog home phone. I had this phone which would play sounds that sounded like the number that was pressed. Like four would sound a bit like "por" and five would sound like "paai". Even as a young kid, I would know how if I was typing the correct numbers just based on the sound.

With this, I think this post is getting a bit long-winded. I will just end of with the 10 Commandments that govern good design (thanks to Deiter Rams)

Good design:

is innovative
makes a product useful
is aesthetic
makes a product understandable
is unobtrusive
is honest
is long-lasting
is thorough down to the last detail
is environmentally friendly
is as little design as possible

Nerding in Canteen

2010-08-28T23:09:00.003+08:00

This comic reminds me of an incident in the canteen with two of my classmates and a junior.

It started of by my junior claiming that the integral of sin(x) was a finite value. Obviously, sin(x) is a oscillating function (technically i think they call it diverging but i like to oscillating instead as it is'nt really "diverging" in that sense). Seniors won!

Then my friend said. "Sorry, I mean (sin(x))^2." Again, seniors had to win!

He checked his notes and exclaimed with a wide grin, "Sorry, I meant sin(x^2)". All the three seniors fumbled this time. Well i guessed it had a finite value. I had hypothesized that the curve would cover 2pi faster and faster as x increased and hence the function was oscillating with smaller wavelengths each time. We graphed the function just to double check and it was true.

2 minutes later, all of us realized how nerdy that discussion was. Intriguing yet nerdy. We couldn't tolerate each other's "nerdy-ness" any longer and thus split up that second...

Baked for an hour

2010-08-28T19:08:00.000+08:00

What my year 3 teacher taught my thermodynamics class *actually* is true. "The higher the temperature of the surrounding, the less efficient we(humans) become." Deliberate a while - I feel sleepy/tired when the afternoons get excruciatingly hot, my brain can't think... blah blah blah.

Our body is actually a Carnot engine; to be precise, a biological engine. The body acts as the heat reservoir and the surroundings as the exhaust. The larger the temperature difference (i.e. the colder the environment), the more efficient we become (even at sleeping). On the other hand, as the temperature difference approaches 0, we start to deteriorate. Forget about when the temperature difference is negative. We simply won't work!

This explains why I happen to be very veRY VERY productive at night/midnight or very early morning (4am - Yes, I have tried waking up at 4am a few times yet, i have failed to make it an habit - a habit requires you to repeat the same process for 21 days. You can imagine how hard is that for a person like me who needs around 10 hours of sleep daily).

On the topic of engines, I wonder if scientists and researchers working in companies use this exploit to report their mileage. Mysteriously, my father's toyota averages around 11km/L while the reported findings are 13km/L. It *surely* must be the engine problem.

The day my mac battery drained to 0%

2010-08-27T18:08:00.000+08:00

For the past few days now, I have been boasting to my friends about my mbp's superb battery life. I literally never bothered to bring the adapter wherever i go. It was impossible that I would manage to use up 7 hours of battery in school when i would use it for only 5 hours at most. but despite all odds...it happened; it happened just as I was glorifying the mac openly.

Thank you Apple!

So firstly, I switched on my laptop after my maths lesson (first lesson) at around 10am. I was in the library talking about SAFMC (Singapore Amazing Flying Machine Competition - this is a real mouthful!) with Je Hon and Minh Tu. Je Hon was showing us some videos on youtube on my laptop on medium brightness and wifi. Not much battery was wasted - an hour at most. Then I decided to take a nap all the way till 11.30 before my next lesson. I combined 3 chairs and made it into the best medical bed of the century. The curves of the chair were perfect for my spine and lower body. With my bag as the pillow, it was home sweet home.

Je Hon continued using the mac though.
Down to 80%.

The next time I opened it was around 12.30. Used Adobe Lightroom at low brightness and wifi on. Played around with it for about 75 mins before I proceeded to meet Dr Chong where I fired up Xcode to show him a bunch of errors i got while compiling pbrt. I was back in class for my english presentation at 2.

Batter still pretty fine - 60%.

But this is where things start to really screw up. I went to the canteen and met the usual Punju Power gang. Joked around and sidwyn then asked me to show him my mac as he was considering my mac.

Lesson learnt - never pass over your mac to Sidwyn even if he is dead serious about it. Control+Command+Power Button. BAM! My laptop switches off. Ok fine. no big deal yet. switched it back on, and like previous times, Control+Command+Power Button.

Sdiwyn-1
Sanchit-0

I powered up my com again and left it in my bag forgetting that I had to hold 'option' to boot into Mac OS X. (I have Ubuntu, Windows 7 and Mac OS X - by default, Grub appears on start up and enters into Ubuntu.)

Walked around the school, up and down the lift twice, went to the com lab and finally came back the library with Allwin. This time, I got a shock of my life, my laptop was boiling. flipped the lid to realize I was in Ubuntu. Major disaster. I booted back into Mac OS X and had only ONE HOUR BATTERY LIFE LEFT!!!!!!

HOLY CRAP!!

Surely a lot of heat was generated. My laptop had *never* felt so hot before.

Still, i decided to continue with my work, ignoring the scarily low battery life. I really thought mac would magically sustain itself (Maybe it had secret solar cells or could be powered remotely by radio waves or smth).

Replied a few emails, fired up Xcode again to fix the errors and waited for Alex. 50 mins left. 20 mins later, Alex finally came. He had to have a make up lesson for mentoring!!!! That is news - make for mEnToRiNg!!

Anyways, i then transferred 11.5GB of Tom and Jerry from his HDD. Another whammy, dropped to 10 mins this time.

Alex finally started to code in Xcode and Terminal.

And just as I was about to transfer VS 2008 to his HDD, the com dies.

I feel very sad for suffocating my laptop for the first time in its 3 month long history. I am finally at 7 cycles now with 97% health.

Lessons learnt - mac battery actually dies out eventually, never boast too much about your mac, and never lend your mac to Sidwyn.

It's been a long time

2010-08-27T02:50:00.001+08:00

It's been a really long time and the previous post almost seems forgotten. But this time, I am back with a lot of stuff to write about. The past year has really changed me a lot.

But no matter how many excuses i make, I guess why I am really starting this blog again is because I have realized that the documentation of my thoughts will allow me to be more reflective of my actions in daily life and somehow allow me to become a better person.

I shall end of here, but I will return again tmr.

Tips for Entrepreneurs - Larry Page

2009-06-19T13:45:00.000+08:00

Time to waste time

2009-06-18T12:28:00.001+08:00

Hi all,

I am Sanchit. Welcome to my blog to waste time.