Fuzz: More Random Thoughts

Marking the instrument on P&ID and making Inspection Test plans on the excel sheets. He sat there wondering if this is it.

“Concentrate” his boss had told him the other day “do not expect anything technical, this is what you have to do now”.

He got Goosebumps.  He looked around… A room filled with A4 sheets, Xerox copies, big files, markers, computers with open excel sheets and PDFs, a cup of tea every two hours and occasional trips to the water cooler.

No, this can’t be it. This should not be it. At least that was not the plan.

Irresponsibly Yours...

“You are such an irresponsible ass” shouted my roommate Yosee. Wait! Who? me? Of all the words I have expected myself to be called, that word was not one of them. “Oh! Yes… Irresponsible” sang the rest of my mates in unison.

Well… maybe then. So during the one and half hour bus journey from college to Thrichur, I switched myself into Self Analysis Mode. And know what? I have given everyone all the reason for them to call me that.

To be brief, I have in my four years of college life lost… two wallets with around seven hundred bucks, two drafters which is an important engineering instrument, seven pen drives of which three of them were not mine, i.e around 20GB of important data. (I even got death threats from one of the guys from whom I borrowed one of the lost pen drives), two calculators, another very important instrument, and again both of them which weren’t mine. Four headsets (all of them mine), wasted a phone by jumping into water completely forgetting about its presence in my pockets, Never ever had proper studying materials during the exam seasons, became an editor of a magazine which never saw light. Huh! What a loser. And now, Yosee’s lab record which is one whole semester’s hard work.

... Of Mothers / Managers

Having a classical dance teacher as your mother is a pretty tough condition. You know, for one, you’ll be waking upto those monotonous classical songs every day, you’ll be subjected to thunderous ‘tha-thayyams’ during the class hours, you’ll have young girls running around your house yelling at each other, you’ll have their mothers gossiping in the drawing room till the classes get over everyday ( that means putting up fake smile to hide the irritation for not being able to watch T.V for at least four hours) and worst the only subject your mother happen to speak will be about ‘adavus’, ‘mudras’, ‘thillanas’, and the various artists in the field…. which all comes across as Na’vi to me. But that’s irrelevant; the topic I am writing is actually about the mothers/managers of the students.

Who wants to be the Good Guy?!?

“Don’t worry… You are the Good Guy” said my friend to cheer me up when I was complaining to her about life’s unfairness. “Remember, good guys get the girl in the end” she suffixed.

Ya, right. Thought I. Get the girl in the end. In the end?? Ha! So senseless. You see, this guy goes through all the trouble throughout, loses everything he has and is in a complete state of perdition during the whole first half. He spends the most of second half planning revenge with a girl who helps him out of pity. His lone friend is killed or loses a leg to villain’s tyranny. He is sad, dejected, disappointed and angry unless until the last ten minutes.

The bad guy on the other hand is suave and cool. He has all the fun. He gets to beat up the good guy in the beginning, has loads of money to do every sort of stuffs, gets to sing an item song while shaking legs with a hot girl, have cool dialogues accompanied by a weird laugh throughout, except for the last ten minutes when he is shot in head at point blank by the good guy after a short chase.

So, when everything starts looking bright for the good guy, the movie ends. Now!! Who the f*k wants to be the good guy??

WHEN WE DECIDED TO BUILD OUR OWN AVATAR!!

It is not really Star-Trek teleportation, but being transplanted to another place as a robot is really cool. So did we found out. It all started with an article in IEEE Spectrum (09/10) by EricoGuizzo (When my avatar went to work) explaining the nuances of a telepresence robot, that really hooked us. In it, he explained how his creation QB, lets remote workers collaborate with others in ways that a wall mounted monitor in a conference room could never permit.

Free Fall

Suddenly.... there was no ground beneath my feet. It all happened in a fraction of a second. I was swiped off my feet and pushed into thin air. I was in a free fall condition.

I was weightless, felt the adrenaline rush through my veins. I experienced the ecstasy of a sky diver. At that precise moment, I realized the intensity of the situation. The thought that I may hit the ground with a big 'THUD' any moment ran chill down my spines. I tried to hold on to anything in a desperate act but couldn't get anything. It was completely dark, I closed my eyes and felt the wind on my face.

I tried to slow my fall by spreading my arms and legs. But the air resistance was negligible compared to the weight of my body. I was still accelerating downwards at 9.8 metres per second square. With every passing moment my potential energy was getting converted to kinetic energy. I tried to cry for help, but the voice coming out of my mouth was blurred and indecipherable.

The fall was taking its toll on me, I was feeling dizzy. In those moments I realized that I have been completely vanished from the phase of the earth. I thought about my parents, my friends, would they be worrying about my state of existence or do they... even care. How can I expect a significant response from them when my input into the life had been negligible.

My whole life flashed before my eyes. I felt wasted. With what aim had been my life designed by the Great Engineer, I wondered. And how terribly have I deployed from the basic principles to work on own fuzzy logics. Frustrations....

My mind wondered, Now where was I falling. Considered all the possibilities. There was no exact answer. Uncertainty principle rules out exactness. Everything has a probability, a chance defined by a number between 0 and 1.

Probably, I was falling into a deep pit from where there could be no possible escape and I would have to stay there for eternity. Wonder if there could be any water below to cushion my fall. Or maybe I was falling right into center of the earth, where all mass is concentrated, where due to intense heat and pressure, everything is in molten state and maybe where I'd have to remain as a chunk of mass till the death of the planet.
Possibly it could be a wormhole which may lead me to a completely new place in the universe, where Time has no meaning and all the fundamental laws of physics fail. Or maybe.... I was getting liberated. From this tyrannous world, I was nearing the ultimate energy. 'Moksha' I thought.
I felt at peace.

"Hey, You!!!" I was interrupted by a noise.

Who may that be now? Any new form of life which is angry with me because I unknowingly entered its territory and breached its solitude. Or..... Or was that sound of the Great Engineer Himself.

"Do, thannoder" (malayalam meaning, 'hey,you'). I opened my eyes.

"THUD!!!"

Jaya miss was standing before me. Damn this was electrical period and I dozed off. I stood up, looked around, everyone was looking at me and laughing.

"Well, Sharat. If you want to sleep you need not sit in my class." she said.
I put up a lame smile. She walked back to the front rows and continued with her class. I looked at my watch, 12:10 it read. Five more minutes, I thought. I tried to copy the equations on the board into my notebook. The teacher walked towards me again and asked
"Enthinaa.. Padhikkane???" (mal: "Why do you bother??")

MINDCASTING!!

Before you people get any weird thoughts, let me explain that by the word ‘mindcasting’, I’m not referring to process of attaching a sensor device into the brain to study the brain wave pattern like in EEG and all. No, this is not a technical article. I’m referring to a fad that has taken over us in the recent times. A fun, which has become a craze, and which is slowly turning into an obsession.