Water in a Tubelight

Captured on the train while coming back to campus. There's water in the tubelight, and its a wonder how the tubelight hasn't short-circuited yet. Here's 'Nisarg Saundarya' (Nature's Beauty) for you VAB, not outside the train but but right inside it........ :)

Cube Hunt

Puzzles have always fascinated me right since childhood. I have solved a variety of puzzles available at the local toy shops back home. On the second last day of college before a Diwali break, I was in a friend's room chatting with him when I saw a puzzle there which I had been unsuccessful at solving a long time.

The Rubik's Cube, one of the oldest puzzles available and also one of the most popular, was lying on his desk. Suddenly, my interest in it was rekindled, and I just had to buy a cube and learn how to solve it.

As soon as I got home, the first thing I did was get myself a cube from a local fair. The cube wasn't of a very high quality, but was decent enough to learn how to solve.

Jump to a month later.....

I had bought a cube but due to the busy exam schedule, I hadn't got an opportunity to actually analyse and solve it properly, though I had tried to play with it for a couple of minutes whenever I got the time.

Finally, after trying repeatedly to unsuccessfully solve the cube, I turned to Google™ for help. Finding a tutorial was simple enough. During the journey back home, I finally learned to solve the cube, but was still a little shaky.

During the vacations, I could finally perfect my technique but ended up spoiling the cube in the process......

Here's where the cube hunt began.....

I wanted a cube that was of a better quality that I already had. The first place I thought of was the toy store from where I used to buy all my puzzles a long time ago. However, unfortunately, the store had only one cube, but that was of a very low quality, compared to my cube.....

I tried going to a few more shops in the vicinity, but there I had trouble even getting the shopkeeper to understand what a Rubik's Cube is.

I had to visit my relatives in a neighbouring town. I tried visiting all the major shops there too, but to no avail....

Finally, there was one last shop left which I thought might be having a good cube for sale.....

I go there and find that all their cubes were sold out just two days ago. I asked the shopkeeper when new stock would arrive, and he told me that I would get a cube in a week....

Now the problem was that the vacation was almost over, and I had to return two days later, and hence my dream for a better cube remained a dream.

Hopefully, I will be luckier next vacation and will finally be able to procure a cube, and continue learning to solve it faster than the basic method I am now familiar with.

Until I get a new cube.........

A 20 paise cheque

A 20 paise cheque..........

So rare in our times, ain't it?

The Start of Something New

These winter vacations, as with any other vacation, I was looking for something new to do and increase my exposure and give me more experience. In college, a few introductory lectures had been delivered by our seniors on "Microcontrollers".

I knew an old friend (old as in the duration of our friendship, not his age ;) ) who had some exposure in the Electronics and Robotics field, and I asked him to guide me as I built a programming board for a microcontroller.

He knew about the Atmel AT89S52 microcontroller, so it was the same microcontroller I chose.

I asked him to make me a list of all the components I would need to make the board and I bought all the components from the "Mecca of Electronics" a.k.a. Lamington Road.

I already had the basic electronic stuff such as soldering iron, flux, rainbow wire and the various tools with me as I had been making electronic kits (simple stuff like clap switch and listening bug etc...) since as back as 9th grade.

Soldering all he components onto the board took about a day at max, when I realised that I was a few components short, leading to another trip to Lamington Road (This happens quite often in electronics)

Finally when I had all the components ready and soldered, I went to his house at 2pm on one fine day, so that he could do the touchups , check the circuit board and help me begin programming.

As with any electronics kit, this one also had a few problems and believe me hardware debugging is a lot more irritating than software debugging. The power was not at all reaching the 7805 transistor, so I had to desolder it and put a new one in its place.

Pray to God that you never may need to desolder a component off a board...... It is the worst thing that can happen to you in electronics......

Now, back to the board..... Even after replacing the 7805, the power did not reach it so we came to the conclusion that the track was faulty...... We shorted the track, and another track and finally the circuit began to work.

By this time it was 11pm so he quickly showed me the way to write a program and burn it on the chip (we did not have time to do it then.....). Then I said a quick bye and thank you and left for home........


The next day, I decided to try making my own program. The first challenge was getting Keil and the burning program he had referred to to make the programming wire. Finding these took 2 hours together, after which I finally sat down with a Mazidi Mazidi to try out a sample program.

Using Keil was simple enough but then burning the hex code to the chip was more of a problem than it seemed. It seemed that errors while occuring randomly while programming the chip. I finally realised that holding the board in the air while the programming took place was the most secure and error free way to burn the program onto the chip.

I wrote a simple LED blinking program to begin with, and the burning was finally successful and I actually saw the LEDs blinking in the way that I had programmed them to. It was an exhilarating feeling. It was like the first time I did something new and worthwhile in a long time.

Such moments are very rare and can never be forgotten....
I may forget which microcontroller I used but I definitely won't forget the sheer thrill and joy that rushed through me when I could make a computer program do something in real life.

These moments usually occur like the time one learns to ride a bicycle, or writes his or her name using a mouse in Paint on a computer for the first time etc......

Such moments are truly magical and will be treasured by me forever....................

Christmas Concert 2k7 @ BSS

It has been four years now......

I still remember the day I last performed on stage as a part of out Christmas Concert in school, my School - BSS.......

It was so much fun and excitement - eight of us, all hefty, dressed completely in black and present on the stage during the whole Std. 10 segment of the show...... technically the main characters of the complete skit showing the circle of life starting right from birth, childhood, adolescence, love, adulthood, marriage, parenthood and ultimately death...... and our part was to depict the way they changed us as each of them occurred.......

Fast forward four years....

Here I am sitting in the audience on Day 3, watching the grand Christmas Concert as it unfolds before me, the way it used to for so many years, with my sister performing for the last time on stage, the same stage I last performed on four years ago. All the dances, the themes, the performances..... all sparkling.

It was exactly the same... the same as it was in our time, except for a few minor changes I would not like to go into..... The same kind of performances, energetic and enthusiastic, with makeup on their faces.......

All the students coming together to make the show a grand success......


There is so much more I would like to express but I'm just not able to put it into words....... so that'll be it for now.......

Later.............

Taare Zameen Par

I wanted to watch a movie this winter vacation with a few of my friends........

Unfortunately due to our 'busy' vacation schedules, we found it difficult to co-ordinate the activity and I ended up watching it with my family instead......

Anyway, luckily for us, we could get the tickets for the first day, first show.

So as the movie says.... 'Every child is special'..... I find it pretty true......

Some children are good at studies, some at sports, some at music, some at arts etc. It is the fault of the education system that does not allow children to grow in the way they want and excel in the field of their choice. Everything is so studies based and that is exactly the theme of this movie....

The child shown in the movie is dyslexic due to which he is unable to read or write properly and the letters appear to him as dancing due to which he is unable to associate them with words or objects and hence finds it difficult to understand their true meaning, leading to failure in all examinations. His elder brother has always been the class topper and this causes his parents to think that the child is lazy or just does not want to study.

Instead of counseling their child, they decide to enroll him into boarding school against his wishes and this further aggravates his problem causing him to lose all his self confidence and leading him into depression and loneliness. Enter Aamir Khan as the art teacher. He soon finds out that there is something wrong with the child and decides to take an active interest. He finds out that the reason for his poor performance is dyslexia and decides to teach him privately and helps him overcome the problem, soon improving his academic performance and restoring his self confidence........

This is the general plot of this movie.

It is a beautiful movie directed and produced by Aamir Khan himself showing the struggle of a dyslexic child through his childhood, with even his parents not being able to understand his problem. His weak skills in academics but a strong interest and ability in drawing and painting is shown nicely. Several scenes in the movie really touch the heart and bring tears to the eyes. The music by Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy is as usual upto the mark and makes the movie an excellent watch. The actor portraying the dyslexic child has done a wonderful job and deserves appreciation. A sentimental movie but a definite must watch as it helps us appreciate the fact that we are 'normal'.

Until next time..............

The Origin of My Display Name

OK. So I took the first step......
It was the hardest one to take.......
To start a blog.....
Have been wanting to for months now........
A writer with limited creativity as myself... does find it hard to write even a sentence without thinking twice.....

Anyway... leave that aside....

As the title says.... The Origin of My Display Name


I was attending a Mensa AGM.....

We were having a general quiz and we were asked to make up team names for ourself.....

We named ourself "Einstein's Brains" or something similar.... but another team named themselves "Mental Havoc"

And thats where it struck me what an awesome name "Mental Havoc" was for my cyber identity....

And thats from when I came to be known as Mental Havoc on the internet....


Thats it for now.......

Until Next Time.....