Nirenjan’s Space

I just came back from my Microprocessor exam. I had a relaxed start in the canteen and came to our block around 8.20 when I got the news that all the guys had already gone for the exam. I rushed to the lab, and found a single question paper. My luck held out as I got random number generation & square of number using look up tables. Raju & I finished the paper around 9.30, but the external examiner was nowhere to be found to take the viva. So Kanchana Ma’am told us to wait for a while. We - Prashant, Raju, Babu & myself - were practically roaming the block to while away the time waiting for the external. He walked in about 10.40 and began asking us questions from every subject except Microprocessor. We have prepared for a Microprocessor exam and he’s coming and asking us about microwave!!! I guess everybody would have screwed up the viva. Oh well, gotta go & prepare for Communications-I.

The exams are just around the corner. My practical exams begin on Monday, with Microprocessor on Monday & Communications-I on Tuesday. I have completed my preparation for µP but haven’t yet begun communications. That’s the paper I’m a bit worried about.

Back to my internet presence, I’ve been trying to get a better look for my family website. I’ve found an interesting site - MyFamily.com, which provides free password protected family websites. However, the free version offers only 5 MB of space, which is just too little. And the 100 MB version costs money, which nobody would put forward. And as I’m stuck without a credit card, I can’t pay either. But even if I could pay, I wouldn’t. $ 30 is a lot of money here, even per year. I think I’ll stick with Tripod for the time being, with their pop up ads and what not. If somebody is willing to put forth the money, I’ll gladly upgrade. On the other hand, I could just get an old 486 and install a Linux server in my own home. The only drawback is that I need a domain name for that. Damn, looks like everything just costs money.

Well, let me get back to my work…

Sometime last week or the week before, The Hindu had published a nice set of statistics which Kiruba reproduced on his site. I have only one thing to say now. NEVER TRUST STATISTICS!!! Oh well, atleast India came to the finals after such a long gap.

Yahoo!!! My model practicals are over! Considering my mood yesterday morning, where I was in a negative frame of mind, I was annoyed that I got an experiment which we never did in the lab - FSK generation. But she had told us earlier that to generate FSK, use the same circuit as FM, but for message signal, use a square wave. I connected the circuit and got the output immediately, considering that it took the entire class, let alone me, almost 8 weeks to get the output for PPM, and 2 weeks to get a perfect FM output. Luckily for me, all the components worked and I got my almost perfect output immediately. With a little tweaking here and there, I got the output absolutely perfectly to the last sample. Oh yeah, I did invert channel 2 (the message signal) to show high frequency for 1 and low frequency for 0. I actually got high frequency for 0 and low frequency for 1, which is incorrect. Either the CRO had some problems or the IC itself was not working properly. Then I got a simple Matlab program to write - convolution. The program I wrote on the paper had a few errors, but after analysing it in Matlab, I managed to correct those. Oh well, all’s well that ends well…

Yahoo!!! My calculator has successfully recovered from its dunking. So far, it is working fine.

I had my first model practical examination today - microprocessor. Shockingly, she was asking questions which we never did in the lab. Like, I got BCD multiplication. It may sound easy to you, but let me tell you, it’s no mean feat coding it in 8085. I managed to get it in about 30 lines of code. But considering that it took me almost an hour to get the logic, I hope that she doesn’t ask out of syllabus questions again. It’s just too tough to think on an altogether different wavelength than what we’ve been doing for so long.

I still have my communication model practicals tomorrow. My guess is that I’m gonna flunk…

Looks like calculators & I don’t mix. My new calculator got a nice dunking in a bucket of cold water. I have to take it for repairs, again.

I finished my exit test @ IIT today. Pretty easy questions, coz I was expecting something tougher. I’ve now got my certificate, and a lot of experience with ADSP processors.

I am becoming more of a Rammstein fan day by day. Now that I’ve heard Das Modell, I don’t think I’ll listen to another western group again. Except maybe for Las Ketchup.

I just checked my mailbox. Unfortunately, I saw the mail from Kiruba too late, as a result, missing the Chennai Bloggers Meet. Read about it here.

Great! India have won their 7th match in a row, beating New Zealand and making it really tough for them to proceed to the semi’s. I hope Sri Lanka beat Zimbabwe and put New Zealand in their place. It will also make things hot for the Aussies.

My net connection is getting slower and slower day by day. People who see my net connection for the first time say it is really fast, but only I know the truth. Only a couple of days back, my net was so slow that even the college connection seemed faster than mine. But atleast I don’t have to pay any phone bills…

Finally, one record of two completed. Microprocessor Lab record should have everything completed tomorrow. That includes the bonafide certificate. Communication Systems record however is a different story. It’s a real pain in the neck, literally, to sit and write 10 experiments at a stretch. But the last date for that is only the 20th. So I still have some time.

I just finished booking my date for the GRE exam. I’m taking it on the 4th of August. I now have to start preparing really hard. Also I need to get my passport. Let’s see how tough the new format is. Naveen’s also taking it on the 4th, though I don’t know if he’s writing it in the morning or afternoon session. I have to call him & tell him. Looks like SSN will be empty during the last 2 weeks of July. Apparently, a lot of people from CSE are also writing it on the 4th. Let’s see…

I’m still wondering what happened to the lab class for two modules - Adaptive equalization and OCR. The PA’s said that OCR would be a demo. All bullshit. They didn’t even tell us about the OCR module, where it would be, etc, etc. And they didn’t even talk about adaptive equalization! I don’t think I got my money’s worth from the course. Most of it was good, except for this. Maybe I should talk to Vinesh about this.

Finally! The DSP class is complete! What with the scene put by the Project associates. I just finished mailing my programs to the rest of the class, so that they can study for the exit test. That is being held on the 17th. I still have to see Sridhar’s program and see what his coding style is like. I don’t think he’d have written his code as compactly as mine…

Finally! All the lecture sessions in the DSP class are over. Now I only have to complete the power analysis module. Today, BR continued his second part of the Baseband communication lecture. Only that Pasupathi explained the transmitter so well that even Jhunjhunwala couldn’t have put it better. Venky & I finished the transmitter quickly after Pasupathi explained it. That’s when Poornima said she was going to check our A-law program. Venky went through the program and got a patch cord, albeit a bad one. We wound up working for over 15 minutes, trying to get the program to work. Luckily, Omprakash had an extra cord and we replaced ours with that one.

However, even after replacing the cord, my voice started sounding like a car’s brakes, with a rather high pitch squeal in the background. We changed the block size and it came out sounding worse, or so we thought. Poornima saw the output and said it was great. Then, we went on to show the outputs for the Image restoration and Adaptive echo cancellation modules. Now, the only thing pending is the Adaptive equalization and power analyser modules. Oh and the OCR demo. I don’t know how we are going to complete it in just 6 hours.

Finally, I’ve completed my image restoration module. Although Pasupathi thinks that my answer is wrong, the others think it is fine. I did that with two thresholds, with the lower threshold giving a better result. I also completed an adaptive echo cancellation module. I don’t know if they plan to do the adaptive equalization module, which is pretty simple - if you have done the echo cancellation module successfully.

Back to the day of the match, apparently the roads were absolutely empty. Looks like India - Pakistan is a really hyped about match - especially in the World Cup. Winning that match is probably better than winning the World Cup itself.

I have to get down to clean my hard disk of all the junk it has. I also need to find out how to use Magic. I’m unable to use a setenv command in Red Hat. Probably need to go into root mode. Oh well…

What a match! What a match!! An excellent innings by Sachin. A blazing start by India. Shoaib hit for 18 runs in his first over. Two sixes - one by Sachin & the other by Sehwag. I don’t think I saw a more thrilling match.

Yesterday, we shifted the lab to the morning session and left in the afternoon to see the match. Vijayendar & I got a van. Since there was no place inside, we got onto the roof carrier. What fun! Some things that only college life can provide. Then we caught a 19G bus. I got down at the signal and went to Ranga’s place, and hence, missing half of the Pakistan innings (and Anwar’s wicket, I might add). But I did see the whole of the Indian innings. No surprise as to the man of the match - Sachin was absolutely brilliant. I think the Indians have well earned a rest.