Nirenjan’s Space

OOPS!!! Looks like my downloads have gone over the limit. Too bad…

Yahoo!!! My life with labs is finally over. No more labs… well… at least at the BE level.

My downloads are critically high for this month. Thankfully, only two more days are left, so I can control my downloads easily. Else I’ll wind up paying extra for anything over the 500 MB limit.

Since my lab exams start tomorrow, I won’t be using the computer much, let alone the internet. So it’s bye bye for now.

I’ve finished installing Windows 98 in Chelli Athai’s computer, along with all the usual extra software. Unfortunately, the system does not detect her USB printer. The printer, which was powering up yesterday evening, does not even turn on now. Whether it’s a fault with the power supply or with the printer itself, I do not know.

Well, I think the problem was with the power supply, as the printer is turning on. But the driver which I downloaded from the HP website does not run. It just says loading… and closes immediately. And XP does not even detect the additional hardware when I turn it on. Most likely, it’s a problem with the printer again.

With my interest in DSP increasing exponentially, I’ve decided to put up a small section on DSP on my website. It should be up within a week or two. I’ll add sections as time permits. It should be useful for me, as well as for budding engineers interested in signal processing.

We had our model lab today. I got isolator & circulator as my experiment. Initially, I was unable to get the output from the klystron tube, but in a few minutes the square wave output came. After that, it was a mere formality to complete the experiment. The viva was also easy, conducted by Jegadish Kumar.

In any event, I got the bonafides and completed signs for both Communication & Control Systems records. So I won’t be going near the college for the next 3 days. Sathish wants me to come to his place to install the modem. I’d better go soon.

Chelli Athai also wants me to fix her computer, better do that also.

The review yesterday went off beautifully. Radha just saw two graphs and said that was enough, even when we had 10 more graphs to show!!!

The university practicals begin next week. Hopefully, I should get the signature in my control systems record by tomorrow morning. I’ve given it for correction, and it should be ready by noon tomorrow. Tomorrow we have a model lab for Communication. I hope it’s easy coz I haven’t prepared anything for the lab.

Today we had the freshers party. As usual, we had a lot of fun, singing, dancing and just fooling around. Thankfully, Monday is a holiday.

The condonation list had just come out today. Luckily I managed to escape, but I can’t understand how Rama got into that list.

As far as the project is going, PCR saw the output on the Widrow’s filter. Pusari said that the value for µmax has to be calculated, so we have to do that. But PCR doesn’t know that as yet.

PCR saw our output and wasn’t satisfied initially, as the frequency plot axis wasn’t OK. I normalized the axis and it went off fine. Then I also managed to implement a variable step size LMS Widrow style noise canceller. Now we are working on the original project, the sinusoidal interference canceller. Venky, Muthu & I have to go to college on Tuesday for that.

Now we have college tomorrow, as a compensation for Sports day, no doubt. I’m wondering when they’ll start compensating for Fresher’s day, the holiday after sports day, Orbitce 2003. Probably they’ll even compensate this year for Orbitce 2001!!!

Unfortunately, the interference canceller worked nicely only for large noise. It didn’t work for a low noise system. I don’t know what went wrong with my implementation, but the simulation is coming out nicely. I think I’ll just try to implement the system in the processor from scratch.

I’ve finally received my microwave realuation results. It’s all clear!!! I’m so happy today. I’ve also managed to design the interference canceller for the project. It’s working beautifully. I just have to show the results to PCR on Tuesday or Wednesday.

I received two of my three revaluation results today - Instrumentation & DBMS. However, there’s still an ambiguity of whether the mark they have mentioned is out of 80, that is externals only, or out of 100. Gowri says it’s out of 80, but then again, I’m not too sure. I have to call up the university tomorrow and confirm it.

I went today to college to begin my project. However, I wasn’t able to get a clear idea of how to implement the cosine table in assembly. I still need a C compiler to create the data files for the program. I did manage however to get some form of simulation in MatLab. However, even that was wrong as my error signal was coming as a noisy waveform instead of a sinusoid. I still don’t know what went wrong with that code. But I wouldn’t have completed even that section of code if it wasn’t for Mr. Nelson who taught me how to do the entire code. I still have a lot to learn in MatLab.

Yahoo! My net connection is back online after almost 30 hours of non-existence. For a user like me, it’s a real handicap being without internet. I planned to try to get a Texas Instruments manual for the instruction set for the TMS 320 series of processors for the project. Also was downloading a bunch of wallpapers for my PC.

The net connection went off about 3 in the afternoon yesterday. It got restored only now. A couple of Hathway guys came today evening and said that the signal in the cable was weak and left to check it out. Then I got busy with other stuff, and saw that my GRE score report had come. I have scored 4.5 out of 6 in the analytical writing section. Not bad, considering that my issue essay wasn’t all that good. Guess I scored a 5 in the argument task and 4 in the issue task.

Now, Shiv Nadar’s coming tomorrow and the college is all spruced up as usual, including the fountain head being brought in at the 11th hour and being polished and the pool being cleaned of all the mud and cement bags lying inside it. Mark my words, the college will return to its old state the very next day after Shiv Nadar leaves. He had better put up a surprise visit the next time. When he sees the actual state of things, the college management is going to get it up their rears.

My project has been finalised (I think!!!) and we’ll start it tomorrow morning. PCR’s told us to finish the first section, that is, the 50 Hz cancellation with fixed weight. Let’s see, I think I can finish it tomorrow itself.