Trip to my hometown: The start

The final decision of my departure was taken by 1400hrs on 28/5/2009. I started off to Gowtham's place and met Pruthvi there. We managed to get to a matinee show after searching several theaters a movie called EE Vayasulo (thanks to Pruthvi).

We went in 10 min after the show started and came out 90 minutes before it ended. The Hero was a zero. Watching him and his co-stars act was an awful experience. The Heroine was also unbearable.
We came back and got a couple of CD-ROMS of telugu movies.

We started of for Vijayawada at 2200hrs. The bus was absolutely maintenence free. Thank god that both mine and pruthvi's seats were able to incline. They played the first half of "Athadu" in the bus.

I managed to get sleep after 2 hrs of struggle. I slept for roughly halfanhour before Kodad came(mid course halt) and couldn't sleep from there on. We reached Vijayawada by 0545hrs.

The day passed fine except for a matty feel over my skin due to the unfamiliar moisture in the air. I finally called day off after small snack at Temptations and dinner later on.

Judgement Day

The day started at 00hrs when jeev sms'd me that the results are out for the project and seminars.
I got a staggering 296/300. I was more then delighted for the mark and instantaneously filled up with gratitude for my teachers.
I woke up at 0900hrs and learned that the results are completely out.
I was afraid that I may retain a couple of subjects for some stupid reasons but when I learned the score I got, I was extremely disappointed by the marks awarded.
Before this, I learned of an unfortunate thing that happened to my friend.

No matter how hard you try, there is an element of uncertainty(divine interference?) involved. This is a very hard fact we have to accept as we have no options here.

I got 78% as my score and was quiet satisfied with that by the end of the day.

Moblie phone specs

We come across a lot of specifications for a mobile phone that are rather confusing or abstract.
I here attempt to explain a few of them.

Battery:
Mobile phone batteries do not perform to the levels as specified by the manufacturers most of the time. This may be due to several factors.
-The battery has a definite expiry time. So older models have under performance then latter ones due to this.
-The specified talktime will be considering ideal situations. This varies on signal strength, local phone settings,bad charging and maintenance practices. We should never keep our battery in hot surroundings or charge it for extended periods.
-Every battery has a specified mAh. One ampere-hour is equal to the electric charge transferred by a steady current of one ampere for one hour. So a higher mAh means a higher battery performance.

Display:
The display can be described in two parameters.
1) Resolution
2) Physical size
3)Number of colors.

-The screen is generally available in resolution of 128x128, 176x220, 240x320(QVGA) among a large variety of others.
This represents the number of pixels a screen can display. The more pixels here, the more clarity the display will be of literally.
-The physical size means the length of the diagonal across the screen. This has little to do with clarity but effects the overall presentation of the screen. We should be sure that the above two parameters are balanced in a particular screen. The normal screen sizes vary widely depending on the mobile.
Eg: 2 inch, 1.8 inch etc.
-Number of colors means the color differentiating capability of each pixel. This consumes more battery but greatly enhances the quality of the display.
This is typically about 4k, 64k, 256k, 16M etc.

Camera:
A mobile phone camera cannot compete with a dedicated digital camera(as yet).
All the buzz about higher Megapixels is only a cosmic improvement most of the time.
The most important thing that separates mobile cameras from dedicated digital cam's is the sensor.
A digital cam is equipped with CCD sensors. these are very sensitive, relatively large and

relatively expensive. A mobile is equipped with a CMOS sensor which is less sensitive, cheap, small and less power hungry.
Apart from sensors, the lens used greatly improves the picture quality. Some mobiles are equipped with Carl-Ziess optics which offer a good image gathering capability but still the ones on digital cam's outperform the mobile ones.

The video option on a mobile cam is also a cosmic option. Most phones offer a basic QCIF resolution which is very un-viewable. A resolution of VGA quality will be minimum that would be viewable.
The refresh rate( FPS) of a recording must match the resolution. If not the video may become even worse due to increased sluggishness of the recording.

I hope you got a brief idea about the most important parameters we generally look at firt. If you have any specific doubts feel free to contact me.

Connectivity:
Most midrange phones come with a decent connectivity options.
This means our phones capability to access data services like WWW on our phone itself( Or as a Modem).
The basic connectivity option is GPRS. It stands for General Purpose Radio Service. It has different classes, which specify( over the air) the connection speed which typically will be around 32-64 kbps.
EDGE or EGPRS is another technology that provide enhanced speeds around 300kbps.
The 3G, which is yet to make a strong mark in India( other then BSNL 3G) provides still higher data rates. This makes possible high bandwidth applications lile videoconferencing, video streaming etc possible.
For short distance mobile to mobile communication, Bluetooth and IR serve the purpose.
For higher performance LAN level connections Wi-Fi and WI-Max come to play.
Java:
Java support is almost universally present mobiles. This means third party software's written Java ME can be used on the mobile.

Wolfram Alpha

Finally a hope is taking shape. A hope for an engine that could be better then Google. An engine that gives away more relevant information it knows complimenting web references that we get in search engines.

Let us welcome Wolfram Alpha which promises a better algorithm then Google. It is said to have revolutionary formulas that makes web based searches more rational and meaningful as talking to a person asking him about our search terms.

For example, Wolfram Alpha will not only give a straight answer to questions such as "how high is Mount Everest?", but it will also produce a neat page of related information –- all properly sourced, such as geographical location and nearby towns, and other mountains, complete with graphs and charts.


Experts feel that

"For those of us tired of hundreds of pages of results that do not really have a lot to do with what we are trying to find out, Wolfram Alpha may be what we have been waiting for".

Nikola Tesla

He is one of the greatest scientists the world has ever seen. Yet his name is known to very few people.
He is a person who struggled for the development of mankind but was betrayed by the very people he benefited. A person whose dreams for a better planet got engulfed by the desires of capitalists.

He is a remarkable genius whose inventions are still being experimented and implemented. These range from Ac, AC motor, Death ray, Wireless transmission to ion-propelled aircraft.



The worlds first wireless transmission tower the wardencliff tower.

http://www.ntesla.org/index.php
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Tesla.html

And now if I ask you who invented radio??

Watch out for what you watch

The day started at 900hrs. I called abhi to know his days plans. He answered me at 1200hrs that he has none yet.

I had lunch and started off for abhi and reached there by 1330.

Vam called us and told me that he and bhar are coming over. They reached us within an hour.

We saw the infamous Russell peters show later on.

That was the most disgusting show I have ever watched. Even disgusting then.........

That guy looked like a total looser to me...Take my word, you don't need to watch that.

After that, I came back home and started for my cousins place again.

The day of "Mitrudu"

I came to my cousin Gowthams place on 7th by1130hrs.

He attended college for his Semester exams. He came home by 1400hrs. We had lunch and decided to go for Mitrudu for matinee.

Attempted Review:

It was quiet different from what I thought of it. This was the second movie of Bala Krishna I watched in the theater.

It was good at some parts and horrible at few other places. He really tried hard to give a good dance show but was only in part successful. It was not a one man army type of movie but he was nonetheless a superhero indeed.

The songs were good and the girls better. The second half was better then the first and I did not repent going for that at the end of the show.

The RAM I never got

I and Abhi planned to get a new 1GB RAM for my system on 5th this month.

The day started with abhi waking up at 1200 hrs. Since it is scorching outside we decided that to start off for CTC by 1530hrs. I was sick by then(the mucus ) but I still fought to stand for the original plan.

I finally managed to start at 1700hrs and got down at my cousins place for a small work. I reached Koti(place) by1800hrs where Abhi waited for a full 45min. We boarded a bus there and it started to rain coupled with heavy winds.

Against all these odds we still hanged on to our original plans and got to CTC by1910hrs.

We went to our regular shop where we were told about the incompatibilities of 533MHz and 667 MHz RAM's. Worried we inquired about this in the HP store where we wanted to teach the staff the basics of computer(Darn).

We went back deciding to go with a 1GB 667MHz one we initially saw. Before I thought of saying "we'll take it" to the shopkeeper, I slipped my hand to take out the Rs.500 from my back pocket.

OMG! The note was missing from there. I checked, doublecheked, checked every place of my body that was socially viewable. The note was still missing...........

The singularity of Big Bang has happened again me. I didn't know what to do.

I initially suspected another infamous prank in the making by Abhi but it was not the case now.

I Argued with my dad for this, fought against my body for this, walked in the rain, ate all the dirt the wind brought and at the end of the day I failed to realize my plan.

The amount of money lost is trivial but loosing it at a time like this isn't.

The lesson is that your effort is not the deciding factor after all.......

I thought I could do everything if I wanted to.....But it seems it is not true everywhere.

Maybe GOD, or maybe I am wrong.

The Bhar house camp

I got 4 calls this morning from Bhar which I couldn't answer. I later called him up later asking why he called me and ALAS! there is an impornant meeting to which I need to attend immediately.

I went by there in a cab and dropped by. by 10:30AM.

The rest SLOWLY turned up thanks to Abhi and south central railway......

We had a good lunch at suruchi in Habsiguda where we ate chicken biryani, some noodles and some shezwan dish. We made a lot of mess at the hotel.

Bhar packed some sweetner we get with the bill in a tissue paper and bought it home, and Abhi left a 23/- as the tip there.

We later came home and abhi pressed some keyboard and we had some discussion after which we started some cricketing.

Thanks to Abhi and Jeev, the teams were very much dependant on these as they can potentially turn the tide in the other direction.

My batting capabilites were throughly displayed to the croud And I continued on to eat the morale of the bowlers by sticking on till the last over.....

Bhars mom finally returned home from office and cooked some snacks to us. We later started off for our respected homes.

And lastly I showed Abhi how to respect elders in the bus and got down.