Author: Pradeep

  • Global Voices Summit: Insights into citizen media and protest movements

    I know of at least two of my friends in the Wikimedia world (@busydot and @psubhashish) who attended this summit. But, I share this post more for some of the keen insights into the recent protest movements and their political transformations (look at the India Against Corruption movement and it’s political avatar, the Aam Aadmi Party) and their use of social media for their narrative.

  • 2014

    The year 2014 was a year for review, taking stock and then boldly going where many have gone before. I would never have guessed at the beginning of the year of the scale of changes that swept through my life in this year.

    I got married.

    I reduced the vast areas of interest to geography, space and digital sciences besides having a professional interest in banking and financial services. I pruned out my various memberships to reflect this change in my professional affiliations and hobbies. I continue that process in 2015.

    I went on my first international trip to Malaysia.

  • Malaysia

    Our first trip to together after Marriage was our first trip abroad to Malaysia. We flew from Kochi to Kuala Lumpur, thence to Langkawi and then back to Kochi from December 10 to 16. We had a wonderful time.

  • Our Wedding

    10984059_10200152360167275_8861360194185534929_nAlthough I had seen weddings of cousins and friends this was still new to me. Our weddings are short and sweet with the whole process getting over in under 2 minutes if you timed it. But, this small tradition marks the beginning of a life long relationship between two people, two families and two family trees.

    Our marriage was held at the Sree Pavithra Auditorium in Alathur at 11:30 AM on Sunday, 7th December, 2014.

  • Public Talk by Dr Seetha

    Last Saturday I was at Nehru Planetarium, Mumbai’s Sky Theatre listening to a talk by ISRO’s Dr Seetha. She was working with the Mars Orbiter Mission and from my understanding on the Mars Colour Camera project. She is also a principal investigator on the Astrosat Project.

    IMG_0686.JPG
    Image: Dr. Seetha giving her talk at Nehru Planetarium, Mumbai. Image Credit: Pradeep Mohandas, released under a CC-BY license.

     

    Nehru Planetarium director Arvind Paranjpaye introduced Dr. Seetha who comes from a background in astronomy and who was working on the instrumentation of telescopes at the Kavalur Observatory. She moved to ISRO once it began the Planetary Sciences Division at PRL, Ahmedabad. She was among a group of scientists who moved from astronomy to space division within ISRO, a fact that was thus far unbeknownst to me.

    She spoke of some of the challenges faced by the ISRO team whilst putting together the Mars mission – the usual facts about the need for the longer coast phase for the PSLV, the need for additional ocean based terminals provided for by the Shipping Corporation of India, the re-starting of engines and of-course the Mars Orbiter insertion. She spoke of how the once in 26 month opening comes for a mission to Mars works and also answered specific questions on spacecraft instrumentation redundancy and radiation and thermal shielding. There were a few request for apps. She said the spacecraft may have enough fuel now to do a 1 year mission even though though it was designed for a 6 month mission thanks to the inserted orbit. She asked the audience to follow the mission via Facebook and Twitter for more exciting picture releases and perhaps even a few science results from the other instruments.

    I hope ISRO does send more of its scientists to talk to the public in gigs such as this. She said she understood that there was public was restless about the speed at which the pics were getting released via Facebook and Twitter but said that the speed was slow down a bit as the scientists get down to the science. In a private conversation with her, I got a chance to thank her for the better quality of pics that were now being made available. She said that better technology enabled this.

  • Diwali @ Work

    IMG_0677.JPG

    IMG_0676.JPG

    IMG_0679.JPG

    IMG_0678.JPG

  • Cast my vote

    IMG_0669.JPG

  • മലയാളം എഴുത്ത്

    മലയാളത്തില്‍ എഴുതാന്‍ ഉള്ള ആഗ്രഹം ഉണ്ട്. പക്ഷേ എഴുതിയത് ശരിയാണെന്ന് ഉറപ്പു ഇല്ല. അത് കാരണം എഴുതാന്‍ ഒരു പേടി. ഇതു മാറ്റി എടുക്കാന്‍ ഒരു ശ്രമം നടത്തുന്നു.

  • The Red Marble

    The Red Marble, this is what I thought we’d call the first global image that would be returned by the Mars Orbiter Mission. The name is inspired by the famous 1972 image known as the Blue Marble. This was made possible by the highly elliptical orbit that the spacecraft was designed to take. Today evening, ISRO put out the first global picture of Mars. It kinda looks more like Mysore Masala Dosa, no?

    IMG_0634.JPG
    Image: Regional dust storm activities captured by the Mars Colour Camera on board the Mars Orbiter Mission. Taken from an altitude of 74,500 km from the surface of Mars. Image Credit: ISRO.

    Emily Lakdawalla explains the importance of this image in this blog post. If you are interested in what specific features this image covers Phil Plait aka The Bad Astronomer covers that on his blog here. Stephen Clark of SpaceflightNow reporting from the International Astronautical Congress 2014 at Toronto, Canada reports that ISRO Chairman Radhakrishnan announced that 4/5 instruments have now been activated at the Space Agency Head’s Panel. All good news!

  • Life Essentials of the Future

    A growing fringe of people have begun adopting them – renewable sources of electricity and segregation of waste and other small contributions towards climate change. Many people still scoff at the idea, including my parents. These will be life essentials one day. Buy now so that you get them at a cheaper rate. Demand for these May send the prices sky rocketing in the future. Zenrainman says it too