A Day of Rest

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The whole of last week was spent in writing about and preparing for the Telescopes of India tour. I have got a wonderful response to my initial post both on the blog as well as via email. I thought I’d take a well-deserved break and do some personal stuff.

I was thinking back to my early days (when I was about 12 years old) I made an imaginary country of which I took over as President called Helix. I got the name from an old geometry box my dad brought me. I had filled up two notebooks worth of paper with various drawings, maps, city plans and what not. Yeah, even had a list of Kings and Presidents from 23 BC. My country is supposed to have started in 23 BC. That came mostly because my room no at the time was 23. BC sounded lot cooler to a 12-year-old than AD. So, that’s when the country started.

I remember I even designed the capital city. I probably lost the stuff while moving homes. It’d have been great to put such designs online and see if anyone thought it worth anything.

If you’re curious the capital city was called Hellington.

Telescope of India Tour – Responses

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First of all, I’d like to clarify that this tour is now being backed by SEDS India. It’s an organisation that I have been leading for the past 4 years now and we’re under the process of registeration.

Now that, that’s out of the way, I have been getting quite a response to my yesterday’s blog post and emails to several mailing lists that I have been on –

  • Manoj Pai from Confederation of Indian Amateur Astronomers (CIAA) wrote in with some words of advice. I really appreciate that.
  • I got a reply from Halit and Bijal from Space Generation Advisory Council asking for any help in communicating with IYA teams.
  • Svetlana Shkolyar from the 4Frontiers Corporation wrote to me. They’ve developed packaged tours for visiting space centres in the US. On the page, they’ve also mentioned about doing something similar in India, with ISRO. They’ve offered to do something similar in the US. It’s an exciting prospect and I will definitely give it a thought.
  • Vikrant Narang from SPACE wrote in to me and has offered to give me a helping hand in organising trips in North India. Thanks, I’ll get in touch with you if I need any help!
  • I’ve also got emails from Kalam Nagappan, whom I met during IAC and Rajdilwar about joining me on this trip.
  • Rashmi Bansal editior of the student mag JAM also wrote in. Turns out her dad works for ISRO! Cool!
  • Update: I’ve also got an offer from Planetary Society, India for free accomodation and visit to observatoryin Andhra Pradesh and facilitation of accomodation if more number of people with the help of Government of Andhra Pradesh.

Thanks for your emails guys.I will reply to you individually as soon as I can. Also, if you’re planning to do something similar in your country, please do write in to me using the contact form.

Telescopes of India tour

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Next year is the International Year of Astronomy. I hope to make a small contribution towards this by going on a “Telescopes of India” tour. I plan to go around the country and visit the various radio and optical observatories in the country.

What will I do there? First, learn about what they are doing there and why. Second, talk to the people behind the observatory to learn more about their work. Lastly, I want to enjoy as much as I can.

Right now, the trip is in the planning stages. The only thing that is certain right now is that I am going. As a first stage I plan to make a spreadsheet of all the Indian observatories and a map of these locations.

Want to help? If you are part of any observatory in the country, please do write to me with the details using my contact form. If you would like to send any words of caution, suggestions or advice, please do leave them in my comments. I also encourage you to do something similar in your country.

Advice to MahaGenCo

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MahaGenCo is the company responsible for generating the electricity consumed by the people in the state of Maharashtra. Here’s a bit of an advise for them, even if I know they won’t be reading about it here.

I learnt about a few people behind MahaGenCo when I met them at the Bhira Tail Race Water Plant as part of my study project for Hydraulics Machinery in my sixth semester. While there the Plant Manager told me that MahaGenCo was having a hard time get funded for new power plants in the state and that their planning and implementation was failing way short of the supply requirements of the state. It’s made the state a power deficit state – which means that they now need to borrow power from the neighbouring power rich states.

I should have probably supplied this advise to him but didn’t. I am sure MahaGenCo can setup an internal Power Consultancy Department which can provide energy audits, enable the setting up of non-conventional energy resources at home and let the people take up generating the extra load they consume themselves. This leads to a better awareness among people about the difficulties and investments required in generating power that they so love to waste. We are going into greater power deficits and this is the only move that let’s people understand the technological limits of power generation today.

The Department can also be a source of income for the Company which it could probably invest in an internal R&D cell. This cell can in turn make innovations in the hydel and thermal power industries which can be shared with other State companies on a royalty basis.

MahaGenCo is a much maligned company just because they have to shut off the power supply in case of heavy rains or even because of lack of rains. There have been recent incidents of blackening the faces of company officials because they had to shut off the power supply because of the power deficit on the grid. It’s best if the officials help the people produce their own power and hence escape from the wrath that they face every season. Details need to be worked up but I know they are really good at combing through the details.

The Left and the Indo-US Nuclear Deal

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I have heard ideological, electoral, religious, operational and communal arguments why India should not sign the nuclear deal but have not heard a single scientific reason why it shouldn’t be signed. This is really why I think that the Indo-US nuclear deal should be signed. The Left got one chance to be close to the power at the Centre and in my opinion, they ruined it. After this debacle, I’m not sure how the Left plans to get itself elected at the centre.

On the other end of the spectrum, the BJP stands against this deal too. But, their arguments are atleast more practical. They request for a discussion on the floor of the house about clarifying certain points with regards to the deal. But they too have failed as an Opposition party in bringing out the scientific opposition to the deal.

The US officials added their words in and the Indian media played up each and every one of their comments. That just made it more difficult for the Indian Government to go ahead with the deal. It’s made it so difficult that they will probably loose their majority in the floor of the House.

I really can’t understand why the BJP wants to come to power now. It’s a really bad time to be a Minister. Everything is going wrong. The oil prices are rising, agitations are swelling up everywhere, inflation is really high and one can only imagine the life in rural India. So, they should probably let things cool down a little before looking for power. But, I guess their strategy is to hit the Government when it as its weakest. It remained largely silent during its tenure as opposition party with the Left slowly bringing the Government to this stage and then the BJP joined in when the Government was at its weakest. The Left now are shirking away from the responsibility of killing the Government and the Right is only happy to take over.

I think the Government should throw away all caution, sign the deal, raise the oil prices even more and let a people who have been living in luxury for more than 10 years come to Earth with a thud. It’s really what’s needed and what will bring people to their senses. They can then go away happy that in the long term the country will benefit and will actually thank this Government for the wake up call. Now, we are just in a dream.

If they are voted out this year, let the Congress play the role of an active Opposition and project the next leader – the next Prime Minister as an Opposition leader and help the country understand the role of the true Opposition party.

Well, that’s all I have to say, I  am really sure that no one is going to follow this advice, but what the heck, it’s out of my system at least.

NEO Study Center Needed

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After the discovery of the Shiva Crater (on Wikipedia), I also found what seems to be a crater in Rajasthan called the Ramgarh Crater. All of these sites are really in a rough 500 km diameter around Mumbai. That’s like drawing a target with the centre of the bull’s eye on Mumbai. And Space seems to be playing that game and is coming really close to the city. Earlier, since humans did not exist at all, it was not really a matter of concern. But now, it might be.

It is with this idea that I propose to start a NEO (Near Earth Object) Study Centre in Mumbai. This is an amateur effort which means – it’s voluntary but atleast I think it is worth the effort. Studies here will have an impact off closing links with study in the United States and Europe and probably coming up with a better complete picture.

Think about the impact of a meteorite/comet today. How prepared are we for it? What kind of disaster management efforts can be made in case of an impact? What would be the effect of an impact in the Arabian Sea on Mumbai and nearby regions? These are some of the things that we plan to study at this centre.

To start things off I’m planning to make a detailed study of these three craters – Lonar, Shiva and Ramgarh. The preliminary ground for these studies will be this blog. We can then probably shift it to a blog of its own once we have enough resources planned for the NEO Study Centre.

If you’re interested in joining in, leave your comment and I shall get back to you. You can be based in Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat or Rajasthan to be a part of this Study Centre.

The PRADX Project

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Many of you may have wondered how this ‘Pradx’ came into existence. Clearing out some of the junk, I find that an earlier explanation for it turned out to be wrong. The earlier explanation was that it came as a result of my online names – everything had a prad and then changed into something else (-eep, 2609 etc.). Therefore the x was more like a variable that could be changed to add some new thing and formed the basis of a good url. This explanation is partly true.

However, this has a deeper root than that. I started coming online only when I was 18 and my first email id was ‘jneeskans’ which pretty much tells you why that explanation doesn’t hold true. It seems that at round about the age of 18 – September, 2004 if you have a thing for precision – I started a small self-improvement project that I labelled the Pradx Project. It was a set of experiments that I could do with myself. The Pradx Project envisaged me engaging online, reading tons of books on philosophy, engaging in sports and a series of what I would now call DIY projects. For the age at which I started this project, it was pretty neat and well thought out. It included elaborate timelines, list of people who could help me with stuff, saving patterns to help me raise funds for the DIY projects, a lot of notes about books I could refer to on Philosophy and even setting out an exercise plan for me to follow until I could grow down from my 85 kgs to the prescribed 76 kgs. In short, it was well thought out. It was secretive and even had the following inscription on the first page –

The Pradx Project
Top Secret. Do not go to the next page unless you know I’m dead.

The reason why I’m telling you this is because I’m going to destroy all of that stuff and I thought an overall entry about it here would be fitting before I put it to rest. It’s a pretty comprehensive document with quite elaborate writings on where I wanted to be and where I was. It pretty much took up a long book of about 200 pages. The darn thing even had footnotes and margin notes. It seems to be revised twice (it’s a practise that I saw in online open source projects that I loved). As of now, I know that it was too ambitious to have been attempted at that time. Heck, its even ambitious now.

The reason why that project fizzled out was because of lack of money and a stupid understanding of where I was. I spent most of the money on the Net and some of it buying books on Philosophy (The Tao of Physics, Commentaries on Living, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence, The Space Within the Heart).

But, I like the idea of a Project for self-improvement. It kinda rocks. So, I’m going to restart it 3 years since it was buried in the archives.

Today is Day 0. The chief idea is cleaning up the stuff that I don’t want now. It’s an idea that’s based on the GTD techniques. But, after that I leave that road and travel on something totally different and perhaps even radical. A weekly post on the Pradx Project can be expected from now on. I am not going to buy a notebook for it this time. Else all I will do is write about the project and not actually do it. The stress is on doing and not writing about doing.