Parallel Spirals

Standing on the shores of space-time…

Blog

  • Caring for your jobs

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://pradx.wordpress.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on September 17, 2008 as per the permalink. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    Global meltdown, job cuts and dipping of interest in jobs seems to be the flavour of the season. Accordingly, I’m bunking college today due to sickness.

    September 15 was engineer’s day. It is celebrated to mark the birthday of the great Statesman-Engineer from India, Sir M. Visvesvarayya among whose many achievements was the first hydroelectric project in Asia at Jog Falls.

    On the occasion, we reactivated the Mechanical Engineering Students Association (MESA) in our college. As the first speaker, we got Dr. Parameshwaran (an erstwhile dean, Faculty of Technology, MU). He’s a great, old school speaker to have who gave his speech without many of the modern aids (no ppts, no computers or even paper in hand) that a speaker normally uses.

    He talked to us about caring for our work – “Even if you are a sweeper at a railway level crossing, work so that your railway crossing is the cleanest in the world.” Visvesvarayya said that and he quoted it during his talk.

    With so much stress paid on effectiveness and efficiency in jobs today, I think that we miss this subtle force – caring. I think, once a person cares about his work, effectiveness and efficiency usually follow.

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  • imagiNATION

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://pradx.wordpress.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on September 17, 2008 as per the permalink. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    A pass time that I cultivated long ago in the hope of expressing my skills in geography, civics and science is called imagiNATION. That’s short for imaginary nation. It also expresses that the nation is part of that person’s imagination. Two of my cousins and my brother also have their imagiNATIONs.

    My brother took the name Elvenia because his birthday falls on the 11th of December and also because he’s fascinated by elves.

    I stand by a name that came to me on a geometry box that my father brought for me. My imagiNATION is called Helix.

     

    Helix

    Helix (There was a MS Paint generated map here that is forever lost?)

    These nations actually refine themselves as one matures. You can keep on adding new innovations there and use it as a playground for testing something that needs to be done in the real world.I also plan to write an imaginary travelogue. Has anyone tried one?

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  • Using Google Docs in College

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://pradx.wordpress.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on September 17, 2008 as per the permalink. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    In India our exposure to technology in getting things done has been limited to Windows and the Office suite. Few students in the mechanical engineering department use computers for their work unless it is forced on us by the syllabus. We still prefer the green graphs and writing on paper.

    For my final year project at Air India, I’m trying to convince my group mates to work in the Google Docs environment to hack together our final year project. The ease of sharing and collaboration that I experienced in Docs through my work with SEDS is essentially my source of inspiration for this. For us, who missed out on most of the computer bandwagon, I think it would be necessary to work in the Internet environment.

    Recently, I saw my brother read about being responsible netizens in his English text books. Although, most of Indian education has remained in the analog state, it might soon be time to switch over to computers or even mobile devices for education.

    Besides the final year project, I’m also planning to work on a smaller scale presentation for a subject, Manufacturing Production and Control (MPC) along with a friend.

    As I’ve already said (and is Microsoft or Google listening?) we’ve gone on a Windows system for campus, but not many people know about it and people are still largely on Yahoo and Google systems online. There have also been a few installs of Chrome and Firefox on the traditionally IE 6 platforms.

    I will use this to share more of my online experiences here.

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  • The Chathurthi Celebrations This Year

    Mumbai and Maharashtra celebrate the Ganesh festival every year with great zest. This year the focus has been on eco-friendly celebrations –

    1. Symbolic immersions of house hold idols. Before the time they became community events nearly 75 years ago, the home made Gamesh idols were immersed in water in home ponds, kept there for some time before placing it back in the house. These have been revived as a way of not polluting water sources elsewhere in the city.

    2. Making of clay models of Ganapatis which are said to dissolve faster than the currently used plaster of paris ones.

    3. Lalbaug Ganapati mandal (the organisation which manages the festival at Lalbaug) are going for carbon credits to offset their carbon emissions.

    4. Purchase of idols from organisations such as NASEOH (National Society for Equal Oppertunities for the Handicapped)

    5. Reviving traditions of Maharashtra among school children by organising plays, fancy dress competitions etc. These are better ways to spread Marathi culture, which once you’re acquainted with are really great to read about.

    6. Lesser noise and sensible use of loud speakers. There’s been really less noise compared to last year. The sensible noise pollution rules have been well implemented this year.

    7. Pestom Sagar Citizen’s Forum converting waste PoP into bricks

    Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the man who started these celebrations to bring unity among Indians against British rule is hopefully proud of such socially and ecologically aware celebrations. Next year, I hope organisers will take the next step in preserving and representing the culture so that it is preserved for generations –

    1. Video recordings of gatherings,activities etc.

    2. maps on Google or Yahoo! on locations of Ganapati mandals. 

    3. sharing photos on sites like Picasa and Flickr and even integrating it with maps.

    4. records of electricity used and decibels recorded for looking at possible ways to save electricity.

    These are just pointers. I hope that much more is done to try and integrate and save traditional practises through modern medias.

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  • Su-Do-Ku on trains

    One of the recent past times I’ve started doing is Su-Do-Kus. Very ancient now and most of the fads have gone but it is still a good refreshing mental exercise to undertake during your morning commute to college. I do three Su-Do-Kus a day, just for fun. 

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  • Telescopes of India update

    I thought a general update on the ongoing efforts with Telescopes of India might help. I’ve moved all the content to an all-new blog. I’m still putting together a list of observatories I might want to visit. I am also thinking about a way to decide which observatories I might want to go to and which I can skip. I’m looking out for a sensible way to determine a cut-off. 

    On the new blog, I’ve also added the first Maps image where I have traced the IAO at Hanle and the Kodaikanal Observatory. These are searchable on Google Maps, but I thought it would be cool to have all of them on one map which can be updated and made available online easily.

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  • Floods in Nepal and India – Google’s dedicated pages

    If anyone was planning to watch on the latest in the flood situation in eastern India and Nepal, they can log on to the specially prepared Google page.

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  • A Day of Rest

    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.

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  • Telescopes of India tour – Blog

    I thought that moving it on its own blog will allow it to remain visible to as many people as possible. Find the blog here – http://telescopesofindiatour.blogspot.com.

    Catch it there. You can get the RSS feeds for the blog here.

  • Telescopes of India Tour – consolidated account

    I have created a consolidated Google account for all matters related to Telescopes of India tour. Please send future emails to this account – telescopesofindiatour at gmail.com. I have also setup a seperate blog where the information that I collect during the tour will be stored. I will share the web address with you next week. Stay tuned.