Shakti Kapoor saves the day!

I had a stupid EDCS paper today and I was asked to present a B-plan out of nowhere. I never did 1 before. I am sitting there looking at the paper with no clue about any other question. The only ray of hope was B-plan. And then it struck me. All these years of worshiping Govinda had finally paid off. ASGM gave me a great idea. And I presented a B-Plan for the same mini-motor wala fan! I think that it was actually believable. I cant believe I am saying this but Shakti Kapoor saved the day!

Abhimanyu @ COEP

On Friday, 21st March, COEP quizzing circle gathered on BC for ‘Abhimanyu: The Intra-college Solo Quiz’. The quiz was set, monitored and and conducted by BCQC. Last year’s winner Aniket Khasgiwale was supposed to be the quizmaster. But he was unavailable, so it was conducted by Niranjan and Ramanand.

Elims were conducted two weeks earlier…this time by Aniket Khasgiwale in a very innovative manner. He showed tremendous resourcefulness as he carried out the whole session by reading out questions from his i-Pod. 8 finalists were selected at that time- Abhishek, Gadre, Kaustubh B, Yasho, Mohit Karve, me (for the first time), Avnish and Aadinath:the Enthu-Fresher.

The finals were in 2 parts. 1 general round and 1 specialty round. Each finalist had given a topic of his own choice on which he was asked 10 questions. My topic was, not surprisingly Michael Schumacher. I could answer only 5 out of 10. Got 4 wrong out of ignorance and 1 by over-confidence!

Other topics were-

Avnish- Foundation Series:Asimov

Aadinath- Tin Tin (Though his 1st choice was Tour de France, quizmasters refused to set questions on that. So poor guy had to take this 1)

Mohit- Formula-1

Yasho- Yes Minister

Kaustubh- Iron Maiden

Gadre- World Cup Football

Abhishek- XKCD

Finals were very eventful, with quizzers delivering all sorts of performances (ranging from pathetic to excellent). Abhishek won on Gadre’s last question.

Disclaimer

Some people (read Khasgi) seemed to have taken my post on MindSpark very personally. I have nothing personal against the organizers. Most of them are my good friends. That post was written entirely from the point of view of a frustrated mech student (read Me) who is trying desperately to be as +ve as possible about the whole situation. So please forgive me if anyone is hurt (not like that many people read my blog anyway, but still…)

New usages of English words

Professors in my college are trained to use english in a very flexible manner. So they use the words interchangeably or even invent a few. For example, a professor coined following phrases-

1) to abstract out (A pump is used to abstract the steam out of the cylinder)

2) to be harmonous (Some working fluids like CFC are harmonous to human health)

Also see Flexible Usage of Grammar

This is a good practice. May be this is why our answers in the exams are also very innovative!

My take on MindSpark

I presented a paper at Axlerate’08 in MIT. Did not get a prize but it was a good experience. After the presentation I was told that the certificates were misplaced and I will get them later. I said great! Another effort to improve my CV gone fruitless. Because I had a same experience from my college itself at MindSpark’07. I participated in the idea presentation competition ‘Save the World’ and I got a certificate that was not even signed. No participant of Save the World had got 1. It was as good as ‘Raddi’. So I went to the MindSpark office to see what I can do. They took that certi and and told me to come after a week. I dont know why, but a teeny-tiny part of my brain believed that I would get it back. But, not surprisingly, I still haven’t got it. I tried a couple of times a month later and now I have given up. So I thought that Axlerate effort was also vain. But to my surprise, I received a call from the organizer, two weeks later who told me that my certificate was ready. She apologised for the delay and was even ready to deliver it to my place. I said you kept your promise, thats good enough and I collected it myself.

I dont care that I didnt get the MindSpark certificate. The point is..that MIT people kept their promise and accepted that it was their mistake. In case of MindSpark, nobody was accountable for the blunder. I think the reason why this happened is because MindSpark was introduced by scrapping all the departmental events. Mechanical department had a well established technical event ‘Fervor’ organised by MESA. I had worked for Fervor team for 2 years, and I was very dejected when MindSpark was announced. Our director had his reason for introducing MindSpark. But it was not fair for mechanical department. So there was hardly any response to MindSpark organizing committee from mech dept. MindSpark supporters pointed out that single event for a college is a universal thing, like in IITs. But those people are accustomed to that from the start itself. That was not the case in my college due to departmental differences.

I worked hard for Fervor to establish my position in the MESA managing committee and I just didnt feel like doing so for MindSpark. I think there will be a few people from my department who will agree with me. In couple of years MindSpark will be well established as people who had worked for departmental events would have passed on. But a few like me suffered the indifference of the first outcome.

Stinking HT

Today we were made to take down this gigantic equation with like a million parameters in Heat transfer. Professor said that we have to mug it up. And what are going to be the problems like in exam? We will be given values of all those parameters and we just have to substitute them in the equation. So whats the point???? Get clerks to do that why engineers? Why not just understand the funda to use the eqn and use it in practical applications? Suppose you face a similar problem in an assignment in ur job, what will you do? Will you tax your imagination to remember this gooey formula? You will open JP Holman and find out this formula. So why bother? What will you achieve by mugging the thing that you will  probably never need?

How Stuff Works

Part-1: Bus Depot, Sangli

I was standing in a queue for reservation. I was 5th in the row. My turn came after 25 min. But that was not new for me. There is no computer, but the tickets are hand written. Sangli is a district place in so called developed state of Maharashtra. Computerized reservation is such a basic thing nowadays. But thats not how it works here. The standard procedure for reservation is like this- you tell the person sitting across the window the day of journey, destination and time. The man then finds out a register for that particular bus out of a huge stack. Then he slowly turns the pages until he finds out the required date. It takes him an eternity to find out an empty seat. He confirms everything again. . Finds out the relevant page in the ticket book. Then looks around for carbon paper and inserts two pieces in the booklet. Slowly writes the ticket. Fills the register. And all these actions are according to the standards established in government offices-1)Customer is the least important thing in front of you and 2) Do not make any movement faster than 2 cm/sec. Then he asks for the money in change. Bickers about something or the other. Whew!!! Finally you get the ticket.

Part-2: Prepaid rickshaw stop, Swargate.

I reached Swargate from Sangli at 10 in the morning. Came out of bus stand and went to pre-paid auto-rickshaw booth. There was a traffic police officer standing next to it who was supposed to attend the travelers like me. But instead, I found him smoking a cigarette (which by the way is illegal at public places). I tried to ask him very politely if I could hire a rikshaw. He did not even bother to look at me as if I was speaking to an invisible man next to him. I waited for an answer. Nothing! After seeing me trying to talk to him, a rickshaw driver came and said I should not disturb the officer but should go with him. But he was not ready to accept the fare by meter. He offered a flat rate. 50 Rs for Karvenagar. Obviously I was not going to fall for that. So I had to cross the busy crossroad and go to the nearest rickshaw stop to get a fare deal. Fortunately I did get 1. But thats not good enough. When you travel for 4 hrs to reach Pune in ST buses, you expect to reach home without any further headache. Thats exactly why these pre-paid rickshaw stops were introduced in the first place. But like all good schemes, this 1 was also broken down by the Police and rickshaw organizations together because they are the ones who will have to compromise.

Part-3: Teqip and Library
Teqip is Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme. My college is funded under this programme. There is a feedback session to be carried out to check the progress implementation of plans accordingly. Today I attended the same. Before that we had briefings about this programme from various professors and our director. Everybody emphasized on its importance and asked us to give a positive feedback. But that was quite understandable as the further grants are dependent on this feedback. I also thought that it was my duty to help my institution and I gave a very positive feedback. I was very proud of myself until I went to library. These library people make sure that my opinion about them is degraded with every visit. Two years ago our library was a book lending shop. We had to place an order on a particular day and return next day to collect the book if it was available. This system was as pathetic as it sounds. This was changed from current academic year and now we have free access. But still our library is in no respect a modern library. Here, the organization of books is the most disorganized activity. All the books are bar coded and are issued by swiping. But still we have to fill the little yellow papers in them for record. We have to make an entry of the book while leaving the library in a register. I mean whats the point of bar coding? We still have to get the books issued by the same old method plus an additional step of swiping it. In spite of all this, there are always instances of wrong records. We can keep the book for 7 days. No no…not the way you know it. We HAVE to keep it for 7 days. Not a day more, not a day less. We cannot renew it. If we are late, we pay fine. Here also they have made it sure that we will be miserable to the maximum possible extent. We have to collect a Chalan from store, fill it in, pay the fine in bank, deposit 1 receipt in bank and 1 in library. So much for a fine of Rs. 5! Ever been to BCL? This whole system sounds ridiculous, doesnt it?

My professor is a Robot!

I am serious. Yesterday, something happened in the class that triggered this thought. Suddenly the electricity went off and this professor went blank. It was like his power supply was cut off and he was just standing there looking at the board blankly. Then suddenly he said “Where was I?” (Maybe used his backup power!). And his processor hung again. Finally when electricity was restored, he was back on track but he repeated half the stuff…maybe he didnt hav time to save the backup. (He claimed that he suddenly went blank bcoz he was distracted when the lights went off, but that must be std defense mechanism to hide the identity). I m not lying guys, I hav witnesses!

So then I suddenly realised that he must be bound by the 3 laws of robotics.

1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Never seen him trying to harm anybody and stuff…tries to kill us during lectures by causing brain damage, but he does not consider students as human beings, animals instead.

2) A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

He obeys the orders given by ‘Humans’ according to his programming, the HOD, director,etc.

3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

His statement earlier for self defense is a clear indication that he tried to protect his existence.

Definitely a robot!

Long live MIT

This MIT refers to the 1 in Pune. My paper has been selected in 1 of their events…aXlerate. This would be my second paper in aXlerate( Ye!!!!). So thank u MIT!
Last year my partner was Aniket Khasgiwale(See Khasgi). Last year we did the presentation just bcoz the topic was Pit-stop technologies.(Long live F1!) We had great fun, but the judges were not satisfied at all. They couldn’t understand the gravity of saving 1 sec in pits. Anyway, so that was great! That experience helped me a lot in my 2nd presentation, again on F1 (Safety in Formula-1) at MindSpark in COEP.

This time my partner is the gr8 Avnish! Our topic is Magnetic Refrigeration (Sounds very techie, doesn’t it! But the tech part was covered by Avnish. I did what I m best at- advantages, disadvantages, applications future prospects and decorating the paper!). We are looking forward to a great Sunday!