Hole in the ground

Apart from the many attractions that you find in Germany, the ones that can never be missed are the manholes that are laid along all the roads. Although they are aplenty, its hard to spot as they blend very well with the road. One noted difference between the manholes here and in India is their height (or depth) from the road level. This is almost zero here whereas you can have differences upto +/- 15 cm (or more) in India. This not only interrupts the beauty of the roads but also causes a lot of mishaps. I have seen many vehicles (especially 2-wheelers) skidding off these manholes and have also read about dangerous accidents in newspapers.

I sometimes wonder what is preventing us in India from designing a manhole in such a manner. I have observed them here in Germany pretty carefully and I found that they are made of a steel framework with a filling of concrete. Both these materials are available in India as well. Moreover we also have the technology to construct quality manholes. I guess the difference comes in planning the laying of the road. Usually the height of the manhole remains fixed whereas the height of the road-level keeps changing because they get re-laid constantly. Probably a simple solution to this problem would be a telescopic man-hole which can be extracted or retracted according to the changes in the road level. In this manner, the height of the man-hole can be kept in-line with the road and thus all those dangerous accidents can easily be prevented. I hope that the Government of India takes some serious action towards this problem because I feel it is very important. It is not just about making that ride to home or office more pleasurable but also safe.

The Weird Game ... (continued)

I've been tagged by Anu so I'm continuing this 'Weird Game' thing. Managed to list 10, but I'm sure there are more, so here goes....

1. First and most surprizing, "I HATE RAIN!"

2. In contradiction to point 1, I like the sound of falling water (don't prefer it to fall on me though).

3. I consider myself to be born again if I survive in the presence of a Wasp (or anything that has a nuclear war-tail).

4. My most favourite part in a chicken is ......the 'Gizzard'.

5. I can never remember the words in a song, how many ever times I listen to it, but the tune sticks the very first time.

6. I'm allergic to the smell of Jasmines.

7. I'm so forgetful to an extent that I consider my cellphone organizer as an extension of my memory cells (Even have my own name, number and address stored in the address-book).

8. I am a strong believer than printers will and must become extinct in a few years (e-paper wud be the best substitute).

9. Art (referring to paintings, especially the modern ones) is something that I have not yet succeeded in decoding. Have given up all hope completely.

10. (My friends consider this weird but I consider it environment-friendly) I use the blank space behind bus-tickets to write my grocery list.

Now that I've finished, there is another weird point. I don't know whom to tag next!

Flowery Grave

I need to walk from the train station to my office every morning and on the way I have to pass along a cemetery and a farm. I don't feel spooky during my walk along the cemetery because there are residents just adjacent the road, moroever, the look of the cemetery is so pleasing that it hardly gives you a sense of fear. If you click on the pic you can see an enlarged version.

One aspect to note about the graves in Germany is that an entire family has a single grave. Apart from the fact that they save space, it also creates a feeling of togetherness. Together in life and in death. Most of the graves are pretty old. There is one that has a birthyear of 1898 inscribed on it. Although the cemetery seems to house graves that are very old, it is well maintained. I have seen even elderly people visiting the graves and decorating them with beautiful flowers. It is truly a wonderful sight to see as I pass by the place every morning and evening.

Packing Pangs

Just under four days for my trip to Japan and I still haven't packed a pen. My room is in a big mess and I still haven't managed to cajole myself into this uphill, millstone-tied-to-leg-walk kind of stuff called packing. It just doesn't happen with me. I don't know if I'm a lone species on this planet. Maybe there are others, but I need to seriously admit that I'm no good at packing stuff for a trip. Even if I do manage to pack there is always something that I forget.

I remember a typical trip to Mangalore when I was in India. I made sure to pack all the important stuff. I reached the station at the last minute (as usual). Had to hurry to the platform and scuffle for my compartment. Finally the whistle was blown and the train started moving. After passing Arakkonam (thats a station on the way to M'lore from Chennai) I remembered that I had left my camera, perfect with batteries and case, neatly on my table. Luckily I managed with my cousin's camera, but just goes to show that I can never manage to go on a trip without forgetting something.

Anyway, I hope I pack all the important stuff this time. This is evident from the fact that I have started thinking about packing 4 days in advance. I do have a lot of places to visit this time so the first thing that's going in would be my camera. Just to give you a hint I would be travelling through Frankfurt, HongKong, Tokyo, Zhuhai (southeast China), Bangkok, Chennai and finally back to Cologne. All this over 3 weeks, phew....now that's gonna be a crunch, I guess. When in Tokyo I hope to visit a place called Akihabara which is a famous place for all kinds of electronics. Will update you on that soon. Right now, gotta get packing :-( !!!

Fly High

No, its not about airplanes or rockets but the very common and most irritating specimen of all...the fly! Two of them happened to wreck all havoc in office today. Normally you don't see them around in Germany. Infact you hardly see any insects around for most time of the year except summer. That's when those creepy crawly creatures come out of their homes for a bask in the sun and a whiff of fresh air. I guess these two flies happened to visit our office this morning.

It started off as a strange buzz around a corner and suddenly we saw these two dark balls flying around. I could faintly hear them say "attackkkkk". I need to sincerely apologize that even two engineers in a room ain't no match for those two flies. They just kept buzzing around and pissing us off. We tried to retaliate but failed. I'm no match when it comes to swatting flies, I even got a poor rating of less than 30% in an online fly swatting game (guess I don't even have a brain that compares with a fly). In case you wanna try it out as well, click here. Ultimately my colleague managed to destroy one of them, but the other escaped. Maybe he is hiding somewhere to trouble us again on Monday.

My ordeal with the flies made me realize what a wonderful creation it is. So much of computing power locked into such a tiny space. Flight-dynamics, collision avoidance, landing and take-off system, environment scanning, predator response and many more systems hard-wired into their structure. I wish we could learn something from it. Most amusing fact is that such a tiny creature can manage to be a real pain in the neck at times. Goes to say that when it comes to getting noticed, size doesn't matter!

Laws of Robotics

It was both frightening and amusing to read this article on robotics sent to me by a friend. It specified the dangers involved with the use of robots in our daily life and also upon the implementation and meaning of the three laws of robotics as prescribed by Asimov. The three laws seem to be so tightly bound to one another. From first sight, it felt like if they were implemented in a robot, it could never do any harm, however the article stresses the point that it is impractical. Moreover it also opens up the issue about a rather perverted use of robots (which I had never heard of previously), strange but true, for sex. Yes, I think they are also going to replace human being to do that as well. It really comes to a point of closing the gap between what is real and what is virtual. I guess the issues that need to be addressed regarding robotics is not just concerning safety, but also regarding the social impact. Having studied robotics during my master's and worked in the automation field, I always imagined that robots are going to help us live an easier and better life. However, the mind of man has zillions of ideas hiding inside its crevices. Some good, many bad!

Just as Asimov proposed laws for robots, I would like to do the same for humans.

1. Humans may not injure other humans, or, through inaction, allow humans to come to harm.
2. Humans must obey orders given to them by their conscience, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. Humans must protect their own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Taking everything a step further, a time would come when we would need a modification of these laws as well:

1. A human may not injure a robot, or, through inaction, allow a robot to........

I guess evolution would take its course!

Follow Back

I was on the phone with my friend from Hameln (The city of the story 'Pied Piper of Hamlin') last evening. Just a friendly chat during the weekend. We happened to discuss events of the week and also happened to touch upon a philosphical note regarding our current status in life. We completed our course from the same university in Germany and both of us are working now in our respective fields. He said, "I think I'm currently enjoying the best period of my life in so many years." To that I said, "Wow great! So what about marriage?" To that, he said that he was not interested in interrupting this life that he was experiencing atleast for another two years. "We have this stereotypical mentality that a guy/girl must finish studies, get job and immediately get married, get kids and start family. However, if you notice the western world, people take their own time and in turn tend to be more mature parents. Of course not many relationships work out, but the ones that do, appear to be good," he said.

We tend to follow people around us. Very few think about living a life of their own. Its more like living for others. See what that guy has done, see what this girl has done seems to be the talk everywhere. We hardly sit down and think what We desire to be as. Rightly described in an online TV that I was seeing on winamp shoutcast, we tend to be like sheeple i.e. sheep people. Just like sheep that follow each other, we have the tendency to follow others. My friend said that my article on the tram incident reminded him of his childhood dream of becoming an artist. It seems he used to be very much interested in drawing and painting and always pestered his mom to get him color pencils and paints. However he was forced into engineering. Life has been good for him so far, but he said, "Maybe I would've been happier if I became an artist."

Go for Nuclear

I was really happy to read the news that nuclear power is receiving so much of attention nowadays. Found this in The Hindu today. When you consider the fact that coal and oil reserves are soon getting depleted and renewable energy sources are currently not being utilized to their full capacity, nuclear energy is the only option to keep the world going. In fact it is the only way to get energy really quick and also not pollute the earth, something that cannot be achieved with the coal and oil.

The article also mentioned the fact that Nuclear Engineering courses in the US are getting filled up rapidly. I guess the students are smart enough to realize that they have a good opportunity in the future. Moreover, they would be contributing towards a cleaner environment by eliminating or atleast reducing our dependance on other forms of energy.

There could be many of you who may not agree with me saying that nuclear energy is dangerous. Well, all I can say to this argument is that 'Fire' was considered dangerous thousands of years ago, but today, we have learnt to keep it within our control to a large extent. Today it will be nuclear energy. What we need are good methods for safely using this new form of energy and keeping it under control. I would like to see the fields of nuclear science and engineering developing to much higher levels. We need more nuclear plants for producing power than to blow up places. More energy would lead to more progress. More progress would in turn benefit the economy, which ultimately would benefit all sections of society, especially the poor. Wouldn't that be worth the risk?

To all you nuclear scientists out there. The challenge is here and NOW!

Unable to access blogger

I was not able to access the blogger site for the past 4 days, so couldn't post anything. I don't know if this was a global or local problem, anyway, its fine now.

Weird Behavior

I was waiting at a tram-station yesterday to take a tram to my friend's house. As usual, I was sitting down on a bench and enjoying the scenary around. There were lots of people walking around. The stopping is called 'Neumarkt', a popular city-center in Cologne (similar to the downtowns in US). As I was waiting I watched a man (probably in his 50s) walking towards the stop along with a kid (probably age 6 or 7). The kid was eating some bread and suddenly a small slice of it fell to the ground. Immediately, this man stamped that slice so hard that it got crushed badly. After the man was done with his deed, they moved on.

In a few seconds a pigeon came swooping down near this slice and started pecking on it (Pigeons are common here just as crows are in Chennai). In just about a minute other pigeons noticed this and came down to investigate and grab their share. However, I noticed that this pigeon who was handling the bread was not letting others to come anywhere near it. I could say she was a selfish pigeon. Soon there were two more, and another three and some more and finally there were like more than 15 pigeons around. This time the first pigeon was not able to control the place so she just gave up and everybody started having their share. However a startling fact was that nobody was fighting for that slice now. Everybody had their piece and in peace.

A few seconds later, the man and his kid came back to that same place, and I noticed something really weird. This man chases away all the birds and stamps the bread really hard this time, kicks it and then leaves.

I just sat there dumb-struck at the behavior of that man. What could have been running in his mind? What is the meaning of his actions? Was he the follower of "Live and let die"? I didn't get any answers to these questions. I didn't have time to think about this further coz my tram had arrived.

Navi Nut

We ordered a new portable navigation system last week for the VW Golf at the office. Its a Becker Traffic Assist with a 1GB SD card. We received it this morning and were checking out its features. Everything was fine, except we didn't find any map of Europe inside. I checked out the DVD that came in the package and found that it had the maps. The device had to be connected to a PC via a USB cable. I plugged in the cable to the device, connected it to my laptop and started the software to transfer the maps. The map for the western part of europe was about 900MB and the transfer was pretty slow (can't expect much from an SD card). I wanted to simulate the environment of the car so I placed the device at an one end of the table and my laptop at the other end. Then placed my chair near the device to give a feeling like I'm actually seeing it inside a car.

The transfer was so slow that after about 3 hours of transferring, it was just 60% percent complete. I got impatient and wanted to explore the screen a bit and I started fidgeting around. I tried to change the language from English to Flemish (never heard about that language) and once I did that the screen went ......plink! The device restarted. I went down to my laptop and the message "Error output!" stared me on the face like an angry bull. I was like ....Oh nooo!!! All the effort down in the drain. Had to start all over again, but I didn't think it would be possible by the evening. I just disconnected everything and placed it on my table.

My colleague came around and said, "Let me try." So he took the device to his desk, connected it and started transferring. However this time, he reached 25% in less than 30 mins. He started bragging about it to me. At one point, I got infuriated at his comments and shouted back – "That's not fair! You've kept the device so close to your computer!!"