Bye Hyd

The time has come. I am not really excited about my South India, so-called Industrial Tour, but there is a certain level of anxiety out here, which leaves me wondering whether everything will be alright. Last time when I went for similar trips, I was in school, and we were all well-behaved kids who always walked in straight lines, following the teachers instructions even in sleep. But now, things are different. We don't know who'll run where, and who'll get drunk or who'll start fighting. These 20 year olds are totally unpredictable. The anxiety is really biting my head off, and I just hope everything goes fine by the end of 12 days.

Right now, I am just hours away from leaving the place I call home, and it was just a few hours ago that I left Srikar who's leaving to Vishakapatnam/Kirandul. I was so confused with all this. I had this tour where all my good friends are going, and the Vishakapatnam trip where my cousins, and dad are going. I still feel, I would enjoy more with Srikar and co. Anyway, things have been decided and I must leave now!!

LA Auto Show

  Well, this happened last week and whatever I was talking about the Reventon is out in the form of images. Some pics of Reventon and other cars from the show. Hail Supercars!




  That is the Reventon in its true form. It's a carbon fiber stunner. The design has been based on fighter aircraft, and sure enough you can see hints of the F-22 Raptor on that. The wheel rims are like razor sharp blades and those 19" wheels are awesome. That's the 2008 Lamborghini Reventon for you...


2004 McLaren Mecrcedes SLR


2007 Audi R8 (from the leMans Concept Car)

Winter is here

Winter has stepped in and it's time to pull out those old sweaters and coats and whatever warmth you could lay your hands on. Anyway this is Hyderabad, India and the cold here is atleast not as hard as the northern regions. Yet, it has been a dry winter so far and it's been pretty much irritating to write exams in such cold. The real deal is yet to come, but I've got something far more chilling and interesting with me now. Well, the timing of my recent craze of gazing at stars was a bit bad and I missed the better half of the night sky during the Aug-Sept-Oct months. Now the famous and good-looking constellations come into view and the interesting period starts now. I wonder how I had the patience to wait for so many months to wait for these 2-3 months of good night sky.
  Today, we were on the terrace for finishing up with our remaining fireworks stuff as it was the full moon and we followed the tradition. The winter chill suddenly cleared my mind and I remembered the Winter Hexagon and all those winter constellations. I ran home, checked out the latest arrangement of the stars in the sky (at the moment over Hyderabad) and ran back upstairs only to find the full moon dominating almost every other object in the sky. But I could see some spots in the eastern side (where the moon was) which were bright enough to override the moon. And I knew these should be the very bright ones and famous as well. Just as an experiment, I took a 15sec exposure photograph of an area in the eastern sky. To my surprise, though the moon light made the photo too bright, i found many many stars that I couldn't see normally. I started taking more pics in the east and finally found what I was looking for. Easily one of my favourites and named after a hunter, The Orion was out there hanging just over the horizon. I could make out all the important stars and because I was seeing it for the first time in the sky, my blood was rushing. I could see 2 stars with the naked eye just under the bright moonlight, but my camera could see 20-30 stars under the same moonlight. I got the photo and after a bit of tweaking, the stars can be seen with some more clarity than the original. The pic goes down here, and I'll put other pics in the coming days, as the moon loses its shine and the sky goes dark slowly. I must catch a glimpse before I leave for my tour. I can still do it there, but the view from Kerala might change slightly. My previous post explains a lot of things: Here. A paragraph of particular interest to me is this:

I managed to find some interesting things over the internet and i get excited to see them out there in the blackness of the universe. Some of the things i would love to be able to see are, Leo, Orion, Big Dipper, Little Dipper, Canis Major and Minor, and a few more like Taurus. But before that, we need to find this so called Winter Triangle and the Winter Hexagon which has among the brightest stars like Sirius, Betelgeuse, Pollux and stuff.. I have been having a faint idea about the location of Sirius coz, it is the brighest star and also forms a vertex of the Winter Hexagon, and, it forms the constellation, Canis Major, but the problem is, i can't confirm it. There's a bright thing in the east the surely is Jupiter, and there are 2 brights above my head of which, one is Mars and the other might be Sirius. Just can't confirm...

  The funny thing is, though I mentioned the Winter Hexagon and Triangle and so many stars, I couldn't see any of them. The 2 brights above my head were not at all Mars or Sirius. Infact, at that time, when I was looking above my head, Mars and Sirius were just setting down the Western Horizon and I missed them. Now, they travel the whole other side of the earth and will peek out from the eastern horizon. I finally get to see my favourite stars in the sky and this pic below shows one of the best looking constellations during winter. To see the details, click on the image, it gives a 1600X1200 pix view of the photo (only then can you see the faint dots on it!!)



(You will need some patience for the 1600 X 1200 image to load and the red lines show the constellations. The sky you see here is the North-Eastern sky over Hyd at around 2100hrs. The photo has been modified and the contrast ratios might be a bit abnormal. So, don't mind ..)

Egg-Whams again !!

Exams are over! But wait a minute. Why am I not enjoying? Somehow, for the first time, I am not happy though the exams are over. If one writes them badly, then he would generally wait more eagerly for holidays. It's the other way round for me though. My exams were terrible on an average and some of them have been worse, and yet I don't feel relieved when holidays are here. I feel as though there is something missing and there is an empty void around me. It could probably be because of the dissatisfied feeling after the exams but I am hoping I would get out of that soon.

There is a Bangalore-Kerala Trip round the corner and I really wouldn't like my bad mood to spoil that. Hopefully, I can get better after some roaming and a few jam sessions!!

No interest !!

No interest to post anything right now. Later, I can talk about my unstable performances in exams and Lamborghini Reventon... the 3D pic was posted in this blog here... Lambo's Lambs. At that time, I could only get the 3D design, but now, the car is out. Your wait won't be long for the F-22 inspired design of Lambo Reventon!! (and by the way, today is my mom's birthday!)...

Diwali, 2007

I never had any plans this Diwali because of the exams. I wasn't in any mood to study but at the same time, I couldn't enjoy fireworks completely because of the exam tension at the back of my mind. Somehow, I managed to get somewhere in between those and started clicking photos. Most of my Diwali night was spent in this. And here's the result of some of my attempts. First thing, it's all easy talk clicking the button when there's a rocket sending out it's so called Hanging Gardens and Lavenders and stuff... but when you get behind the camera, it becomes so much more difficult. The light comes first as it travels much faster than sound, and we get confused trying to wait for the sound to come and in those milliseconds, we miss out the shot. So I clicked nearly 100 times and deleted atleast 70-80 of them. Finally, the exposure helped me and i got some good ones in the end, though I am not entirely satisfied by what I got. Even then, some shots are way beyond my imagination. The smoke and illumination make Hyderabad City look like a city from Jupiter, thanks to the exposure.

Well, the Festival of Lights has come to an end and I need to get back onto my studies, or else I'll still be in 3-1 for the next Diwali. Meanwhile, these are the outputs of my experiments. But I won't get 75/75 for this exam ... hahaha...

Dare to dream ??

Ok, this bug bit me 2 days ago when I found myself in the one place that I love to be. I went to my favourite musical intrument shop, Khords and was lost in there, as simple as it could be. I actually went there to buy Guitar Strings for both my guitars. Ofcourse, I ended up buying cables and other mini accessories as well. But what caught my attention in the shop was the bunch of new guitars that they had. The acoustics were too good, and the electrics were out of this world! They brought in many many new models of Givson (as they always do), but I saw some unknown brands like Focus and stuff. The real Black Gold was deep inside the shop, the Ibanez with models for both right-handers and left-handers. The latest addition (the fresh stock!!) were 4 large sealed boxes which had actually had Fender Stratocasters in them. I couldn't see the guitar inside, but I could feel it. The box was actually a complete set with Guitar+Amp+other small accessories. The guitar comes with a Whammy Bar as well and the box was priced at a surprising 12K. I thought it would touch the sky.... I know guitar freaks won't leave those boxes alone, but I am sad that I had to do that. Well, the time might come.. who knows?

Johny's Laboratory

  The External Lab exams just got over, and it's more of a relief that they went smooth.
  Yesterday I had Aerodynamics Lab and supposedly, everyone was scared of that exam. As fate had it, the college bus got very late, and I could only enter the lab at 10. I lost a precious half hour and was wondering if this is the beginning of my end. I chose one random question out of the last two and it turned out to be the easiest of all. I quickly answered everything needed (I didn't even need to do the experiment as there was a problem with the wind tunnel equipment), and left for the viva. It wasn't very good, but i answered a few which I hope will get me through.
  I had the Aircraft Production Technology Lab exam today and though the name sounds interesting, the subject tells a different story. The word aircraft appears around 2-3 times in the entire subject. Anyway, the exam was fine and I managed to learn on the spot, how to read exactly from a Vernier Calipers, and how to make accurate use of the graduations given on the lathe machine. I was doing the expt for the first time directly (that happens every year) and I was quite comfortable with it. The viva was screwed after the external asked me things which I never heard of. When finally he asked me a question I knew, I was relieved and started answering. But then, just as I started answering, he sent me away. I don't know what to make out of that, but I hope something will be done so that I can get a respectable score in the final.
  Well, though there were problems, on an average, it was a good round up of my Lab stuff. That comes especially after missing both the Lab Internals due to sickness, and then re-writing them after a lot of begging and persuasion. Hope the final result shows the Thumbs Up for me coz my descriptive exams have already decided that they won't allow me to write them well ..... who's human ?????

Ambigram Chocolate

Well, we can now see Ambigrams coming out into the open with the new's ULTA Perk placing one on the cover of the bar. As the name suggests, the wafer part is outside and the chocolate is on the inside, just a reversal of the original Perk. The picture above tells all...