A Techno gone by...
I am in my Third Semester now, with term already over and semester exams scheduled to begin tomorrow.
Work for Technovanza, the college technical fest, has started a while ago, but is yet to pick up speed..
The study leave, as always, continues to be conducive to the creative cells, with every conceivable wacky pointless pursuit being pursued.
I wait for the Techno ahead of me, and I remember some sweet old times of Techno past.
I remember...
Looking forward for work to begin all throughout the exams, and feeling all pumped up the day the exams get over, all ready to do something cool for Techno.
Wearing the Techno t-shirt every third day in the vacation, and not at all during Techno, all to impress the visitors.
Leaving early for college in the morning throughout the winter break, coming back home for a nap in the noon and leaving for college again in the evening only to stay the night in college, and the irritation with which Mom used to ask, "Are you even coming back home tonight ?"
Running around doing everything with nothing happening, and finally those truly sweet few moments of pride when stuff finally works.
Going to "down" sugar-cane juice after getting bored with the work at hand
Getting all those "Gujju" home-made dabbas when spending the night at college, especially the "chakli", and having more than half of it eaten by others. And some people complaining right after eating those about my "Gujjuness" in bringing so many dabbas.
Roaming the college at 2 in the night without being questioned, and exalting in the calmness of the Quad from the third floor at night,and everything else for that matter.
Running away after a window opens when a friend is snapping pictures and being quite pleased about it.
The "Curse of the Blank Notepad" haunting me whenever I had to prepare a formal document related to a project. What's on your mind is NEVER what you can put on that file. What you can put on that file never crosses your mind.
Sweet December and January, with lazy sleepy mornings, the after-effects of the previous night spent listening to heavy metal while trying to figure out how to make the project work.
Feeling really happy when someone finally agreed to sponsor something, and arguing over who gets to go and collect the cheque, compared to the strong reluctance to go and visit the companies for the first time.
Asking every day of January whether lectures happened when you were out to a meeting,and then laughing immediately afterwards,saying you wouldn't have gone anyway.
The three days of Techno passing by ever so quickly.
At the end of it all, ruing the fact that I couldn't see everything because of the event I participated in, and how I got so few food coupons as compared to others, or how I could have possibly missed the supposedly "cute" reporter that came in half an hour ago.Also, its always funny that the professors who actually taught me always arrived when I was on lunch break.There went my chances of impressing them.
The "Box fight" and the demolition that took place immediately after Techno was over.
Going to the stage to receive the "Best Exhibit" award because the senior team members weren't there in the Quad.
Culture and arts are all fine and dandy, but the last night of Techno is reserved for all who cared to make it happen and all those who cared enough to stay back to tribal dance their hearts out. Ahh..what a dance ...
The Techno dinner with the awesome chocolate cake and the special (and more tasty) Jain food, especially for Jains like me.
I remember the last day of Techno being one of the best days ever.
I remember waiting impatiently for the days of the next Techno to come near.
I now have one more Techno ahead of me, and sweet memories behind...
Life has been good.
Work for Technovanza, the college technical fest, has started a while ago, but is yet to pick up speed..
The study leave, as always, continues to be conducive to the creative cells, with every conceivable wacky pointless pursuit being pursued.
I wait for the Techno ahead of me, and I remember some sweet old times of Techno past.
I remember...
Looking forward for work to begin all throughout the exams, and feeling all pumped up the day the exams get over, all ready to do something cool for Techno.
Wearing the Techno t-shirt every third day in the vacation, and not at all during Techno, all to impress the visitors.
Leaving early for college in the morning throughout the winter break, coming back home for a nap in the noon and leaving for college again in the evening only to stay the night in college, and the irritation with which Mom used to ask, "Are you even coming back home tonight ?"
Running around doing everything with nothing happening, and finally those truly sweet few moments of pride when stuff finally works.
Going to "down" sugar-cane juice after getting bored with the work at hand
Getting all those "Gujju" home-made dabbas when spending the night at college, especially the "chakli", and having more than half of it eaten by others. And some people complaining right after eating those about my "Gujjuness" in bringing so many dabbas.
Roaming the college at 2 in the night without being questioned, and exalting in the calmness of the Quad from the third floor at night,and everything else for that matter.
Running away after a window opens when a friend is snapping pictures and being quite pleased about it.
The "Curse of the Blank Notepad" haunting me whenever I had to prepare a formal document related to a project. What's on your mind is NEVER what you can put on that file. What you can put on that file never crosses your mind.
Sweet December and January, with lazy sleepy mornings, the after-effects of the previous night spent listening to heavy metal while trying to figure out how to make the project work.
Feeling really happy when someone finally agreed to sponsor something, and arguing over who gets to go and collect the cheque, compared to the strong reluctance to go and visit the companies for the first time.
Asking every day of January whether lectures happened when you were out to a meeting,and then laughing immediately afterwards,saying you wouldn't have gone anyway.
The three days of Techno passing by ever so quickly.
At the end of it all, ruing the fact that I couldn't see everything because of the event I participated in, and how I got so few food coupons as compared to others, or how I could have possibly missed the supposedly "cute" reporter that came in half an hour ago.Also, its always funny that the professors who actually taught me always arrived when I was on lunch break.There went my chances of impressing them.
The "Box fight" and the demolition that took place immediately after Techno was over.
Going to the stage to receive the "Best Exhibit" award because the senior team members weren't there in the Quad.
Culture and arts are all fine and dandy, but the last night of Techno is reserved for all who cared to make it happen and all those who cared enough to stay back to tribal dance their hearts out. Ahh..what a dance ...
The Techno dinner with the awesome chocolate cake and the special (and more tasty) Jain food, especially for Jains like me.
I remember the last day of Techno being one of the best days ever.
I remember waiting impatiently for the days of the next Techno to come near.
I now have one more Techno ahead of me, and sweet memories behind...
Life has been good.
Keyboard + LCD Interfacing with ATMEGA16
It has been two months and more since we planned to interface a Computer Keyboard, a Mobile Phone LCD and a memory card together to make a sort of a minimal standalone computer system.
The process has been long, with major and minor problems keeping on cropping up,stalling work and almost making us give up more than once.
However, today we crossed one more milestone...We have now interfaced the Keyboard and a 16*2 Character LCD simultaneously. That means we have now achieved 60% of what we set out to do.
I have already put up blog posts on Keyboard Interfacing and LCD Interfacing seperately, but making them together proved to be more of a battle than we expected. It wasn't as easy as just meshing together code from both the examples and making it run. There were a lot of small hardware issues and configurations which kept on coming up, but the most annoying problem was that if the connectors to the LCD aren't perfect, it would firmly refuse to even start up or start throwing curses in Chinese !!
Also, Keyboard Interfacing was only the beginning, as we had only obtained raw data from the keyboard and that needed to be mapped with its corresponding key. Here's a rough idea of what all needed to be done :
1. Obtain the raw data from the keyboard and decipher the key which was actually pressed. This was done by including two arrays, one for printing out Upper Case and the other for Lower Case characters.
2. The delay between keypresses needed to be set up properly to avoid a single keypress being detected as multiple key presses.
3. Pressing of Caps Lock and special characters etc needed to be dealt with separately to avoid erroneous/unwanted output and to implement changing of case, backspace,newline etc.
Ok, this could go on, but here's what this code can do in short :
1. Print key-presses on the LCD (obviously).
2. Detection of Caps-Lock and printing of Upper case and Lower case characters accordingly.
3. Newline feed on pressing Return
4. Erasing of characters on pressing backspace.
5. Clearing of screen on pressing F5
Special characters can be included as well with minor additions, but I'll leave that for later ;)
Here's an introductory video :
Here's the code.Click here to download.
<----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
Acknowledgements : Aniket Taati has been in this all along. I don't know what I would have done without him testing out the code I wrote initially ;) He's also responsible for adding a lot of the fancy features that make this project really useful. Many thanks to Rohit Pawar and Rajesh for setting up the hardware :D
The process has been long, with major and minor problems keeping on cropping up,stalling work and almost making us give up more than once.
However, today we crossed one more milestone...We have now interfaced the Keyboard and a 16*2 Character LCD simultaneously. That means we have now achieved 60% of what we set out to do.
I have already put up blog posts on Keyboard Interfacing and LCD Interfacing seperately, but making them together proved to be more of a battle than we expected. It wasn't as easy as just meshing together code from both the examples and making it run. There were a lot of small hardware issues and configurations which kept on coming up, but the most annoying problem was that if the connectors to the LCD aren't perfect, it would firmly refuse to even start up or start throwing curses in Chinese !!
Also, Keyboard Interfacing was only the beginning, as we had only obtained raw data from the keyboard and that needed to be mapped with its corresponding key. Here's a rough idea of what all needed to be done :
1. Obtain the raw data from the keyboard and decipher the key which was actually pressed. This was done by including two arrays, one for printing out Upper Case and the other for Lower Case characters.
2. The delay between keypresses needed to be set up properly to avoid a single keypress being detected as multiple key presses.
3. Pressing of Caps Lock and special characters etc needed to be dealt with separately to avoid erroneous/unwanted output and to implement changing of case, backspace,newline etc.
Ok, this could go on, but here's what this code can do in short :
1. Print key-presses on the LCD (obviously).
2. Detection of Caps-Lock and printing of Upper case and Lower case characters accordingly.
3. Newline feed on pressing Return
4. Erasing of characters on pressing backspace.
5. Clearing of screen on pressing F5
Special characters can be included as well with minor additions, but I'll leave that for later ;)
Here's an introductory video :
Here's the code.Click here to download.
<----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
Acknowledgements : Aniket Taati has been in this all along. I don't know what I would have done without him testing out the code I wrote initially ;) He's also responsible for adding a lot of the fancy features that make this project really useful. Many thanks to Rohit Pawar and Rajesh for setting up the hardware :D
Geeky Dreams
It was siesta time yesterday and I was tossing around uncomfortably trying to think of something to dream about...And the fact that I had a lot to do other than trying to think of something to dream and that I wasn't doing any of it wasn't helping much either...
Then, like that rushing flood of relief which comes unexplained, it stuck me..SO simple..And so began my dream...Oh and you might want to forgive the tense used from now on, because the dream has not been forgotten..It still remains...
1. I dream of a time when everyone shall search for the same keywords AND get the same results.Implying that I dream of a time when I shall not have to Google search for my friends and family.
2. I dream of a time when everyone "gets" Xkcd.com ... I am tired of laughing alone most of time, or laughing with three to four friends at max.
3. I dream of a time when everyone USES all the online accounts they registered for.
4. I dream of a time when everyone learns How to Ask Questions the Smart Way (via @Sengupta)
5. I dream of a time when I won't have to deny 10 application requests and report them as spam on Facebook everyday. I also dream of a time when unknown people don't add me or at least have the courtesy to introduce themselves when they do.
6. I dream of a time when everyone checks their email regularly AND replies to them. Oh, and websites too.
7. I dream of a time when everyone checks who their replies go to when they press the reply button.
8. I dream of a time when everyone know that Google does not understand sentences, only words and what SEO means.
9. I dream of a time when people understand Facebook is a SOCIAL NETWORKING WEBSITE, not a psychiatrist or a quiz book.
7. I wish people paid more attention to serial numbers and what they read in general.
10. I dream of a time when everyone attributes the content they post, and CORRECTLY.
11. I dream that someday I won't have to empty my spam everyday in fear of having 600 spam mail lying there at the end of a month.
12. I dream that people would realise without me telling specifically that this article is in fact a wishlist, not a dream.
P.S. There's more to come right here, its just that I can't remember the entire dream all at once. ;)
P.P.S : Many apologies to the all-seeing a-lot-knowing one for my oversight-in-haste.One of my dreams would have been shattered by my own folly ! Fixed now ! :)
Then, like that rushing flood of relief which comes unexplained, it stuck me..SO simple..And so began my dream...Oh and you might want to forgive the tense used from now on, because the dream has not been forgotten..It still remains...
1. I dream of a time when everyone shall search for the same keywords AND get the same results.Implying that I dream of a time when I shall not have to Google search for my friends and family.
2. I dream of a time when everyone "gets" Xkcd.com ... I am tired of laughing alone most of time, or laughing with three to four friends at max.
3. I dream of a time when everyone USES all the online accounts they registered for.
4. I dream of a time when everyone learns How to Ask Questions the Smart Way (via @Sengupta)
5. I dream of a time when I won't have to deny 10 application requests and report them as spam on Facebook everyday. I also dream of a time when unknown people don't add me or at least have the courtesy to introduce themselves when they do.
6. I dream of a time when everyone checks their email regularly AND replies to them. Oh, and websites too.
7. I dream of a time when everyone checks who their replies go to when they press the reply button.
8. I dream of a time when everyone know that Google does not understand sentences, only words and what SEO means.
9. I dream of a time when people understand Facebook is a SOCIAL NETWORKING WEBSITE, not a psychiatrist or a quiz book.
7. I wish people paid more attention to serial numbers and what they read in general.
10. I dream of a time when everyone attributes the content they post, and CORRECTLY.
11. I dream that someday I won't have to empty my spam everyday in fear of having 600 spam mail lying there at the end of a month.
12. I dream that people would realise without me telling specifically that this article is in fact a wishlist, not a dream.
P.S. There's more to come right here, its just that I can't remember the entire dream all at once. ;)
P.P.S : Many apologies to the all-seeing a-lot-knowing one for my oversight-in-haste.One of my dreams would have been shattered by my own folly ! Fixed now ! :)
This work by Ankit Daftery is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 India License.
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