Inf-sanity

Ah ! My blog ! Its been Eons since I have written anything. Reason: Insanity ! The cause of this loss of sanity is that I have a mind to begin with. A very wandering, drifting, mercurial, hyperactive mind that cant seem to hold any thought with conviction. Ever since I got on that plane to the United states or maybe around that time, my mind has been engulfed by a veil of uncertainty that has never lifted. Its like the morning mist that lets you see for about a 100 ft but not any more, and of what you can see, you arent very clear about. I can always sense an air of panic and frustration around me. The simple reason and probably the correct one using Occam's Razor would be that I am afraid. The fear of the unknown is a very powerful fear. The unknown in this case is the future I have ahead of me. You see, I've lived in a shell for the most part of my life thus far. A nice picturesque city with a clear sky, good people, benevolent weather and a very laidback atmosphere. I assumed I had it all figured. The problem is one of purpose. Every mind on this planet asks itself that question at one time or the other. Some people ponder over the question, few peruse over it for a long time, while most just think it to be a passing phase and so it usually turns out. As a kid if you question the events and things that happen around you , you will eventually grown on to become an adult who will one day pose himself the question : "why am I here?" and "why do we do the things we do ?" . As time progresses you realize two things, one is that these questions have no absolute answer at all and two you like living and hence its much simpler to forget about them and think about the immediate goals/objectives/worries and live on. I think I have moved on from those questions and am done with them. They have long since passed by on the sands of time. But soon after, you reach the crossroads of your life. The time at which one has to choose what one hopes and wants to do for the remaining duration of his existence, of course the time is decided by the prevailing societal structure at the time. Now while one is on these crossroads, weighing his options and thinking deeply/ aka hesitating to make a move, he starts to get afraid. Every kid on this planet starts out by thinking that anything is possible and its just a matter of time before it happens, next a kid tries to learn his strengths and weaknesses to make that decisions and when the time comes to make it he wonders if his present strengths will continue to be so in the future that ensues. I guess thats where I am at. I know not whether my strengths today will continue to be so tomorrow. I know not whether the crossorads of life are now or if I am at a mirage thats making me question the very essence of me. Since College ended, I spend a great deal of time thinking of all the things I could've done and would've done if I knew the things I know now. I still keep thinking that I need more time. But the simple fact of matter is, time is the fairest thing in the whole wide world. Its always the same amount that everybody gets, not a measure more and not a measure less. Its entirely upto you what you do with it. And also that I still have a lot of it left. You always assume that your decision today will change the entire course of your journey drastically, but then again looking back you know that you've always done the thing thats been right for you all along. Things connect in the hindsight , quoting the late Steve Jobs. SO the only thing I can do or should do is to not mind the fact that my decisions alter my life but to accept the fact that ones life is made by the decisions he makes and when one look back they always seem to fit ! Wow ! That was a lot of self healing philosophical jibber jabber !

What I really wanted to blog about was about the human mind. I read this article , this wonderful concept that compares the Internet to the mind. When you ask an intelligent being a question it comes up with an answer and strangely Google does the same ! So saying that Google is an intelligent being may not be as absurd as it sounds. Here is the link for the article: http://blogs.hbr.org/stibel/2008/06/the-internet-is-a-brain.html

On a more geekier and hence a lighter note - I recently learned in class that while we were lallygagging and Gallivanting in our undergrad 2006 to now has been a golden era in VLSI and chip making, where lots of crazy advancements like the use of Hi-K dielectrics, metal gates and FinFETs are some of the things that the chip industry has been trying to implement to give us the 22nm ivybridge intel chips and possibly crazier stuff to come in the sub 22nm realm in the years to come. By another 8 years we will be in the 7nm realm and things are going to be mighty exciting. Prospective PhD's and MS grads - you feeling my riff here !!!!

Oh yeah I even dabbled with research this past year. And I must say working in an AMerican lab is a dream ! Its loads of fun. You have to get stuff done "all by your onesies", quoting Capt.Jack , and its mighty fun. I have been playing around with Magnets for the past year and man, they never cease to amaze you. I feel like an applied physicist. Yipppeee ! The Pink Floyd lyrics "In a world of Magnets and Miracles" is my favourite line in the history of music. Those guys nailed it. I even have two conference papers in my resume due to all this. Life has been good on that realm.

Some of the other harsh realities of life are that I utterly suck at cooking. Knowing the right measure of salt to add is not one of my strong points and hence doesnt help my cause . While in America , you get bored of Beer. Girls are girls everywhere, be it Indian or american, it doesnt matter . One needs a car to have fun in this country. Without a car you are simply handicapped.
Korean food is an absolute treat, but I am not in Korea anymore. Gainesville does not have a Betta ! American Onions make you cry a lot more than the indian ones do and yet they pale in comparison hen it comes to taste. I miss mango. Restaurant chains are everywhere and every city looks, smells and tastes the same. I miss Masala Dosa. I am way used to WiFi. A haircut is outrageously expensive. The Dollar conversion rates sucks.

Apart from that there is not much of a foreign feeling in the states. It just feels like home. No difference. So thats a plus, I think !!! (kind of a disappointment initially, but if you have roommates that cook good indian food... ! )

Alrighty then on that note/line I end this post. Good to be back blogging. Hope I write more. Till then , Adios, Sayonara, Cheerio !
Vikram signing off. Feel free to pen your thoughts.

Nikola Tesla

Been a long time since I wrote a post. Was lost in my head I guess! SO I thought what better way to encourage myself to write than Tesla. Not many blokes have heard of Tesla other than in the science books dealing with the mystery that is magnetism. No other name would have been more apt to quantify magnetism coz Tesla like magnets is an enigma! Tesla has a couple of epithets in the present time some of them being -"The Lost Wizard of the twentieth century" , " Man out of time". Titles which have an ominous ring to them. I consider myself fortunate to have read about Tesla.
Let me tell you why...........

Nikola Tesla was born in a small town called Smiljan in Croatia. I guess he always knew that he was different from the rest of the lot. His mind was a free spirited one but without the frivolity associated with it. He had a different perception of Nature and space. He had an inclination to mechanics and kinematics. When he was little he is said to have observed the way ladybugs flap their wings , took a few of them and stuck them on to a wheel which rotated coz of their flapping.
He was also gifted with an uncanny ability to imagine an entire mechanical setup in his head . He took this gift to such an extent that he would run experiments in his head and would implement them only when he thought it worked and magically they always worked without a hitch the very first time!

Oh yeah- He defined eccentric!never was able to swallow a classroom education. He left his bachelors course on Electrical Engg and set out to the US of A . He approached Edison (dude who invented the bulb) with a recommendation letter saying " There are only two very intelligent people in this world today. One is you and the other is the man bearing this letter" . Edison grew jealous of him and started illtreating him. Being an upright man he promptly left General Electric (Edison's company) and went on to work as a manual labourer whilst delivering lectures in universities , coz Tesla had already managed to strike a few chords designing DC machines for Edison.

He later collaborated with Westinghouse,Edison's competitor and strongly started propounding the feasibility of AC machines . Coz in the timeline i am speaking of electricity was a rich mans pride possession !!! Edisons DC machines were run by noisy steam engines in the basement of house and had power enough for that house alone. Tesla was audacious enough to claim that hydel gens could be used to transmit power to large population of people for a smaller price.
And he proved it too, at the Chicago fair using coils for transformers. but his employer Westinghouse was bankrupt at the time and he asked Tesla to keep his patent rights at bay for the time as Westinghouse owed him more than a million dollars at the time!! He promptly tore his patent contracts and burned them just to console his friend.

All this success made him very famous. But I guess his life thus far is kinda the "regular run of the mill crackpot inventor success story" but his life changed from this point onwards.

The true genius of Nikola Tesla was in uncanny understanding of inductors and the remarkabe concept of RESONANCE. If at all any man came close to understanding the very esoteric concept of resonance, it would be Tesla.
His work on resonance led him to build devices that could transmit energy in the form of waves -TESLAWALLEN(tesla waves) .He was obsessed with the concept of wireless transmission of electricity. Communication was never on his mind . But that was not the case with the young ambitious , unscupulous italian Marconi. He used 19 of Tesla's Patents to "come up " with the radio!!!! But Tesla did not mind his mind wanted bigger things. He was going towards obscurity , people being capitalist fools started going towards the next big thing -The radio , slowly forgetting the genius that created it.But Tesla Persevered , this crazy insane lunatic genius believe it or not built a huge remote controlled steamer using Tesla Coils ( The ones you know as "Plasma Globes")! This was in a time before diodes, transistors or any of the control circuits mind you!

Now the time is 1900 -the bloody 20th century, Tesla comes up with the most god awesome of ideas ! He says to himself -"The Earth is a conductor covered by a Dielectric -Atmosphere, So the earth is a giant cavity in the eyes of radio waves "and he does a resonance collumn experiment that we did in 11th But the tuning fork happens to be a gargantuan Tesla Coil powered by a Hydroelectric generator Spewing out 100 foot long Electric arcs. He tweaks with the resonant frequency of the coils and hits a magic number 8Khz! Resonance!!!!! His electric arcs rise to hundreds of feet and burns the generator!

He never gave up. Tesla went on to build a huge "Magnifying transmitter" called Wardenclyffe tower at Long Island ,New York . but the project was abandoned coz the capitalistic money hungry pigs came and asked him " Where do i put the meter on this thing?". A dejected and demoralized Tesla was forced to go into isolation and oblivion. But the man was Undaunted in what he wanted , He is supposed to have come with the idea of a Radar and a satanic ray called the Death Ray which had the ability to destroy enemy vessels and planes to name a few. He is also to have been involved in the Philadelphia Experiment and other Dark projects.

A true scientist till the very end he believed in something and pursued it come hell or high water. This legend of a man who made electricity accessible over the world which we now take for granted , and who opened our minds to the beauty of Radio waves and Resonance died a miserable death , a pauper and no one to care for at a grand old age of 87 . His life's work in the later years is still a secret ,his work was confiscated by the military. No one other than Tesla himself knows what secrets of nature he was able to unravel.

But after his death the court ruled that Tesla was the true inventor of the radio! Schumann discovered that the resonant frequency of the earth was 8Khz! Edison accepted that staunchly following DC to AC was the worst mistake of his life! Nobody knows how many more codes of God tesla was able to decipher before his demise! I am sure theres a lot we will never know! AND now we know the genius that was Tesla.So now my friends if you have read patiently thus far you would have realized the reason why magnetism has the unit Tesla.

Tesla's life though may seem tragic to the weakhearted let me tell you its not!
His life stands as a testament to the fact that when you truly believe something to be true and your heart asks you to go for it , Then go for it come hell or high water!! The one who takes the most practical or pragmatic path is a meek,cowardly fool who may have everything in life but will die a Mortal. The one who sets of on the unexplored path will have to face a great deal of strife and misery ,but when his time on this blue planet has come to pass he will transcend the confines of mortality and will truly become a GOD.

Dark black hair , lean disposition, on first glance he does not appear to be a redoubtable personality. But if you look carefully at his photograph you will see in those deep unfathomable eyes a sense of achievement and look deeper and you will see true and unblemished contentment!

The Electron

Today,May 8th ,i happened to see one of natures spectacular occurrences.I was strolling on the terrace trying to enjoy the cool summer ,evening breeze when i saw flashes of blue on the walls.I realized what it was, but it somehow thrilled me. I turned around and saw something i had never seen before, an electrical storm. Wave after wave of lightning completely shrouding the northern and western horizon! Brilliant flashes of all the hues of blue and purple filled the sky! Boy! was that amazing . It appeared as though there was no end it.It went on and on and on.And all the while i just stood there completely engrossed in whatever was unfolding in front of me.I saw some of the most blinding flashes of blue there was to see,and when i had not blinked in a while i would see LIGHTNING ;streaking across the clouds ,in between them or sometimes even through them.
Boy! was it amazing.It was an amazing feeling just standing there, looking at it. I was hooked.Couldnt move or think of anything else,was just overcome with a sense of fear and awe at the same time.I guess man always has fear and respect for the unknown.Lightning deserves respect! One of Natures mystical phenomenon!No wonder the ancient civilizations always had great respect for lightning. Take the Greeks for example ,they feared it so much that they respected it .And respect slowly turned to worship ,so much so that they made 'Zeus' the god of gods ,the king of the gods,and the weilder of lightning bolts.The Romans adopted most of the greek gods and hence zeus was replaced by 'jupiter'. The Norse too revered lightning . They had 'Thor' ,the son of the king of gods in ValHalla-'Woden',the gur after whom thursday is named.He is supposed to have created lightning and thunder with his mythical Hammer,'Mjlonir'.I guess here in india we too have our own 'lightning God' -Indra.But i guess we did not grant him allpowerful status coz we live in the tropics and have not seen lightning like the europeans!!!

I think that people have always associated their fears and insecurities about the unknown(nature's forces) and given it a form called god!And they somehow found a way to sleep better at night by coming up with elaborate rituals and customs to please these forms and by coming up with stories that make these forms more human by nature;they assumed that they would be pleased with the rituals and would keep them safe.This concept carried on through the generatins as primal fears did not change through generations ,and people always like to play safe.And now in this present world, even after scientific renaissance, the concept of god still exists!And we still follow the same primitive rituals and customs coz it still makes us sleep better at night.Modern man still associates all thing inexplicable to god.As time progresses many things are being explained but new unexplained phenomena come to light because of this. And hence god still serves a purpose!

I guess according to me ,if you define god as an omnipresent ,omnopotent force that is all pervading and controlling,I would say god exists! Not in the form or concept that you have come to believe but quite literally! Think about it this way- Whats all around you,but yet cannot be seen?Controls all things ,in a way?And ultimately creates and destroys things?I would say the answer to this is energy.but energy still gives fundamentalist god believers ,hope! So let me change that slightly,What manifests energy ?- Particles !(leave the strings out for now!).if so then which would be the most all pervading fundamental particle responsible for all the visible matter in the known universe? The Electron!The very thing that Forms Lightning! The very thing that makes everything! The very thing taht controls matter !
So i guess i saw God today!
All hail the Electron!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
what say you?

Me First BloG

Howdy Dudes and Dudettes,
Life, As You have By now Found out, is whatever you have made it to be !
Think its a fucked up definition , Think again! Whatever life you've lead or are leading is a probablistic combination of Circumstance,Decisions,Emotions,Luck and WILL! You are exposed to a myriad of incidents ,some are good, others not so good, either of which is not entirely under your control. The emotions that you feel when such events take place are not entirely dependent on you, you can getaway by saying that you are genetically predisposed to reacting in a particular way! Which science has proven to be true! YOU , or whatever you think defines YOU is just there by plain probability. You exist because of chance!!!!!! I am an Atheist ,so I think God is just an Adults Imaginary all powerful,All knowing,All pervading imaginary friend! Even though most of the stuff that you go through ,is by just plain chance or Luck,and you are predisposed to feeling in a certain way ,the 3 million years of evolution has given us something to change it all ,A Highly advanced BRAIN. It perceives,thats its job,and thats its secret for survival and the great thing about it is that it learns .that the only thing that distinguishes you from a friggin amoeba ! Cause we are all made up of the same stuff and the life of a amoeba is just as unpredictable as ours and it too reacts in a genetically predisposed way !The only thing that makes you a higher organism is your mind, each person completes differently based on the things he or she has learnt over the years of their lives ,by instinct or by perception.And then WE HAVE A CHOICE! this is something that each one of us has by nature but the weird thing is that we are so freaking bothered about so many other insignificant ,mundane screwed up things that we dont bloody realize that we have one ! It is my personal opinion that Life inherently has no bloody meaning .There is no such thing as right or wrong ,its totally relative (depends on your point of view) ,Everything is justified! (PS: this isnt satanic, coz satan like god Doesn't exist he his just your manifestation of your own fear and insecurity) . mind is inherently designed to create dimensions and see things in a certain way. So what i am trying to say in through this highly weird blog is that Always do whatever you think or feel is right ,No matter what it takes or does. Create your meaning for life and stick to it! keep yourself happy at all times ! The world is just a conglomeration of minds, some alike in certain aspects ,others completely different. Just do whatever you want to do and the Universe will adapt to it.Remember "Mens Agitat Mollum"- 'Mind Moves Matter'.Live a life because thats what you will end up doing no matter what,you will 'a' life. Just make it a good one and try not to hurt too many people on your journey!
I know this blog is insane and may even seem like the memoirs of a sociopath . But its not, its what each one of us ends up doing in the end ,So thats exactly why I started this blog with life is whatever you have made it And it will become whatever you want it to be ,So all I am asking you is to lead less hypocritic lives and "to thine own selves be true"!!!! Cheers Earthlings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No Matter what you comment on I will continue my weird and crazy rantings through this blog,But let that not deter you from commenting, be it good or bad,Comment on , Live on ANd most definitely DREAM ON