N3RD AL3RT_

Suicide is a taboo subject, just like other taboo subjects most of us must have thought about it at least once in our lifetimes; for different reasons. Reasons like:

1. I am not good enough for anyone, not for my girlfriend, my boyfriend, not for my parents, not good enough to exist.

2. My parents fight all the time because of me. If I wasn’t born, this wouldn’t be happening. I wish its over soon.

3. I am bullied, abused and hated in school because I am a looser.

4. I am suffering from this incurable disorder that hinders me to do what I want to, to be who I want to and it will take me away much sooner than others. Why should I live through this, what did I do to deserve this? I can make this suffering go away If I end my life sooner.

All the reasons seem so true at the time that we don’t realize its all because of the depression and our miserable condition.

The circumstances are so important, we don’t even see “why” something had happened. Usually we are driven to such an extent of “desperately-looking-for-a-solution” that in an intense state of reduced logical reasoning we pick the easiest solution. To End it.

When you do think about it reasonably for a moment, there is a realization; what would happen to all the people who actually love you? They would be devastated! But didn’t you originally think no one loved you? This is the reason why some end up killing themselves and some get over it. It is at that point where you have to get out of the loop.

In this world, there will ALWAYS be someone who will love you and ALWAYS someone who will hate you for who you are. This does not mean no one does! This does not mean if two or three have treated you very badly that no one will ever understand. You would have had talked to a million people to know if everyone hates you (maybe more if you have to be sure)!

So get this, we might feel there is nothing more to live for, but life changes, situations change, it may take time or seem like nothing is going anywhere. But they will. Get professional help if you can, its like talking to someone to understand yourself better.

I found this piece on ezinearticles.com by Christina Sponias, here is an extract:

Here are the basic steps that lead someone to come to the point of committing suicide:

1. First of all they suffer in their lives as victims of other people’s cruelty.

2. Then the anti-conscience, their wild and evil, primitive conscience, starts sending them many absurd ideas and feelings, taking advantage of their revolt because they were injured by others.

3. As they follow the absurd suggestions of the anti-conscience they make many mistakes in life, and in the end they see themselves imprisoned in a labyrinth of problems that have no solution.

4. The anti-conscience starts then sending them many suicidal thoughts, besides depression and fear.

5. They completely lose their human conscience, which was destroyed by the absurdity that invaded it. They cannot control their behavior anymore, which means that their primitive side dominates them completely, and they are not responsible for their actions. This is when they commit suicide, without caring about anyone or anything.

If you don’t have the courage to commit suicide, this is a very good sign. This means that your human conscience is still alive, and you still have human feelings. You can understand what your suicidal attempt would mean to everyone…

Presently, I am working on a project by Crazyengineers.com. CE Bot (visit the link for more information and see Appendix for more links). While discussing the appropriate suspension/chassis design, we thought about implementing a Rocker-Bogie system inspired by the Mars Rover designs.

So to get an idea on how the Rocker-Bogie design would work, I tried several simulations on PHUN, a 2-D simulation sandbox. Interesting program to go a lot of other things, its free.

Note that the simulations are only for one side. The other side is connected by a differential rod with elliptical gearing on each side. This has to be further studied to be used properly. However, here is a small flash demo showing how each side will turn based on the other’s motion [[LINK]]:

Buttons top to bottom are (if you cannot read the text): Kuper, Planetary, Sun. We will be using Planetary in our design to connect the two sides.

Here is the video containing the 3 simulations with explaination:

If you have more Questions visit:

CE Bot Google Site

CE Bot Part 1

CE Bot Part 2

CE Bot Part 3

or Email me at: varun(att)crazyengineers(d0t)com

It’s been a long time since I have updated this blob. Reasons? Lazyness, and time. Both reasons are related in someway that are beyond me. There are several things that I need to do before I start writing regularly again and these are pretty time consuming. Like, if you might have noticed my Catagories do not show up, and some other internal problems.

However, new stuff thats comming up:

1. Articles, code examples and completed programs on Python.
2. Articles and code examples on MATLAB.
3. My lates project reports and details.
4. Updates on previous project reports.

A good news is that I have completed my B.E Hons. degree on Electroncis and Instrumentation from BITS, Pilani-Dubai (U.A.E) campus (atlaa~st)!

My Ankylosing Spondylitis treatment is going on in Delhi, India presently. Natural treatment for now, mainly Ayurvedic.

I have been thinking of moving my blog to blogspot. I know, this seems to be the opposite of what I have always wanted but its mainly because of these reasons:

1. I love Wordpress, I love the flexibility and customizations! But it gets too much to keep up as I am into a lot of other things lately.

2.  As for blogspot, it has been improving albeit a little slowly. Mainly I can add videos, HTML code and Java apps, plus also Google Gadgets. This makes multi-media presentation a bit simpler. Information is more important now, fast information.

So keep an eye on this one for now. I will tell everything about upcoming projects and some more exciting things:

1. Going to buy a rotary tool set!

2. Started learning Python. Amazingly compact and thus a bit tougher to get through it, but its fun.

3. New projects on crazyengineers.com (as xheavenlyx).

4. Will be updating previous projects (since I will be having the rotary tools!)

Here are some interviews with Ben Heckendorn, these are just links and are not mine, but thought neccessary to share with all you readers.

He is a very active game console hacker/moder. Not in any way related to piracy! But he will strip your game console and remake them smaller, portable and much more fun! He has no formal training in electronics but is self thought.

The reason I am writing about him is that he is one of those people who take a boring subject and turn it into creative, artistic, lovable and fun subjects. Visit his website if you are curious: www.benheck.com

He has written an excellent book:

Hacking Video Game Consoles: Turn your old video game systems into awesome new portables (ExtremeTech) from Amazon.com

Ok, so here are the interviews:

1. Hack A Day: Part 1 Podcast about 21 mins,

Part 2 Podcast about 21 mins.

2. Interview with Ben Heck - Console Hacker Extraordinaire From Racket Boy.

3. From Good Deal Games .com : http://www.gooddealgames.com/interviews/int_Ben_Heckendorn.html

Hello after a very long time. There is no particular reason I am late, but mostly laziness… usual.

Anyway, the project idea I had posted earlier is finished. Its a college project so bear with the technicality. Its a joystick in a glove form, has no base to keep it on a table, and you wear it, its a glove. Its official title is: “Design and Development of a Glove Based Joystick Input Device”. Actually, this version I made can only control 2 servo motors and is not for a PC. Future designs will be able to connect to your USB.

Here are a few images:

The Device:

The joysticks are a single pair of Analog controllers salvaged from the Playstation2. The microcontroller is Basic Stamp 2 from Parallax. This is the first version of a glove based device. The goal was to make this a Joystick that can be connected to a computer, however this model does not, its just a demo of the hardware and connects to 2 servomotors to show the flexibility of the joystick and the ADC. The remaining details can be found in the project report.

Future Ideas:

1. I can either take a commercial USB joystick and strip it, connect the inputs to my device and have a fully functional glove based joystick.

2. The more difficult method is to program a PIC32 with USB capabilities. USB- HID (Human Interface Device) protocol can be used.

Here is a ppt describing the protect:
For a full report and construction details email me: varun@crazyengineers.com

You must have, should have read about my visit to CNN in the previous post. Well, we finished off by exchanging cards, no wait, not exchanging, she gave hers. We exited the office in awe, thinking wow, that was damn easy So, while getting down the lift, we stopped on the 3rd floor randomly because of the colorful direction boards and company names. We came across many like Cybertronix, 7 Cube etc, but none were open, so we decided to visit Geo Channel. Half of the whole floor was theirs, nice.

We entered the office, no receptionist. We introduced ourselves to a guy next to the recep. and asked if someone could show us around. He looked puzzled which was understandable considering how many barge in like this - he asked us to talk to a guy sitting behind us. He was the broadcasting Station Head; Mr. Imran Meer. Well, Geo TV is Pakistan’s premiere news and entertainment channel like ARY and local PTV group. He gave a huge smile and said, “So, you guys are students? Want to have a look around?”. We were all wide faced smilie-lookin. He took us to the News station area where they receive feeds from all over the world from other stations and journalists or Routers, AFP, AP etc. The edit all that, translations, voiceovers, etc and give it to the area where its put in line with the anchor talking about all that stuff, the studio where the anchor sits (Hamid Mir). well, just for your information they all use apple Mac’s there, not a single Wondooz based PC for the technical work. Though some employees had 2 pcs, one Mac the other an Intel machine.

more…

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Last week a friend of mine, an old family friend, landed here in Dubai, Emirates. His name, Aamer Mansoor Trambu, a final year student of journalism, Mumbai (And presently in Ryerson Uni, Toronto, Canada as an exchange student). We had our friendly exchange of life stories and usual recording of random video clips for our own music video (he wanted to showoff what he learned at the school of journalism and I wanted to showoff my Adobe After Effects skills). By the end of the day, suddenly, we decided to do something I had always wanted to for a long time. Visit random companies and pester them with a million questions about their work (and ofcourse learn at the same time, while keeping their irritation at a minimum). So we decided to head to CNN at Dubai Media City.

Now before I talk about the visit, I want to get something off my chest. Generally students, as far as I know in my college, think its not possible to get companies to show them around. This might be from the fact that our college professors never encourage us nor tell us how to go about requesting companies to do that and, sharing the blame, the students themselves are never interested. Very few students have tried it (successfully, but never shared their experience which I dont understand why not) and very few professors have told us to do so (these few professors are the reason I am still interested in engineering For sure, if you try it the right way, companies would love to show you around as long as you truthfully tell them why you are there.

Moving on; I called 119 (Information services) and asked for CNN’s number. They didn’t have CNN listed, weird. Anyway, I know every group here has a website, like Media City (News.TV.Publishing.Magazines.Events), Internet City (Software.CorporateSolutions.TelephoneOps.ISPs), Knowledge Village (Institutes.Training.Colleges.otherCompanies) and Academic city, Biodubai, Silicon Oasis and so on. We got CNN’s number and Aamir called them up. The operator directly transfered the call to a sweet lady, Miss Samia (Initially he got confused and asked if we wanted to drop in our CV, I wish!). Samia asked us to meet the next day (14th Nov) at 12 pm. Wow, we could not believe it. CNN is just a call away!

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I am on a new project these days. This one is under my final year. Its a

Glove Based Joystick Input Device (Wired and Wireless)

1. Progress? Well, I have salvaged 3 pairs of potentiometers from old Playstation 2 controllers.

2. Tested them with RC time technique to get Analog value into the Microcontroller.

3. Yesterday tested with ADC0832 2channe, 8-bit Analog to Digital Converter.

I had problems with the RC discharge time technique, Google the details if interested. too long and damn boring. Now the most important this is connecting it to a PC. I have thought of two methods. One, buying a ready module with USB-HID Protocol. Second, try to implement it myself in Basic Stamp2 (Which is pretty difficult).

I think the first method is my first choice and here is the module I am talking about.

://www.lbodnar.dsl.pipex.com/joystick/

http://forums.frugalsworld.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=98831

Any updates will be posted soon.

Actually there might be a possibility of using Buetooth HID Protocol too

Here are two videos I made using windows movie mekah. Its not bad for basic picture to video presentation and amature video editing. The best features are easy text/titles/credits and splitting an imported video. The worst thing about this is the video can only be exported in .WMV format!!!

Update [09/12/08 - 8:00pm]: I am testing a new flash video player. However, WP already has a way to directly import/embed youtube video’s. The new flashplayer can only play flv, and related videos.

Update [09/12/08 - 8:00pm]: Tested internal Flash video player. Garbage! Does not work…or is too slow. The best options are using default Youtube and FLV links. And 1 Pixel Audio Player.

Basic Youtube form using an option provided by Wordpress:

Using an Audio Plugin:

Download file here: Enigma: Gravity of Love