My Highs & Lows of 2008

What’s good about a new year? To be honest, nothing is good about it given the extra effort needed at the time of speech delivery to make sure you don’t say next year to things which are suddenly going to happen in this year and the added mental effort of making sure you jot the correct digit when writing down the date. However, the new year, or end of an year can serve as a benchmark to have a look at the things and events that happened in the past year. Looking back myself, I can say with certainty that this year had events that will remain ingrained in my memories forever.

The beginning of year 2008 was a good time for me. I was done with my final semester exams looking at various options to shape my career. As soon as the year started I knew the next two-and-a-half months would be extremely busy. Being the sole driver in my family (with my dad in UAE), only son, and only brother of my dear sister it was me who had to make sure all her wedding arrangements were meticulously handled. I didn’t apply for jobs at that time, hoping to secure an admission in some MSc course. I also knew the next few days would be spent shopping with my mom. This wasn’t all that bad: shopping at Tariq Road with ladies around (more…)

Weekend Nights

A weekend night is something we all yearn for over the whole week and the plans for such nights can be numerous varying from person to person but nothing trumps the fun of sitting late in the night with nice background music, sipping coffee/coke/red bull and eating doritos while trying to figure out a way to reduce 20ns latency in my program!!

Any programmer (software and hardware) can testify that the he loves to debug. It is tedious but then following the expected behaviour of the code and comparing it with the simulated results is something we can do when others are out there partying, and wasting time!

And that feeling of achievment when that little bug in a code of 2000 lines is found is incomparable to any other human emotion.

Although, as I said earlier, I’m heavily loaded with courseworks I’ve begun to enjoy it since I started working on it. Coding is always fun and when it doesn’t work, it takes away my sleep. Take an example, I was writing a code in VHDL last night which didn’t function in the first attempt (they never work in the first attempt!). I tried to figure out the bug for few minutes (at least 90) and then kept my laptop aside and went to sleep with the lights on. When I woke up in the morning, I glanced at the bedside, and within seconds I was back in the world of code looking for that bug. So the sleep didn’t matter at all.

Quite recently Saadia and Leena asked me what am I doing, so here is a glimpse.

Click here to see a  small part of the layout that I’ve made for an 8-bit adder, the complete layout is pretty big and nasty for general public view. (The other domain is mine too, the next project which I’m working on whenever I get some free time. And BTW, I will have yet another blog very soon hosted on Imperial College’s network because I have been selected as one of the 10 bloggers and all ten of us were given a nice Sony Cybershot, memory sticks and some other freebies ….More on this later!)

And below you can see some waveforms and binary digits which are the results of my VHDL simulation for interaction with a video RAM. Things are working quite nicely here but my output is taking 20ns more than it should. To those who don’t know, 20ns in digital world is like 20 minutes of real life!

So life is full of courseworks at the moment but it is fun and pleasant at the same time!

I’ll conclude by giving a snapshot of my current desktop which is a reflection of my life: disorganized! [My laziness and more use of Linux has also contributed to this]

You're An Engineer If….

I found these interesting points about engineers on a website which I’m reproducing here with my own comments in italics on some of them.

You’re and engineer if:

• You have no life – and you can PROVE it mathematically. Atleast we can prove it
• You enjoy pain. We can take it!
• You know vector calculus but you can’t remember how to do long division. Errr…true!!
• You chuckle whenever anyone says “centrifugal force”. Ofcourse! the fools hardly know anything about it!
• You’ve actually used every single function on your graphing calculator. Why not?!
• It is sunny and 70 degrees outside, and you are working on a computer. We ‘work’ unlike others who waste time!
• You think in “math“. LOGIC, baby!
• You’ve calculated that the World Series actually diverges. Not yet, maybe one day…
• You hesitate to look at something because you don’t want to break down its wave function. Ok, yeh zyada hogya
• You have a pet named after a scientist. Hate pets!
• You laugh at jokes about mathematicians. Better than sardar jokes
• You can translate English into Binary. Actually..I CAN!
• You can’t remember what’s behind the door in the engineering building which says “Exit“. Oops!
• You have to bring a jacket with you, in the middle of summer, because there’s a wind-chill factor in the lab. Hahaha
• You are completely addicted to caffeine. Sure am!
• You avoid doing anything because you don’t want to contribute to the eventual heat-death of the universe. Shutup!
• You consider ANY non-engineering course “easy“. Because they ARE!
• When your professor asks you where your homework is, you claim to have accidentally determined its momentum so precisely, that according to Heisenberg it could be anywhere in the universe. Good idea, never tried it though..
• The “fun” center of your brain has deteriorated from lack of use. Lame!
• You’ll assume that a “horse” is a “sphere” in order to make the math easier. Again, hadd hogayi!
• The blinking 12:00 on someone’s clock draws you in like a tractor beam to fix it. Yeah, because I can!
• You bring a computer manual / technical journal as vacation reading. Oh yeah, its interesting!
• You can’t help eavesdropping in computer stores… and correcting the salesperson. Because all sales people are a bunch of liars!
• You have any “Dilbert” comics displayed in your work area. Hmm..no!
• You have a habit of destroying things in order to see how they work. Isn’t that fun?
• You have never backed up your hard drive. Don’t even get me started!
• You haven’t bought any new underwear or socks for yourself since you got married. I’ll note that when time comes..
• You spent more on your calculator than on your wedding ring. Not applicable..
• Your favorite James Bond character is “Q,” the guy who makes the gadgets. LOL!
• You understood more than five of these jokes. All of ‘em!
• You make a copy of this list, and post it on your door (or your web page/blog !)

Clutter of Mind

I don’t know what to write. There’s a lot of clutter on my mind. My last post was 21 days ago!! I can’t remember that long hiatus before. I’ve been tagged, twice, but I’m yet to respond. I feel so damn lazy here! It has to do with the weather I think. The cold weather and quiet nights (which begin early!) are a perfect combo for a nice long sleep. And then I’ve got so much to study, which I’m constantly putting off. Just when I decided to write this post, I stopped somewhere before this sentence for two hours. I don’t know what I am doing, but I’ve decided to get things under control. Just after completing this post, which is basically pointless, I will pick up a pen and a pad to jot down the things to do in certain timeframe. This relates to my class today where I learnt resource constraint and latency constraint scheduling, whatever that is.

Now whatever I’m writing now is without any thought. So it may not make sense. I’m already feeling sleepy, its only 9.50pm here. Once upon a time I used to study in the middle of the nights, I’m trying to get that thing back.

I feel emptyminded. Nothing is coming up. Oh, and btw, my ‘windows’ is so messed up and yet I can’t format this thing because I forgot my product recovery dvd in pakistan, locked in the safety of my room!

I will try to keep the blog updated now. In fact, I don’t think I will be opening my books now, so I will now try to jot down some more posts, more focused posts, just after I’m finished with my ‘latency constrained scheduling.’

Note: The pic associated with this post is NOT my room. My room is very clean, surprisingly. This just reflects the clutter of my mind.