Mission Impossible #5

I was running, I don't know from who, I don't remember what got me into that scene, but I was running. All I knew was this, I was in big trouble and I had to go where my feet took me.

As I was running, I saw a blinding flash and ducked involuntarily, a few seconds later, after the ringing sound in my ears subsided, I finally was aware of the situation. I could hear its distant beep, and alarmingly the frequency was steadily increasing. But no, I couldn't think of it now, I had to focus on the man in front of me, specially since he was teasing me - the way he was brandishing his gun. I almost felt sad for him, I'd been well trained for this kind of situation. I don't think he even noticed my hand, he slumped instantly. I continued my sprinting, breathing heavily, wishing I get to it sooner, its sound was getting louder.

As anticipated, the next block came, this time it was three men, bantering and giggling like a bunch of teenage girls, don't get me wrong here, they were nothing like teen girls in appearance, they had popeye arms that could easily crush me, and were equipped with semi-automatic Walthers. Fortunately, they haven't seen me yet. I knew that a smoke-grenade won't be effective against these beasts, and I din't want to risk using my heavy explosive grenade, not with it so dangerously close. I was losing my calm, and my heart was beating at twice its normal rate and the beeps were getting too loud.. No, I had to focus.

I decided to use the age-old distraction technique, and rolled a quarter into the dark alley and took out my Stechkin. They'd fallen for it, two of those entered the dark alley as I fired at the third. I liked my Stechkin, though most others would call it obsolete, it was the OT model, and was nicked as the "multivaned mace", its bang was so silent that the other two din't notice it under the sound of their footsteps, not until that thug fell anyway. And that was surprise enough for them, before they could react, I fired two more shots and that was the end of these beasts.

Without wasting any further time, I raced towards the building, and I knew I hardly had about a couple of minutes. The doors were fortunately unlocked and the room wasn't difficult to get to, not with the loud beeps. I rushed into the room, it was a bedroom, with a nice cot, an unlit lamp beside it, and a computer whose monitor was turned off. I could finally see it on the bed, flashing and vibrating and ringing, I jumped onto the bed, the way I usually do before I get to sleep after rigorous training, and took it into my hands. It was quite light, for the amount of noise it was making. I finally hit the snooze button, and drifted to sleep.

In about 4 minutes another mission would begin...

Experience

Today is probably the 1000th time I'd felt the trouble of an idea or a thought process that came just about 10 seconds late. The post is not about the 1000th time, but about all of them. Ranging from an elegant solution to a problem that you realise just after handing in an exam paper, or a question whose answer becomes obvious to you just after you'd asked it to jokes in the middle of a conversation like this or an interesting thought that could've changed the route of a serious discussion.

Life is queer in the sense that you ought to learn atleast when you're doing something, if not before. The process of learning is skewed - unless you are given the ability to predict all possible situations which you will get into. But if you could actually predict that, well, you can do a lot better than just not making a mistake. And since there are infinite possible situations that you could get into, its not possible to predict and be prepared for all of them. So, in life, you're theoretically bound to make mistakes. This is not even getting into misjudgements and miscalculations.

So the most important thing is to learn from all of these and extrapolate these to many more so that the probability of doing a mistake decays over time. Maybe this is what they call as experience. Now, the best part of this experience is that it doesn't have to be yours - you could learn from others' mistakes as well, which is one of those nice things that give you a hand in avoiding errors. Fortunately/Unfortunately, as your experience gets aggregated, you stop making many trivial errors, which is good, but if you make an error is has huge effects. And as the story goes, unless you take time to sharpen your axe you aren't going to get better just by cutting more trees. The "silly" errors that don't affect anything drastically are the ones to remind you that your axe has to be sharpened.

I'm happy about most of those 1000 mistakes, I know I'm a much better person now because of them. The next time you make a mistake instead of feeling dejected, think about it - you'll be glad about it (in a weird sense) sometime soon. This, in my opinion is real experience.

Looking Back

There are only a very few times when I look back at my life, and wonder why I've been doing the things I'd done. I'm forced to go through the process now as I'm trying to draft my Statement of Purpose - The single most interesting part of any university application is the SoP, where you're given all the freedom you'd want to highlight your achievements, enlist your passions and even explain a few of your shortcomings.

I was quite excited when I began writing mine, and I filled nearly a page and a half listing things that I'd just done in my school days in less than ten minutes. There was a logical flow of things, and I knew exactly what to write about them. But the moment the chronology led to my college life, or even just the beginning of it, I fail to see any explanation. Weaving a story out of nothing is simple. But weaving a story out of mistakes isn't.

But now, all that I can say is this:
What I really love doing is X. But I got into doing Y just because of some Z. In my process of doing Y I stopped doing X. And now I want to do A because its the closest I can get to X. :-/
-- I'm not sure about the A part, but I'm pretty sure the XYZ part is true in varying orders for many of us.

Apart for the cliché it carries, "Life is too short to do things that you don't like doing" makes a lot more sense in retrospection. Of course I know its still not too late to make amends, and I'm not getting all emo here, but the crux of it all is just, (atleast as a note to self) - Don't let anything stop you from following your heart. It might not be immediately possible, but this is the ideal time to reflect upon the things you'd want to do and try to get to doing them as soon as you can.

A poetic puzzle

Morning greetings with delight:

your challenge is to find light,
namely in a poetic trite,
all it takes is some insight.
maybe as it is really bright
everyone will find it right?

I had a weird dream last night,
sigh 'twas a melodramatic fight
pen and paper in foolish blithe
rantin' and reavin' bout their plight
aghast, I fought with my sword upright
kept on till it broke to the pen's might
alas! my only escape was to quickly write
something mine, which also is a fact and a trait
ha! its a synonym to my characteristic weight.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Need a clue?
First things first.. just read the poem well.. and think straight ;-)

My experiments with truth #3 -- The Ruben's Tube

This is the story behind how the author constructed a model of the Ruben's tube. The author highly recommends that you try this out, its so awesome to watch the flames dance! :D

Day 0:

Agenda : Do nothing.

( 5th March 2010, 11 am )
Exams have just gotten over, the author is very excited, decides to finish off his assignment as soon as possible and goes out in searching for a big pipe. Finds that its available in just one shop, enquires the prices et al. and decides to wait for a day to do any further work.

End of the day ( EOTD): Enquiry, essentially nothing. Sticking on to the agenda is nice right? :D

Day 1:

 Agenda : Permission, buy stuff.

( 6th March 2010, 9 am )
The author realises that the pipe is going to cost a lot, and decides to inform his professor about this before proceeding to buy stuff.

( 6th March 2010, 10 30 am )


Author: "Sir, about the assignment, the pipe and other stuff cost around 500-600 bucks. Can I go ahead and buy stuff? Also, I have a couple of doubts, blah blah blah"

Prof: "Just get me proper bills, do whatever you feel is right for the experiment"

Clearly, Prof does not want to discuss any further details. The author then goes to the hardware stores and buys the materials, without realising how heavy they were. The author then painfully carries the stuff to his room, and decides to rest till next morning and proceed. A great deal of work is done - He thinks.

EOTD:  Covered everything in the agenda, so far so good!

Day 2:

Agenda : Drilling holes into the pipe.

( 7th March 2010, 10 am )

Author goes to his prof and asks for a letter to be signed for taking the pipe to the workshop and drill holes. Prof asks the author to do the drilling by himself and if that doesn't work take it to the workshop. The author decides to take a shot at drilling, goes to the department supplies and borrows a drill-bit.

( 7th March 2010, 11 am )

The author goes out with this friends, decides to work later in the night. Returns back at around 6 and decides to start working.

( 7th March 2010, 6:30 pm )

The author is in big trouble, carrying the pipe all the way from his room to the lab is going to be a Herculean task. The pipe is about 20 kg heavy and has to be transported for about 3 kms. Just as the author comes out, he sees his room neighbor who has a bike. Sweet! The author then transports the pipe to the lab and sets everything up for drilling.
The pipe is in position, the drill-bit is set, the machine now starts rolling, the drill bit is slowly lowered, there is contact, and poof! the drill bit breaks. Disaster!
Now, there is no way any work could be done for the day, the author leaves to his room and watches Psych before sleeping.


EOTD: Nothing done, broken drill-bit. Smells like trouble.

Day 3:

( 8th March, 9 am)
The author wakes up, decides to take the pipe to the workshop to gets the hole drilled, and then realises that its a Saturday, nobody will be working.
He then think of taking the pipe outside to a fabricator and get the holes drilled, but trouble there, a permit letter signed by the prof is required to take stuff outside apparently :-|. And the prof won't be there as its Saturday.

This is when the author decides to follow the ultimate solution to all problems:

When the going gets tough, call Dad :)

Dad then calls mom, mom calls our electrician, he calls the author and explains that its hard to drill 2mm holes with a HSS drill-bit, and offers to help in drilling it tomorrow.

So the author puts peace for the whole day, finishes the 4th season of Psych, watches Death Race and Shooter and finally dozes off.

EOTD: Though nothing was done, it was a good day.

Day 5:
The penultimate day, submission due next day morning at 10 am.

( 9th March 12:00 noon)

The author wakes up to the call from his electrician (who's going to come in another half hour), rushes through his lunch and waits for them to come. (There are two of them coming)

( 9th March 12:30 pm)

The author takes the two electricians to his lab and shows them the pipe. Time to start measuring and marking the location of the holes.
 Problem 1:
The author then realises that there is no chalk or pencil, and the pen doesn't write on the pipe. After frantically searches through the lab to find any of these, gives up and decides to wash his face before thinking any further. It was then when he sees the soap, aha! Soap is the new pencil of the day.

The author then marks the location of the holes with the soap and asks the other two to start drilling. But apparently, they need a punch to create a small hole which will guide the drill-bit.
 Problem 2:
No punch available.
After turning the lab upside down in search of a drill punch, the author comes to term with the fact that there is no drill punch.
No drill punch -> no guidance for the drill-bit -> no drilling for the day.
It was then when the grinding machine catches the author's eye. The author takes a thick drill bit and grinds it to form a drill punch. yay!

The hole positions now have tap holes on them. Time to start drilling.

 Problem 3:
No provision for injecting coolant.
HSS
The author goes around in another search mission for a bottle or something which can be used to pour water on the drill-bit during drilling, again there seems to be nothing that serves the purpose.

Finally the author sees the hand wash bottle, drains its contents and decides to use it for squirting water on the drill-bit when needed. Voila! Drilling can go on seamlessly now.

The drilling process begins and in about half hour its done, the author thanks the other two profusely as they leave. The author now begins to work on the other parts that have to be setup. The author in the process realises that there are 2 more issues to tackle.
Problem 4:
No teflon tape to make the joints air-tight. The author looks around, finds dismantled parts of another setup, carefully unwraps the used-teflon from those joints and uses it for his setup.

Problem 5:
There is no bolt to hold the rear side of the LPG inlet into the pipe, the author decides that using mseal is a very clumsy solution and decides to get wild. The author takes the rear end of the nozzle, heats it with a candle and creates a threading on the plastic cap with the heated brass instead of drilling a hole. The hold is still not strong enough. The author then begins another frantic search and finally finds a long collar that would serve as a bolt for the rear end of the nozzle. He then hack(saw)s the long collar, brings it to his required size, gives a layer of teflon on the thread and seals the inlet.

The setup is finally done by 7pm. Surprisingly, it actually works in its very first run!

Happ'y'ness++

The author then decides to blog about it and here he is.

And this is a video of the setup in action: (Its a pity that the setup in real life is waaaaay more awesom..er than how it appears in the video though)

 


The author now signs off to start writing his report.

Fundamental changes

After realizing how embarrassing it is to give out my blog url, I have made a decision to change it to something which makes far less sense than what it did earlier. Though I could plead being 12 years old when I had thought about that one, I'd rather say I like the new one better.

And, here: How very interesting it is.
{
\t Pun
}

Now that we have covered the main issue and the mokkai, lets move on to more mundane stuff,
How you doing?
Been long since I opened this and felt "live" again :P

And oh, btw, this darn thing has robbed me of all my comments :-/
So, I can't post the link to the 'live' part.