Tom goes whitewashing...

...his desert cooler. :-)

As I said in my last post, my broken, rusted, and ignored desert cooler is growling at me from the balcony each time I pass it by. This weekend is going to be a full blown restoration week...very interesting...already have a list of things to purchase and

It is all the more satisfying when you do something by yourself and then see it work. No one on-hire is going to pay as much attention as much as you can to the thing that you want to get done. Strange as it may seem, it takes much less skills to fix something by yourself than what most of use believe.

The best way to know the skills needed to achieve a minor fix can only be known by attempting it. So tomorrow I will be brushing, sanding and painting the old frame of my cooler. Maybe next weekend it will be ready to roll. I am expecting this overhaul to last at least three seasons without needing any further maitenance.

Enough talk about this cooler task

Few days ago I started to miss my gym! I decided that rather than spending the first month at slow conditioning, I should try to condition myself at home itself and then get a head-start at the gym. But by mistake, I have been a little overenthusiastic the first day of my home routine and the result is that I am sore in most of my muscles now and had to take off for a couple of days. Lesson is that home exercise also has enough potential to train us if done regularly.

I will be happy to share my ideas of home exercise if readers wish to. A half an hour workout for whole major body parts without any props and equipment! Learned that from those months I have been spending in gym over past few years. :-)

So while my muscles recuperate during the night, I will prepare myself for the tomorrows Tweaking. Till I finish that,

See ya!

Rise of the Tweaker

tweak*  (twk)

tr.v. tweaked, tweak·ing, tweaks

1. To pinch, pluck, or twist sharply.

2. To adjust; fine-tune.

3. To make fun of; tease.

*Source: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/tweak

I am a Tweaker by birth. Although the term is not present in Oxford ALD, but defines my cravings for electronic, mechanical and electromechanical stuff very well.

Of the above meanings, my idea of tweaking goes more with the 2nd with added tactics of 1st one to achieve my goals and sometimes the 3rd one as well for recreation. But my subjects are mostly inanimate articles from the long forgotten boxes full of broken inventions and some curious metal and plastic contraptions that tend to stay at home long after their useful period has elapsed due to their virtue of catching the curiosity of a Tweaker like me.

I already have mentioned my other DIY project that is about to jump on the drawing board. Last day one of my as geeky cousin called up to seek my help in rigging up a cheap surveillance system comprising of web cams, motion detectors, limit switches, GSM modules (or cell phone itself) and so on...

Discussed the plan for about one and a half hour and this is what fell into my bucket:

"Write a program to receive Boolean status information from any of the devices connected to a LPT1. The system will then have to take some action based on state of the connected devices. Possibly send a Boolean signal to one of the few signal pins on the LPT1 to trigger a low power relay that in turn triggers a high power relay that powers up an alarm or blah blah blah..."

A dive into this realm of electronics seems to be very fascinating and I am keen to explore more and more of this geeky entertainment. Being a techy, I believe that controlling an LPT should be less pain than trying to impress a girl. Holds true at least for me ;-)

So be sure to find some cool projects coming up soon. That reminds me! Summers are here and I need to fix our desert cooler for the season. Will do this weekend if I can find enough time. Its a lots of work. Again for fun, I am doing it myself, if anything goes wrong, we always have mechanics to fix them ;-)

Well, now I am thinking that mine would be a lucky wife to have a plumber, electrician, mechanic, all in one!

Ahem! Ahem! No self praise!

Okay then. Take care. See you again soon with my first rough rough (yes those are two roughs!) plan of the HLD and stay tuned for this LPT prototype as well.

Good nighties!

Learning and learning more

I sat down to write something here but ended up with a Black Pearl that was too valuable to be posted here, in a casual diary. So it ended up in a more treasured location in my other blog.

Read about the perils of introspection that go wild here.

Apart from that, I am trying to restore the learning order to my life and retrain my brain to start learning what is coming along. The dilemma here is that there is simply so much to learn and read that one cannot stay abreast all. This information era forces us to develop skills to choose what needs to be allowed in, and what information needs to be filtered away without getting overwhelmed by the amount of information that technology is creating day after day.

Of course choosing the right thing to learn is the best tactic to survive. That is what goes for any technical hand. Change, adapt, learn or perish!

See ya!

Blogging blackouts

Every blogger, writer, or artist must have experienced such spells when imagination just gives up. Mind simply goes devoid of ability to express. Not that we were busy with our life so much so that there was not enough time or were watching TV or were on a vacation. It was like someone has pressed the mute button on our thoughts.

But then we can again express this void that we are going through.Talking of which, I think it is a consequence of ourselves, or rather our thoughts being too occupied by something of so much more importance that we are forced to abandon our softer, more human self for a while and turn into a lifeless living-machine; an equipment that knows how to fulfill certain tasks in given period of 24 hours and then start all over again.

It is not easy to break through this vicious cycle and it takes immense courage, to break out of it and re-tune yourself into your older self.

See you soon.

Hey. I am back!

Been away for a while. Was attending to some exams.

I wonder if everyone is like that but I am hard coded with a fear for examinations. Maybe from the childhood days when the surrounding used to by haunted during the exam days. Everyone used to be so sensitive to us kids wasting any single moment on something not meant for scoring marks in exams. Suddenly the time used to become so important for all the poor kids. All eyes on us!

And then there used to be those padhaakoos (specky book worms) in the colony that served as a catalyst to engage our parents against us. "See HE has been studien since monin, HIS mom says HEs haven't even eaten or bathed!". I hope someone out there is relating to this?

Blah! I would say poor chap has only 10% of my IQ and has to work 10 times harder. Attend more coaching sessions and buy more books to get the concepts right (or cram them right).

Eventually, all those padhaakoos scored a couple of percents more than me. That's all. They were only good enough to get my parents charging at me with study-more-verbs. Now most of them leading lives similar to mine. Well, some are doing better too. :-)

But this continuous conditioning year after year four times a year or more was enough to have me worry even now. Crazy isn't it! As a reflex, suspended most recreation. But today I walked a free man from the exam center and here I am - connecting again.

What else? Yeah! a small update. I turned 100% veg. No more eggs! More on the 'why' later. I need to relax a lot now. Watch movies, TV,do random stuph, read books, attend to pending projects and so on.

Ciao!