SAKSHAMA '09

After roving through the sweet memories of Sakshama'08, I m back to broach about the second edition of this phenomenal event...Sakshama09. The awe-inspiring fruition of the last edition has inspired us to be back with more ardor. The hankering for anabasis has been so high that you can except something off the beaten path from our team...For every event there is a starting point and undoubtedly its the design of its logo which gives recognition to the entire event.The story is no different here and we started our labor with the design of the logo for Sakshama09....



Let us know what you feel about it...pen your comments and stay tuned more to come....

A Nostalgic trip down lane - SAKSHAMA'08

The School of Mechanical Engineering, Sastra University conducted its first ever National Symposium- “Sakshma-08”, thus providing a chance for the best minds of the country to show off their superiority in mastering this era of Machines and Technology.

The whole idea behind such a mega event came forth when the powerful ones of the “Mechanical and Mechatronics Association- MECCASO” decided to add something more to their list of achievements, a feather in their cap and hence “Sakshama-08” was born.

But what is Sakshama?? What has that name got to do anything with a mechanical symposium?? Well when the time for naming this brain child came up, a huge turmoil took over. Needed a name! A name that not only talks about the technicality of the symposium but also sticks to the traditional roots of Sastra University, and then came up the idea of naming the event in the “language of Gods-Sanskrit”. After literally an era of careful research, “Sakshama” was chosen which means, to realise one’s potential.


Ideas for the events were left open to students of the SoME and the response to that was revolutionary! Finally the committee of organisers scrutinized and shortlisted five events which covered the various aspects of the mechanical and mechtronics sector.

The events were a combination of technology and entertainment, of careful research and conceptual analysis, of money and power!

The base for any symposium played a foundation here too!
Paper Presentation: Innovation is what sending shock waves through corridors of power and it’s the thing that drives much of today’s conglomerate. With the three main subdivisions of the mechanical world as the topics- thermal engineering, design and production, Sakshama served as a platform for various innovative ideas to be showcased.

Watch the Birdie: Well men and the game golf go a long way back but golf and machines?? Well at Sakshama, the idea of golf for machines came up. Participants were required to construct a mechanism to drive a ball into strategically positioned holes, with varying levels of difficulty.

On the spot events were decided to inculcate fun and frolic in the symposium. The events under this were Treasure Hunt and Inti Sensors.
Treasure hunt: as the name suggests, this was to bring out the ‘Jack Sparrows’ within one’s self by providing clues to hunt for the treasure hidden in the deep and dark corners of the Viswakarma Joth. Participants were required to use the combined might of brain and brawn to find the product of quest and thus to emerge victorious.
Inti Sensors: Measurement has become an integral part of the engineers and the event Inti Sensors was based on measurement of different quantities. A Mechatronics problem statement was given and the participants were to solve the problem impromptu.

Finally, none of the tech fests or the symposiums becomes true without this event- “Tech Quiz”. The team came up with rounds of questions to quench the thirst of knowledge for the participants.

The preparations for the symposium started in full swing about a month earlier. First things first, Sponsorship! With just the idea for a technical platform and the green signal from the authorities, nothing could be officially started, unless and until someone came forward in financing the events. Fortunately, ZOHO, A Product of Advent and TATA Consultancy Services, were indeed a blessing in the implementation of this creativity.

The rules and the problem statements for the events being set, the Design team of the department got together to start off their long process of preparing the brochures, posters, pamphlets, certificates and what not!

With the job of the marketing team and the design team nearly complete, the posters and the invitations were sent to some of the leading engineering colleges of the nation and the response to the preliminary rounds of Paper Presentation indeed made the team happy! A jury was set up to select the papers for the finals presentation on the Sakshama platform. It consisted of eminent professors from the host department.

All this while the infra team was busy in preparing the tracks and thus spreading the feeling of enthusiasm all over, the design team came up with the idea of Sakshama T-shirts for better publicity within the University Campus. The excellent design and the T-Shirt quality accelerated its sales and even before the Day arrived, the college was swarming with the people in the t-shirts.

Finally the D-Day dawned bright and sunny. The day started off with the inaugural function with Mr. R.Venkatraman, Director S.P.F as the chief guest. After the ceremony, the day proceeded on with the various being held as scheduled. An overwhelming response from more than 18 colleges spread throughout Tamil Nadu and neighbouring states with over 250 participants from different branches of engineering.
Apart from the outside colleges, the interest shown by both department and non department students of Sastra University was indeed like icing on the cake. The event witnessed a marathon paper presentation program with more than 17 papers being exhibited in fields of Thermal, Design and Manufacturing Engineering. The most sought after Treasure Hunt had whopping 85 teams, while Watch the Birdie event drew more than 10 different mechanisms all of which were to play the robot golf. Inti sensors, event to test innovation, pulled in a large crowd along with a Surprise event on creativity in drafting saw huge participation. The Quiz Finale was the trademark of the entire event, with 5 final teams battling it out to glory. The valedictory ceremony marked the culmination of a month long efforts by the team. Mr. V.Badrinath, Dean H.R. Department, Sastra University, presided over the ceremony and gave away the prizes to the victorious.

Picasa 3.5 brings facial recognition to the desktop

Roughly a year after rolling out facial recognition on its Picasa Web Albums site, Google on Tuesday is introducing an updated version of its Picasa software (for Windows | Mac) that can recognize faces in photos stored on users' computers.

Just as it does on the Web, Picasa scans your photos for faces, then groups together photos of specific people. It's then your job to tell it who they are as well as confirm its guesses. If someone you're tagging is in your Google address book, you can also look them up very quickly with auto-complete. Otherwise, Google gives you the option to add them as someone new; this information then gets synced back up your Google address book.

Picasa's software can now scan for faces, and offer up recommendations of people it thinks are your contacts.

The system worked very well for me, but it was slow going. I had to leave the program running overnight for it to finish processing my 3,700 or so photos for faces. It also had my processor humming, since it was doing all the work on my machine instead of Google's giant server farm.

That's not to say Google hasn't included a few things to help speed up the process. For one, if you've got photos that are both hosted online and on your hard drive--and that have already been scanned for faces, the Picasa software can grab that information and add it to your local library. This saves it from having to scan the same photos twice.

And for photos it thinks contain people you've verified as contacts, it gives you quick "yes" and "no" buttons that can add or reject name tags. Oftentimes, clicking "yes" adds a few more suggestions for photos of that person that the program feels is safe enough to recommend. There's also a way to group accept or group decline its suggestions, which saves time you would have otherwise spent clicking the buttons one at a time.

Users can now geotag their photos right in the Picasa, just like they can in Picasa Web Albums.

As with Picasa Web Albums, your reward for trudging through your photos to add tags is better organization, which for a massive library of old, archived shots can be hugely helpful. And unlike Picasa's albums feature, name tags let you quickly sort all of your photos by who's in them--not when they were taken or how you've personally organized them. It also continues to do this with any photos you add to your library in the future.

Along with facial recognition, the new version of the software integrates Google Maps--a much-wanted feature among geotagging fans. Just as you're able to do in Picasa Web Albums, you can search for a location in Google Maps, then amend that geographic data to your photo. You can also view groups of photos by place by clicking on little red map markers that show where individual photos have been placed. Unlike the facial recognition feature though, this is still largely a manual process of doing a search for each location then adding it to a photo, or group of photos, at once. That is, unless you have a camera with GPS (which most people don't).

One big thing Google is bringing to the table with this release over something like Apple's iPhoto (at least for Mac users) is the capability to tag items that are spread out across your entire computer, as well as external drives. In that regard, it does a much better job than iPhoto when it comes to automatically importing and organizing photos--all without disturbing where they're stored. Considering it now does much of what iPhoto is able to do with faces, with the added bonus of grabbing that contact information from your Google address book, it makes for a very seamless experience.

The new version of the software should appear as an update for users of Picasa v3.1 the next time they start the program. It can also be forced to update by clicking the "check for updates online" option in the help menu.

Velocity of Money...!!!

It is August. In a small town on the South Coast of France, the holiday season is in full swing, but it is raining so there is not too much business happening. Everyone is heavily in debt. Luckily, a rich Russian tourist arrives in the foyer of the small local hotel. He asks for a room and puts a Euro 100 note on the reception counter, takes a key and goes to inspect the room located up the stairs on the third floor. The hotel owner takes the banknote in hurry and rushes to his meat supplier to whom he owes E100. The butcher takes the money and races to his supplier to pay his debt. The wholesaler rushes to the farmer to pay E100 for pigs he purchased some time ago. The farmer triumphantly gives the E100 note to a local hair dresser who provided him his services on credit. The Hair dresser goes quickly to the Hotel, as he owed the hotel for his room use a month back.
At that moment, the rich Russian is coming down to reception and informs the hotel owner that the proposed room is unsatisfactory and takes his E100 back and departs. There was no profit or income. There was NO real economic activity. But everyone no longer has any debt and the small town people look optimistically towards their future. That's the power of velocity of money!

Google chrome

After Microsoft and Apple coming up with television ads, its now Google's time. Their first ad will be of its own very popular browser "Chrome".
Chrome is actually based on the open source project called chromium. Its available for free on google code : http://code.google.com/chromium/
Chromium is available for Linux and mac also, it is called CrossOver Chromium. It is emulated to run on both platforms, but does not support it natively.

Powerslave---Auto Power scheme to conserve Power!!

Windows System has some power saving features that allows users to configure them either to be in full horse power or in power saving mode depending on situation. Typically during office hour you are looking for a system that can run in full speed for more optimum performance but when reaching home at night, you may want to give your computer some rest by setting it to energy saving mode. Instead of manually configuring it, why not just set the profile so that it can switch by itself within a predefined time frame. Now with the simple solution named as PowerSlave, it allows users to configure the power scheme profiles switching automatically without the need of users’ intervention.


Once installed and launched, the utility will bring you a simple interface. Without the need to go through complicated setup, users just need to select the Day time and Night time plan accordingly. For instance, you can put in ‘High Performance’ and ‘Power Saver’ plan for day and night time respectively. Once completed, just key in the ‘Start Time’ and ‘End Time’ for the plan followed by ‘Apply’ button and you are ready to go.

If you think this is useful, just get a free download here for personal use and have a peace of mind with programmable power scheme switching for more effective work besides able to conserve energy towards greener environment.

i am back!!!!

hi ppl,
really long since i blogged. Was involved in lot of activities and due to wi fi problems had to temporarily stop blogging. but now as i am free n wi fi is great,thought i will continue it.so first of all i apologise to all my readers. so the best thing would be to tell u ppl is that my team participated in english and hindi dramatics with me as their director.We won second position in hindi dramatics but nothing in english. it was an awesome experience working the ppl. had loads of fun.!!!!
keep waiting for more posts.

signing off
adithya

How indian Mind Works!!!

NOT A STORY BUT A
TRUE INCIDENT

An Indian man walks into a bank in
New York City and asks for the loan officer.
He tells the loan officer that he is going to India on business
for two weeks and needs to borrow $5,000.

The bank officer tells him that the bank
will need some form of security for the loan,
so the Indian man hands over the keys
and documents of new Ferrari parked
on the street in front of the bank.
He produces the title and everything checks out.
The loan officer agrees to accept
the car as collateral for the loan.

The bank's president and its officers
all enjoy a good laugh at the Indian
for using a $250,000 Ferrari
as collateral against a $5,000 loan.
An employee of the bank then
drives the Ferrari into the bank's
underground garage and parks it there.

Two weeks later, the Indian returns,
repays the $5,000 and the interest,
which comes to $15.41.
The loan officer says,
"Sir, we are very happy to have had your business,
and this transaction has worked out very nicely,
but we are a little puzzled.
While you were away,
we checked you out and found that you are a multi millionaire.
What puzzles us is, why would you bother to borrow "$5,000" ?

The Indian replies:

"Where else in New York City can I park my car
for two weeks for only $15.41
and expect it to be there when I return'"

Ah, the mind of the Indian...


This is why India is shining

Pongal celebrations !!!

just before pongal comes the usual news at sastra ....... only one day declared as holiday and no open permission for students visiting their homes.. was a bit dejected on hearing the news.
when my friends kamal n gokul came to know about this , they were like machi why not celebrate pongal here???and tried to change my mood. it was another two days for pongal n we sat there breaking our heads wondering what to do.. we wanted something different to be done. then this idea of kite flying suddenly struck us n then we were like why not include rangoli also specially for girls.
we had only 48 hours to plan n organise the complete thing. so we approached our senior manoj anna, one who can help us out anytime n in any situation.
so we planned n set up our tasks and divided our works amongst us. called upon a few first years n second years to do some volunteering work. major task to get permission from the management. designed this poster n went to get the permission.



just kept our fingers crossed n finally we got the permission for the same. we were on cloud nine, jumping with joy. now started the main task. had to set up the arena , plan everything for the next day like framing the rules n regulations ,inviting jury etc. the materials etc. had to be brought from tanjore. first aid was also to be taken care of. registrations were on n all of us had hectic schedules of classes to be managed along with this work. we kept our fingers crossed hoping that atleast some 200 people turn up for the evnt.
finally the D day arrived n at first there was a small crowd. few kites went up n then a huge rush.
my god i could not believe the situation. total of some 200 kites were sold out within half an hour. n loads of girls tuned up for the rangoli in the traditional sarees.
around 120 teams for kite flying including both girls n boys and around 35 teams for rangoli turned up. so around 1000 people made it to the event. the event was a mega hit.
few snaps ....


in the due course learnt a lot about team work, helping each other out , time management , how to approach different kind of people , what hard work meant n best part enjoyed like hell.
we made a profit after spending a good amount on prizes n also rewarding the volunteers.
so my first salary lol.. got mom n dad gifts from it also to my best friend :-)

back home!!!!!!!!

huh!!! finally home sweet home.. after a long month's gap. exams n stuff n other works etc., kept me busy n could not blog much. have loads to share with you people. yesterdays bus journey n dinner was excellent with friends. will surely blog when ever possible about all. tata...

To all , who know how to solve the problems mathematically...

Please solve it

Kirchoff's Current Law (KCL):
At every node, the sum of all currents entering a node must equal zero.

Kirchoff's Voltage Law (KVL):
The voltage law says that the sum of voltages around every closed loop in the circuit must equal zero.

Exercise :
Please apply Kirchoff's Current and Voltage laws to the following figures.

I think Kirchoff's himself would struggle to solve this problem :)

Tomato Story

A Jobless man applied for the position of 'office boy' at Microsoft.
The HR manager interviewed him then watched him cleaning the floor as a test.

'You are employed' he said. Give me your e-mail address and I'll send you the application to fill in, as well as date when you may start.

The man replied 'But I don't have a computer, neither an email' .

'I'm sorry' , said the HR manager. If you don't have an email, that means you do not exist. And who doesn't exist, cannot have the job.'

The man left with no hope at all. He didn't know what to do, with only $10 in his pocket. He then decided to go to the supermarket and buy a 10Kg tomato crate.
He then sold the tomatoes in a door to door round.. In less than two hours,
he succeeded to double his capital. He repeated the operation three times,
and returned home with $60.

The man realized that he can survive by this way, and started to go everyday earlier, and return late. Thus, his money doubled or tripled everyday.

Shortly, he bought a cart, then a truck, and then he had his own fleet of delivery vehicles.

5 years later, the man is one of the biggest food retailers in the US
He started to plan his family's future, and decided to have a life insurance.

He called an insurance broker, and chose a protection plan.
When the conversation was concluded the broker asked him his email.
The man replied, 'I don't have an email.'
The broker answered curiously, 'You don't have an email, and yet have succeeded to build an empire. Can you imagine what you could have been if you had an e mail?!!'The man thought for a while and replied,'Yes, I'd be an office boy at Microsoft!'

Moral of the story

Moral 1
Internet is not the solution to your life.

Moral 2
If you don't have Internet, and work hard, you can be a millionaire.

Moral 3
If you received this message by email,
you are closer to being a office boy/girl,than a millionaire. ......... .

P.S - Do not forward this email back to me,
I am closing my email account & going to sell tomatoes!!! (Pls don't take this line seriously as yet)

read it!!!!!

Three world famous magicians were in the bar drinking and boasting about
their achievements.
The first one said," During my latest show, I made three women from the
audience disappear, it was so convincing that their relatives started
panicking, no one could find the trick"
The second one said, " Hey, that is nothing, during one of my open air
shows I made the Municipality building disappear and the entire town was
searching for it"
The third one sighed and said," Both of you are so local, I went to
Paris and made the Eiffel Tower disappear for a full one hour, it was
live on the TV, entire France was searching for the building & no one
had a clue".
Just then an Indian walked into the bar and the three magicians suddenly
turned quiet, gave each other fugitive glances and started to slip
towards the door.
A Bartender watching this got curious and asked one of the magicians,
"Hey what happened ? Who is that guy ? "
One of the magicians whispered, "He is the World's greatest magician, he
has done the biggest disappearing trick of all times, we are all mere
amateurs compared with what he has done. His name is Ramalinga Raju. He
has made USD 1.5 billion disappear from his company's balance sheet in
front of everyone's eyes, and the entire world is still looking for it .

checkout the poem!!!

hi all,

check out the poem at this link...
http://chithroobeni.blogspot.com/

adithya

DAKSH '09

daksh is my coll tech fest.. its online events have already started...u all can go through,if interested u can register n play..

About Daksh

“Magic is any sufficiently advanced technology.”

- Arthur.C.Clarke

This is very true, especially in the current times. Man’s yearning to learn about the world around and his thirst for knowledge has resulted in technology manifesting itself in many forms, in a wide range of sizes from the extremely tiny to the magnificently huge. Essentially, Science and Technology define and nurture every aspect of our lives today. We at Daksh’09 wish to help propel the advancement of technology to make life and living better for mankind.

If Nirman is all about creating structures that will stand the test of time, ElectronIQ is about designing clever electronic circuits to do the biddings of us humans, their masters. The cluster Envisage is one to bring out managerial skills which is something definitely very important as evidenced by the following words of Karl Marx- “Even the greatest of armies can falter without a leader.” Robotricks is about combining the might of man and machine to overcome challenges and succeed.Compsense deals with our new-age companions, our “virtual” friends, computers, which help us in almost all aspects of life, and Chromoxone is all about probing into the purpose and reason behind our very existences. And last but not the least, Shunyakaal is about thinking on one’s feet and solving problems in the same fashion. After all, life is all about thinking impromptu too.

Daksh has always been an excellent platform to showcase developments and augmentations made to technology. This year’s edition of Daksh promises to uphold whatever it has stood for till now since its inception and for more. We invite you to participate in Daksh’09 and go back home a tad wiser and better in more ways than one. We invite you to -
Come, Learn, Get DAKSHified.

Ten Tips for writing a blog post

Here are ten tips that help me with my blog writing.

1. Make your opinion known
2. Link like crazy
3. Write less
4. 250 Words is enough
5. Make Headlines snappy
6. Write with passion
7. Include Bullet point lists
8. Edit your post
9. Make your posts easy to scan
10. Be consistent with your style
11. Litter the post with keywords

1. Make your opinion known
People like blogs, they like blogs because they are written by people and not corporations. People want to know what people think, crazy as it sounds they want to know what you think. Tell them exactly what you think using the least amount of words possible.

2. Link like crazy.
Support your post with links to other web pages that are contextual to your post.

3. Write Less
Give the maximum amount of information with the least amount of words. Time is finite and people are infinitely busy. Blast your knowledge into the reader at the speed of sound.

4. 250 is enough
A long post is easier to forget and harder to get into. A short post is the opposite.

5. Make Headlines snappy
Contain your whole argument in your headline. Check out National newspapers to see how they do it.

6. Include bullet point lists
We all love lists, it structures the info in an easily digestible format.

7. Make your posts easy to scan
Every few paragraphs insert a sub heading. Make sentences and headlines short and to the point.

8. Be consistent with your style
People like to know what to expect, once you have settled on a style for your audience stick to it.

9. Litter the post with Keywords.
Think about what keywords people would use to search for your post and include them in the body text and headers. make sure the keyword placement is natural and does not seem out of place.

10. Edit your post
Good writing is in the editing. Before you hit the submit button, re-read your post and cut out the stuff that you don’t need.

I hope you enjoyed my tips for writing a blog post - feel free to share your own blog writing tips by commenting.

Happy new year !!!!!!!!!!!!!

New Year is a time for celebration of love, of life, of Friendship.
It's the time to thank God for wonderful friends, and to bring to their
lives as much magic as they bring to ours...So here's celebrating our
Friendship and praying that its magic continues forever. Happy New Year 2009....

May this year mark the beginning of a year of pleasure and discovery
for you. May each day hold something special, that is wonderful and
new... For you deserve the best of everything, that life can ever bring.

Wish all my blog readers a happy n prosperous new year..