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!