Harsh J

I know I rant a lot about my college, the studies that men do, and general stuff in that regard. But underneath all that hate I seem to spew around, I do actually love my course.

It does get tedious when some subject you have no real interest for gets in the way and you have to learn it no matter what but if seen clearly it does teach you something you never knew all your life. And am sure somewhere you would be able to apply the same, if not immediately, in your life.

I shouldn’t be speaking examples here cause cases are all relative to what people study but I’ll push on with it. I had no idea how or what JPEG compression worked or did until this semester. And when I did learn that and GIF, TIFF, MPEG and other stuff like it, I realized how important digital signals were and how much you can achieve by them. I had to remove the mental block that had grown out of my hatred towards any subject that considered a signal x(n) and derived seemingly useless equations out of it a.k.a Digital Signal Processing.

What I mean here is, once I got to know how large the application area of the subject I hated was, I felt shame I did that. But its not entirely my mentality at fault, its also the syllabus outline we have prescribed. The subjects hardly focus on the practical part of a paper, and by practical I do not mean laboratory or stuff like that, but real-world applications. At max all I see is a small 4-5 point block about “Used as”, “Used in” and etc. Never do they include an detailed explanation about at least one of the various interesting applications of the topic.

Not that it would make a difference to the majority who wish to graduate for work purposes alone but to those who actually have joined with an interest it would mean a lot.

Back to normal topics, (i.e. if you’re still reading this far), I’m loving this Gentoo Linux, it didn’t turn out to be hard as predicted at all. Of course I just did the stage3 install via the Handbook but I’ve compiled my own custom kernels and applications and it all seem so easy and nice to do. Well, so much for a normal topic huh?

Gonna watch Iron Man or Speed Racer within the week and both within the next. Just for summer’s sake of course. I really wish The Dark Knight released sooner, its too long the wait since Batman Begins to watch Bale take up the Wayne role again with his perfect straight face, heh.

Anyway, me off now for some stuff I must have done long ago. Got to catch up with the skilled world.

Discovered that PowerISO has a free Linux CLI tool for opening .DAA (Direct Access Archive) files and allowing conversion to other formats as well. Can be downloaded and installed from the .tar.gz package available at their website here or click here for a direct download!

College’s been pretty hectic, or I instead have been very lazy since my last blog post (27th January).

Other stuff am trying these days are problems, both old and new, from IIT-K’s Bitwise (Of course, in Python!). I did try the still-alive Krypton but I got fed up of it at the 6th level, lost my touch I guess.

Also trying to learn nasm bit by bit (Pun intended) but I can’t be an avid user of it any time soon, its hell mighty! .Net is going into my brains too, as my College’s Lab projects require it. IMO .Net’s pretty good to use, with its heavy abstraction, its very easy to build stuff with it. Strictly NO for efficient applications though. Its a dependency hell (sort of) too but thats okay with me.

Well thats all for now, more on what movies, etc I’ve seen, later! Darn records.

I’ve got a 10 day break from college for this Pongal festival. Of course it didn’t come free, as I have a ton load of assignments to complete before it ends.

Off to some distant land for now. BRB.

My 4th semester’s begun, and its back to college for over 8 hours a day.

The subjects this time are all mostly theor-ish.

Here are my subjects this 4th semester:

• Probability and Statistics
• Microprocessors and Microcontrollers
• Computer Architecture
• Software Engineering
• Digital Signal Processing
• Information Coding Techniques

Probability is fun, but also involves a wrote of writing, than solving. Bah.

Microprocessors and Computer Architecture are interesting ones which I don’t mind paying full attention to. Though Computer Architecture is something very basic and I end up day dreaming in its classes.

No one’s turned up for Digital Signal Processing yet but from the syllabus it looks like its just a deep extension of the Signals and Systems I had last semester. Signals was easy last year, but I don’t know how it could be an IT Industry application. But the problems were simple nevertheless.

Information Coding Techniques is the lone nice subject I have this semester. It has all those things about data compression, various formats of compression, and so on. Neat.

Software Engineering is full theory of various models, concepts, blah. I never would understand the need of learning so much corporate stuff until I start working I think. But the subject’s just started so I can’t say much. Having the word ‘Engineering’ in its name makes me think its more than just what it looks.

So am off to another grueling 3 months I guess. This time am gonna need 2x the amounts of pens I used last semester. Since there is NO CODE at all. I wish there were more Code/Algorithmic subjects.

In Labs we’ve got 3 again:

• Digital Signal Processing and Communication Lab
• Microprocessors and Microcontrollers Lab
• Software Engineering Lab

Software Engineering Lab has project stuff where we have to make teams of 4 or more and build something redundant. They advised us to use VB and MS-Access even while the Syllabus stated the use of just simple C/C++. Meh. I’m gonna see if they allow the use of other languages and GUI tool-kits as well.

Microprocessor one is all OP-Code and programs with those. Adding two numbers was never this fun.

Not been to DSP & Communication Lab yet, will update this part next week or so. Its gonna be boring, am sure of that. Cause to me, Communication stuff is ALL boring. Don’t even get me started on how I managed to write things in that Principles of Communication paper in December’s Anna University exams.