A nice long drive can really help u get a grip on life. I have not sat on the drivers seat of such long drives but sitting on the passenger seat, it relaxes ur mind, letting it wonder off into the passing road. as the trees zoom by at 79 mph, u tend to look up at the black sky while the thoughts and imaginations that fly inside you have no speed limit nor a sky.
I guess to plan ur life and to think about the future, u need to be able to look into the past and reflect on it . without reflecting on the past, u prolly never grow up . and without thinking about the future also u prolly will never grow up . breaking our past and our future into yearly durations or 6 month durations, i think, is the best way to plan and reflect on what you have learnt , what do u want to learn, what have you experienced , what do you want to experience, what have you done, and what do you want to do ?
the bottom line i think would be : always have a plan.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
A white piece of paper
Yesterday I was discussing a paper on computational neuroscience with my friend Suvashish Thapa. He has a weak mathematical background. He was explaining to me some neuroscience concepts and I was explaining to him some statistics concepts when I realized something. If you can take a blank white piece of paper and starting from scratch explain a topic to a layman, then only can you safely say that you have understood a topic.
The same thing could be done for a lot of other fields such as vectors algebra, tensor calculus, mechanics, etc. I teach physics labs to a class of students who mostly major in non-science fields. Teaching concepts on mechanics is always difficult because they end up asking "how is it useful for me ?" and no matter how much I explain to them its importance to them, they are never fully satisfied.
Perhaps I should start the "blank piece of paper" concept to teach things to them from now on and relate it to the things they really need such as sports for the students who major in kineseology ( a study of sports).
The same thing could be done for a lot of other fields such as vectors algebra, tensor calculus, mechanics, etc. I teach physics labs to a class of students who mostly major in non-science fields. Teaching concepts on mechanics is always difficult because they end up asking "how is it useful for me ?" and no matter how much I explain to them its importance to them, they are never fully satisfied.
Perhaps I should start the "blank piece of paper" concept to teach things to them from now on and relate it to the things they really need such as sports for the students who major in kineseology ( a study of sports).
Acoustics and Electromagnetism
As an electrical engineer, electromagnetism forms one of the foundations of my knowledge. But during my thesis project currently, I somehow need to also read up on a lot of acoustics, and while reading it it has struck me on how similar the 2 fields of acoustics and electromagnetism are. Both are waves after all. One has equations on E and H as vector components while the other has equations on T( stress ) and velocity( v) as tensor and vector components respectively.
So though both wave equations are similar in terms of concepts, they differ slightly mathematically. In electromagnetism the worst you need to deal with is vector calculus, but acoustics with its tensor calculus is like hell. For those who dont know, let me rewind a little.
Scalars = Tensors of order 0
Vectors = Tensors of order 1
Dyadics = Tensors of order 2 ( when we refer to tensor , we refer to order 2 tensor )
Tridics = Tensors of order 3
So, overall I think for someone with a good grounding in electromagnetic wave equations, Poynting theorem, reflections, boundary conditions, and propagation of electromagnetic waves; acoustics will be an easier field to conquer. The only background you need is some preliminary tensor calculus.
So though both wave equations are similar in terms of concepts, they differ slightly mathematically. In electromagnetism the worst you need to deal with is vector calculus, but acoustics with its tensor calculus is like hell. For those who dont know, let me rewind a little.
Scalars = Tensors of order 0
Vectors = Tensors of order 1
Dyadics = Tensors of order 2 ( when we refer to tensor , we refer to order 2 tensor )
Tridics = Tensors of order 3
So, overall I think for someone with a good grounding in electromagnetic wave equations, Poynting theorem, reflections, boundary conditions, and propagation of electromagnetic waves; acoustics will be an easier field to conquer. The only background you need is some preliminary tensor calculus.
Friday, November 26, 2010
The question Why : Reason and Belief
I think one of the ways wrong ways to bring up children is to not answer their questions, specially the question Why. " Why should I do this?" " Why do I need to go to school?" "Why do I need to eat green vegetables?" "Why do I need to study this?" , If proper answers are given to children at the right time and they are treated as adults, they will travel to maturity easily.
A child comes up to his father or mother, and asks them why I cant smoke cigarrettes or why does he/she need to put down the toys or close the TV, and sometimes the only reply they get is a "cause I told you so". I was talking with my uncle last night through skype when I suggested him to not keep the laptop on top of the carpet. I suggested him to keep it on top of a hard surface such as glass or a table. Without hesistation he obeyed. Were the roles reversing? Though I did tell him the reason later, I wondered why he didnt ask me why I told him to not put the laptop on top of the carpet or the sofa at first.
Could the answer be belief ? Was that what our parents were sometimes trying to teach us: To believe in them. My uncle believed that I knew more about the computers than he did ( he was a BBC = Born Before Computers) , so he followed my instructions without a question. Could that be what our parents wanted us to do ? To believe them before trying to reason with them.
A child comes up to his father or mother, and asks them why I cant smoke cigarrettes or why does he/she need to put down the toys or close the TV, and sometimes the only reply they get is a "cause I told you so". I was talking with my uncle last night through skype when I suggested him to not keep the laptop on top of the carpet. I suggested him to keep it on top of a hard surface such as glass or a table. Without hesistation he obeyed. Were the roles reversing? Though I did tell him the reason later, I wondered why he didnt ask me why I told him to not put the laptop on top of the carpet or the sofa at first.
Could the answer be belief ? Was that what our parents were sometimes trying to teach us: To believe in them. My uncle believed that I knew more about the computers than he did ( he was a BBC = Born Before Computers) , so he followed my instructions without a question. Could that be what our parents wanted us to do ? To believe them before trying to reason with them.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Sunday, January 25, 2009
the NEA's report
and here is the report by NEA titled:
Committee Report for Solving the Load Shedding Problem
http://nea.org.np/committee_report/index.php
Click and enjoy !!!
--
breathe the air, enjoy life.
The NEA website a big letdown
I googled "hydropower projects in Nepal" and expecting to see a nice site lisitng all the hydropower projects in operation in Nepal was greeted with a an odd jumble of weblinks.
So i navigated to the nea.org.np website hoping to find some enlightment. But to my disappointed all that the website said was
:
Currently, sixteen hydropower stations and two major thermal power plants with total installed capacity of 398.39 MW and 53.41 MW respectively are in operation
It didnt give full names and rating of each of the projects.
But oh yes they do show you pictures of thei inauguration ceremony of their annual day 2009 and the minisites giving speeches.
And oh there is the load shedding chart and its in xls format... poor those guys who have not installed microsoft office package.
And people there is nothing to worry the have a nice link which says rastriya vidhyut sankat nirupan karyayojana-2065 though. Click and see for yourself.
--
breathe the air, enjoy life.
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