Electronic Rain Gauge with FLI

Its been quite a while since I have posted because of my continuous examination schedule. Now atleast I have found sometime as it is my Christmas vacation

About a month ago, we had a school assignment of making a Rain Gauge. Though most of my classmates made simple ones by inserting a funnel into a bottle full of markings, I decided to make an electronic rain gauge. I researched a bit on different models, and fond a few interesting ones like the tipping bucket model. Since I couldn't find the materials I needed for the tipping bucket, I was left thinking for something else.

After quite alot of time I came up with a simple and easy to prepare model.

It used a simple mechanism of FLI (Fluid Level Indicator), which was injected into a transparent plastic jar, attached to a funnel on top.

It did take a lot of time to prepare the model even though, the model looked very simple.

I came across a lot of leakages, which I had to fix with M-seal.

After all that hard work, I got a full in the assignment,and my gauge was a sensational attraction to all the Biology department!

Why is gravity only attractive?

While reading the well known book 'A brief History of Time' by Stephen Hawking, I came up with a very simple and silly question, 'Why is gravity only attractive?'. Why is it so? Why can't it be repulsive? I spent some time trying to find the answer, but I could'nt find anything convincing on the Internet. A few days later a I came across a video depicting gravity as waves and ripples in the space-time continuum.

Basically, the space-time, is a 4-dimensional space, in which points are events, which is like a fabric on which matter of different masses are placed. Since the planets are bodies with extremely heavy masses, they form a depression of curvature on the fabric. The properties of the depression depend on the mass and surface area of the object. Objects of larger mass form deeper curvatures whereas, wider objects form wider curvatures.

Now, due to the depression or curvature caused by the planets, any other object which comes towards the depression starts to sink in, and moves closer and closer to the object or attracting towards it. In the case of the sun and earth, the sun forms a large depression, in which all the planets of the solar system are present. It is due to this depression that the planets revolve around fixed orbits around the sun. Thus, we can say that these areas of depression or curvature depict the force which is currently known as Gravity. It is also proved that gravity is not an instantaneous force, but it also takes time to travel. Einstein calculated that gravity travels with a speed equal to that of light.

This picture of the universe has answered many questions relating to gravity, such as what will happen when the sun runs out of fuel and disappears, and I believe it can answer mine too.

As we have seen gravity is caused due to depression or curvature of the space-time, thus objects can only sink in and get attracted and have no chances to repelling repelling due to gravitation.
I only feel this is a half way solution, but I'm at least convinced!

The picture depicts the Sun and Earth in Space-time.

Advertisements breakthrough - The zoo zoo's

Recently during the IPL (India premier league) there have been a number of ads by Vodafone, pointing to each of it's features.
These ads have a few animated characters called zoo zoo's, which speak a very hilarious type of slang.

The Zoo zoo's attract me the most! They are a strategic way to reduce ad costs and also increase popularity. Other companies might come up with mascot ads soon

The official website is at http://vodafonezoozoo.in/. You can go and download any or all of these cool short videos.

Here is a video of my favourite ad 'The busy message'!

Twitter for emergencies

The newly unveiled beta product of Microsoft, named Vine^tm is believed to be a twitter during emergencies. Vine is designed to keep family and friends in touch when other communication methods are either broken or not particularly efficient. The whole new idea came from the GM Public Safety initiatives Tammy Savage, four years ago during the Hurricane Katrina.

It gathers information such as warning and reports, from national news sources and also from the
NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).
It also give status updates from Facebook and other social networking sites, to update everyone in the network, such as family and friends.

The official Beta site is at http://vine.net/ , where an invitation request can be made.
If you make an invitation request they will email you when a new beta is available.
I made a request as soon as I got to know about it, and I will stay in touch with my whole family when I get it.

My view towards Vine is that it can be enabled to rural India, through making it available on mobile. It would be a perfect solution for those poor villagers on the coast line, where frequent floods occur.

A screen shot of Vine.

Samuel Morse's B'day!

Samuel Morse, who was a painter and inventor was born on 27 th of April, which is the grand day today.
He is commonly known for his invention of the telegraph, Morse processor and the Morse Code.
The Morse code is a code built of '-' and '.'. Today the commonly used Morse code is called International Morse Code.

Today, Google celebrated Morse Day, by adding a translation of the Google logo in Morse code, to
their logo collection.
Of course! It can be seen on the Google homepage.

Here's My version of Morse Day:


That's my name is International Morse Code!

Cross browser!

These days there are a numerous number of dynamic and elegantly designed applications on the web. They run on various platforms, some on newly introduced ones like Silverlight, and others on the most commonly used Flash. These applications could be dynamic and highly user-friendly, but they may cause a difficulty to users with older versions of browsers, slow internet connections and limited connectivity. The plugins required to be installed on the browser sometimes could be of large size and could take time to install. They may require a considerable amount of time to load the application data, making the user interface slow for users with slow internet connections. Some plugins do not work on all platforms, for example Silverlight does not work on linux and unix platfroms. Older versions of the browser may not support some plugins,
making it tough time for the user.

Thus, if applications running on different platfroms are placed on a website, they must be provided with an alternative for low priviledged users. This can be done through modern
methods, like the usage of Ajax to speed up requests, and DHTML and javascript tricks for an elegant style of the application. If an aplication is purely made of any of the above then it can function on any modern browser i.e Firefox 2.0+, IE 5.0+, NS 4.0 +, Opera 7 + , Google Chrome.

If the alternative is provided, then the area of access to users can be increased at a high rate!

The Impossible is on the web!

Previews of places directly with 100 - 1000s of photos taken!
The amazing application, can intelligently recognize photos with similar environments
and put them together to give the user a preview of the object or item from almost all angles.
This amazing application, which came out of Microsoft Live Labs recently is called PhotoSynth^tm

It brings photos to reality, by creating heart-breaking interactivity with the user.
That too it is all online. Can You beleive it!
The user just need to download a small plugin for his browser and soon he is also ready to experience the magic live on the web.

There are many pre - made "Synths" on the home page: http://photosynth.net/,
out of which some are made by users. Everyone is free to publish their own Synths.

The Synth which catches me the most is the Pyramid of Gaza, which I never visited before.
It was like I was actually touring to Eygypt and standing infront of the great Pyramid.

In the future maybe we could virtually walk into places, through technologies like PhotoSynth!

Bumping with BumpTop

After a wait of 2 weeks or so, I finally got a beta invite from BumpTop! They gave me a link
to the download and also a guide video.
I was so excited even when the download was progressing, I couldn't stay in my seat!

The Download was done! I was ready to setup Bump Top!
The setup process went all well! I clicked the Bump top icon created on my desktop!
The magic showed off.
I saw a whole new elegant theme, with all my original desktop icons organized in a
beautiful mess!

My Bump Top!



Whatever Anand Agarwala had demoed at TED was true. The compact software,
was full of jaw-dropping and breath-taking features, with a very eye candy user interface.

You could bump files on to others and trow them at walls. You could clip the files or widgets on
the walls.
It had the lasso tool for selection and the Pie menu for right-click!

The replacement of the folder with piles was the best idea. It made the user experience more realistic!

The best part was it was all messy! Not organized! It may look quite different and
irregular, as people have got used to their old boring organized desktops over the years.
It resembled my Work Desk, which is always messed up!


It even gives you the option of being organized, by allowing grid views.

I see Bump Top as revolution to the common desktop today!
It could make our interaction with the computer more realistic!
And bring back to use of old paper and pen, on to today's technology!