Every dark cloud, has a silver lining

Is it not amazing, the number of times a stark discovery has been made out of something trivial (the falling apple!). Or the number of times a great invention has just been an accident?

But how many times have you seen a completly avoidable tragedy being the impetus for the implementation of an existing technology, that could've avoided the tragedy in the first place, to prevent it from recurring?

This article alludes to the introduction of the GPS system into the field of civil usage. The Global Positioning System, GPS for short, is a system comprising of satellites that can precisely locate a given 'receiver' on the surface of the earth (or airborne). Before the incident of the Korean Airlines Flight 007 incident, the GPS had been an exclusive property of the US Department of Defence, not intended to be used by the public in general.

The KA flight 007 from New York, after a stopover at Anchorage, was headed  to Seoul, South Korea. The prepared flight plan took the aircraft over international waters. But, due to the aircraft losing its heading and the pilots not recognising the deviation from the flight plan, the plane ventured quite some way into Russian airspace without the necessary clearance. The ill-fated flight was, not long after, shot down by Russian fighter jets.

So, the next time you use GPS to navigate your car, you know to whom you owe the availibility of the technology - the 269 lives that were on board.

The silver lining? The world can now use GPS, and is a safer place from that standpoint.

The glass is half empty.... or is it?

With innumerable books and webpages devoted to the type of attitude one should develop, the title shouldn't be unfamiliar to most. After all most of us know how important it is to see that the glass is half-full rather than seeing it as half empty. Now let me just take it a step further.

Consider a pessimist, not a hardcore, but somebody who just likes to sulk at stuff and see's things through a negetive perspective. He would consider the glass to be half empty. And on the other hand an optimist, or somebody who likes a bit more cheer in his life, would perceive the glass to be half-full wouldn't he? That is at least what most people would say. So even with the different ways to view a given predicament, the only difference one makes is to his state of happiness. Where a pessimist would always feel low about his shortcomings, the happy guy would be happy that his is not a completely empty glass.

Following the same chain of thought, which do you think is better. I'm sure you'd go with the pessimist, for who'd like a sad and depressed guy around? Just let me know if you differ in your opinion!

But hang on, what if the happy-go-lucky guy stays blissfully ignorant of his incomplete life? And, on the other hand, we have the whining pessimist working towards fulfilling his capacity. Who would you side with now? The satisfied-static "optimist" or the "diligently-dynamic" pessimist? I leave it for you to decide.......

In conclusion, I'd say that seeing the glass as half-full or half-empty is not as important. Of prime importance is what you do about it.

The Nokia Touch.....

I doubt that I have enough readers that might have noticed the absence of posts for the last couple of days. Well, I owe it to Nokia.

Th Nokia 5800 Xpress Music is a "first" from the Finnish major in that it is the first touch-screen phone to be launched by it. It is at loggerheads with Apple's I-Phone. Which is better is worth another post on its own, so I won't do it here. The 5800 is a great phone no doubt, but with hardly a month since I bought it, it is too new to be developing any kind of problems, which it is. I, for Nokia's sake, hope that this is just a one-off case and not a problem with the 5800 in general. That would be a disaster, not only for the 5800 but for the N-96/97 dunno which one exactly that they have lined up to be the successor.

Now, the problem may have arisen due to the fact that over the last few days I had used the phone to connect to the internet for 8+ hours. That's just exploitation, but isn't a device as expensive as that supposed to handle that kind of a work load? It is a problem with the display, which flickers when you make or receive a call or when you 'unlock' the screen/touch pad.

Its over to you guys at Nokia-Care, to which I'll have to schedule a visit pretty soon.

Murphy's Law!

Last year, a brand new Airbus A340-600 was parked at the Airbus assembly plant ready to be handed over to Etihad. I had just undergone its test flights successfully, when the engineers (either Airbus or Etihad, don't know which) started their tests.

To check the performance of the engines, all the four engines, with the parking brakes applied, are taken to take off power, on a virtually empty aircraft. The flight computer raises an alarm, since the aircraft hasn't been configured (with respect to slats/flaps etc) for take off although the engines are at take off setting.

To silence the nagging alarm, on of the engineers pulls out the circuit breakers for the Ground Proximity Detector. This fools the flight management computer into thinking that the aircraft is airborne. And hence, it releases the brakes. This, in fact, is a safety feature incorporated to prevent the pilots from accidentally landing with the brakes applied. With the engines running at full power, and no brakes, it hardly takes the brand new airplane to transform into a heap of expensive junk.

Just another example of the Murphy's law: If anything can go wrong. It will.

To modulate or not to modulate....

That radio it seems has made a come back. My life hasn't spanned long enough nor did it begin back during the time when radio transmission was supposed to be the next big thing, for me to be able to see radio communication evolve. However, with whatever little I have seen I believe that radio has made a comeback; and how. I'm talking about the use of radio for entertainment purposes and news broadcasts because it never really went out of favour in transportation, and it never will.

What started out as simple AM or Amplitude Modulation, it has now evolved into a diaspora of techniques of getting the information across to the receiver. Pulse modulation, phase modulation, width modulation, frequency modulation (modulation modulation?!) are a few more methods in use.

The inherent problem that led to the decline in popularity of the radio was the "noise" that normally accompanied the transmission. You couldn't enjoy Beethoven without the flies buzzing in your ear. Nor would a sport telecast be complete without an apparent presence of a swarm of bees. No doubt the advent of other better communication channels in the Television and more lately, the Internet had a humongous role to play as well.

The reason I say that the radio has made a come back is because the newer FM (frequency modulation) stations seem to be popping up like mushrooms all over the place. The reason being that FM suffers a lot less from noise, which is a great advantage when the transmission needs to carry high fidelity stereophonic sound. The flip side of it is that FM has limited range in comparison to the earlier AM stations. The FM stations lie within the radio spectrum of 88 Mhz through 108 MHz.

Worth pointing out here is that, though utilizing frequencies within 118Mhz through 136Mhz, VHF aircraft communication employs amplitude modulation of its messages. The reasons being the lower bandwidth requirement, thereby a lot more channels can be accommodated with a given range of frequencies. Since the transmission is mainly voice, the requirement for high fidelity is not as important as in case of music.

The airplane and the push cart!

The poetic flourish in the title might tempt one to think that this post is going to be a self composed poem. You couldn't get farther from the truth.

 

Central to this post is the question  - "What is common between and airplane and a push cart?"
The answer to that question is although blatantly simple, but hidden. Now, I read somewhere that there is no such thing as a stupid question. But this one certainly stretches the saying to the limit doesn't it?

 

After all, what can be common between a contraption that moves on the ground at 15mph have in common with even the most ancient of aircraft? Listing out their points of differences would have been simple to the point of being simply pointless. But I, stick my neck out in fact, and say that an airplane is a push cart. How?

 

The airplane when on ground is maneuvering under its on power, and by that I mean not being towed or pushed back, is in fact not "driven" by its wheels. Contrary to what might seem obvious, the wheels of an airplane do not have a transmission! Yes, they don't!

 

The airplane is simply being pushed by the thrust that its engines produce. And that is exactly what causes the wheels to roll along. Seems intriguing, that a tried and tested method and taken-for-granted method of delivering power to the wheels has been omitted in a state-of-the-art machine, doesn't it? It is all for the sake of keeping it simple. Because these birds are meant to fly in the sky and not crawl on the ground. And in the sky, you don't need wheels.

 

Hence, I hope you agree with me when I say that an airplane is a cart on the ground. Let them be birds in the sky.

A country that is India

With unwilling hands, I bolted the door and slumped down on my bed. It had been a yet another exhausting day. And no, this time neither project work nor practicals was involved.

 

I just lay there on my bed hoping not to fall asleep, reminiscing what I had seen, no experienced just over an hour ago. Fiasco and serenity, together. In one place.

 

In my mind, with great effort, I jump back five hours, when I am in college. It is about 1:00 PM on a Thursday. With no practicals slated for the day the afternoon and the evening is as good as "off" for me. What a chance! Call it co-incidence or name it destiny, I finally have a chance to visit the "Peer Baba Dargha"without any of my classes getting in the way.

 

The Peer Baba, for the benefit of those who do not know is a "Dargah" which, by virtue of the limited knowledge of  Islam, I believe is a Muslim place worship. Akin to a mosque but not quite.

 

What lends more charm to this beautiful place is the fact that it is located inside the Delhi airport. Which, I suspect, is the prime reason for the large crowd that it draws every Thursday. I guess it is more the chance to see airplanes of different kinds from up close that attracts people to it than the chance to pray.

 

Having only heard of the place from my friends and this being my first visit, I was unsure of the path to take as I disembarked from the bus at the Indira Gandhi International's cargo terminal. A quick query and I'm on track.

 

Women selling marigold garlands and incense sticks line the street and serve as waypoints to the destination. Some way along the terminal boundary, a left turn and, I am stunned…..

 

A gate, into the airport premises, is manned by CISF personnel. But between myself and the gate is a sea of people. Okay, I agree that I have been caught in larger crowds but I did not expect to see so many people line up to visit the not-so-significant place. With no other option on hand, I join them like a drop into the ocean. Making my own minuscule contribution to the strength of the crowd.

 

It is 2:30 PM now, and having skipped lunch for this excursion, the pleasant sunshine starts feeling a bit too warm.  Just as I start wondering if I'm getting symptoms of a sunstroke, it is my turn to be frisked. I'm relieved that I am at the gate… finally! A walkie-talkie crackles to life somewhere close by and the creaking voice that comes through it, asks the personnel to let everyone in at once! Great…. After having waited patiently for my turn in the hot sun for over an hour, everyone behind me goes in with me! Grr… But wait; why is everyone scampering?

 

It is a stampede, and for some reason that I cannot fathom. Just as a Virgin Atlantic A-340 taxies out of my I ear somebody say about boarding the bus. Before I get the time to think, I realize that I am an integral part of the stampeded. Another gate slowly fills up my field of view. Another queue, and this time around, from being the first one in, I now have 70 people ahead of me.

 

Another 25 minutes drag along before I walk through a metal detector, get frisked and board an Airport Authority of India bus that would take me to my destination. The bus starts and creeps along a narrow stretch before turning right and an endless expanse of the airport fills my vision. Numerous aircraft dot the horizon, and as the bus turn right a seemingly endless expanse of the airport engulfs my field of view.

 

A five minute ride and the bus, bursting at the seams, packed with people jolts to a halt. Remove the hustle-bustle of so many people and the location would resemble a narrow strip of road in through a desert with endless open areas on either side.

 

Green bamboo fence encircle the perimeter and under a tin shed on a marble platform are two "tombstone" like structure (I really wish I knew what they call it in English…. Do let me know if possible!) The enclosure, situated right beside a taxiway, has a couple of "peepal" trees with red threads wrapped around them - the physical manifestation of peoples' desires and the acts they promised God should their wishes be granted.

 

Since I don't have a thread, I make-do by tying the wrapper of the incense stick I have to one of the threads. I notice that I'm not the only one to have employed this stop gap measure. My wrapper is one among many. And I'm sure God would understand.

 

Over the cacophony of crying babies and jets taxiing by, I see something that makes my heart swell with emotion. As I hand over my offerings to the cleric I realize, for the first time, this is the true fabric of India. A place where people with different backgrounds mingle freely. As I watch Hindus, Muslims and Siekhs  offer their prayers, their children playing among themselves, I simply can't believe that this is that very country where so much blood has been shed in the name of religion. It is a paradox.

 

I just wish that the emotions of the people, the feelings that they have for each other in that confined place swell a million times over and overwhelm the country. Only then would our country take off like the numerous airplanes behind me. A country, that is India.