The silver orb

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I stared at the silver orb dreaming to own it. But for a 2nd Year B.Tech student, the price was staggering. I cursed Shashank for showing it to me the day before because since then I could think of nothing else. The silver orb, a replacement to my Philips Walkman. I wondered how many people round the globe were viewing this page and eagerly clicking on "Add to cart" endangering one of Sony's pioneering invention. Digital mp3 players were soon going to rule the music world. But two thousand eight hundred rupees....
"..techfest cash price 15000... Mumbai... Line follower.... Micro mouse..." I over heard the seniors sitting beside me in the departmant browsing center. I opened the IIT, Powai techfest site. Most of the competitions involved making robots or creating web sites or presenting papers, cash prices were highly attractive ranging from Rs5000 to Rs20000, but none interested me. Suddenly I saw the title "CRO 1.0", intrigued I clicked on it.
"Create a dot-dash game to be played on a CRO using 8051 microcontroller. It should be a 1-Player game with a Human player playing aganist the computer"
Microcontroller was a black box to me and a CRO, well with all the dials and knobs, was a nightmare. We often ended up turning random knobs and toggling random buttons to get some output during lab sessions. But I knew this was the competition I ought to register for and immediately signed up.
First learn 8051 then CRO, I decided.
After a week of ardous study in the library about the 8051, I went shopping and bought the microcontroller, its programmer, soldering iron, solder wire, resistors, capisitors, clock crystal, batteries and other odds and ends spendng Rs2000. In a week, after burning a few micontrollers and messing around with soldering, I could design a circuit and write code to blink an LED. Next, the CRO, an hour of online lessons and I knew the purpose of every dial and button. I started showing off in the lab too. Our HOD, a thin lean man, flatly refused me a CRO after lab hours but I wrenched it out from higher authorities without his knowledge. It offended him but I didnt care, he was a snob anyway.

So there I was after class hours in the lab with a mess of wires, a CRO beside the monitor, the monitor filled with lines of assembly code, circuits and batteries all around me and a small keypad in my hand with which I was moving a dot on the CRO, the lab technicians were highly amused and told me they have never seen anything like this in the lab before. This apparatus earned me friendship and respect from every technician in the lab for the rest of my stay in the college. But the HOD, well the snob just started ignoring me. Well anyway, it is common knowledge that in India, lab technicians are often more knowledgeable and useful than many PhD profs!

I was sitting staring at the CRO filled with dots and a few dashes; I was playing aganist the microcontroller. I had to start to Mumbai the next day. The game was ready, except for one small bug, it was behaving erratically at times. I went over the whole assembly code, line by line, at least 10 times, everything seemed perfect. I had the scribbled memory map in front of me. There was no operating system and I had to carefully manage the usage of every byte in the 128byte RAM.
"Wish I had more time", I shouted aloud.
Everyday, I had access to the CRO only for five hours, from 5pm to 10pm, a big handicap!
"Lab will close in half an hour", shouted the assistant, I raised my hand in acknowledgement and started going over the memory map.
"Oh my god!", I exclaimed after 15 minutes of examining. One byte in the memory was having two addresses and I was happily using it as two bytes corrupting it and hence the erratic behaviour!
I furiously made changes to the code and finished when just five minutes were left, the assistant was turning off the lights. Quickly, I compiled and burned the program into the controller and started tesing it.

"Dad, I am going tomorrow", I called up and told dad half an hour later. Reliance has just introduced the Reliance to Reliance anywhere in India free offer and we spoke for about half an hour. In the end, Dad decided to accompany me to Mumbai. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry; on one hand, it would be nice to show him what I had made but on the other had, techfest in Mumbai, the crowd was going to be colourful ;).

The IIT lab was dazzling, it was state-of-art. If you had seen Iron Man, it was like I was Tony Stark working in the Afghan Caves while the IIT Teams were Tony Stark working in his own futuristic lab! But a few of them were still struggling. In contrast to my simple circuit, some had a briefcase filled with ICs. I thought I stood no chance and just decided to enjoy the fest.

"The third prize goes to Jayanth from sastra. He is the youngest participant and did it all by himself", announced the judge. I was stunned. The allowed team size was four but I work alone. I had all my things packed, ready to leave after applauding the winners. Visitors who had played my game came forwarded to congratulate me while I was still in daze.

The cash prize was Rs3000 with which I got my first mp3 player. The irony was, I spent around Rs5000 in developing the apparatus but I guess it was fair to ask Dad the money to buy educational stuff and spend the winnings on entertainment :-)

The Eggs and Me

"Oh no! I forgot all about the eggs in the water boiler!", I exclaimed aloud five minutes after leaving the college at 6am in the morning. I was on the task of going to Hyderabad cycling and had planned to have eggs before starting. But in the excitement, I started empty stomach and going back was out of question since I was already late. I took two days to cover 2/3rd of the distance and it was the best trip of my life - speaking to locals, sleeping in dhabas and on the highway, riding on the dark highway among other things. Many things could have gone wrong but nothing did - not even a puncture.

"Not again!", I exclaimed the moment I got into a 356C. I was going to Hyderabad by bus and again forgot all about the egg I boiled for breakfast. No point wasting a twenty five rupee ticket for a three rupee egg, I decided and went on. I got down at silk board since I had some work at Banashankari before catching the bus and I got a call from dad.
"Jayanth, I am in Bangalore now. When are you leaving for Hyderabad?", he asked.
"Tonight", I replied surprised and hoping he would come along.
"Ok I will call you in the evening. Lets go together", he said and I was elated.
That day, the time I spent in Bangalore was memorable and in the evening, I traveled home with dad.

Both the times I left eggs half boiled, I had a real good time. The first time it was three eggs and the best time of my life. The second time it was one egg and things turned out to be better than expected. But both the times I had to throw away the rotten eggs.

What will happen if I leave five eggs half boiled? Will I get a girlfriend on my way home?
I am leaving home today so shall I try it out? Still thinking... guess its worth a try... is it? :-)

Other side of me

Having journeyed extensively and blogged about my trips, I decided on a rather different trip this time. A trip to my childhood.

Here are the programs I will talk about. DOS based so might have compatibility problems. Click Here to Download  

(Extract and run the executable bstprogs.exe  in the same folder)

I was waiting expectantly as my brother was typing furiously on Dad's latest 386. Dad was working for the Andhra Pradesh State Electricity Board. He had his office in the basement of our house where there were five computers. A TVS dot marix printer was connected to the 386 on which my brother had been working for the past one hour. This printer was used to print electricity bills. Once every three months, it would work continuously for about a week, day in and day out, making one hell of a racket and spitting out sheafs of bills. If you had ever seen a dot matrix printer at work, you would agree that sleeping next to railway tracks would be far better.

The year was 1995 and I was 10 years old.

“What are you going to do?”, I asked bro when he was entering the office with a fat book in his hand with a large 'C' inscribed over the cover.

“Programming”, he answered curtly.

“What?”, I asked confused.

“Hmmm... writing a program, like that game you played last week”, he said and my eyes lit up.

The previous week I had played the brick game, a game in which a bouncing ball smashes a brick wall above it, some bricks being magical giving special powers like the ablity to shoot or rip through the wall. I loved it but unfortunately it got erased and my brother could never load it again because the small floppy got corrupted. I was devastated.

So the moment he said 'game' I decided to wait for him to complete it.

After two hours, during which I brought coffee at least five times, he uttered a joyous cry and I stood up to have a closer look.

“Run” he typed.

The screen cleared and a single line appeared:

“Bank Account Number?”

I stood staring at the screen expecting the ball and bricks to pop up. But all it was showing were lines like “Interest?”, “Mortgage?”, "Balance: 4356" etc etc.

“Ok I am done”, said my brother switching off the computer taking me by surprise.

“What! Where is the game?”, I asked flabbergasted.

“What game?”, he asked looking at me, amused.

“You said you were making a game like the one I played last week”, close to tears, I reminded him.

“Oh God! No way. It takes a team and lots of time to do that. I was writing a banking appli....”

I started crying.

All I knew was I was cheated into getting him coffee and wasting my two hours there instead of playing cricket. It was 6'O clock and cricket would have ended. I cried harder.

“I want a game, a game. Please make at least a simple game”, I cried dropping out the bricks from my imagination and settling for a bouncing ball.

“No chance, its too tough”, he said dragging me out of the room.

“Just a moving circle....”, I managed to say before he slammed the office door shut and locked it.

I stared at the locked door and the dark sky, no computer game and no cricket, I burst out crying louder than ever.

I owe my school, Jubilee Hills Public School, a lot. In 6^th, we were taught LOGO in which a cursor called turtle responded to commands like FD, BK, RT, LT moving across the screen leaving a trail behind it. I drew circles, rectangles and tons of fancy figures. Later, in 7^th and 8^th, we were taught BASIC, Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Language when my desire to make a game was ignited. But after extensive research, I learnt that the task was almost impossible in BASIC. Following my brother's advice I learnt C when I was in 10^th.

Six months later I was able to fulfill my dream and well actually do more than that.

Click Here To Download (Extract and run bstprogs.exe)

Inception of Exotic Trails

The speedometer was showing 53.4Kmph. It was almost the end of the descent and I was peddling like my life depended on it but it stayed stubbornly at 53.4. I tried to shift to 7th gear on my 6-speed FireFox RoadRunner but, of course, the Revoshift would not budge. Though I was on top gear, there was little power transmission from my frantically pumping legs to the wheels.
53.4… 53… 52… 30…
That’s it! End of descent and my dream of touching 60kmph vaporized. It was then I decided that I need another bicycle with better gear ratios for more efficient power transmission.
As I cycled towards ABB, I started thinking. A Trek would be too expensive, not Hercules, not another FireFox. I remembered Rakesh of RR International Bicycles, Madiwala mention the Schwinns. I liked the name and decided to enquire.

The moment I saw the Schwinn the next day, my heart went out for it.
“You can get a Schwinn Sporterra for 13k and Sporterra Sport for 15k”, he said and assured me that Schwinns are far better than Firefox, “There is no comparision sir”, were his exact words.
I had a windfall the previous day, HCL had at last closed my PF account and deposited the money in my account, so 13k was kind of affordable.
“Ok I will take the Schwinn Sporterra”, I said deciding on the spot. I knew thinking on and on would just be a waste of time since I would end up buying anyway.
“Right now we only have the Sporterra sport sir, we will get the lower end one in three days”, said Rakesh throwing me in a dilemma.
I just could not wait getting my hands on a new bike but spending 2k more?
“What are the exact differences between the two?”, I asked
“Sporterra sport has got continental double fighter tires, has 24 gears,..”, and he mentioned a couple of other differences.
“I will think over lunch and come back”, I said hearing my stomach growl and seeing that it is already 2pm.
Over lunch in a nearby Shanti Sagar, I decided, no more KFC’s, no more rich food, go for meals and idlies, save money in all ways, healthy ways, and go for the bike!
After an hour, I was the proud owner of a sparkling Red White Schwinn Sporterra Sport.
Riding towards college thinking how to put the Firefox to good use, I decided to start a bicycle rental venture.
I will organize rides, give cycle on rents and like I have recently realized, will make others realize that cycling technology has indeed undergone a revolution making everyday medium to long distance cycling a pleasure.
I had to christen the idea and I choose ‘Exotic Trails’ after my debut novel ‘Exotic Engineer Entrepreneur’ which indirectly led to all this craziness. (Read my blog on how I burnt my first cheque).
I reached college and got down to work – wrote a blog and sent a mail across.
PING!
Prutvish: I will join and throw my Hercules in.
Me: Are you sure?
I was surprised because a bicycle is a very personal belonging and to rent it out, well tough! I had a tough time convincing myself.
Prutvish: Yes
Me: Take your time, take a day and tell me tomorrow
Prutvish: Not required, waste of time, I know I will come to the same decision anyway.
I laughed and thus we became partners of our little venture.

The next day I was surprised to find a mail in my Inbox from Pradeep B V asking me if I would be interested in adding five more bikes to our stable! I literally sat staring at the screen for a while. Pradeep is the co-architect of the Mapunity Platform. Mapunity is a startup incubated at IIITB.
Honestly, all we need to do is start something, help will come!

The Hero Hawk
A week later, unaware that he was busy with a ceremony the next day, I barged into Pradeep’s house. His house was bustling with activity but Pradeep was kind enough to set aside time to pump air in his Hawk and his 8 year niece helped me carry the bike out. She was so cute. Thanks a ton Pradeep!

Act 102 and BSA Mach1
Another week later, Prutvish and I went to Pradeep’s office to find these two bicycles, unused, locked and without air. Like two nifty thieves, we half dragged and half lifted the cycles till the nearest hardware store where we bought a hacksaw blade. It took us a little less than 10 minutes to cut through each lock in public with no one pouncing on us asking what the hell were we doing.
“It took us 10 minutes, it would take a pro 1 minute”, Prutvish remarked belittling the usual cycle safety measures.

Thus, we now command 6 cycles and have students of IIITB, RV college of Engineering, employees of Wipro and Cycling and More as our present customers.