Of the Binary Family

I just came back from a wedding. I also happen to have a Digital Logic paper tomorrow.

First, lets talk a bit about Digital Logic (God knows I can use the revision)

Digital Logic is basically making finite decisions in the form of a 1 or a 0. Using multiplication, addition, comparison, and inversion you take one or more inputs and spit out an output.

But that’s not important right now.

Weddings are a great place to find out the weirdness of the bride/grooms family. In this case, the wedding was a family one. (Not my cousin’s that’s still a week away) You find out all sorts of stuff. Like who hates who, what a certain person is called behind his/her back. etc.

Anyone one of you who have old relatives will be aware of the obsession people had with nicknames.

• You’ll have an 60-year-old vast entity of an uncle who every one calls “Munnu”
• A grandma-ish person who stares at the face of death every day called “Pinky”
• A thin-as-a-rail uncle who everyone calls “goolu-mian”

You get the point? Now at this wedding I met the kids of a certain uncle of mine called “No-no”.

Now, me, I’m desperate to score an A in Digital Logic no matter what. So, I’ve been studying the subject like crazy. And as soon as I heard “no-no” my brain went into overdrive. I grabbed the nearest person (of my age group) I could find and after explaining the concept of digital logic to him pitched my theory of what No No’s family tree would be like.

Since he’s “No-No” and not “No-No-No” that means he as 3 siblings. 2^2 = 4  vs  2^3 = 8

His brothers and sisters would be named; Yes-No, No-Yes and Yes-Yes, . He’s the eldest of the siblings. Not to mention they should be thankful that they are only 4 siblings and not 8, because if they were 8 siblings these would be some of the conversations their family might end up facing.

Mommy (introducing her kids to some relative) : … and this is  Yes-No-No, he’s in class 6. Finally this is Yes-No-Yes, she just started kindergarten.

Stranger:  Wait, who was Yes-Yes-No?

Mommy (patting husband’s arm) Yes-Yes-No’s not here yet. Maybe next year.

~~!~~

Daddy: NO-NO-YES!! Bring back my slippers! How many times I’ve got to tell you not to tame my slippers.

No-No-Yes: Abbu! No-Yes-Yes took them! You always blame me!

~~!~~

Teacher (accepting project proposals): Yes…No…No…

Yes-No-No: Yes Miss, you called me?

Teacher: No! I wasn’t. …Yes…No…Yes

Yes-No-Yes: Yes Miss?

(both are twins)

~~!~~

So that’s how I see my family. Thankfully the guy I had grabbed just stared at me and then smiled politely. There could be worse things he could be named No-No-No-Yes, with an entire cricket team backing him up to beat the hell out of me. I doubt he would then let me explain the concept of Hexadecimal to him.

Of Tik-Tok

Til we see the sunlight…

…Tick tock, on the clock…

…But the party don’t stop…

…Woah-oh oh oh…

…Woah-oh oh oh…

NO WAY!

Tom-foolery aside. this has got to be one of the most awesome posts I’ll ever do in a while.

Second semester at uni came with a course called Digital Logic. We learnt about pre-computer generation parts. Gigantic chips that when combined in the right order would tell you if your answer matches with the answer key, or you could even make a calculator that only adds numbers together and gives you a sum. Such stuff.

Each course this semester required us to make a project for it. For logic people made counters, traffic lights, alarms, and other basic shit.

I proposed I’d make a clock. A decent AM/PM clock. With an alarm. Since I reasoned, that once these people made their useless counters and alarms, few would have to foresight to integrate it into their everyday lives. Hence I told the prof I’ll make a clock.

I had no idea the shit I got myself in.

(Below this line things might get technical, still I’ll try and keep them simple for most of you)

• The 555 circuit I made to drive the clock’s seconds kept speeding up for some unknown reason. so in 5 minutes it would be counting 30 seconds for every real second. in ten minutes the minute display would turn into the new second display.


• The 7490 and 7492s I used to count the seconds, minutes and hours were retarded. Theoretically one poke means one count. They would either ignore a poke or count it as 5 like there was some sort of animosity between them and the 555.


• No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get the hours to move. even though I made simple double-delay poke thingy that would reset the hours from 12 to 1 instead of the normal zero.


• Since the hours weren’t resetting I couldn’t toggle the AM/PM light, which worked beautifully.


• And various glitches involving AND gates, negative feedback and god knows what else.

Why is it that whenever I try to make something it has a ton of glitches. So, after a long talk with a friend of mine, I went back to the book I tracked specifically for this purpose (TTL Cookbook by Robert Lancaster) Due to desperation and a looming deadline I ended up changing a few things at the last moment. I’m noting going to even go into the design phase.

Sheet #2	Sheet #1
Sheet #4	Sheet #3

Sheet One. Crystal Oscillator vibrates, goes through dividers, gives 1Hz pulses. 74160s count seconds and minutes. 7493s are easy to reset.

Sheet Two. Soon as the hours turn 13, it switches back to zero in an instant. The pulse that resets the clock also gets delayed and hits the count pin of the 7493 advancing it to 1. So in a fraction of a second, 12:59:59 turns to 0:00:00 to 1:00:00. I connected the reset clock pulse to the clock-pin of the edge triggered flip-flop which toggles AM/PM lights.

Sheet 3 is just the alarm logic. Each 10’s of Hours, Hour, 10’s of Minutes, and Minute is basically a Binary Coded Decimal (BCD – No I’m not making this up) The purpose of the circuit on this sheet is to check if a certain pattern is present and to eliminate the possibilities of it finding other patterns, When all 4 patterns match…

Sheet 4. A pull-up resistor (or a transistor) will power the two 555s in tandem create a two tone frequency that is used as an alarm.

Overall, it took me a day to fix all my problems and get it to work on breadboards.

Yeah, 8 breadboards, and I still need to wire the alarm logic. Feel free to question my sanity.

Oh, and it got the first prize in the Second Semester Hardware Contest. Wooo!

Of The Electronics Paper

Dear old Sir Munaf.

Mid semester he gave our batch of first years a killer project. He wanted us to stage a robo-war. Top three groups get an A grade in the course, no questions asked.

We worked hard on the robot. (Details once I get the robot back)

Now, we had our Electronics paper on Friday. Upon opening the paper, half of the class burst out laughing. See, Sir Munaf is lazy. He took all the questions he gave us in the first and second hourly test and made a finals paper by combining them.

The following is the only thing he said to us during the entire paper.

Kid: Sir, this is the same paper. What happened to the “you solve a hundred books and I’ll make your paper from the hundredth and first book”??

Sir: But I’m always there to deceive you *big smile*

 

I see my future. Somewhat. Maybe.

Of Stellar IQ Levels Around Me

Yesterday, during English class, our teacher decided to split us all into groups of three and wrote down a list of things on the board

a pen and papers	a bottle of Pepsi	ointment
matches	a nylon tent	20 meters of nylon rope
an axe	a knife and fork	a saucepan
a blanket	an atlas	knitting needles
a camera with 5 rolls of film	radio with batteries	Flashlight

The dire scenario that the teacher presented was that we were all going to board a plane and we were allowed to take 8 things with us. The plane is going to crash on a deserted island and we’ll be stuck there for an indefinite period of time. Needless to say the 8 things each of us chooses has to help us survive.

Once each of us had made his/her list, the teacher wanted us to come up with a group list (by convincing others to agree to our logic why we chose something) then two groups were merged with the same concept, and so on and so forth till there were two lists in the entire class. Leaders of both groups had to come up and present their reasoning and make one final list.

Easy eh? Hardly. As soon as the class started with the exercise, you could hear 4 very sane people sigh out loud and curl up into a fetal position.

The basic aim of this exercise was to develop one’s reasoning, listening and speaking skills. Throw listening and speaking down the drain, the reasoning was enough to make us 4 cry.

So, the gas canister (who happened to be in my group) suddenly decided to take knitting needles with him. Why? To sew up wounds. >.> Yeah, I can so imagine taking a knitting needle and using it to sew up a gash. Why not take the axe and chop off the offending appendage as it is.

Now, everyone in this class is on his/her way to become an engineer. So, naturally one would assume that problem solving is a key attribute to becoming an engineer.

The majority of the class rejects useful items like:

• Radio (“who will listen to FM91 on a deserted island” and “the batteries will run out”)
• 20 Meters of Rope (“what will we tie with it?”)
• an axe (“it will get rusty, knife and fork better”)
• a flashlight (“we can make a fire” and “batteries will run out”)

You can use a radio to transmit morse-code, or scan incoming traffic for any sign of incoming planes etc. You could use a rope to tie logs together to make a makeshift raft or erect a bigger structure for more people than a nylon tent. . . oh well.

I’m sorry people if I seem like I have a stick up my ass. But honestly, can you blame me for wanting some level of maturity from these people. Its like I never left work. I’m still surrounded by little kids who want mommy to do everything for them.