CashBase

I was looking out for a decent free tool to keep track of my daily expenses (let alone that am not earning). NO, it's not that I have become overly conscious about my expenses - just that my parents have been complaining about ever increasing spending from my side over the last few months. So, with the intention to prove them and see for myself where all I spend, I was out on the hunt for a free budget management software.

But as it turns out to be in most with online hunts, this time Google didn't turn out to be a very faithful friend. Led me to a few wrong links and downloads which proved utterly useless. I almost gave up the chase, but at the very verge of giving up - out of nowhere - Web Store of Chrome struck me. That is where I got introduced to CashBase.

CashBase runs on the Chrome interface itself and all you need is to add it to your Chrome web store. Log in with a E-mail ID and password and you are ready to go. With a easy to use interface it fulfills all you basic needs to keep track of what's in your wallet. This is one app in a long long time I really felt satisfied with, simple, neat and effective. Only thing is that you can count only in $'s here. :)

6th Sense Technology !!!

HexaCopter

This is something that caught my attention lately. Something good enough for a major electronic project.

COURTESY: IEEE Spectrum

Five years ago few people had even heard of Quadcopters (also called Quadricopters or Quadrotors). Now they seem to be everywhere, from university labs and hobbyists to UAV competitions and commercial platforms. What happened?

According to a recent Robots Podcast interview with Joshua Portlock, manager of the CyberQuad project at Australia's Cyber Technology, what happened is a classical case of an enabling technology being driven by the consumer market. Fast, precise and affordable accelerometers are a key technology for Quadcopters. Their development was initially driven by their use for airbags in cars, and now increasingly by their use in consumer devices such as mobile phones.

Accelerometers are key because unlike standard helicopters, which use complex mechanics to allow stable flight, Quadrotors use fast onboard motor control to take care of stability. This mechanical simplicity is also their main attraction: Quadrotors can navigate in three dimensions using only four moving parts. And the high reliability of brushless motors makes them a simpler, more reliable alternative to many traditional flying platforms.

Hexacopters such as the one featured in the video above allow to pack more rotors into a given size providing more power. Other designs including Octocopters (such as the one in the picture below) and ducted fan or counter-rotating versions allow further versatility needed for specific applications such as indoor flight.

For now most applications such as inspection of power lines, oil rigs or wind turbines, law enforcement surveillance or military reconnaissance are very real-time and do not require much autonomy beyond simple GPS waypoint navigation. However, that may soon change.

Future application scenarios include robotic security guards that can rapidly react to a triggered alarm by autonomously providing surveillance of a specific site or area. Other tasks center around autonomous border patrol and perimeter search. And the military is considering sending groups of Quadrotor UAVs that can perch on powerlines, rocks and rooftop edges ahead of convoys for advanced surveillance, which may also allow automatic pin-pointing of sniper locations using sound triangulation.

For further reading, have a look at the Portlock interview or the German MikroKopterproject.

MikroKopter - HexaKopter from Holger Buss on Vimeo.

Officially "Senior"

Despite rumour that the college may be suspended due to the much talked about Swine Flu, finally the day has arrived, to be officially crowned a 'Senior', the very thought of which gives a rare sense of superiority. I don't want to talk about the 'most haunting word in a juniors life' - Ragging, for the sake of my own safety (Attended an anti-ragging campaign in college a couple of weeks before, which had the basic motive to scare us by enumerating the consequences of ragging. As a matter of fact, we did get scared. Words like ''abatement'' are still ringing loud in my ears).

It's the New Year in our Malayalam Calender and as per tradition your life for the rest of the year will depend on this one day - the Mallu New Year. The worst part is that we are not granted a holiday. A Monday - Opening day to a hectic week prior to our first internal exams in my second year of college life.

I was woken up by my roommate at around Four in the morning. He wanted me to close the door as he was getting out to catch some train to attend a technical fest at Chengannur College of Engineering. His revenge - for me refusing him company. What an opening to my New Year! Having got him out, I went back to bed hoping to wake up to the alarm I have previously set on my phone. At some point of time, hearing the multiple loops of the Snooze thing, I woke up to find that I have overshot my plans by about a hour-and-half (nothing new though). Having done my usually morning cleansing, I settled down in front of some gigantic Math textbooks hoping to feed my brain. And yea, I did succeed in turning a leaf and making a leap. The topic was LaPlace Transforms, the most important in an electrical engineers life - as they made us believe. Starting off with the basic formulas which i didn't find difficult to recollect from class, I stepped on to irritating 'special cases'. At this point I got terribly irritated and distracted (Yea, I get distracted very easily).
After those remarkable achievements, having fed my brain, it was time to feed my stomach, dress myself and get to college(which always promised trouble - this time in the form of Lecturers or new assignments ). Got lift from a friend called Renesh, and for the first time in this Semester- i made it to class well before time.

The class, as usual, was in some hurry doing homeworks and assignments for the week, and me being a part of it joined in. It was a usual day with lot of boring lectures and even more boring lecturers.

(I dont remember a thing to write further, as i have been re-doing this post which was drafter a couple of days before)

My First Serious Post...

I have been trying to construct an opening sentence for the past 10 minutes and has failed completely. Hectic work on a pleasant Sunday morning. At times things don't come too you the way you need. No complaints. So, this being my first (or even last- that depends on how I feel about the whole idea of blogging after I finish this) descriptive post, I don't guarantee any interesting stuff for the unfortunate reader.

I see a lot of red-underlined words appearing as I type - suggesting me to check the spellings. For a first-time blogger i don't consider this a big deal. Meanwhile, A friend from school, named Sam,now in Oz soil has come online in Y! Messenger. Connecting with schoolies was always a personal pleasure. Sam was talking about his new trans cultural friends from Nepal, Vietnam 'n Kenya and his plans for making some picture with the faces of all the guys from guy. Not a bad idea.

The day started with me violating my biological clock, waking up at around a quarter-past-ten, when the sun was high up and shining. Sundays makes you sleep more in your student life. No big deal. Had a quick brush and bath and went out of my hostel room to see if the Mess had something left to offer. Lucky me ! They have spared me a few 'wheat doshas' with some tasteless water-like 'coconut chutny'. Gulped them down literally with some sugar to add flavour. Getting back in my room, I found that the Torrent download of some game I have scheduled for the preceding night has made no considerable progress. Dis hearted 'n cursing the betraying net speeds at night, saved the download for the next night wishing not to be dis hearted again. Opening my Orkut account,I was happy to see a few Photo comments on the pics posted last day. It's always nice to have response. Finishing off with the photo comment replies I moved to my GTalk account to check whether my room mate (a cool headed guy from Trissur, named Rohit - who doesn't care a damn about cutting classes, at present away at home) is online. Finding him online, getting myself assured that he'll back in room by evening the same day, I signed off.

''What next?'' . As if i had very little to study. Yet, I somehow couldn't get to digest the idea of mugging up in the morning itself (by now its nearly noon, but for the sake of saying). That's when I hit upon the idea of doing my 'First Real Post' here. At the same moment I hit upon this fantastic idea of mine, a insomniac friend of mine all the way from Changanassery, with the name Sebin, rang up - just to spoil the mood. He was talking about all the assignments that needs to be submitted the coming week & asking me to predict precisely the time that he'll take to finish them - as if am his 'God'. Having finished with him, i gathered up all my lost enthusiasm to blog, and finally ended up typing all those that you have just read.

And now when i consult my watch, it reads "13:31, 16 August, Sun"

Getting Started ...

Was thinking of getting into this for the past few weeks. Seems like the time has arrived to dedicate some time to self-evaluation and accounting for all that's been done socially. So here i am, at the other end of your computer screens typing out all that flows through me.

Technology has brought the world real closer. Cyber space is the new play ground. The world is now just a click-of-the-mouse away. So drop in here once in a while, when you are bored, spending long, least productive hours in front of your system not knowing what to do. (I understand guys, am no different than you - only that a very few of us feel free to accept that we get bored being here)