Hmmm… so, I heard this song On Melancholy Hill by the Gorillaz a few months ago and the melody was an immediate hit with me. I think Damon Albarn’s really talented in making melodies. I tried to make a cover of it the moment I heard the song and I think it sounds pretty good on acoustic. Simple progression and amazing melody.

Up on melan… Tree… …with me?

e |————————————————————————————–|

B |————————————————————————————–|

G |————————————————————————————–|

D |————————————————————————————–|

A |3333333333333333——————0000000000000000————————————|

E |—————–3333333333333333——————1111111333333333-1111111333333333–|

==================================================|

|1234567812345678-1234567812345678-1234567812345678-1234567812345678-1234567812345678–|

e |–3——3–3——3——–3–3—-3——3–3——3——3–3——3——3–3—–|

B |1——1—1–1–0——–0–0—-1——1—1–1–1—-1-0—0–0–1—-1-0—0–0—|

G |————————————————————————————–|

D |————————————————————————————–|

A |3333333333333333——————0000000000000000————————————|

E |—————–3333333333333333——————1111111333333333-1111111333333333–|

Now, the tabs look so untidy, the reason being that I wrote the tabs on a notepad that uses simple text. But, when I copied it to this blog, the ‘-’ size is so small that the lines started looking uneven as you see above. So, I wanted to change the ‘-’s to ‘=’s since they have the same size as the numbers and texts. Now, I didn’t want to change every ‘-’ into a ‘=’ by hand and sit there making sure the all lines are equal length so the tabs are at the right place.

So, since I have been learning PERL for some time, I thought I’d write a PERL script to change all the ‘-’s to ‘=’s. Regular Expressions. Here’s the PERL script.

open (MYFILE1, '<tabs.txt');

open (MYFILE2, '>editedtabs.txt');

while (<MYFILE1>){

      my($line) = $_;

      #chomp($line);

     $line =~ s/-/=/g;

     print "$line\n";

     print MYFILE2 $line

}

close (MYFILE1);

close (MYFILE2);

Here’s the output I got.

  Up on melan...   Tree...  ...with me?
e|======================================================================================|
B|======================================================================================|
G|======================================================================================|
D|======================================================================================|
A|3333333333333333==================0000000000000000====================================|
E|=================3333333333333333==================1111111333333333=1111111333333333==|

 |1234567812345678=1234567812345678=1234567812345678=1234567812345678=1234567812345678==|

e|==3======3==3======3========3==3====3======3==3======3======3==3======3======3==3=====|
B|1======1===1==1==0========0==0====1======1===1==1==1====1=0===0==0==1====1=0===0==0===|
G|======================================================================================|
D|======================================================================================|
A|3333333333333333==================0000000000000000====================================|
E|=================3333333333333333==================1111111333333333=1111111333333333==|

Well, I had to change the font again since, it was too long for the layout. But, the PERL script did what I intended it to, change ‘-’s to ‘=’s.

Now, to explain the script, MYFILE1 and MYFILE2 are filehandles which let us open the files for reading or writing. The ‘<’ sign before the file name tells the interpreter that the file is being opened for reading. The ‘>’ sign tells the interpreter that the file being opened is opened for writing. We’re storing each line read in $line so that it can be operated on. The chomp function is used to get rid of the ‘\n’ at the end of each line. I didn’t use that because  I wanted the separate lines. s/regex/replacement/g is the regular expression that replaces the regex with the replacement. ‘s’ is the keyword for replacement and ‘g’ tells the interpreter to do a global regex replacement, meaning replacing ‘-’ with a ‘=’ everywhere in the file.

By the way, here’s the link to my video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkxpdlyQq4o

But, it turns out that if I change the font for the tabs with the ‘-’s I can get them aligned and I wouldn’t have had to write a PERL script to change the hyphens to ‘equal to’ signs. But, I learned to do something useful.

   Up on melan...   Tree...  ...with me?

e |--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

B |--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

G |--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

D |--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

A |3333333333333333------------------0000000000000000------------------------------------|

E |-----------------3333333333333333------------------1111111333333333-1111111333333333--|

  |1234567812345678-1234567812345678-1234567812345678-1234567812345678-1234567812345678--|

e |--3------3--3------3--------3--3----3------3--3------3------3--3------3------3--3-----|

B |1------1---1--1--0--------0--0----1------1---1--1--1----1-0---0--0--1----1-0---0--0---|

G |--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

D |--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

A |3333333333333333------------------0000000000000000------------------------------------|

E |-----------------3333333333333333------------------1111111333333333-1111111333333333--|

Where t is the interconnect thickness, L is the interconnect length, W is the interconnect width and R_s is called the sheet resistance. But, we need to take the fringe capacitance into account when the interconnect is close to the substrate. Higher metals don’t experience much of fringe capacitance. The actual capacitance is given by

Time constant

Apart from these parasitics, when we deal with high frequency signals (fast switching), an inductance parameter comes into play. The propagation delay is affected by the inductance parameter in addition to the resistance and capacitance. For example, when V_DD is supplied to the source terminal of a pMOS, the actual voltage available at the terminal is V_DD – V(t) where V(t) is the voltage drop generated by the inductance given by, V(t) = L (di/dt). Therefore, the actual V_DD available to the pMOS source is v_dd = V_DD – V(t). This happens to every gate and transistor in the fast switching network.

Another parameter known as the characteristic impedance comes into play for high speed signals. These are transmission line parameters usually dealt with in board level design. But, the moment rise time and fall times go below a certain limit, these parameters come into the picture. Proper impedance matching has to be done to avoid signal reflections and degradation. Generally, when

signal t_r < 160ps,

R < 5Z₀

t_r or t_f < 2.5t_flight

we need to consider characteristic impedance (transmission line effects).

One more effect of high speed signals is the skin effect where the signal tends to flow on the surface of the wire for very high frequencies. What happens is that the resistance if the line is also dependent on the skin depth because it essentially reduces the wire width. Naturally, when the wire dimension is reduced the resistance is increased and distortion is experienced on the signal at high frequencies.

We can notice that the time constant Ƭ depends on R and C (and also L of the line at times) and becomes proportional to square of L

Ƭ ά L²

To model the interconnect delay, we divide the whole line into m RC rungs of a ladder network (Distributed model.) such that \

R_m = R_line/m

C_m = C_line/m

=

As m approaches infinity for a long interconnect

From calculations propagation delay

so,

because pMOS gives the logic ’1′ and nMOS gives the logic ’0′.

Using the rise time and fall time delays the total propagation delay from input to output can be found by the formula

These are all dependent on the L and W parameters of the line using which we can alter the delays.

The monkey Goo is the superior being according to NASA funded research. These are but a few facts not known to the average female blogger.

Although, Nobel Prize holders and top researchers have accepted the superiority of the Goo, there has been but only one view against it. This has been found to be a human female blogger called MonkeyGirl. Further investigation showed that this human calls herself “Meechen Wonsungee” meaning “Crazy Monkey” in Korean. It has been confirmed that her Korean friends had given her the name understanding the fact that she could not learn from the superior Goo.  Her obsession with monkeys has turned into a hatred for the superior beings monkey Goo just because they happen to have the word monkey in their scientific name. She had been spotted trying to imitate the superior monkey Goo actually having stolen his glasses once.

The US government has realized the damage caused to the Goo and fearing the loss of the valuable knowledge and wisdom that can be learned from them, has charged MonkeyGirl with felony. The trials will start pretty soon.

Many of the Internationals in America , especially Indians, would know who FOBs are. I was once an FOB and literally everyone (students) that steps into the U S of A are immediately FOBs by rank. But there are times when we are ‘STILL FOB’. I have noticed a lot of Indian students and mostly myself answer questions with laughs, smiles and ‘yeah’. It doesn’t matter what the question is. This is because I didn’t understand the American’s fast English. When I was a FOB, I did that a lot. Now, I do that occasionally. An example of a FOB conversation would be like this.

cashier: (smiling and trying to exercise his customer skills) What more do we want than a 6-pack of beer on a Friday   evening?

FOB: heh heh… yeah.

cashier: Great beer man but, I need to see your I.D.

FOB: heh heh… yeah… (just smiles and looks at the cashier)

cashier: *Blink*

FOB: still smiling

cashier: I need to see your I.D, sir.

FOB: Oh, here.

The first two answers are the default answers most FOBs give to any question and fortunately, most questions require only a ‘Yes’ or a No’. It so happened one time that my roommates and I went to an event to present the Indian culture to the Americans who were interested in learning about it. In the casual conversation the American asked a question “what is the most popular food in the whole of India?”. My roommate said “heh heh.. yeah”. I couldn’t control my laughter as well as embarrassment. I know, there is nothing to be embarrassed about but, I am sure that a lot of FOBs as wells as SOBs (Still FOBs) give this default answer and don’t ask the person to repeat the question because we think it is embarrassing to not be able to understand the American accent. If people disagree, I apologize but, at least that’s what I did.

I used to be so self conscious about how I responded to an American. If I didn’t understand what he/she said, I simply smiled and said ‘yeah’. I do not understand why I did this but I thought the reason was definitely the one I gave above, at least for me. It’s been a while since I have been here in the US of A and I have learned to ask people to repeat themselves if I didn’t understand or couldn’t hear them. And I saw that Americans themselves weren’t afraid to ask anyone to repeat themselves even if it was a dozen times. That is one of the many good things I have learned through my interacting with a lot of people.

PS: Sorry about the cartoon, that’s the best I could do.

What I was going to blog about, I had no idea. You will see what happened in the end in the following cartoon.

So, that’s exactly what happened. I spent all the time thinking what to blog about. Finally came up with this cartoon that I thought would be a good material for the blog. I am gonna give this cartoon a character. Most suitable would be an Indian grad student at Sac State. See ya.

Coming to ‘Vapour Water Ice’, yeah, no commas, only space. This is a wonderful worship album from my good old friend Gangai back in India. He calls his ministry ‘Kerygma Worship ministries’ and his website is www.ikerygma.com. Amazing songs, seriously. I like almost all the tracks, ‘Reign Lord reign’ being my favorite right now. I can see Andy Park style lyrics in a couple of songs, of course, given the fact that he was one of Gangai’s inspirations. ( Sorry, that is my assumption). Do, check them out. The music production was great for a first album although, I wish the mixing and mastering had been better.Oh, and Gangai is my inspiration to even learn the guitar and try singing and worship. I never thought I’d be helping with worship in my group here. I always thought I was a percussion guy. I used to play the Tabla with Gangai in our worship ministry for YST back in Chennai and here I am playing the guitar and singing .

Now, coming to other things, I just watched ‘Shutter Island’ last night with my roommates. It was a good movie. If you haven’t read the reviews or heard about the story, it is definitely worth a watch. Unlike, ‘The lightning thief’ which was a waste of money. I’d give Shutter Island an 8.5/10. I think that is about it for this entry… oh, and I just came up with a random simple tune. I want to write lyrics and put it up on YouTube, if and when I find time.  Varta?

The look is new of course, and I am not sure if it is just me or if it is really running faster. I installed the 64-bit version since, now the microprocessors are pushing the OS and applications towards it. Not many applications are 64-bit yet. The only two I have used so-far are Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta and iTunes 9.xx. I am hoping there will be Firefox and other applications we use regularly pretty soon. Almost all of my roommates are going to be upgrading to W7 by the end of the week.
Oh, and I also have Ubuntu 9.10 on a dual boot. When I upgraded from Vista Home Premium to W7, the GRUB loader was over-written. Information on how to restore the GRUB can be found HERE. This was a simpler and easier method than the ones given in the ubuntuforums.

Going back to Win7, I realized the Hibernate option was not in the shotdown list. I use Hibernate all the time because my battery is dead and I don’t even use a battery, my laptop is always plugged-in. The option is available in the Power Settings to activate it.

வணக்கம்!
नमस्ते

Wow! I just discovered Blogspot has options to type in 5 Indian languages. I have said Hi, Vanakkam in Tamil, Namaste in Hindi, in the respective order. Something completely random. O.K., going to the post. Oh, did you know O.K. was invented as a misnomer for All Correct (Oll Korrect)? Heh heh… sorry I digressed.

So, yeah, I am into skateboarding now. I used to have one back in Chennai, when I was in probably the 6th or 7th grade. My friend Ravi had his roller-skates and together we ground the roads of Meenambakkam. But, the one I had back then was made of Mica and wouldn’t hold big weights. It had those big cruiser wheels and I never understood the principle behind the ‘Ollie’. I strapped my slippers on to the board using a strap from an old back pack and would put my foot in like on a snowboard.

Now, I just got my interest back on skateboarding and got myself one. I had to research about it and I came to learn so many things. All the components, the deck, the trucks, wheels, bearings, ABEC ratings, so much skateboarding vocab. Mine’s the blue Broken Virtigo board, the second model in the bottom row. I am still learning to balance, but also trying ollies. I am actually getting better at it. I will put up a video pretty soon. I have to admit it is not an easy art to learn. Yes, I said “Art”. You guys should watch the ‘Time Warp’ episode on skateboarding with Greg Lutzka to see what Discovery Channel has to say about this ‘art’. lemme just post it for you guys.

Yeah, it’s not as easy as these pros make it look. I have already a broken radial neck, two bruised knees and a cut flesh at the bottom of the thumb. All these are still healing but the feeling of accomplishing something, even as simple as a slide stop, is great. I will post more updates soon. I have a lot of reading to do cos my prof has free time only during the winter break. Lot of studying to do.

Thinking of auditing the CpE159 class but still unsure about the registration and tuition amount.

American Bearing Engineering Committee or council.

The higher the ABEC rating the tighter the tolerance.

Tolerance to a certain value…

tighter tolerance = more equipments rejecting the bearings although,

tighter tolerance is also = better performance.

The American system ABEC is exactly the opposite of the ISO standards (International Standards Organization), as usual . Higher ABEC number is class 1 and lower ABEC number is class 6, class 1 being the best.