Shakuntala Devi

This is one of her books I read many many years ago. She is a Mathematical Genius. Then for many years I did not hear anything from her. I thought she has migrated to some other country or is busy in some other projects. She was in Singapore some days back and had a seminar. My daughter told me that she had visited her school. Old memories flashed. I had bought her book from Higginbothams. The stall was on Vijayawada Railway Station.

Some of her photos of past and present. She looks just the same.

Then

Now

Relates Sites.

http://www.shakuntaladevi.in

Watches

In my school days there were very few of the students who used to wear watches. My dad had gone to US in those days and he had got one electronic watch. I was one of the firsts to wear an electronic watch in the school. I was searching of the important things that happened in the history of watches.

1500s=The first pocket watch was invented in Germany

1884=GMT recognized as the basis of time zones in England.

1956=Rolex has the first day-date display in the watch.

1962=First Quartz watch (Swiss made). Battery Operated.

1972=LCD. Liquid Crystal Display (Electronic) Watches.

Since then we have variation in the models. Essentially there are mechanical watches, automatic watches, quartz watches, Kinetic and electronic watches (battery operated and solar). Some extra features like FM/AM Radio, Temperature, GPS, Bluetooth, MP3 Player, Remote control, USB connected watches have been launched. I have yet to see any watches with integrated mobile phone. Watches in Phone are so prevalent, but phone in watches not yet. Or is it that I don't know?

How can we discuss watches without talking about HMT and Titan. My father is still a HMT fan and wears an HMT, I on the other hand wear a Titan.

Guru Nanak Jayanti and Children's Day

Optical Illusions

In many email chain letters and many presentations, I have seen these two pictures/

How many people you see, How much time you took to find out, where are they etc etc.

Do you see an old woman or a young woman and what did you see first, and seeing front or seeing back etc etc. I think thousands of presentations had the speaker impressing the crowd with these photos.

Basically all this means that the presenter itself had been disillusioned with these images. And he or she used these images to understand more. Next time you see these images in emails or presentations, ask the sender/presenter. What did these images bring a change to their lives? And you will be surprised on listening to their stories. I use this a gauge to judge presenters.

Computer Memory

Decided to write some technical history today.

Computer memory can be broadly classified into 3 categories

a. Based on Vacuum tubes. 

b. Based on Ferrite Ring (called as Core memory). This was invented by Jay Forester.

c. Today's, semiconductor based LSI (Large Scale Integration) chips.

The revolution in memory technology came from Jay Forester. For a period of time, the core memory was used in 90% of the computers. No wonder we have the "core dumped" , the famous message we see during compiling C programs.

So what about SDRAM, EDORAM, DDR, DDR2. Will clear this mystery in the next post.

Suresh

BR Chopra Passes Away

BR Chopra was one of the top film makers of Bollywood Movies. Masala, Masti, Magic, Epic, he tried and succeeded in everything he made. Mahabharat, the epic TV serial on Doordarshan was his defining entry into the small screen. We were glued to our TV sets those days.

Top Movies by BR Chopra (Must SEE)

A Happy Diwali

Wishing for Peace and Prosperity and Stability.