Svishnuu - THE WAY I SEE IT

transition from pencils to pens

^ my physics notes

This semester, I switched from pencils to pens. I have been using pencils for the past two semesters. At that time, I could never understand people (fellow classmates) who use pens. You can’t erase with pens – it’s like using a bad old typewriter, if you make a mistake it stays forever.

However, now I understand the profoundness of using a pen!. Pens are almost frictionless. They glide effortlessly over the pages like a zero-volume mass sliding down a frictionless decline. Using a pen feels like you’re saving nano-joules of energy due to fewer friction. The experience of using a pen is unparalleled to that provided by any pencil I’ve ever used. Pencils are TI-10s. Pens are TI-89s. So, wonder why I stopped using pens two semesters ago?

A little history, I sometimes try to be perfectionist. I always try to perfect my MATLAB codes; it gives a pleasure while I attempt to make it concise as possible. However, over the course of my education, I’ve gotten a lot better of turning off my perfectionist tendencies — like when the professor alters the notes after I copy it down. Before, I would have erased it — with the eraser-end of my pencil, of course. Now, I don’t have to. I feel like it’s less efficient; it takes around 5 seconds to erase few words, while it only takes a second to draw a line across the same few words.  So what if I wrote “Kircoff’s rule” instead of “Kirchhoff’s rule”? Well, when I go back to my notes, I would still understand it, and if I don’t know to how to spell it, Google’s “Did you mean….” will save me.

Just the other day, I submitted my Physics (Electricity and Magnetism) problem set. I had few scratchings across some calculations, but I became more conscience later on. You might wonder this would have created a bad impression. Guess what happened after I got it back? Absolutely nothing. I’m pretty sure my professor didn’t care at all and has completely forgotten it, unless he reads this post.  

This shows that I’m really putting my education to great efficiency and doing some Calculus constraining (and also some probability). After putting time fixing my slight errors, I’ve already reached the point of diminishing returns. The slightly decreased probability of something going wrong just isn’t worth the additional time I’d spend to attain it.

I am not on a discriminative drive towards perfectionism (although it wasted too much time), but I think perfectionism shouldn’t be applied to less important things. I think pencils are great (wait, don’t think I’m contradicting) but only for sketching! Pencils, used wrongly, will more likely to obfuscate people than enlighten them. Finally, to me it is a rapture to be a pen person now.

Totally relatable!

SUCCEEDING AT GRAD SCHOOL

“Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference. Each one of us must take responsibility for our own lives, and above all, show respect and love for living things around us, especially each other.” Jane Goodall

R a n d o m // pondering about finals | #finals #collegelife #iphone

                                                   Welcome to 2013

Gregorian calendar 2013 MMXIII

Ab urbe condita 2766

Armenian calendar 1462 ԹՎ ՌՆԿԲ

Assyrian calendar 6763

Bahá'í calendar 169–170

Bengali calendar 1420

Berber calendar 2963

British Regnal year  -  61 Eliz. 2 – 62 Eliz. 2

Buddhist calendar 2557

Burmese calendar 1375

Byzantine calendar 7521–7522

Chinese calendar 壬辰年十一月二十日 (4649/4709-11-20) 癸巳年十一月廿九日 (4650/4710-11-29)

Coptic calendar 1729–1730

Ethiopian calendar 2005–2006

Hebrew calendar 5773–5774

Hindu calendars  - Vikram Samvat 2069–2070 - Shaka Samvat 1935–1936   - Kali Yuga 5114–5115

Holocene calendar 12013

Igbo calendar  - Ǹrí Ìgbò 1013–1014

Iranian calendar 1391–1392

Islamic calendar 1434–1435

Japanese calendar Heisei 25 (平成25年)

Juche calendar 102

Julian calendar Gregorian minus 13 days

Korean calendar 4346

Minguo calendar ROC 102 民國102年

Thai solar calendar 2556

Unix time 1356998400–1388534399

Source: Wikipedia

boeing 787 | dreamliner

The boring 787 Dreamliner is a commercial jet from Boeing, it’s the most fuel-efficient airliner in the planet and is with composite materials—specifically, carbon fiber reinforcement plastic. According to Boeing, it’s made of 80% composite by volume, making it the lightest aeroairplane in its class. It also includes “nice” passenger favorable like: bigger windows, noise reduction (quieter), and oh, more space. So, I don’t see how this is a revolutionary aircraft, rather, I see it as an evolutionary aircraft.

So what’s the problem? Well, this is the thing: the Dreamliner has been plagued with accreting problems. In layman’s term, its battery can easily catch on fire. So axiomatically you know this is serious; hence, this is why the FAA grounded all 787s late last year (2012) shortly after service by many airlines around the world.

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner completely relies on electrical power than any other previous plane. Commercial jet airlines – other than the 787 – uses bleed air, which is super-hot, super-pressurized air taken from within the engine, and used it for all kinds of functions, from de-icing to pressurizing the cabin itself. However, this greatly reduces the efficiency of the engine. In order to prevent this loss in efficiency, the Dreamliner relies solely on electrical power, from some hyper-high-capacity lithium ion batteries. So, the problem is – these batteries have a rapture catching on fire and create angst in Boeing employees.

The famous lithium ion is chosen because it's got a super-high energy content for its size and weight – like, twice that of the batteries  (lead-acid battery) used in electric cars – but it also has one huge problem. That would be heat. Although there are different kinds of lithium ion batteries, the Dreamliner uses cobalt oxide batteries, the same kind as what's used in smartphones, laptops, and tablets. So, obviously the batteries on your phone don’t catch on fire; this is because they are small. However, the batteries on the 787s are huge and have the tendency to catch on fire.

I was pondering like you too on why Boeing engineers didn’t find this issue during the preliminary testing stage.  So here is why: The Dreamliner has had a very, very long and tumultuous birthing process, with multiple redesigns over the years. The 787 has been several years, yes years, behind schedule for deliveries. But theses delays were not directly related to the batteries catching fire. According to Boeing, nobody knowshow this problem got by.

A good guess for this – “just got by” – would be that with such a newfangled electrical power system, nobody really knew how the Dreamliner would respond with repeated use.

Anyway, after three months, today (Apr 19, 2013) FAA approved the Boeing’s plans to fix the 787’s batteries, a decision that could allow the planes to return to service within weeks. The decision was a major milestone for Boeing and its innovative jet.

This post is already long enough, so, I’m not writing what the Boeing’s fix is for 787’s power system.

To say there are no regrets in life, is just to fool yourself. How boring it'd be without regrets

Thank you and can’t wait for an exciting month detectives!

Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had.

Italo Calvino, from Invisible Cities (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974)