EveryDingEveryDong

 SonifyCPP is my software written in C++ that "sonifies" or creates sound from any input image. I have explained in my last blog post how exactly this is done. The input image pixels have to be read one by one, and in my approach I generate sine waves for each of these pixels. Clearly, as the image dimensions increase, the computational cost increases. One simple way of increasing the speed of sonification is to just naively downscale the input image to a dimension that is "sonifiable" (something like 200x200). But this approach is just....meh. So I thought, instead of sending the pixels one by one to the sine wave generator, how about I send it in columns. And that's what I did. This, sadly, did not result in considerable speed up. So, the only other way was to implement multi-threading. Multi Threading For those who have been living under a cave, modern computers have processors which have more than one working "brain" or cores. (Note: I'll use p...

 Well.....it's not magic, it's programming and mathematics that's helping us produce the music or audio signals. A while back, around November of 2023, I had participated in the NASA Hackathon. There was variety of projects to choose from to work, I chose the project called "Image Sonification". Me and my team members had 48 hours to code the software in any language we wanted. We chose to do it in Python for some reason. Okay, I'll back up out of the flashback for a second to describe what Image Sonification actually is. Similar to how microphone is used to produce some audio signals and then is processed on a digital audio workstation to produce a digital audio, Image sonification refers to the process of converting the images to audio signals. Coming back to the hackathon flashback, we finished coding the project to produce some sort of "music" from input images that were smaller resolution (We couldn't figure out a way to optimize the code to...

Typically sunday nights go the same way, have dinner with a friend, go for a long walk, but today was different, atleast for the part where we rode the YULU electric mini-bikes. YULU electric bikes have been around for a long time now, atleast here in Banglore, I have seen many around. Last week, me and my friend, we were discussing how cool it would be to ride on one of these bikes, and voila these week we finally tried it. As a side note, I do not have two wheeler license, and you do not need one to ride one of these bikes. These are considered similar to a bicycle, except that this thing has an electric motor.   Picture of the YULU electric mini bike It's really easy to use these bikes. YULU has an app on Android and iOS, once logged, it asks to make a refundable deposit of 199 INR. Once done, we have to locate the nearest YULU station and go there to get the bike. Once at the station or near a bike, just scan the QR on the bike, and enjoy. The timer starts on the app when the ...

My Journey in Coding I have been learning how to write code in various languages for almost a decade now. I started writing code when I was in 8th grade and first got my hands on HTML language. We were taught basic HTML principles and syntax, but I didn't stop there, I was curious to learn how to beautify the plain text webpage, so I ended up learning CSS . Then slowly I wondered how I could add buttons and add functionality to them, so I ended up learning Javascript . Curiosity is the only way that will pave way into the beautiful land of coding. DOOM 1: Old game, that made me curious about the programming of computer games Roadrash: Another game that made me curious about the programming   I love computer games like many other people do. Whenever I sat down to play games, I thought to myself about how the game could be programmed, how can us humans make computers understand these entertaining and engaging piece of software. Internet is the best resource available to learn all ...

I have been using Arch Linux  for a few years now and it's been awesome since I last changed from ..... ( I don't remember my last distro)... I have tried almost every linux distro, Debian, Ubuntu, Manjaro you name it. I had been seeing a lot of Linux enthusiasts using Arch and I thought of trying it too. I had just started using awesomewm as my Window Manager and they go hand in hand perfectly, so I gave it a shot. I know the first word that pops into your mind when mentioning Arch, and that's its "DIFFICULT".  Let me tell you "IT'S NOT", I mean not exactly...but those who are comfortable with Manjaro, it's perfect for them ArchLinux logo Intro So the easiest path for opting Arch Linux (like I did) is to go through every linux distro (Distro Hopping) and see which fits best for you. Let me now move over to the qualities which makes Arch Linux the best.  Features  The best feature that's wo...

I recently participated in the inter-college fest SAMYOGA conducted by JAIN (Deemed-to-be University), Jayanagar Campus for the two events, Battle of Bands (BOB) and Solo Instrumental . For the BOB, we chose to play the three songs, Love is a long road - Tom Petty You give love a bad name - Bon Jovi Rock you like a hurricane - Scorpions  Many participants from different colleges had come to participate in these events. Almost all the colleges performed really well in BOB. We got the third slot to perform, and I feel that we performed really well. No fault whatsoever this time, no change in tempo, no mess-up by anyone from the team. Here is a little glimpse of the performance.   The BOB and solo instrumental event had a clash in timings, due to the poor time management by the coordinators of the event. Added to this, there was only one drum kit in the venue. This was a problem because both the events started simultaneously, and all the participants of the solo instrumental ...

I love playing drums. It has been a lifelong dream to play in a band and on the stage. Luckily my college has a music team called "AROHI", and they were looking for a drummer. I sent them a video of me playing in my drum kit back home, and they invited me over to meet them. After I got in, we started practicing for a showcase. It was a risky move as the event was in 2 days, and we had only 24 hours or so of practice time. On the day of the showcase, we all felt butterflies when it was our turn to perform. We go on the stage, I look at the drumkit they provided, it was a pearl decade 5 piece standard kit, but with lots of cymbals, zildijian and sabian, there was three crash cymbals, one ride, and one hi-hat. I was mesmerized by the drumkit.    

I participated in the Kodaikanal Solar Observatory (KSO) Winter School organized by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics from January 3rd to 10th 2024. The winter school was focused mainly on Solar Physics. We had lectures by various professors from IIA on topics like brief introduction to Magnetohydrodynamics, Atmosphere of the Sun (both upper and lower), Helioseismology, flares and CMEs (Coronal Mass Ejection), Remote sensing techniques and In-situ Observations of CMEs. Along with the lectures we also had hands-on sessions on the topics which were taught during the lectures. One day was allotted for visiting the various telescopes in KSO: KTT (Kodaikanal Tower Tunnel Telescope), H-alpha telescope, White light Active Region Monitor (WARM), Spectroheliograph (used by John Evershed, who was at Kodaikanal during 1900s, and discovered the Evershed Effect), 6 inch refractor white light telescope, radio telescope etc. More info about the history of Kodaikanal can be found here We also had o...