My freedom is important to me. I say this knowing that freedom is, in itself , an illusion.
At first sight there might seem to be a contradiction, but, I feel, there is none. The conflict lies in the first sentence which can, at worst, be called vague. It only talks of freedom but does not talk about the level of abstraction at which this freedom is defined. The second statement just does the opposite by bringing in the idea of different levels freedom. Since freedom itself is an abstract idea, when one calls it an illusion, one is invariably introducing a lot of level`s` of abstraction. So, redefining freedom for both the sentences should obviate the contradiction that seemed to exist initially.
When I say my freedom is important to me, I talk about freedom from that what I perceive as threats to my “freedom” at that moment in time and space in my life. This freedom and its inhibitor’s definition are strongly influenced by not only my perception of the world and also the price my sub-conscious mind is willing to pay for that freedom. If the price is perceived, by my mind, to be too high, more often than not, it will not been seen as shackle by my conscious mind. But once it is identified as a chain by my conscious mind, my ego would not rest till at some level I break the chain or at least convince my self that I have broken it. This is why it is important to me and how I fructify this importance
In the second sentence, freedom is to be taken in its most absolute terms that you can imagine for it. But the image that you conjure up will still be limited by the very facets that make you human. So to imagine it as an un-imaginable thing is the best way to imagine it, much like the concept of infinity. And it is this concept that’s an illusion.
Contradiction Solved?
And to round it off on a sober note, I asked one of my friends after *making* him read this give me his definition of freedom. He retorted “Your freedom is to ask me that question, mine, to choose not to answer and, ours, to understand each other on this”
Ever come across petrol pump workers who are hard of hearing or seem to be really dumb that they cant understand the amount of petrol you want? Ever been taken on a ride to cloud 9 during your short vist to the station by being asked enthusiastic questions about your bike?
Beware….in the guise of being dumb and/or friendly they might be cheating you.
If you try to fill for, say, 200 RS and the “dumb” guy fills for 30 first and then realizes his mistake, apologizes and fill the “remaining” 170 then in all probability you are getting a total of 170 Rs of petrol for the 200 Rs your paying. Depending on the type of pump being used the method varies. For example in a old no-frills pump, before starting for the first run of 30 zero reading would be shown to you specifically but once 30 is reached the next trip to 170 would as fast as the time it for a person to realize a intentional mistake and it usually starts at the 30 that was initially filled. This is something I have caught red handed. I suspect with the newer pump version there would be some option to resume from the last figure filled. I know it sounds a bit incredulous but I vouch from experience that it is very rampant especially when they see that you have an out-of-state registration number.
My way out? Since it’s hard to actually prove that they are cheating, and since I am not very good at mouthing out Kannada pejoratives, the moment they stop at 30, I close the tank pay the 30 and ride to the next station
Continuing from part I and part II
VLSI (FPGA) Project Topic Selection / List
Like I promised earlier I am putting up some of the FPGA related projects which I feel can be taken up at college level.
I shall split them into 3 different types depending on infrastructure that’s required. Why I am doing this is because most of these projects would lend themselves to be coded pretty easily (comparatively) but it’s the infrastructure that required to get them working and SHOW that they are working on hardware that might become the stumbling block.
Simple Arithmetic
- Parity prediction in adders
- Protocol converters (eg:Manchester to UART)
- Multiplier
- 4 bit Processors
- CRC Generator
- Reed-Solomon Decoder
Since they are all Simple arithmetic blocks , once coded they can be easily demonstrated in hardware using input switches and output LED’s that are present in most FPGA kits. Also the thing that should be kept in mind to keep their scale low (like a 4 bit word length for a processor rather than 8 bit) so that proving them on hardware is possible. If the scale increases it would be a bit hard to prove them on hardware since the pins of the FPGA are limited .You might have to think of innovative interfacing solutions like parallel to serial conversion inside the FPGA and reverse once outside using MSI shift-register chips etc
Protocols
- I2C (Master or Slave operation)
- SPI (Master or Slave operation)
- I2S
- JTAG
- UART
Here again the coding will not be an issue (not to take it lightly, but harder things are ahead) the stumbling block can be validation of the logic on FPGA. Since we need to be able to show that your chip is able to work seamlessly with the standard you would have to interface it with another device that operates in the protocol and prove that they can communicate. So along with the work on the HDL design you would have start working on the validation environment. Also interfacing, clocking etc would be harder. Also a logical oscilloscope can be very useful while debugging on hardware and access to one is an important criterion to select these kinds of projects
Application Based
- Image Watermarking on FPGA
- Traffic Signal
- Industrial Safely System
- Your Brilliant idea
In some ways, these are the safest projects to take. Here what you do is take a real life problem and solve it using electronics. You define the context of the pins and digital logic. Like a pin going high can indicate the activation of a safety latch to prevent a nuclear reactor from explosion 
Only difference between an ordinary electronic project and VLSI would be that the core logic that solves the practical problem would be implemented in FPGA. The actual logic to be implemented in the FPGA can be as simple as a string of ring counters or complex state machines depending on the problem that you are trying to solve AND how you propose to solve it. Also since the main idea is to (unleash your creativity and) get familiarized with FPGA flow and FPGA’s don’t lend into small form factors - a lot of packaging (“product-worthiness”) related issues are sorted ,which would have arisen if the project had been done using components like micro-controllers and discrete components. (In the VIVA you can say that you are using the FPGA as a prototype and can go into mass production of smaller ASIC’S once the practicality is proved on FPGA :P)
As you can see my main aim was not to provide a comprehensive list of projects, which I feel is something that should be left to your imagination, but try to classify the projects based on the difficulties and infrastructure required so that you can make a informed decision which choosing the topic. I hope that this was helpful and please do leave a comment to share your experiences.
Some months ago I had written about the Angel Investors and the Entrepreneurship culture that I found very refreshing in UK and without doing much research concluded that it would not be very prevalent in India. BIG Mistake! The sheer number of hits coming from India that this page has been getting is testimonial to the fact that there is an urge within our society from both innovators and from the VC side.
Recently while tracking back an organic it at my site via Google for search “angel investors in India” some links caught my eye and I browsed though them. There seems to be a lot of genuine activity going on which is very pleasing. Of course, the general feeling you get from these links is that the investment environment has still not reached the levels that I found in UK; where a person was pitching a product that would help hold an umbrella better to an Angel VC listening very intently. But still it’s very encouraging to see that such venture capital environment is growing.
Indians by nature are a creative lot. By it’s largely a necessity driven innovation rather than a dilettantish innovation. Take a look at a sack, in a developed county, I have read that a sack is manufactured for a particular purpose and use for that purpose alone. In India due to our sheer numbers, this is not even imaginable. The sack has its own life cycle starting for edible products then down to fertilizers to coal and so on. Agreed that this is not exactly innovation but re-use, but such kind of circumstances do force us into being innovative or thinking out of the ordinary, simply because the normal way of thinking won’t work.
Similarly I remember a NDTV series on Indian indigenous inventors who have invented home-made tractors, innovative manual water pumps etc. You could argue that these are very specific to the problem and there would be no larger markets but unless you do a case by case analysis we might actually be letting a lot of ideas rot. Also it bores testament to the fact that such thinking is in-built into our genes.
Hopefully by the time I am in need of “Angels” the situation would only improve. Last time I had stopped by asking about investors in India. I am going to answer that in part now. Here are some very interesting links
Needed: 10,000 Angel Investors
List Of Angels Investors In India (Its easier to let someone else maintain :P)
Seven Common Tactical Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make in their Initial VC Pitch which are Simple to Fix
A Black Swan is defined as a rare event with three very special characteristics:
- It is not predicted,
- it has massive consequences usually on a global scale, and
- in retrospect people invariable claim that they could have predicted it if they had been paying attention.
Examples of Black Swans are 9/11, the Netscape IPO, and the stock crash of October 1987.
Taken from Core Values
It seems to be the cause of one of the various strategic inflection point that can hit a industry that Andy Gorve talks about in his book "Only The Paranoid Survive". Seems like a good time to wrestle away control of a industry from any stong players,say like Google? Could make a good story IMO
