Washing Machine and Rain

I am sitting here in my balcony. Sipping coffee while looking at the rain outside and thinking:

Its raining again! Somehow it has to rain whenever I switch on the washing machine. Is there a link between the machine and the clouds? Well you never know. Maybe it will be the next big news in Scientific American,

Scientists find strong evidence linking washing machine usage and rainfall 

... In a recent study published in the Journal of Scientific Mumbo Jumbo, researchers from University of Blah throw light onto the possible correlation between rainfall and washing machine usage. Based on a study lasting over a decade, researchers have found strong evidence suggesting ...

I know. It sounds crazy. But all I am saying is that you never know.

Or maybe I only remember instances of rain when it causes me inconvenience. Or maybe the coffee has hallucinogenic properties.

Link to the original facebook post. 

How to avoid triggering the circuit breaker

Heard the following story from a colleague at Amazon:

This happened during the time I was at Amrita University. Back then the hostels did not have power sockets. This was the time when cellphones and laptops were beyond the reach for most Indian students. One day some guy managed to get his hands on an electric heater and wanted to cook in the hostel. Some searching led the guys to a socket in the corridor. Switched on the heater. There was a pop sound somewhere down the corridor and no power for that entire wing. These would be engineers soon figured out that the circuit breaker was getting triggered by the high current drawn.

Ordinary folks would think better and shut down the heater. But there was this one guy (name withheld for obvious reasons) who had this great idea. He proudly told that he will "fix" the circuit breaker. He went down the corridor and asked the guys to switch on the heater. This time there was no "pop" noise. The power went off for the entire wing. And there was a burnt smell.

Turns out that the fix was to hold the circuit breaker to the top contact and not let it "trip" (disconnect). The high load just burnt out the wires instead. No electricity for these guys for a week.

Photos of Bogmalo, Goa

Bogmalo Beach, Goa, a set on Flickr.

Some pictures of Bogmalo, Goa from August 2013. Went there from Amazon for a branding event at BITS. Wonderful campus, great beach and awesome seafood made this a very enjoyable off-season trip to Goa.

Pics of squirrels clicked in BTM

Squirrel, BTM, a set on Flickr.

Here are some of the non-blurry pics of these cute, super busy furry animals. Clicked from the verandah of my BTM home in April 2013.

Mysore Trip with ml-bln

Mysore Trip with ml-bln, a set on Flickr.

Pictures from my trip to Ranganathittu bird sanctuary and Mysore palace with my colleagues from Amazon India and Berlin.

Via Flickr:
5 of us from the ML-Blr team went on a day trip with some members of the Berlin team. We stopped at Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary and Mysore Palace.
20140125

Not posting for a year

Will start this post with an apology. Its been more than a year since I last posted. Lots of things have happened since my last post. {got married, moved to a different work team, changed house twice}. The principle reason however is different.

My recent posts have been mostly along lines of "how to do X" where X is some interesting thing which I stumbled upon recently. There is no central them to X. Mostly it revolves around Linux/Unix, Internet and ML; basically my work. With the popularity of Q/A sites like stackoverflow, "how to" kind of posts have been rendered unnecessary. A look at my blog statistics convey the same theme. My original contents like GATE solutions still attract majority of visitors to the blog; mostly from search engines.

Hence, from now onwards I will try to refrain from posting simple how-to questions from my work related fields. But original content is rare. I will continue posting on  topics like:

• CS beyond CS; Organizing clothes using DS
• Interesting observations; Latching doors without locks
• Non CS stuff like Origami, Photography, Fountain-pens

Anyways, will be posting more regularly now.