Assignments & More

I know it has been quite a long time since I posted a blog. I could not do so due to the fact that I had quite a few assignments last week. They were quite interesting really, I mean if you looked at it externally and not have to do it yourself.
My first assignment last week involved a C programming project,in which I had to code a maze. The main outline of this task was to read in a maze from a textfile and display it on to the screen. The user then had to be prompted to give the starting co-ordinates from where the maze had to be solved. The textfile consisted of a grid of x,p characters.X's denoted the walls, p denoted the path. The goal was denoted by g. The maze was confusing as it had many dead ends and junctions and my program was supposed to be able to go back everytime such a dead end was reached.
I spent a good part of my vacation figuring out the method I would adopt to solve it. In the end I was able to solve the maze and accomplish the task.
The second assignment might be a bit more interesting. It involved the design of an FPGA which sorted into ascending order, the 8 bit values that were inputted into it. The language used was VHDL which stands for Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vhdl. It is actually very much like C programming, but here u are actually able to construct and program hardware to make it do things u want it to . VHDL is an excellent tool as not only are you able to describe the behaviour of chip through programming, you are also able to modify the behaviour if you are unstatisfied with it. The program used to compile and simulate VHDL is ModelSim. The components for the sorter were placed on a simulated PCB using Xilinx, which gives the timing frequency and efficiency of the chip so created.
The sorter problem was very complicated as it involved the programming of many components which were embedded deep into the main layout.
The next assignment uses the sorter to detect a peak from a stram of data and display it onto a computer. I have been assigned a group for this task.
Anyway I shall continue to update this blog as an when I get an opportunity. Have fun and tc

A new beginning

Hello everyone. I have now finally decided to update my blog regularly.I shall make it a point to do so atleast once a week(twice if something interesting happens).

BACK TO SQUARE ONE

I doubt whether the title for this post is apt, but i have decided to put it to use anyway. After quitting my job, I returned home. Yes Im back home to "enjoy " my vacation, except that there seems to be little enjoyment left. I very much miss my job and freedom, life back in the uk seems to be such a wonderful dream that i have left behind. I mean it does sound stupid ( at this point, whilst I write) , considering I will be going back there 5 weeks from now.
Well i came back 2 weeks ago to mumbai. It will seem odd that none of my friends know about this.I dont know why i have decided to keep my stay secret, but i will surely meet them.........
Probably the main reason for this is that I feel oddly displaced here, I cant seem to get into a routine on a day to day basis. I feel useless and I have a host of very negative thoughts about myself, as demonstrated here . It is just now , that I seem to be coming to grips with the new lifestyle, of basically trying to do nothing.
Well, anyway, I have more to write about my life in the past two weeks, which has been interesting.The next post sould involve an odd Indian marriage and a Greek bridegroom.

LEAVING MY JOB

Sad as it does sound, I had to quit my vacation job . It wasn't due to the obvious fact , that it was boring and had no future, but for the simple reason that i wasn't given extra hours to work. Thats right, i quit because I wasnt allowed to double my working hours.That reduced the time I spent flirting with the beautiful girls who worked there.
Life was kind of boring when i was working only 4hrs a day and earning a paltry sum. I went into a phase in which i slept for abt 12 hrs because of the boredom. When i did get a chance to work for double the number of hours, I had atleast something to do. Beleive me I found it worthwhile to work for 6 straight hours on a till and have a nagging back pain (plus a sweaty bum) .
At my workplace the clientele consists of customers who are in the age range of 60-70 years. So for me it was more like working in an old age home.(No offence, but i am actually sick of seeing old people now, i mean i couldnt believe that there were so many aged people here) .
The worst part is when you have to tell them the price of the stuff they have bought, and it take forever to explain to them, the amount, because most of them are hard of hearing. Even the digital display in front of them is of no use as they cannot see very well .
Sometimes , the very few customers whose essentials are alright , seem to have this odd tendency to give out their pin numbers , when they are entering it into a card machine, which is very qeer and funny . One time , one old lady, gave me a peice of paper ,which had her pin on it , she asked me to punch it in for her! God bless them.
So here I am, writing this peice( which is my first) As you can guess, I have really nothing better to do when i work for 4 hrs a day( this is my last day of work)!