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Monday 28 November 2011

5 Things You Must Have While Travelling

1)      Camera- Ok! Let me start with the most important thing. Travelling without camera is like going for shopping without your credit card. Camera not only help you to save memories of the places that you visit but also help you in preserving those nice, pleasant & beautiful memories. But before you pack your camera, please check if it’s working or not & whether the batteries are new. Always, keep two to three extra set of batteries with you, in case you face unwarranted circumstances. Next thing- how you will you know that which camera best suits your need? It’s quite easy (of course without going to specifics) . In case you are not good at the art of photography & neither you want to be an ace photographer, digicam is the best option for you. They are easy to use & not require many settings. In case you are an avid photographer, then there is no need to tell you. I am sure you already know- DSLR is the thing for you. Plus you can go for optional lenses.

2)      Laptop (+ extra set of batteries)- Now that you have clicked all the photos, you want some place to store them right! There is no better place to manage those pictures than your laptop. You can also edit your pictures quickly before uploading them in facebook or myspace. Additionally, laptop gives you the flexibility to have a quick chat with your friends & family back home & also to charge your Ipod. And you can have a quick search about all the interesting places around ( in case you have not done it already) or for a quick change in travel plan.

3)      Wireless internet card- There is no meaning of clicking pictures if you can’t share them with your friends & family. Always keep wireless internet card with you, that will help you access internet, friends & family & also preparing for emergency situations. I know now days you can do most of it through your mobile, but still PC is the most convenient & secure way.

4)      Mobile- There is nothing new in this.  Mobiles have become an important part of our existence & it’s very difficult to live without them.  Go for a mobile with 3G applications, good memory & at least a 3 Megapixel camera. The latter will help you in clicking some quick pics(without the setup) that are otherwise difficult to capture. But remember to switch it off when you don’t want to be disturbed!

5)      Ipod- I am sure nobody will forget this! Otherwise how you are going to pass your time on those boring plane or bus journeys. Remember to charge your Ipod to full before starting from your home. Create a playlist with different genres of music so that you can listen to them later, depending on your mood.


Thursday 24 November 2011

What is ERP?


ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. In other words we can say that it’s a software package (application) that is used to manage an organization's both internal & external resources. Now to understand what this application performs, let us first see how an organization work 7 what are its different parts. For example, big organizations like petrochemical companies or aerospace companies have different departments within themselves that supports different functionalities, important for running the parent organization itself. Some of them are Human Resource (HR), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Sales & Distribution (SD), Financial Services & Support (FSS), Material Management (MM), etc. Now, before ERP applications were developed each of these departments had their own applications for supporting & managing their activities. But with ERP applications all these departments are brought under a single umbrella, sharing a same database. This has led to better visibility, traceability & connectivity within organization & with external stakeholders. The job of ERP is to facilitate quick flow of data between various departments within & external to organization. The main advantages of ERP application is that they provide a common database for all functions, more or less the outlook is same for all applications, can be easily integrated with plant machinery & can be used with all most any business functions. The most common ERP application that is being used today is SAP.

Tuesday 22 November 2011

Mainframe Computers


Mainframes are often described as big, powerful computers that are used in big organisations where they manage & process huge volumes of data. Mainframes are mostly used is government & big organizations for critical applications where continuous processing of huge amount of data is required. Some examples of these type of applications are enterprise resource planning (ERP), measuring census, banking & financial transactions, etc. Most of the original mainframes architecture & basic designs were developed around 1960's but still they are evolving today to suit the market needs. We often hear about another term called supercomputers that are used for determining weather patterns or in nuclear research. We often get confused between these two terms. But we need to remember that while supercomputers are required where complex analysis and more computational speeds & accuracies are required, mainframes are used for handling high volume/traffic of data. In technical terms mainframes performance are measured in millions of instructions per second (MIPS), whereas supercomputer performance are measured in floating point operations per second (FLOPS). An instruction may be read/write whereas floating point operations are addition, subtraction, multiplication or division.

Mainframes have higher reliability, availability & serviceability which are its defining characteristics. these three characteristics are very important because mainframes are used in those applications which should have very minimal or no downtime. In older mainframes, there was no interactive interface. But, today most of the mainframes support either fully or partially web based user interfaces. The new generation mainframes require much less cooling, power consumption & space. From business perspective, IBM dominates the mainframe markets. Some examples of mainframes are IBM zSeries, System z9 and System z10 servers.

Flash- Animating internet


Every day we use internet for news, social networking, listening to songs, watching movies & animation, etc. But how many of us know that most fo the animations that we see over internet are built over a platform known as flash?
Most of the advertisements, animations & online games that we see over internet are built over flash. Flash content can be viewed in almost all type of computer machines, using Adobe flash player which is available for free. Flash based content are not only available for computers but also available in mobiles & tablet devices. Flash can be used to create animations of texts, drawings & even still images. This is achieved by manipulating the vector & raster information. You can also automate your flash animations & capture user inputs with the help of an object oriented language called ActionScript that is bundled with flash. The file formats are usually in swf, referring to shockwave flash. Another format of flash video files is .flv format that can be played on variety of media players like quicktime, Km player, etc. This file format is used extensively in Youtube videos. Flash videos usually take less bandwidth because of less sizes, which in turn is due to use of vector graphics along with program script.

Monday 21 November 2011

RADAR- Radio Detection & Ranging- Basic Idea


I guess, we all have heard about RADARS, at least once in our life. Radars are used all around us & we know where they are used but don't know much about how they actually work. In this post, I will just try to give a small summary about the RADARS & their applications. In case you want to get the mathematical or engineering details, you can visit wikipedia or other e-books that are available over internet. I will try to find out such books & in case I get any I will share them in my subsequent posts.

Radars are used in wide variety of applications like from weather/storm monitoring (meteorological applications), in Air Traffic Controlling, military operations- identifying hostile targets & guiding weapons, in space programs- to map earth or lunar surfaces, etc. There are variety of radars available depending upon their intended use like Doppler radars, Synthetic Aperture Radars (SAR), Active/Passive Electronic Scanned Array(AESA/PESA) radars, etc.
Basic function of radars:-
1) To find out whether an object is present at a distance or not.
2) In case an object is there, what is its speed?
3) To map a surface (like lunar or earth's surface).

So how radar actually works? It's quite simple! At least in principle. It works on the principle of echoes & Doppler shifts.  In every radar there are two parts- transmission & receiving unit. Transmission unit consist of a radio wave emitter which emits radio waves in particular direction. The receiving unit consist of a receiver that detects the signal bounced off from targets (echoes). In this way radar detects if an object is present at a particular distance or not.
To find out, whether the object is approaching or leaving & the speed of the object, the effect of Doppler shift is used. Doppler shift is the apparent change in frequency (of sound/light) caused by an object which is approaching/moving away at some speed.

Sunday 20 November 2011

Greenhouse Effect- Reason for global warming


Now a days we often hear the phrase “global warming” & issues like carbon emission reduction, etc. But do you know how increase in carbon emissions is related to Global warming? The link between both of them is a phenomenon, known as Green House Effect. If you ever visited a green house, you will notice the inside temperature is always a few degree higher than outside. This is due to greenhouse effect & for precisely for this reason only green houses are used in cold climate for plant cultivation.

What happens in green houses is the glass walls allow sun light with shorter wavelengths to pass through it. The sunlight increases the temperature of the inside by getting absorbed. Once the internal temperature of greenhouse increases it starts emitting radiations but of higher wavelengths. Glass walls do not allow this higher wavelength radiation to pass through it & reflects it back into inside. This reflected large wavelength radiation again cause heating of the inner side of green house & creates a “heat trap”.

Now the same phenomenon happens in Earth too. We just have to imagine Earth as a big green house with the layer of carbon dioxide in atmosphere acting as glass walls. This layer of CO2 allows shorter wavelengths from sun to pass through it, whereas reflecting back the longer wavelengths emitted by heated earth surface. The more concentration of Co2 in atmosphere will causes a more effective “heat trap” resulting in higher temperatures.

Saturday 19 November 2011

Techno-Gig Introduction


Today we stay in a world which has become smaller, smarter, better because of various technologies that are developed over a period of several centuries. The pace of technological development has increased manifolds over last century. Now a days, every single moment a new kind of technology is either invented or implemented in one or other way. It has become very difficult to stay abreast of all that is happening in field of technology & engineering.

With this is mind, I thought of starting this small blog in the vast ocean of internet. I will try to write about new technologies that are being developed and also about old ones that are already developed. I will try to present the basic facts about how most of technologies, that we see in everyday life, works. I know there are lots of other websites & blogs dedicated for the same reason, but I will try to be different, concise & precise.