Friday, March 22, 2013

The perks of parallel processing

Yesterday was a dukkhi day. Dukhi because sad simply falls short of the expressing our grief  and dismay require.
I might have mentioned it earlier, but let me emphasize this  again : The writer has an extraordinary talent for destruction, be it biryani or a beagle board that has the misfortune to fall in her hands. 
Technically speaking, this is the middle of the end, since we are halfway through fyp. Sometimes I realize that I am going to miss my college enormously. The holidays, to be exact. How I am going to play truant in the future is a source of constant worry to me. I also picked up some like-minded and almost-as-dim-witted-as-me people there, who have always dissuaded me from suicidal plans, albeit half-heartedly.
On the day before yesterday, I was a happy elf. A free elf, almost. Working with a beagle board xm has been a very interesting and rewarding experience, and it has rekindled an old dream, of being an embedded system designer. I might even write a couple of posts about the general outlines for working with it, as well as the problems we encountered and are still encountering, provided that I can summon the energy.
This time, we decided to divide the work among our three selves. Being the person who finds the most faults with literally everything, I have been appointed as the official choota (sans the public dealing, thankfully). While the others watch and record videos and do interesting stuff, I try to impress people with the fact that a complete os can run on 5 V on a 3x3 inch board. 
To the point now.
Thing is, parallel processing might be the thing for actual processors, but it certainly isn't for us. What doing 3 different things in parallel has brought us is the chance to get stuck at three different points simultaneously.
When working as a group, we usually have one problem at a time, so this is a new achievement for us. In a way.
Rants aside, I should document my problems.
As the icing on the cake, I received a new and strange 'kernel panic' error yesterday. Since then, my work is officially on standstill. Maybe I need to change my focus for a couple of days. Middlemarch might be a choice, for I am a fan of George Eliot and Dorothea's story can not be more tragic than mine.



9 comments:

  1. The title reminds me of 'The perks of being a wallflower'
    It does suck when a perfectly running system stops working suddenly. It sucks even more if multiple perfectly running systems stop working simultaneously. Sometimes, out of nowhere, I realize that being stuck in string theory would have been lot more interesting than the stuff we get stuck in. I keep on saying 'Zindagi bekaar he' (derived from a serial name 'Zindagi Gulzar he')

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  2. '...multiple perfectly running systems stop working simultaneously.' you have summed it up exactly.
    'Zindagi baykar hay' is quite nice, I like it.
    We can bank on string theory, you are right. Let us abandon all non-working cables and cards and boards and LCDs and embark on the study of pure sciences, being an oompa loompa is so very tiring.

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  3. 'Being an oompa loompa' I liked it. But don't like being an oompa loompa anymore..
    I appreciate the idea. Let us divert our attention to the possibilities of non-causal systems, perpetual motion machines, room temperature superconductors and einstein rosen bridges.

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  4. Don't forget time machines, >3 dimensional worlds and parallel universes.
    So you finally agree that anti causal real time systems are way more worthwhile? Good.

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  5. people, you are not alone. Being stuck in fyp is in fashion nowadays.

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  6. Recording videos isn't the interesting part. Programming and OpenCv itself is :)

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  7. You know what, develop a gui and I will have an excellent video editor for my system.

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