Category Archives: Technology

My job is like a medical intern’s

I’ve been watching scrubs a lot lately and I think I can relate to that lifestyle because I have a similar job. Now, I’m not remotely connected to the medical profession, but there are many similarities between my job and that of a medical intern.

1. We both work in shifts, mostly nights.
2. We both have to work under high pressure situations, time being of essence.
3. We both get to work on cases. Some are easy and get solved right away, some take months.
4. There are high priority cases where you can’t do anything unless they gets solved and there are normal ones. Just like an ICU.
5. You don’t feel that happy when you escape at the end of the shift because you know when you return the next day, the cases will be waiting for you.
6. Some cases you don’t know what to do but they got solved by themselves, some cases seem very easy but go on for months.
7. We all have to work on holidays.
8. Research is your best friend.
9. When you don’t know what to do, you go beg your mentor to tell you something.

Electric Car – A farce

The electric car is one of the biggest objects of farce in today’s age. People keep on crying about how electric cars run on electricity and not by burning hydrocarbons and hence they are less polluting and “environment friendly” Ha. Ha. Looks like the people who say this have never believed in anything written outside text books and tabloids or understood a few simple concepts of physics.

Let’s take for example a regular petrol/diesel powered car. The efficiency of a stock normal compression petrol engine is around 30% and that of a diesel engine is 45%. That means 45% of the energy obtained from burning fuel is actually converted into mechanical energy to move a car and this includes mechanical loss and heat loss. For high performance cars, the figure may be up to 50%.

Now let’s take the “environment friendly” electric car. An electric car motor has an efficiency of around 90%!! Wow!! Isn’t that amazing?? And also so pollution free! Not quite so! Where does the electricity used to charge the car come from? From power plants. What do these power plants run from? In India, 87% power is produced by burning coal. The efficiency of a typical Indian power plant is around 23%(US=33%) which means a loss of 77%. Add to that transmission losses of around 15%(US=9%). Battery charging efficiency is at the best 70% which means a loss of 30%. This brings the total efficiency of an electric car down to 19% starting from the first fuel. And this is using coal, which is much much more polluting than petrol or diesel. I’m not even taking into account the fact that half the weight of an electric car is the batteries which is a waste of the mechanical energy. Also, each megawatt of power utilised more in the cities means 1 less hour of electricity per day in the villages. And the villages i’m talking about get only a few hours of electricity per day as it is.

Let’s look at the total efficiency figures of a diesel and electric car

Diesel—–Diesel Engine 55% loss——> Mechanical Energy = 45% Efficiency

Coal/Diesel—-Turbine power plant 77% loss—>Transmission 15% loss—>Battery charging 30% loss—->Electric Motor loss 10%—->Mechanical Energy = 19% efficiency

Modern diesel and petrol engines are almost pollution free and you also get performance and practicality. Would you want to go on a road trip and stop for a charge every 100km or so and even then crawl along at speeds not more than 80kmph. And for all this you shell out 4 times as more than you would for an Internal Combustion car and also have people laugh at you.

Unless more efficient and pollution free power generation is adopted, the electric car is clearly impractical and in fact more polluting than a normal car. The only difference is that a normal car pollutes the urban section and the electric car pollutes the suburbs and the rural. The blame of pollution is just passing from your conscience to the government.

Pink Floyd+Vodka=Disaster (I am screwed big time…)

Seemed like the perfect evening. Pink Floyd Pulse concert on DVD on my friend’s laptop. Me and my friend were having Fuel Vodka. Pink Floyd music and Vodka really combined have a really interesting effect. Couple with that the spectacular Visual Effects and the Psychedelic nature of the music and your head will surely start reeling. Anyways, We watched the whole concert when “Comfortably Numb” started playing. Eager to show off my guitaring skills, as I could play that song well, I picked up my guitar from the bed and accidentally hit over the vodka glass lying on the table and spilled vodka all over the laptop. Dried it off the best we could at that time but in the morning it won’t turn ON, so we took it to the service centre. Seems that the motherboard is shot to hell and I have to get a new one. A new HP laptop motherboard costs around 35,000 and I have to pay that so I am screwed. Don’t know where to arrange so much money. Meanwhile I am really depressed while I look for ways to arrange the money.. 🙁