Surprise Presentation at Manipal

It has been 6 years since I graduated from Manipal. I studied at the School of Information Science where I did my Masters in Embedded and Wireless Technologies. Suddenly One day I got a call checking my availability for a guest lecture. As I interacted more with the lecturer there, I learnt that I would be addressing Masters students in cloud computing department.

I have been back to college several times after graduation. One time I have even gone back and given a live presentation on USB Device drivers in Linux. But this time it would be different because I was taking my wife along who had not seen Manipal college before.

I asked an intern in my department who used to frequently run his workloads on the cloud, so that he would serve 2 purpose:

1.       As he was an intern from another college, he could relate better with the students
2.       As he had used cloud infrastructure, he could talk about topics more relevant t the students

However, when there was just 2 more weeks for the presentation, I learnt from him that he had an online exam on the day just after the presentation and since his grades depended on it, he would not be able to come with me to Manipal.

Fortunately, by this time we had got the syllabus copy of the cloud computing department which had lot of elements of DevOps and Cloud Infrastructure setup.

I approached a colleague Vijay from my department who had 13 years of experience in DevOps and infrastructure development. He gladly agreed to the opportunity and accompanied me to Manipal.

Our faculty were happy that there was 2 of us coming form the industry to talk to the students.

As roads had been damaged due to rains, our bus reached Manipal at 8:45, instead of 6:10 as booked with the travels. We quickly got ready and reached college around 9:30 and began the presentation.

For the 2 weeks of preparation, we had believed that we would have to share the 3 hours allotted on that day among ourselves. But just before departure, we learnt that each of us were presenting to a different set of students, so we carried separate slides to our sessions.

[Day 1]:

My presentation was to a batch of Embedded System and Automotive Embedded Systems Engineers and my class contained 86 students. 

The presentation topics were:

    1)     How to score more marks
    2)     Difference between MNCs and Startups
    3)     How to go about a job search
    4)     How to be a more effective software professional

In the middle of the presentation, I planned a Notepad++ Macro feature demo. The demo got a good response.

I gave 1 minute gap between topics and then once my slot was over, opened the floor to Q&A. It was a good learning experience. Since Vijay’s time slot was slightly more, I went to the same room as Vijay to hear his presentation.

Both me and Vijay were given mementos for presenting at the college. We collected feedback regarding our presentations and spent some time talking to different lecturers who had taught me.

From the college we went to Pai Tiffin for lunch. 

From there we went to Manipal’s Anatomy and Physiology museum. Then we went to the adjacent Manipal canteen to enjoy some waffles in the evening.

When we were about to leave the canteen, a procession of students participating in the Keli fest also arrived at the venue. We joined their procession till Syndicate Bank Golden Jubilee Auditorium. The Keli fest is organized by the Malayali community at Manipal. 

It was a good experience to watch students perform all their stage acts, dances, dramas, standups, musicals, beat-boxing, instruments and other performances. The whole fest was filled with lot of energy and we absolutely enjoyed the whole show. We stayed there from 5:30 to 10:30. Then we had dinner at Dollops Restaurant and went back to our Room from there.

[Day 2]:

We got up early in the morning and walked to Manipal Lake. Our stay was arranged in NBQ Valley View flat. The flat had an amazing view from the balcony, where we could see greenery till the horizon among which fog could be seen raising from underneath.

Then we walked around the lake for 2 rounds and walked back to the Hotel.

After having breakfast, there was some time left, so I joined the students playing basketball.

As there was some free time till lunch, I took my wife around Manipal college and showed her around. I took her to the architecture department where we saw different designs of staircases, ramps, balconies and other architectural shapes.

From there I took her to Manipal College Library building, then to the Innovation building. From there I took her to the Chemical Engineering Department where my brother had previously studied. From the Chemical engineering department, I took her to the campus central cafeteria, which has a very appealing design. There used to be a basketball court in front of the cafeteria, but now there is a circular open air theater surrounded by shops on the semicircular periphery.

As we had to take a night bus back to Bangalore, we slept in our hotels in the afternoon.

In the evening we had snacks at the NBQ mess and went to Manipal endpoint. We had an amazing sunset viewing experience at the end point.

Later we gathered all our belongings and walked to Tiger Circle across Kasturba medical College’s entrance. We had dinner at Pangala restaurant and left back to Bangalore.

We hope that the presentation in Manipal has helped the students and Faculty.

My work experience at E Surveying Solutions

My work experience at E Surveying Solutions

I have worked in E Surveying Solutions in almost all of my Engineering vacations. It is a company my Uncle (Mother’s youngest brother), Mr. Kotaa Krishna Kamath (aka KKK) started after his previous work at Relyon Softech as Director, Founder and developer. I have done some small assignments at Relyon Softech such as setting up Interview Question Paper, Correcting Interview Answer sheets, reporting bugs in Saral Paypack and merging PDF documents of state-wise school surveys using PDFmerge. Though these assignments are very simple to complete, I was in first PUC when I did it (first PU is similar to 11^th standard). Also I had no knowledge of any of these products. It was however notable that nobody qualified the aptitude paper that I set and they decided to revert to the old paper set after testing my paper for one day.

In the starting days of the company, when i first approached him, I wished to know a little about the work and help him in whatever way that I could. He showed me what I was supposed to do and was happy with whatever part I did.

My uncle is a Mechanical Engineer, who started a company that makes Softwares for Civil Drawing generation. The first thing one can notice about this is that, it’s a cross disciplinary company that is a combination of Mechanical, Computer Science and Civil Engineering, and I being an Electronics and Communication Engineer learnt a few basic works at the company.

My first assignment was to collect a list of Surveyors for his company to sell products to. The company makes Civil Software for Surveyors that will generate drawings in 2D and 3D for data collected from Ground Works, Drainage Channels, Road Elevation Data, Irrigation Canals, etc.

During the first assignment, I used to sit all day long making list of Surveyor’s all across the country. This work was important because, there is no list readily available online. It was my first experience with Microsoft Excel and though it began to feel monotonous, it left me with a good experience with the software. Also, when this work was first done, his office had just one computer so I had to go to a Browsing Centre to make the list. The next assignment was to make Crossword Puzzle that contained words to be organized into puzzle. As it turns out, It is so much easier to set a crossword puzzle than to solve them (^_^). I was also required to collect comics that contained survey jokes for a magazine Idea that he had in mind.

The next time when I went to ESS, I was given assignments which I could do at home, I was expected to find 30 bugs in his software, and after I did so, I had the rest of the day for myself, most often, I used to sit on an assignment about an hour before I had to go the office find the bugs and report the bugs to him. I approached him late during my next holidays, so that was the only assignment that I did. 

The bugs were reported as in standard testing format where Path to the window type of bug and a brief description of the nature of the bug were meant to be sent. The bugs were mostly of the Font type, tab-order reversal, alignment of various entities in a window, and the order in which the softwares gave the Run Time Error. 


Additionally the customers using this software were very fond of Key-board shortcuts so we began adding shortcut features to all the entities in the software. Later on we finalized with a common format for all shortcut display. My part was only to check if all the keys and tabs had a unique shortcut.

However, in my next holidays when i approached him, he showed me how I could test his softwares thoroughly. I learnt a little of Black Box testing. His product E Survey Sections was becoming a very good success in Survey industry. He was still running the company all by himself. He took me to 2 places where he did his marketing. It was fun to see how varied his customers and their offices were. Additionally it was discovered that different resolutions, themes and other default settings also affected the working of the software, and new test cases were added as an when new challenges were encountered in testing.

The company makes softwares which can be run independently on their own, but when the software is combined with the output of Excel and CAD, and the kind of people who have working knowledge in them have limitless uses for his softwares because While drawings can be accurately drawn in CAD, the data tabulation and analysis features given by Excel, run hand in hand and make the biggest of difficulties look simple and help in automation of work.

The next holidays when I got there, I did a thorough black box testing of his various softwares, now there were different softwares to deal with specific requirements from customers. E Survey CAD, E Survey Lisps, E Quick Sections, E Topodraw were some of them. It was about time that the testing procedures were standardized and we began noting down some instances of test cases that needed to be done on each product from there on. It was at the end of this holidays that new employees like Praveen, Shashank, Hamsa had joined the Company. Just before I left for the next semester college, my last assignment was to teach them how to test softwares and I kind of gave them an overview of all the products. Another assignment which I remember doing at that time was a report on GPS and various historical advancements that could make a good use of the GPS facility. 

This was particularly needed because survey was looking for various benefits from GPS and the Total Station Land Navigation Equipment which was needed for the survey was often with errors. The softwares developed from company could generate the required drawings directly from the Total Station Data.

The next holidays when I got there, I was required to learn basics of CAD. So we started going to Kruthi Centre for learning CAD as part of the training. I had basic knowledge of AutoCAD until then, but I learnt so much more at Kruthi about 2D, 3D drafting and the newly introduced features of AutoCAD such as export of tables to Excel directly from AutoCAD. I even got to learn AutoDesk Inventor software. The best part however was that the Training was fun, interesting, the company paid for it and I had to work only half a day during training. It was also the time when I learnt how to make video tutorials using SnagIT software, so I made videos of AutoCAD of the training that we had been to, so that employees could learn from the videos instead. In most cases, the person using the softwares was required to use Notepad ++, Excel, AutoCAD so in short, I have learnt a lot of these softwares. The company had made an irrigation project called Ayacut and had released a special software by the name Ayacut to deal with various parameters in designing Irrigation channels.

In the next holidays my uncle began with teaching me Visual Basics, it is a fun to learn programming language, however, seems like I neglected it a bit while I had the chance and went back to testing the softwares after the first assignment on VB. If you ask me, he is the only person who can teach VB in that fashion. Learning VB also helped me report bugs more accurately, because I now knew the different window components such as tabs, menu-bars, panes, textboxes, buttons, radio buttons, checkboxes, dropdown menus and many more. I wrote a code that did the same as Microsoft Calculator using VB. 


By this time, the customers of ESS had begun to ask for help files. And documentation of all the products began. At first the theory behind the working of various theorems. One particular assignment I had done under this was Simpson’s one third rule of integration. This was so because the next semester we had Simpson’s Rules in our syllabus. Documentation helped me learn a lot about text formatting and indentation along with table and picture manipulation under Microsoft Word.

The next holidays when I got there, I learnt that the company had now over 26 products in the market (which included E Survey CAD, E TopoDraw, E Contours, E Survey Lisp, Ayacut, E EarthWorks, Crispy Lisp, E Survey Section, Survey Aid )(I particularly had fun with E Contours, having learnt CAD I had a knowledge of how I could manipulate a drawing), each tailor-made for specific requirements. In this Holiday, however, I was required to make AutoCAD ribbons, Since Customization was part of the CAD training at Kruthi, I knew where to begin this assignment, however I only managed to make rough ribbon outlook that did nothing when buttons were pressed. I thought it needed some kind of ‘Lisp’ knowledge and began looking for solutions in Lisp, unfortunately this was not so, however, in my quest, i learnt about different versions of AutoCAD such as AutoCAD 14 and all succeeding versions of AutoCAD and learnt how each version varied from the next. One of the Assignments during these holidays was to analyze Bazier splines (Bazier Smooth Polylines) and to check out how they weighed against AutoCAD’s spline feature. Shashidhar had just joined the company and he was a programmer. I was required to explain to him how the spline Equation worked and he was required to program it. This was the first time I learnt Maths online (^_~). It is amazing how splines can approximate to real world curves. 

Additionally Delaunay’s Triangulation was a part of the next assignment and it was fun to study it. This triangulation was needed for AutoCAD to generate drawings quickly and efficiently by reducing the overhead in calculating the easiest way to draw in a drawing with several thousands of points. 

Lisp is a very easy to learn programming language, though lisp is mostly used for CAD purposes (because it was designed that way) today Lisp serves several applications. 

I also learnt additional CAD softwares such as GStarCAD, ZWCAD and BricsCAD. The Lisp Script needed to be tested in these softwares for consistency and it was essential that all these softwares responded for the various Lisps.

In my last and final holidays of engineering, when I first got there, I was required to find Google Earth API for finding the Z co-ordinate of a point at any point on earth, given the X, Y coordinates. I learnt a few special features that were present in Google Earth while on this assignment. It was something totally different from all my previous assignments and fun in its own way. After this assignment was done, I tested E SurveyLisps, E SurveyCAD and E TopoDraw where bugs regarding calculation errors and output representation needed reporting.

After this was done for the next 10 or so days, I got an opportunity to make ribbons again, only this time, the company had found a very good solution to making ribbons automatically and I was required to test consistency of spelling, shortcuts and representations of various fields in the ribbon. It was a good learning experience. After I completed this assignment, I was required to test the source-code of the softwares and make corrections wherever I felt appropriate.

This work was really amazing. I got to learn how complex a software code can become if not handled properly. Punctuation (in warnings and message box) and Comments can play a colossal role in writing a code. We at ESS were now planning on starting projects under Water supply and Water Management.

I was given an Excel sheet and find out how water distribution calculations were taking place at different points of the Excel sheet. I had to first document the findings and report it to the developers there. I learnt a lot on how complicated a City’s water design can be. There are several mathematical aspects that need to be taken care of while designing a Sewage system and rain water drain. After a satisfactory amount of study was done, we decided to organize a water supply design workshop on EPAnet. This workshop was organized at Hotel Parijatha GateWays and most of my uncle’s Customers enthusiastic in this software had come from different parts of India. It was fun to organize and learn the software firsthand from the people from EPAnet. It was fun learn, download tutorials, burn the contents and label the CDs for the workshop.

It was also the time we started looking for customers on an international level. Our products had been proved to be consistent in Dubai, Philipines and Africa. However the standards needed a makeover and work began on how to solve problems regarding different file formats such as CSV. Different countries follow different formats of data representation such as a choice between comma or space to separate numerals, to represent decimals as subscript, superscript, comma, semicolon etc. And we needed to make solutions to these entities based on requirements. Further, the company had undertaken good measures to help customers learn from help videos which can be found on their youtube channel. Then company has also begun to provide details of various CAD and Excel usage information to beginners in the field from their blog CivilCADSoft.com.


One of the most remarkable thing that happened during this tenure was however that I got called for a meeting on deciding what changes needed to be done to improve their YouTube videos. It was as if a meeting is no different than any other conversation, except that you need to be sure about whatever you have to put across.

Work Culture:

I have seen a lot of variation in work culture during my service to ESS. The office starts at 9:30 and you can go home when your work for the day is done. I don’t really know the closing time but I suppose it is 6:00 PM because that’s when everyone else usually left. Afternoon there is break of 1 hour for lunch. Evening everyone takes break for snacks at about 5:00 PM, however, not everyone leaves the office at the same time. The company provides support by Phone, TeamViewer and Skype. Some people go a bit late for the break because at least one person is required to provide support at any time. Interviews are conducted and candidates who pass the aptitude are called for a technical round based on performance. Employees are given a definite assignment which they are required so complete by a specified time. Mr. Indrajeet makes amazing drawings using different drawing tools for the company products and other company requirements. And I would like to thank Mr. Arshal for the countless number of chocolates that he used to distribute. 

P.S. The company has now been renamed to E Surveying Softech India (Pvt.) Ltd.


What did I learn from all this?
* I got to use my knowledge in properly formatting text documents which has helped me in several report submissions. 
* I learnt the importance of Punctuality and time-management.
* I got to apply a lot of what i already knew and learnt many new skills.
* I spent my holidays in a pleasant way.
* I got good exercise walking 2 Km everyday, something that I very much need now at Manipal.

Some quick links to the company's resources:

1. Esurveying - www.esurveying.net
2. ESurveyCAD - www.esurveycad.com
3. Blog Survey Drawing - http://blog.surveydrawing.net
4. Esurvey Earth - http://esurveyearth.com
5. Esurvey Lisp - www.esurveylisps.com
6. Quick help for all the products - help.esurveycad.com

Unforgettable IISC - The Final year project.

All Engineering students have to do a final year project, and mine just happened at IISC-Bangalore.

8th semester engineering is the best part of engineering. And what makes it really special is the final year project. Most of you reading this might be wondering, whats so special about dedicating a blog to our project, or wondering whats so special about IISC, or some even might be looking into the details of my project, while other might be looking for something to read on the web. Let me tell you, i have not included any details of our project over here.

I consider myself extremely fortunate that I got to do the project at IISC. IISC Bangalore is one of the most beautiful places in Bangalore. When the question of the project team came, it was decided that I do the project with my friends Abhilash and Gopinath. Since Abhilash's uncle knew people over there, we got an opportunity to do a project at the Micro-electronics laboratory at IISC.

Our project was on MEMS pressure sensor design for wide range application. MEMS => Micro Electro Mechanical Systems. The term Electro-Mechanical says that its part, electronic, part mechanical, since we were from electronics background "technically", we had to report to totally 4 guides at IISC.

The guide heirarchy was a follows. At the top was Prof. Jagadeesh, who was incharge of us submitting the sensor design to IISC as they were making the sensors for ISRO, testing it there. Then there was Prof. Gopal Hegde, who was the head of the nano science department, and was responsible for the micro scaled experiments. Though we were supposed to be mentored by him, we were supposed to learn whatever required from Vamsi sir, but since MEMS devices were modelled using a software of mechanical background (CoventorWARE) we were mentored all the way by Jayaprakash sir.

In short, first we report to Jayaprakash sir, then Vamsi sir, then Hegde sir, then Jagadeesh sir. But the funny part was, it was not as complicated as it might seem.

We needed to go to IISC only once or twice a week. Our teacher Jayaprakash sir was so co-operative, and foresighted and had done his Masters in IISC itself and was a 2008 passout, he made us learn the complete theoretical background needed for the project in lots of mini-assignments. Infact, we had so much material toward the end, that we did not have to worry about getting our reports done at the end of the project. While my friends doing the project at college had to go and report every day at college, spending their time on chitchat, and worrying about last minute report making.

Our Project was very very simple, infact we could have done the whole project in 2 hours looking at the manual. But the real catche was that it was a new field to us, something that was a thing of the cutting edge in technology. Our teachers had no idea about MEMS at college (he he he he). And we did not spend a Ruppee (Indian Currency). OH, YA, we had to spend on the report but thats not worth mentioning (^_~).

In short, we learnt a lot, had a lot of fun got to see a beautiful place, met a lot of intelligent people. And got through a semester as if it was a piece of cake. And got to eat delicious Pav Bhaji every now and then.

So What are the advantages of doing project at IISC apart from the above, well there are plenty and here are some:

1) You will be prepared for what ever viva questions your teachers can come up with, because you actually put a lot of effort once you are there, the environment is very conducive for learning.

2) You will get to know a lot about current sciences, for instance, when i did my project over there:

    i) It was the inaugural event of the particle physics department on the centenary of IISC, if not for the event, I might have never got the opportunity to attend the seminar on 'Asymptotic String Theory', by David Gross, the teacher of Ed Witten and Michael Green.

        ii) I might have never got to know about 'IISC Open Day', the day on which, all departments are open to common public, and it is traditional for various departments to exhibit several areas of their research.

(TY): If anyone wants details of any kind please feel free to post below...