Indian Railways is one of the largest consumer of both diesel oil and electricity in India. It uses 2.7 billion litres of diesel and around 20 billion KWh of electricity per year for traction purpose. Additionally another 2.5 billion KWh is used for non-traction related usages like powering stations and other things. This 2.7 billionContinue reading “Could Indian Railways be Solar self sufficient?”
Author Archives: Anand Sivaram (आनन्दः )
Evaporative Cooler and Tonnage
Evaporative coolers are very useful in dry and hot climate. Pour a lot of water and run the fan, and get the cool moist breeze. It is a simple device and it is good for what it provides – fresh cool air. For a long time I have been thinking how to compare the evaporativeContinue reading “Evaporative Cooler and Tonnage”
The story of water from two continents: the Amazon River and Lake Baikal
Let us start with two tricky questions. Pause here and take a wild guess. Q1: Suppose the entire Lake Baikal is drained on Russia, how deep a water pool would it create? Q2: Suppose the water flowing in the Amazon river is used to fill an equivalent of Lake Baikal, how much time it wouldContinue reading “The story of water from two continents: the Amazon River and Lake Baikal”
Building Android App without IDE from the command line
Recently I got the source code of one particular Android App from github and I wanted to build that on my Debian Unstable latest. I was just trying to see how I could build without installing the IDE. This is what I did. apt-get install default-jdk From Android site I downloaded both commandlinetools and gradle.Continue reading “Building Android App without IDE from the command line”
Indian Astronomy and Calendar Systems
1. Motion of the Earth, Celestial Sphere These are a few things we learn from primary school times. Our Earth revolves around the Sun in one year. At the same time, it also rotates around its own axis in 24 hours. But are we revolving or rotating in Clockwise or Counter Clockwise direction? The answerContinue reading “Indian Astronomy and Calendar Systems”
gstreamer pipeline to stream raw audio over network
Normally all audio pipelines use an audio codec and RTP encapsulation. I searched a lot for a raw audio pipeline, but I could not find much information. Then, I tried different options and came up with the following. gst-launch-1.0 -v filesrc location=/tmp/musicfile.mp3 ! mpegaudioparse ! mpg123audiodec ! audioconvert ! audioresample ! audio/x-raw, rate=16000, channels=1, format=S16LEContinue reading “gstreamer pipeline to stream raw audio over network”
Petroleum to Biofuel: How much land is required
One of the primary uses of petroleum is as fuel. As the average carbon dioxide levels have already gone above 400 ppm and global warming is taking place, there have been many calls to reduce the usage of petroleum by substituting it with renewable energy. Biofuels stand very distinct among all other renewables because theyContinue reading “Petroleum to Biofuel: How much land is required”
Compiling ffmpeg and vlc from source
Both ffmpeg and vlc are two of the important applications in free software media processing. I wanted to compile both to incorporate latest codecs, x264 and libvpx for video along with aac and libopus for audio. This is what I have done on Debian unstable. For my purpose, I was compiling these codecs from source.Continue reading “Compiling ffmpeg and vlc from source”
Airtel 3G modem E1731 Linux Configuration – Complete guide
Recently I bought an Airtel 3G connection using Huawei E1731Bu-1 USB modem. As usual, I wanted to get it working in Debian GNU/Linux amd64 version. As a first step, installed the following packages using apt-get. sudo apt-get install ppp pppconfig wvdial Normally this modem is detected properly, but I was curious to know the extraContinue reading “Airtel 3G modem E1731 Linux Configuration – Complete guide”
An environmental lesson from the Soviet Union
Ships of the desert grazing near deserted ships in Aral Sea desert Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan – First ever window to space. Beginning of the space age was one of the greatest achievements of mankind since the dawn of civilization. Many space scientists, explorers and researchers had gone through the arid steppes of this small CentralContinue reading “An environmental lesson from the Soviet Union”
Saurorja 