About Me
I’m Akarsh Simha (kstar on irc.freenode.net), a 2nd year Engineering Physics (BTech) student, studying at IIT Madras. This is what I look like:
I’m enthusiastic about GNU/Linux and FOSS, Amateur Astronomy, Learning Physics, and Classical Music (mostly Western Classical and Carnatic Classical).
Amateur Astronomy:
I own a 8″ f/8 Newtonian Reflecting Telescope which I made at Association of Bangalore Amateur Astronomers (ABAA) and have made quite a good number of observations with it (300+ Deep Sky Objects). Am now looking forward to a much larger instrument with much more light gathering power, so that I can enjoy seeing the detail in DSOs rather thain seeing them as faint fuzzy blobs of light. I am a member of the Bangalore Astronomical Society, which is a Bangalore-based Amateur Astronomers’ Association and am pretty closely associated with it. I also help manage their website and query e-mails. My friends and I are working towards getting a structured Astronomy Club running in our institute. Our institute owns a wonderful Celestron 8″ GTA and we’ve made quite a few observations and taken some photographs using it. My interests as far as amateur astronomy are concerned are Visual Observations and Astrophotography. I enjoy processing astrophotographs using The GIMP. Much of the astrophotographs I’ve taken are with my friend Shashank, manually tracked using his Celestron Firstscope, taken using my Nikon FM 10 Camera, on film. I like Fujicolor Crystal and Fujichrome Provia a lot.
GNU / Linux, FOSS:
I run Debian GNU/Linux on an AMD Athlon X2 3800+ system with ASUS M2NPV-MX motherboad and 512 MB of DDR2 RAM. I’m happy with my system and typically keep it on all the time. I get an average uptime of 30 days between reboots. (Needless to say, I’m on an obsolete kernel!). I use KDE / IceWM depending on my mood (currently on KDE4.0) for a Desktop Environment, to open one terminal, one web browser and occasionally The GIMP or XPDF. A window of xterm running GNU screen constitutes much of my workspace on the computer and I have tabs running an IRC Client, Mail Client, Jabber Client, Music Player, Web Browser and Audio Mixer open almost all the time. Kumar Appaiah helped me set up much of what I use.
Music:
Classical Music is mostly what I listen to – usually Carnatic Classical Music. I can meddle with quite a few musical instruments – the Keyboard, the Flute, the Violin – but can’t play any decently. I am currently learning to play the Violin (Carnatic Classical) from Smt. Sowmya, a disciple of accomplished violinist Kum. A. Kanyakumari, at IIT Madras itself. I frequently attend concerts organized in the institute by the IIT Madras Music Club and also happen to co-administer their site. One of my good friends, R. Prasanna (pressman on freenode) happens to be very good at Carnatic Classical Music and learns to play the Chitraveena. Much of my inspiration when it comes to Music is drawn from him. I also like Western Classical pieces – Fu”r elise and the Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven, the Grand Waltz in Eb Major by Chopin (is that Opus 64?), and Turkish March by Mozart happen to be some of my favourites. I also like compositions by Yanni, Old Hindi/Tamizh/Kannada film songs, and some Hindustani classical pieces.
- The Bangalore Astronomical Society’s Homepage
- IITM Linux Users’ Group Wiki
- My Homepage – still coming up
- My Page at ee.iitm.ac.in – Yet to come up
- KStars – my favourite astronomy software
- My FOSSguru Kumar Appaiah’s homepage
- My friend Pavan’s blog
- My dad’s company’s website
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1.
R.Thiagarajan | July 2, 2008 at 11:25 am
“You are JavaScript” – that was funny…:)
Hey..i play the violin too…i ran into your blog while searching for straight bowing techniques in carnatic posture….nice space you got here..
2.
Akarsh Simha | July 2, 2008 at 6:21 pm
I’m still learning the basics of how to play the violin. Thanks for your comments.
3.
R.Thiagarajan | July 3, 2008 at 7:19 am
I am just 2 months into the violin…got till upper sthayi..having trouble shifting to high sa.i hear shifiting generally takes a lotta time if you don’t have a good teacher…It’s one of those things that requires you to train your ears well…
4.
malle siva naga raju | February 11, 2009 at 8:06 pm
sir i want to take up kstars project please help me as i am starting from scratch
5.
Suresh | March 5, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Hi ..This is Suresh from JNTU Pulivendula
I met u along with our friends and Rahman before we attend to Madhurai fossconf’09
6.
Sahil Shah | May 24, 2009 at 4:51 am
hi akarsh,
i appeared for jee 2009 and am expecting a rank around 3500, i’m easily thru BITS pilani CSE as my score is 370 on 450… i’m a true physics lover n for more than a yr i onli studied physics for my jee prep so naturally EP seems intersting, bt i don knw the cut-off so could u pls tell me ur rank and also if u could explain more abt what u study in EP as i have heard its more of theory physics than the solvin numerals… thanx…
7.
Akarsh Simha | May 24, 2009 at 12:29 pm
@Sahil:
With a rank of 3500, EP is a hard thing. However, you should be able to get a MS in Physics (See my earlier blogpost here), which shares a lot of courses with EP. The only thing is that if you pick up the MS in Physics, you should probably decide to pursue Physics in future.
As far as IITM’s Physics Department goes, I’d say our primary strength is in Theory and in Experimental Condensed Matter Physics. In EP, we do mostly theory, as you’ve heard rightly. There’s less of numericals / problems. With theory Physics, you usually develop the fundamental laws in the classes – which you can of course apply when you need. We hardly ever solve problems in class in the strongly theoretical courses – we solve them in assignments.
You can mail me at akarshsimha AT gmail DOT com if you want any specific clarifications about EP / IITM.
8.
Andrew | May 30, 2009 at 6:47 am
IceWM? If you’re looking for performance, I’d suggest Xfce for usability while not sacrificing too much more speed than Ice. I never could really learn to like IceWM; it was too stripped down and unintuitive. As a plus, xubuntu is a snap to get running. I used to love KDE, but once I switched over to Xfce, it took me a couple of months to realize that I not only didn’t miss KDE, but that the change was so smooth that I didn’t have to think about it.
9.
Kelvin11 | October 22, 2009 at 9:06 pm
You’re absolutely right — I have not attended the program, and what I’ve supposed about the community and its cohesiveness is pure speculation on my part. ,
10.
Wolf16 | October 23, 2009 at 6:39 pm
For it clearly matters for its own sake. ,
11.
Aditya shanker raghuwanshi | October 26, 2009 at 1:52 am
hey can u mail me my query on my e- mail id shiningadityasr@gmail.com as soon as possible because i need to apply for internship soon.