Crystalized Bread! - My Experimental Kitchen

If you follow the well famous television series, The Big Bang Theory, you must be remembering the following episode where in a scene Sheldon comes to Penny and asks for bread!

Series 3 Episode 06 – The Cornhusker Vortex

Sheldon: (Knock, knock, knock) Penny. (Knock, knock, knock) Penny. (Knock, knock, knock) Penny.
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Penny: Sheldon, come in.
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Sheldon: Thank you. I’d like to make a sandwich, but I’m out of bread.
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Penny: There’s some in the fridge.
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Sheldon: You shouldn’t keep your bread in the refrigerator. Staleness is caused by crystallization of the starch molecules, which occurs faster at cool temperatures.
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Penny: On Earth, we say thank you.

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Penny kept her bread in a fridge and Sheldon got a chance to lecture about the effects on the bread. A funny scene scene, but also a truth!

But, I have a method which can bring back that stale and dried, or a cold-dead bread back to life! I accidentally discovered it when I was cooking a chicken for myself using the oven. I have those not-so-fancy electric ovens for my personal non-vegetarian cooking late at nights. After finishing to cook the chicken, I planed to re-heat the Diwali left-over sweets, actually a Gulab-Jamun in the same pre-heated oven. 

I also realized that I am out of rice and hence was planning to eat that cold-dead bread! The idea of re-heating that bread & sweets together was a good idea, which I implemented well.

I am not sure what came into my drunken mind (a few pegs of scotch turns everyone into a super-thinking-machine) when I pour some water in the baking tray and placed a grill in the oven. I then kept the Gulab-Jamun in that water filled tray and cold bread on the steel-grill which was placed at the top of this tray. 

After few minutes, as obvious the sweets were nicely heated and then I checked the bread. Wow! I see the bread was not only heated but was as moist and fresh as it was made a few hours back!

The water in the baking tray created vapors that brought back the moisture and that subtle heat of the oven and the water vapors made the bread warm, further making it very soft and it smelled really fresh! 

Well, I am a scientific mind too;

I then tried applying butter on the bread by making a humble butter sandwich. Did the whole thing again and surprisingly the butter melted very nicely in the bread and did all those good things to bring back the dead-bread to life!

So, no toasting of the old bread to hide its age. No, throwing away of the bread which is forgotten in the fridge for several days. A boon for people like us who eat bread as SoS food supplement. An advantage for food joints too!

But hey Sheldon, can you put your scientific comment on this one?

TI's Technical Ladder (Contd...)

As I said this model is excellent in isolation. Because, of its key selection points:

1. Innovation in products leading to business impact
2. How the person helps to grow the technical pool in their team, whether they have mentored and helped others grow technically and
3. How the person has contributed to enhancing TI's image in external environment like industry and forums

What I think, is that each person, can do the above, as everyone has equal potential. But, then why only 1% of all are able to achieve this position? Situation!

These key-points are laid down by any company in the world for their employees. But still, each company is not TI! Why? Where are the points for the companies laid down by employees? OK, well, lets do that:

1. Companies should have strong senior member's team. In terms of technology and management. The position such as Team Leads are very important. As these senior persons are very close to team members and aware of what's going on at the floor.
2. The chain above the Team Leads should support: Innovation, Visibility and Appreciation
3. HR should work closely with seniors to get the right candidates. More transparency is required while hiring a person, apart from the well laid down hiring process. Although, a lot can be said about HR!

TI's Technical Ladder

I was reading about Texus Instrument's Technical Ladder recently from Economics Times. I think this is a fantastic idea! At least in isolation! Here's the excerpt from it:

What is the technical ladder? TI first started the technical
ladder in the 1970s to recognise the contribution of its top employees to the
company's bottom line. Although promotions in the company are decided on the
basis of job grades, those on the technical ladder get recognition and are
chosen for more challenging assignments. The selection process is tough. At any
given time, no more than 22% of TI employees can be a part of the technical
ladder. A technical ladder has six steps and the progression
moves from a member to senior member, distinguished member, fellow and then
finally senior fellow of the technical staff. Only 1% of TI employees are chosen
as fellows. Along with the rungs come corresponding status and responsibility.
AfFellow on the technical ladder is the equivalent of a vice
president running a business unit worth $500 million to $1.5 billion. A senior
member of the technical ladder wields enormous influence. For example, Mahesh
Mehendale, the only fellow from TI India, is one of the few people who is
involved in deciding the strategic road map of the new products to come from TI.
Selection process The Technical Ladder measures the level of
innovation and differentiation that the engineer brings to the company. “The
distinguishing feature of this tool is that it is not decided by the management,
but is a peer evaluation process,” says Subramanyam. So, only senior members of
the technical staff can select another senior member and so on.
The technical leadership selection depends on the following
three criteria: 1) Innovation in products leading to business impact, 2) how the
person helps to grow the technical pool in their team, whether they have
mentored and helped others grow technically and, 3) how the person has
contributed to enhancing TI's image in external environment like industry and
forums. It is not a measure of how good an engineer is technically but how much
value he or she creates for the company. So, while publishing papers and patents
are important criteria for selection, a bigger criterion is the impact of the
technology created by the engineer on the business. For instance, if a chip
designer reduces the area of a chip by 10% or if a CAD application developer can
reduce the cycle time for simulation from two days to four hours, he earns the
right to be on the ladder. TI does not start the process of
identifying its technical scholars till they have finished at least 5-6 years in
the organisation. This way the company makes sure that the young recruits have a
variety of experience to choose from. It is also not a
one-time measure of a person's contribution, every year the person's status is
re-evaluated. If a person cannot devote at least 50% of his time to technical
matters then he excuses himself from the ladder and goes to a managerial role.
He then has two years to meet the selection criteria to get reinstated on the
ladder. TI allows people to move between the managerial role
and the technical role. The finest example of a person who has managed both the
two streams is TI India managing director Biswadip Mitra, who started his career
as a technical contributor and now heads TI's operations in India.

Trust Technical People?

Why should I trust people? I mean, technical people?
Sometime, you have a job that is complicated and you need some one to really figure it out and just get it done!
And at the same time, you never find that person! Or in my case, I realized I am not able to find such a person. Me as a technical architect, if I am, or in case if I want to be one, I need people that are able to take responsibility to... Code!

Now, first question that I need to ask is, "should I code?". The obvious answer (from myself) is ofcourse, Yes! I think I can justify the 'coding' job and do a pretty decent job of coding!

But, what about other people in my team? How will they learn? How will I be more focused on the design aspect, or focus on bringing/deciding new technologies? I remember, when I was young, my Seniors had 100% trust on me and my code. Why can't I gain that trust!?

I am not sure of this, or don't have the answer right now, but if this blog existed 5 years from now, I will be back on this post and post an answer! :)

Till Then, Take Kare!

Angle and Rotation Sensors

Angle sensors!
Well, when I read about them (accidentally by clicking on an NXP banner) I wondered what are these? Then I read its datasheet; amaizingly it has these two orthogonal MR signals wired with an algorithm called CORDIC!

Now, what is CORDIC? It's full form is, "Coordinate Rotation Digital Computer". It's job is to efficiently perform all the trigonometric specific calculations. It contains various equations which requires lot of multiplication, done efficiently by bit-shifting.

But the question remains there: What are they used for? Especially in automotive industry! The most interesting scenario I found is detecting the banking angle of a motor-bike. Amazingly, it works well with them, for example if a bike crashes the tendency of any two wheeler is to lye down on the road with a leaky fuel tank! This sensors detects the angle of the bike, which crosses the allowable limit and shut the fuel line, the engine etc.

These angle sensors BTW, comes in two forms: Optical and Magnetic. Going one step beyond, here is a chip that is being designed with a rotating coil in it! It can detect angles upto 360 degrees.

Just thinking out loud, is this a Gyroscope of the 20th century!?