Posted by jayanthy on June 1, 2010
It so happens that in most times, a student is never satisfied with what he gets. This is so because his expectations move in a direction, where if unmet will lead to dissatisfaction and even frustration. What as a student we fail to realise is that, it’s the mind which actually affects our performance. To control that mind from losing its focus, it’s very much important to manage the expectations and their effect on the mind.
While it is true that it is not possible to be without expectations, it is also very important to know what to expect and what not to. Expectations have to be arrived at after a proper assessment of the current state of affairs and capabilities, a realistic setting of goals and also being prepared for the worst case scenario.
When you prepare for your examinations, it is important to focus on the subject and the perfection of your performance over the possible outcomes and results. This is because the result is an uncontrollable variable and hence a result which is unexpected provides a fair degree of disappointment. So keep your expectations on the results low and be open for every possible result.
How do I manage to perform though my expectations are low?
To make sure your performance is high while your expectations are low, you have to focus on how well you can do a particular test. It is important to prepare but it is equally essential to understand that no matter how one prepares it is those 3 hours or so of the examination time that actually matters. Hence while preparing, always be prepared and expect the unexpected and keep telling yourselves that you will manage whatever comes in your way!
This allows you to keep your mind focussed and free and unaffected by the uncertainty of the results.
What is in your hands is what is in your control. The moment you realise this golden truth you will starting focussing more on the means than the end and this by itself will lead to your success.
To conclude, expect the unexpected. Stick to performance. Be realistic. You are meant to see success!!
All the best!
Jay
Posted by anupam singh on May 29, 2010
_____________________________________________________________
IF THERE WAS A MONOLOGUE BY BLANCHE DuBOIS IN THE LAST SCENE
OF
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
[BY ANUPAM K. SINGH]
_____________________________________________________________
The monologue by Blanche occurs in Scene 11, when she is sitting in a chair, wearing a red stain robe, while Stella is packing her things.
Blanche : (in a low undertone which gradually picks up in decibel level and hysterical style of delivery) :
“My own kid sister!. She doesn’t believe me! She is infatuated with her husband, that…that……Polack!!”
“I can’t stand foreigners. They are so…so..crude. NO !
No! No!! Me? I never! How can you even suggest….?
I never felt a thing for him. How could I? I am sooo above him and so culturally and racially superior to him and he is ..was….is such an animal! The brute!!
How can Stella claim she loves him? Nobody loves men. Not like those ones.
Okay, except for my late…poor late….husband. He, too, loved men!
(gives a short, hysterical, twittering laugh, then pulls herself together and continues her ramblings in a relatively more composed tone and a bit louder, emphatic voice) :
Ohh!…
(Mumbles a name…..not clear….sounds like William, her first lover)
…now there was a boy!…I mean a Man!….I made a man of him!!
(giggles)
So..uncouth…..sweaty…..look at him, playing cards all day….and Mitch too.
He is a bad influence for Mitch. Now Mitch, I could have made a man out of him. He was promising material….
Ohh!..The job of a teacher is so demanding!!
Those guys at the School Board did not know the first thing about teaching.
You have to be in love! That is the first requirement!!
How can you teach if you don’t love your job? AND your pupils?
I was passionate.
They don’t understand passion.
Least of all Stella…she doesn’t understand Stanley. He can be passionate…but….he is so…yes…..uncivilized is the only word.
I will write it on the blackboard for you….u…n…c…i…v..i..l.e…..never mind…..you vile kids…….you can never appreciate what a good teacher you all had the good fortune to be taught by…you poor, innocent things……let me teach you some manners…polish you up…..!
POLISH Manners
(she is nearly shouting now and over-the-edge)
…Ha..haahhahaa….
DON’T TALK to me about Polish….I don’t wanna (her grammar too is slipping) know another Polish guy as long as I live!
Ohh!
(clutches her head).
..those bells…please stop ringing those bells….those Bells of Bele Reve…they are all against me….and oh my god!…they are bleeding all over me!
Oh! my dress is stained all red…..
(To the Asylum Nurse, who has just come onstage to take her away):
Could you please help me? My dress is stained all red!…how would i EVER get myself cleaned up again….please……
…………..please………………
(too exhausted, her voice fades away….)
Posted by anupam singh on
The Boarded Window
BY AMBROSE BIERCE
In 1830, only a few miles away from what is now the great city of Cincinnati, lay an immense and almost unbroken forest. The whole region was sparsely settled by people of the frontier–restless souls who no sooner had hewn fairly habitable homes out of the wilderness and attained to that degree of prosperity which today we should call indigence, than, impelled by some mysterious impulse of their nature, they abandoned all and pushed farther westward, to encounter new perils and privations in the effort to regain the meager comforts which they had voluntarily renounced. Many of them had already forsaken that region for the remoter settlements, but among those remaining was one who had been of those first arriving. He lived alone in a house of logs surrounded on all sides by the great forest, of whose gloom and silence he seemed a part, for no one had ever known him to smile nor speak a needless word. His simple wants were supplied by the sale or barter of skins of wild animals in the river town, for not a thing did he grow upon the land which, if needful, he might have claimed by right of undisturbed possession. There were evidences of “improvement”–a few acres of ground immediately about the house had once been cleared of its trees, the decayed stumps of which were half concealed by the new growth that had been suffered to repair the ravage wrought by the ax. Apparently the man’s zeal for agriculture had burned with a failing flame, expiring in penitential ashes.
The little log house, with its chimney of sticks, its roof of warping clapboards weighted with traversing poles and its “chinking” of clay, had a single door and, directly opposite, a window. The latter, however, was boarded up–nobody could remember a time when it was not. And none knew why it was so closed; certainly not because of the occupant’s dislike of light and air, for on those rare occasions when a hunter had passed that lonely spot the recluse had commonly been seen sunning himself on his doorstep if heaven had provided sunshine for his need. I fancy there are few persons living today who ever knew the secret of that window, but I am one, as you shall see.
The man’s name was said to be Murlock. He was apparently seventy years old, actually about fifty. Something besides years had had a hand in his aging. His hair and long, full beard were white, his gray, lusterless eyes sunken, his face singularly seamed with wrinkles which appeared to belong to two intersecting systems. In figure he was tall and spare, with a stoop of the shoulders–a burden bearer. I never saw him; these particulars I learned from my grandfather, from whom also I got the man’s story when I was a lad. He had known him when living near by in that early day.
One day Murlock was found in his cabin, dead. It was not a time and place for coroners and newspapers, and I suppose it was agreed that he had died from natural causes or I should have been told, and should remember. I know only that with what was probably a sense of the fitness of things the body was buried near the cabin, alongside the grave of his wife, who had preceded him by so many years that local tradition had retained hardly a hint of her existence. That closes the final chapter of this true story–excepting, indeed, the circumstance that many years afterward, in company with an equally intrepid spirit, I penetrated to the place and ventured near enough to the ruined cabin to throw a stone against it, and ran away to avoid the ghost which every well-informed boy thereabout knew haunted the spot. But there is an earlier chapter–that supplied by my grandfather.
When Murlock built his cabin and began laying sturdily about with his ax to hew out a farm–the rifle, meanwhile, his means of support–he was young, strong and full of hope. In that eastern country whence he came he had married, as was the fashion, a young woman in all ways worthy of his honest devotion, who shared the dangers and privations of his lot with a willing spirit and light heart. There is no known record of her name; of her charms of mind and person tradition is silent and the doubter is at liberty to entertain his doubt; but God forbid that I should share it! Of their affection and happiness there is abundant assurance in every added day of the man’s widowed life; for what but the magnetism of a blessed memory could have chained that venturesome spirit to a lot like that?
One day Murlock returned from gunning in a distant part of the forest to find his wife prostrate with fever, and delirious. There was no physician within miles, no neighbor; nor was she in a condition to be left, to summon help. So he set about the task of nursing her back to health, but at the end of the third day she fell into unconsciousness arid so passed away, apparently, with never a gleam of returning reason.
From what we know of a nature like his we may venture to sketch in some of the details of the outline picture drawn by my grandfather. When convinced that she was dead, Murlock had sense enough to remember that the dead must be prepared for burial. In performance of this sacred duty he blundered now and again, did certain things incorrectly, and others which he did correctly were done over and over. His occasional failures to accomplish some simple and ordinary act filled him with astonishment, like that of a drunken man who wonders at the suspension of familiar natural laws. He was surprised, too, that he did not weep–surprised and a little ashamed; surely it is unkind not to weep for the dead. “Tomorrow,” he said aloud, “I shall have to make the coffin arid dig the grave; and then I shall miss her, when she is no longer in sight; but now–she is dead, of course, but it is all right–it must be all right, somehow. Things cannot be so bad as they seem.”
He stood over the body in the fading light, adjusting the hair and putting the finishing touches to the simple toilet, doing all mechanically, with soulless care. And still through his consciousness ran an undersense of conviction that all was right–that he should have her again as before, and everything explained. He had had no experience in grief; his capacity had not been enlarged by use. His heart could not contain it all, nor his imagination rightly conceive it. He did not know he was so hard struck; that knowledge would come later, and never go. Grief is an artist of powers as various as the instruments upon which he plays his dirges for the dead, evoking from some the sharpest, shrillest notes, from others the low, grave chords that throb recurrent like the slow beating of a distant drum. Some natures it startles; some it stupefies. To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, stinging all the sensibilities to a keener life; to another as the blow of a bludgeon, which in crushing benumbs. We may conceive Murlock to have been that way affected, for (and here we are upon surer ground than that of conjecture) no sooner had he finished his pious work than, sinking into a chair by the side of the table upon which the body lay, and noting how white the profile showed in the deepening gloom, he laid his arms upon the table’s edge, and dropped his face into them, tearless yet and unutterably weary. At that moment came in through the open window a long, wailing sound like the cry of a lost child in the far deeps of the darkening woods! But the man did not move. Again, and nearer than before, sounded that unearthly cry upon his failing sense. Perhaps it was a wild beast; perhaps it was a dream. For Murlock was asleep.
Some hours later, as it afterward appeared, this unfaithful watcher awoke and lifting his head from his arms intently listened–he knew not why. There in the black darkness by the side of the dead, recalling all without a shock, he strained his eyes to see–he knew not what. His senses were all alert, his breath was suspended, his blood had stilled its tides as if to assist the silence. Who–what had waked him, and where was it?
Suddenly the table shook beneath his arms, and at the same moment he heard, or fancied that he heard, a light, soft step–another–sounds as of bare feet upon the floor!
He was terrified beyond the power to cry out or move. Perforce he waited–waited there in the darkness through seeming centuries of such dread as one may know, yet live to tell. He tried vainly to speak the dead woman’s name, vainly to stretch forth his hand across the table to learn if she were there. His throat was powerless, his arms and hands were like lead. Then occurred something most frightful. Some heavy body seemed hurled against the table with an impetus that pushed it against his breast so sharply as nearly to overthrow him, and at the same instant he heard and felt the fall of something upon the floor with so violent a thump that the whole house was shaken by the impact. A scuffling ensued, and a confusion of sounds impossible to describe. Murlock had risen to his feet. Fear had by excess forfeited control of his faculties. He flung his hands upon the table. Nothing was there!
There is a point at which terror may turn to madness; and madness incites to action. With no definite intent, from no motive but the wayward impulse of a madman, Murlock sprang to the wall, with a little groping seized his loaded rifle, and without aim discharged it. By the flash which lit up the room with a vivid illumination, he saw an enormous panther dragging the dead woman toward the window, its teeth fixed in her throat! Then there were darkness blacker than before, and silence; and when he returned to consciousness the sun was high and the wood vocal with songs of birds.
The body lay near the window, where the beast had left it when frightened away by the flash and report of the rifle. The clothing was deranged, the long hair in disorder, the limbs lay anyhow. From the throat, dreadfully lacerated, had issued a pool of blood not yet entirely coagulated. The ribbon with which he had bound the wrists was broken; the hands were tightly clenched. Between the teeth was a fragment of the animal’s ear.
THE END
Answer these questions and submit your work through the assignment.
1. What is the setting for this story?
2. Who are the central characters? What details, or lack of details, does the author provide to develop these characters?
3. From whose point of view is the story told?
4. Briefly summarize the plot.
5. What is the climax of the story?
6. How does the author create suspense in the tale?
7. What is the irony in this story?
8. As a reader, how satisfied are you with the conclusion of this story? Explain your reasoning.
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ANSWERS :-
- The setting of this story is the deep woods, a few miles outside Cincinnati.
- The central character of the story is the reclusive old man named Murlock. The author provides only a bare sketch of the character and the middle-aged man goes through a traumatic experience upon his wife’s death, when, during the course of a single evening, he is transformed into an apparently paranoid man aged beyond his years. He is depicted as one of the earliest settlers of this remote ‘outpost’ of the westward movement of the 19th century American pioneers. Unsmiling and laconic, he is a man of few wants (which are met through barter of skins) and an indifferent farmer. His physical appearance is described as tall and thin with a stoop and long white hair and beard. The words stoic, humorless, taciturn and prematurely aged just about complete his characterization.
- The story is told from form the point of view of an absent third person omniscient, unnamed narrator. The narrator himself heard about the events described in the story from his grandfather.
- The story begins with a brief description of the temperament which drove the settlers westward. It describes the reclusive and taciturn Murlock living alone in a small log cabin in the woods outside Cincinnati around 1830. Murlock kept to himself, sustaining his Spartan lifestyle bartering animal skins. The most notable feature of the cabin was a window opposite the front door, which was boarded up, No one knew why, except the narrator, who heard the story from his grandfather.
It appears that Murlock’s wife died relatively early in their marriage after she fell ill and, in the absence of any medical help and despite all of young Murlock’s ministrations. Without a coroner around to attend to the corpse, Murlock tried to do the best he could to prepare her for the burial with his limited mortuary skills after laying her upon the table. When he was done, he sat down with exhaustion beside the table and fell asleep.
He is awakened in the middle of the night by an inexplicable noise. He hears the patter of bare feet upon the floor and something heavy crashes against him and the table in the darkness. Wild and crazed with fear, he grabs his rifle from the wall and fires at the unknown ‘thing’. In the flash of the rifle shot, he sees an enormous panther dragging his wife’s body towards the open window with its teeth sunk in her throat. Murlock fainted and, when he came to in the morning, he found his wife’s body splayed on the floor near the window. The most horrifying fact was that “the ribbon with which he had bound the wrists was broken; the hands were tightly clenched. Between the teeth was a fragment of the animal’s ear.”
- The climax of the story is reached when Murlock goes to sleep, exhausted after his inexpert preparations of his wife’s body for burial, by the table upon which his dead wife lay. In the night, he is awakened by strange sounds and a heavy body crashes upon him, upsetting the table and terrorizing the wits out of him. He grabs his rifle and fires aimlessly. The panther, in the act of dragging the corpse to the open window, flees, while Murlock faints.
- The suspense in the tale is created, firstly by the setting of the story wherein Murlock is all alone in the cabin in the woods with the corpse of his wife. A couple of screams are heard, Murlock is tired and half awake or dreaming. The strange sounds, an unknown thing crashing upon him and the table, the darkness and the presence of the corpse all go towards the building up of the suspense.
- The irony in this strange horror story lies in the fact that the very last line of the story [ “ Between the (wife’s) teeth was a fragment of the animal’s ear.” ] informs the reader that, maybe, Murlock was mistaken in assuming his wife was dead.
- As I read the story, I was extremely surprised and shocked upon reading the last line. In so far as the ending really managed to make me feel strangely awake and weird, I think the author has succeeded in his aim of telling an unusual tale. Also in so far as the story was so unlike any I have read, must count as a plus for the author’s literary skills. The element of ambiguity, waking-dream state of Murlock, the mystery of the attacker in the dark all go towards making the ending of this tale extremely intriguing and original.
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END OF ANSWERS
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Posted by vinod kataria on May 27, 2010
This is in continuation of my previous article:
Embedded Systems:
It is a process system which processes one or few specific processes dedicatedly and independently. The Hardware and Software utilized in these Systems are underutilized and restricted.
Embedded systems can be designed as Real time systems and /or non Real time systems. Besides these may be Portable or Non portable systems.
Hardware and Software used in an embedded system are customized such that the system will perform these operations repeatedly.
Real Time Operating Systems are used for real time Embedded systems such as Digital control module for a specific control operation(e.g. Specific opening and positioning of valve in a Control Valve, Fuel flow controllers, Dispensers etc.).
While normal Operating Systems are used for non real time systems such as Cash Registers, Point of sale terminals, RFID based monitors or controllers Etc.
Points to consider when designing the embedded system:
- Cost Optimization of the processor being used.
- Functional ability, computational speed of the processor and response of its I/O devices.
- Power consumption of the entire System.
- Plug ability and adaptability of the system with changing requirement.
- Modularity of the software used.
- Portability of the software used for any changes in programme.
- Physical size of the system.
- Demand of the developed system must be large enough (in terms of quantity sold.).
- Selection of the peripheral devices used should be based on its uses , power consumption per devices, easy availability of consumables etc.
- Operation of the system must be user friendly.
- The system should be affordable.
- A real time embedded system must be designed based on Quick response, high sensitivity , perfect RTC, etc.
- Safety to the user while handling an embedded system must be ensured.
Embedded system based on single performance (purpose) processor:
Application of the system must be absolutely clear while designing a single purpose hardware for the system. e.g. while designing an embedded system for digital camera the designers were absolutely clear that they need to process Video and only video signals within the focal range of the camera, any other ability of the processor such as word processing ability, internet ability etc are not required at any time. Hence instead of choosing a general purpose processor they went on to design a new hardware (new CPU) which can have capabilities of scan, convert , compress, and process the video signals, display those signals on LCD screen and ability to send these datas on USB port.
This sort of development is called Customizing the processor to single purpose(performance) processor system. These customized single purpose processor exactly fit with requirement, not more and not less.
Customization of hardware, reduces size, memory requirement, provides faster data paths and low power consumption.
Software:
The Operating System, Peripheral drivers and the application program for the single purpose(performance) embedded system clubbed in single program and loaded together.
Complete program is designed ,developed and debugged together and outside the system. The final executive program is burned in the memory which is either inside the processor chip or out side it.
Software for such embedded system is not flexible, does not have configurability, only few steps may be allowed for configuration, this does not provide enough scope for maintenance.
Posted by Priya Singh on May 26, 2010
1.Sr<Ca<Mg<Be
2.Be<Mg<Ca<Sr
3.Sr<Mg<Ca<Be
4.Sr<Ca<Be<Mg
Correct option:1
low m.p indicates more covalent charecter.Polarization of anion increases as the size of the cation decreases.Compounds having smaller size shows more of the covalent charecter.As we move from top to bottom the size of the atoms increases hence the covalent charecter decreases and m.p increases.
Incorrect option2:
Be<Mg<Ca<Sr:In this option it is just exactly opp. to the order given in option 1,hence rules out.
Incorrect option 3:
Sr<Mg<Ca<Be: as we move from Be to Sr the size of the atoms increases but in the option it is given that Mg<Ca, which means that Ca has more covalent charecter than Mg.
Incorrect option 4:
Sr<Ca<Be<Mg: it is given that covalent charecter of Mg is more than Be, which is wrong b/c Be has smaller size and should has more covalent charecter than Mg.
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