>> Pragyan ‘08

Been a while since I penned down something. Pragyan 08 just finished and I basically just finished having a great time. Well, here are a few highlights of what I was upto. I spent a lot of unnecessary cash on food thanks to the occasional non-functionality of the charging card feature. And of course me being hungry only when that happened. Apart from that I was the ‘Qaos’ in charge of 3 separate events – the details of which I will not go into! As for the technical side of my activities, a couple of us built a roller coaster outta wooden sticks, a long tube, plenty of thread and tape. It looked pretty wacky and we thought we had a nice setup with a cool loop and an anti-gravity upwards section. The first few trial runs with an oversized ball failed but with the smaller ball it rocked. Apparently the judges didn’t think so, heh. The second day’s problem was brilliant. We had to make an automatic bowler (a device which throws a ball to hit the wickets). Once again, we had an idea par excellence. Oh so we thought. While everyone used the standard catapult mechanism, we decided to try something crazy. A launcher which would propel the ball forwards with tremendous force. Think of it like an oversized snooker cue. Our cue was a wooden ruler which would be pulled back and then let go to strike the ball. With many more modifications for area of contact, power, aim, stability and all the usual stuff. And then came the trials again. Unfortunately I wasn’t there to witness my teams demonstration but I heard it was hilarious. The first two shots missed because of aim. We nailed the maximum score possible on a single shot the last time. However.. here’s what actually happened mechanism wise. The ruler was pulled back, ball placed on a small support in front of it. Ruler let go. Ruler hits ball – ball flies – ruler flies – support (consisting of a small Fevicol bottle, a leaf bowl and some more arbit stuff) flies – ALL hit the wickets! The complete launcher, well – launched! Afterwards during dinner I got whacked and thumped with my own launcher. You ungrateful teammates, Hmmpf!

The other thing I was ‘actively’ involved in (apart from Qaos..) was the daily Pragyan Times paper. I got dragged in for the fact that I knew some photoshop and they were a couple of people short. However, I did learn a lot about it, got more flexible with it and was able to give my best shot the 2 days I worked with them. It was great fun although I did nitpick a lot! (I always do when it comes to these kinda things). On the last day I finally got the whole font set changed to Verdana (Yay!). Times New Roman sucks – it’s got too many serifs, it’s cramped and sore on the eyes. While Arial is alright, it’s a bit cramped as well and spacing isn’t great. Verdana looks professional, great on the eyes, good spacing, good script (Akshay if you’re reading this – yes it does look like I will be bugging you about this till the time we graduate, mwhaha!). There were a few goof ups but we tried our best to be perfect.

In the end, it was an enjoyable event, I learnt quite a few things, did a bunch of things I’ve always wanted to do, tried new crazy stuff. And ate a lot. A bit late to advertise it but here goes – http://www.pragyan.org/

Peace.