• Sensex Touches New High!

    Ok, I confess I am late to the party. But it seems like the Indian stock market is enjoying new highs every other day. Is this sustainable? Who know? Does anyone know why the stock market is touching new highs even as the economy has not recovered and many things are still unknown? No one knows. But that does not stop one from making wild guesses. The most common and obvious theory is that the market is buoyant on the news that a vaccine may soon come. I don't know why that should be a good reason to hit new highs.

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  • Ability To Learn By Yourself Is Fundamental

    Some people ask us if we are worried that our kid may not learn much because she is not going to school. Their primary worry is that she may not be able to find a job without education. Our worry on the other hand is that kids these days are spending so much energy on learning things that may not even interest them. And worst of all, they may end up with a job that they don't like to do because they have a degree in an education that wasn't of their own interest.

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  • Is It Better To Buy Or Rent A House?

    There are already tons of articles about which is better -- buy or rent. In this post I will give my perspective on this subject. The topic is about buying a house to live in as compared to renting a house. If you are looking to compare investing in real estate vs equity investment, you might want to read my other article. The problem with making this kind of comparison is that it depends on a lot of factors. Lets take an example to help understand.

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  • Building a DIY 5.1 Audio Video Receiver – Part 7

    Now that I have the front speakers, rear speakers and sub-woofer working, the next thing I wanted to do in my DIY AVR project was to bring up the center speaker. I ordered a TPA3118 amplifier board for Rs. 379 towards it. The only problem with the board (which I did not realize when I ordered it) was that it does not have a volume control. The repercussions of this mistake will soon become clear. Anyway, I connected the board to a 12V power supply. The same one that was powering the crossover board from my previous post. Output from the board is connected to my center speaker. The sound quality is fine to my ears. Anyway it is the center speaker, so we don't need a great quality output.

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  • Building a DIY 5.1 Audio Video Receiver – Part 6

    In the last post I mentioned that I was looking for a crossover board. The one that I purchased is putting out a huge DC bias and I was not comfortable using it on my sub woofer. Wondering if it is a problem with the particular unit that I got, I ordered a replacement. Unfortunately, even the replacement has the same signature output. So I decided to do something about it myself.

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  • Managing Dry Waste - Part I

    I have been composting my wet waste for a while now (roughly 3 years). The yield of the compost has been good and it has become an integral part of the kitchen. Lots of valuable plants have come out of it and it's been a worthwhile experience for me. I cannot say the same about our dry waste though. Our layout has a BBMP trash van that collects wet and dry waste. I stopped giving wet waste since I have been composting all of the wet waste. However, I have been religiously giving them my dry waste.

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  • Building a DIY 5.1 Audio Video Receiver – Part 5

    So far I have finished bringing up 4 of my 5.1 speakers in my DIY 5.1 AVR project. If you missed, check out part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4 of the series. Next I wanted to bring up my sub-woofer. Since I have an active sub-woofer, I did not need any amplifiers to drive it. I just need to connect the output signal from my audio source directly to the sub-woofer input. But there is a catch. If you connect the audio source directly to the sub-woofer, the sub would be wasting a lot of energy which may heat up the driver and may damage it. Moreover driving the sub with all the frequencies will give boomy muddled up sound. So we need a low pass filter or a crossover.

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  • Franklin Saga Drags On

    Franklin has been in the news quite a bit due to the decision to wind-up six of its funds. After deciding to wind-up the funds the fund house was planning to get unit holder's consent for disbursing cash from liquidated papers. However, some investors did not like the decision and started legal proceedings against the fund house. Unit holders filed cases in multiple High Courts. Now we all know how long courts take to pass judgement on just one case. Given there were multiple cases I was not very positive that something will happen any time soon.

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  • Different Types of Investors

    Let me start off with a story. So the other day a friend of mine called me up asking me to help him solve a plumbing problem. He probably thought I was good at plumbing because I have been working on rain water harvesting and drip irrigation. Anyway, he tells me that there is a tap that was constantly leaking water. He tightened it fully, but the water still leaks. Asks me if I have a fix for his problem.

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  • Building a DIY 5.1 Audio Video Receiver – Part 4

    As I mentioned in my last post, after measuring the frequency response and testing the TDA 7498, I decided to buy one more. The board I bought earlier did not have the right LC filter for a 6 ohms speaker. It was designed for 8 ohms speaker. So I decided to use that board for my rear surround speakers which were also 6 ohms. However, it is fine to have a slightly poor quality amp for the rarely used rear speakers.

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