Electronics is pretty intuitive, especially since there’s this very weird combination of math and physics slow dancing in the dark—mid-(mental)breakdown—the day before exam. For anybody who is not particularly good at basic algebra—And wants to get better at math, I’d ask you to go through literally any middle-school mathematics textbook, without hesitation. It’s definitely going to help (I swear). Unfortunately, I’m in this terrifying headspace that I have started becoming not-so-good (god save me) at mathematics in the past few years. (Yes, math got crappier despite college) and it is definitely affecting my confidence lately. So, I’m going to do something very simple about it. I am going to go back to high school algebra and calculus. (Because I’m terrified of losing my edge)
NCERT here I come.
Flipping through a few pages in my old 11th grade NCERT textbook slowly urged me to walk around the house for two rounds and open the refrigerator thrice, as if food is going to pop up in the chiller magically. The initial inertia of solid sitting down kept me up for quite a bit. I usually play music to overcome it. So, that’s exactly what I did. Brilliant me, forgot that the volume knob was turned all the way up the last day, thanks to that whispering voice note sent by a homie. As soon as I opened Spotify, it blasted out a soul-crushing-ly loud version of “Rasputin”—loud enough to wake the whole neighbourhood. Like usual, I ended up swearing like a sailor and getting my hands on the spacebar like my life depended on it. Hopefully, that didn’t wake the neighbour’s 5 year old.
Then, with an adjusted volume, I went back to playing music and humming the tunes, while going through the introduction and theory with a highlighter for the formulae. Took quite a bit to wrap my head around the small things I once remembered. Then came the solved examples. That was when I grabbed my book and pen. I was surprisingly able to solve most of it. That build some confidence for the upcoming exercises. But then, I left the first exercise for the next day. Since testing my knowledge the next day with the exercises—where answers are not provided—would be a great way to do Active memory retrieval (If you’ve not heard about Active recall, please do check it out). The rest of the day was me goofing around and wasting time with short form content and chasing the shitty kinda dopamine. (Yes, I really should stop since it’s frying my goddamn brain)
One thing I know about myself is that I never felt like I “wasted” time, when I learned something new that day. It’s a great feeling. I genuinely want to get rid of the short form content I’m consuming from my life. Hence, these days, I have been replacing scrolling with movies, longer YouTube videos and similar. Going back to my hobbies and dedicating time to simply create is something I have been struggling with lately.
“I’m having a moment”
I used these words around 5 years ago. Didn’t realise that I never stopped having a moment throughout the 5 years. Maybe, a huge chunk of it was the mobile phone, like my birth-giver said. The way growth felt shunted right around high school and then, COVID just happened and it took away a lot of things from us—It definitely took my sanity and attention span. I accept that it’s not a huge deal, compared to all the people who lost their lives to COVID. It was horrible. I know that things wouldn’t go back to the way it was. But, some part of me thought—or hoped?—that things would turn around. Adulting wasn’t as pleasant as I expected. There’s a recession incoming. Unemployment is more common among educated people than it is among the uneducated. The governments are turning against their own citizens. History is repeating, in the most horrible way possible. War. Meaningless bloodshed. Death. Hatred—The kind that makes you wonder about the sort of atrocities humans are capable of. All in the name of a few bunch of words, a few schizophrenic ancestors whispered into the present. It’s all politics at this point. And politics hasn’t always been about business. But right now, it is.
Moving on from the existential crisis…
The original plan was to go back to math. But since I was feeling adventurous, I decided to go back to Electronics.
Dramatically gasping, I scrolled through the pdfs of an old Elektor magazines from 1999 and 2000. DAC 2000 caught my eyes. Having always thought that data converters were mental, there came this very familiar urge to build. It had been a long time since such a feeling had sprung up. I thought that the busy college schedule drained that creativity juice way back. Apparently not. Browsing about various ADCs came to a halt when I came back to my older hyper-fixation. High-quality microphones. That made me come to a conclusion that I might have to make one. It’s been way too long—giving up on my microphone dreams since it costs more than my net worth. But before any of that, I needed to get my basics right.
I needed to learn all about the smaller elements. The foundation had to be strong. It’s quite stupid, if you think about it. I mean, I thought that I would make some good music during the semester break and not apply for any internships. Look at me taking on something I clearly can’t handle. Can definitely say I got it from my father… you know, the confidence. Not sure if I’m going to burn the whole college down or make the smoke detectors go off succeed in the whole making-a-mic-becuase-I’m-obsessed-with-audio-quality thing, but I’m definitely going to learn something from it.
Since I have came this far, it would only be right to make a page on Microphones. I’ll regularly keep updating it as I progress. Plus, I’ll try my best to keep it as basic as possible.
Bye ^-^