Ganya has restarted blogging

or at least we hope he continues. Anyway, this post is charming.

Answer to Sci-Tech

Here are the answers to Scitech - the online quiz conducted as a part of the elims for Techfest 2008. I do not know the answer to q7 and q12 for sure. Please to use comments and point out if you're wiser than me. Pdf can be found here.

DISCLAIMER: This is what I think the answers are. I qualified, so chances are most of them are right ;)

1. Nicholas Flamel.(The alchemist finds mention in all these works.)

2. That is Freyja, also called Vanadis - after whom Vandium is named.

3. Super Glue (Dr Harry Coover)

4. Carl Sagan

5. Logitech (this seems to be from here. )

6. Nike+Ipod

7. We wrote, People from Bell Labs winning the Nobel Prize for physics. (This is mostly incorrect. All of them have won the Nobel Physics. But 97 guy is not Bell.One or two others also I think. Also some groups are mentioned completely, some are not. Weird. Shockley is the most famous by a mile though.)

8. Radio Shack and Issac Asimov

9. Camera works on smile detection.

10.Guitar Hero Controllers, company is Gibson.(Pretty sure, though not 100%)

11. Google Doodles (Burning Man Festival - first doodle, Dennis Hwang who draws them, Dali and Miro paintings were also Google doodles once.)

12. (Thanks to V) People after whom craters are named.(Bunsen etc)(Volt, Galvani, Diesel etc. Dunno how diesel can be "lab equipment")

13. Project Gutenberg (Declaration of Independece, Gutenberg, Michael Hart)

14. Alan Turing

15. Schroedinger's Cat

16. Butterfly Effect(Bradbury's book made it popular, Ashton Kutcher starred in the movie and The Lorenz Atttractor named after Edward Lorenz is where term is applied to Chaos theory.)

17. Nikola Tesla - Gas Ignition(Spark Plug for automobiles)

18. Locations of the 5 Jantar Mantars. (Delhi, Jaipur, Varanasi, Ujjain and Mathura(?) )

19 Screens of Death

20 Algorithm and Algebra

High 5 for Mood I!

I'll be leaving to participate in Mood Indigo, IITB's annual cultural fest in a few hours. This will be my fifth Mood Indigo - and unlike the first years that I'm carrying in tow (a la Hagrid?), I no longer have the excitement that I once did. In fact, were it not for the quizzes I would not have gone.

Shocking as it may seem - my objectives for this year are to sleep at a reasonable hour (by around 1 am perhaps?) and NOT eat the junk chinese at the hostel 3 canteen and get my throat all messed up.

Apart from that, all my moaning about "5 years and no Jagjit Singh" has borne fruit. The great man will be there this year, and though many of you might not be fans - I'm really looking forward to this. Also Shankar Mahadevan and troupe are performing. I hope they give us the kind of stuff that I like, and not the populist stuff that is famous. Here's my wishlist

1. Rind Posh Maal (Mission Kashmir)
2. Lakshya (Lakshya)
3. Taare Zameen Par (TPZ)
4. Kal Ho Na Ho (KHNH)
5. Aao Na (Kyun! Ho Gaya Na)
6. Koi Kahe / Jaane Kyun Log Pyaar Karte Hai(DCH)

Apart from that, as this guy is no longer at IITB, I wont have internet access or peaceful lab-solace when I need it. I will try and chronicle stuff this year - so watch out for that once I get back.

PS: I'm accepting suggestions for what team name we should use this time round. The best ones I could come up till now unfortunately are all puns on Modi and Mood-i.

The Pop Quizzing Joke Book - section I

The MELA quiz at MindSpark,(or barQing Mad as some of us like to call it) ensured conditions where I could comfortably stare at the screen, think about the answer for a nanosecond, and then resume with whatever I was doing before (i.e chatting, counting the number of tiles on the north wall, eavesdropping etc.) This is where these following jokes have their origin.

1. Why could Avinash Mudaliar never complete his maritial pheraas?
Ans: He insisted on a round reversal.

2. Why did no team finish the Military quiz?
Ans: Due to the rapid-fire round at the end.

3. Why did the times call the quiz "a victory of circular logic"?
Ans: There were too many rounds.

Yes, I know, the last one sucks.

BCQC Quizzing Saturday!

The BCQC is at is again. We've ensured that this Saturday, you'll have nothing to do but quizzing!

Snippet:
24th March. College quiz in the morning. Open quiz in the afternoon.

All details here.

Hello all,

I and Aniket,(a friend from COEP) took part in the ESPN - Champions of the World, a quiz on the World Cup.
We stumbled along till the National Semi-finals. We appear on TV for 2 episodes, each of which will be telecast thrice.

You can catch us on ESPN at the following timings:


Episode 1 - quarter-finals
02/19/07 MON 21:30 22:00 - prime time broadcast
02/20/07 TUE 10:00 10:30 - repeat
02/24/07 SAT 15:55 16:25 - repeat

Episode 2 - Semi-finals
03/02/07 FRI 21:30 22:00 - prime time broadcast
03/03/07 SAT 08:00 08:30 - repeat
03/03/07 SAT 17:00 17:30 - repeat

All episodes on ESPN, hosted by Harsha Bhogle.

I am also uploading photos to Flickr (only 2 presently ;-) )
here is the link. http://www.flickr.com/photos/58379914@N00/