What is my IQ?

I took an IQ test few years back, my IQ was measured around 145 at that time. Then, after four years, came an application on Facebook, which measured my IQ at 124. My brain cells must have took a severe beating because I distinctly remember that the first IQ test was a lot tougher than this frivolous widget on Facebook. Since then, I have been asking people whether they know of any particular site, paid or unpaid, which can accurately tell me my IQ. There is one High IQ Society on the internet, which allows you to take very accurate tests to measure your IQ, but the catch is that you need to be a member of that society. I will be crossing the fine line between foolishness and lunacy if I start hoping to join that society. I am content to be on the side of foolishness; at least I can roam about freely without posing any danger to the society.
Coming back to the IQ thingy, yesterday, my friend confirmed that all the IQ tests are wrong, at least in my case. It came after my chance remark that I regularly read Dilbert blog and I just love XKCD comics; he said that it is a proof enough that my IQ is way below 60 and refused to quantify the exact measurement. Case is closed.
PS: Should I tell him that I am trying to solve problems on Project Euler? Maximum that can happen is that he will rate my IQ below zero…

Mayawati and Black clothes

This is what I love about her, the sheer power she wields. Hate her with all your might, but black clothes are not being allowed at Kanpur for the latest Indo-Pak match. The reason, ostensibly because she does not want her opponents to wave black flags at her while she enjoys the match but for all you know, she might have had a nightmare involving black clothes.

While policemen are taking all care to check socks, handkerchiefs, scarves, t-shirts, shirts, pants and other clothing are they taking due care to check the underwear as well? If I were one of the spectators, I would have worn big black underwear (twice the size I could fit in) and then after I gain entry, I would go to the rest rooms, pull out the underwear and wave it right in front of Maya Memsaab. At the most, I will be fined for breaking the laws; a small price to pay for getting the District Collector getting transferred, Kanpur SP to be suspended and the local police inspector dismissed for negligence. This will also remind the world that my underwear alone is far more powerful than any other person in UP.

The authorities, who are on their toes when Madam gets into town, must be edgy to the point of having nervous breakdown. Imagine sneaking behind them and shouting at the top of your voice “Black” and then before they get to you, complete the sentence with “Sanjay Leela Bhansali”.

This brings me to “Sawariya”, well done Shahrukh!

The Orkut Crush

I have that feeling again, of being in love. It is pretty usual for me – merely a routine work, people say it’s because of the positioning of Venus in my birth-chart. The only unusualness in this whole affair is that I have seen my ladylove on Orkut.com and never ever seen her in real life. For all I know, she could be an impostor – a boy posing as a girl, though I am sure that this is not possible because I have been tracking her photo albums for some time and it does look like a genuine profile of a girl studying in Indian Institute of Technology – Kanpur, India.
I came across her while browsing through scrapbooks of one of my friend’s friend. I saw her photograph and the first thing which came to my mind was that this can’t be any real person – no one can be so beautiful and I was proven right. It was just a trick of light in that photograph, the extra shine which made her appearance completely divine. Yet, I have to admit that the girl was pretty, and the fact that she had so many photographs in her profile made me visit her profile many times and before I knew it, she became my first ever online crush. The only sad part is that I don’t even exist for her, and I am not one of those desperados who instantly scrap every girl they come across ostensibly to have “friendship” with them but covertly hoping to have sex with them at the first chance they get.
Such social networking sites can come out as a strong alternative to matrimony sites because people are being more “natural” while putting their personal information and not trying to “sell” themselves to prospective brides and grooms so the information is genuine and more extensive. The other factor is the list of common acquaintances which are listed out when you visit a profile, so your background searching also becomes easier.
I wonder if Google is pondering launch of “Google Matrimony (Powered by Orkut)”...

Public’s First Servant

Pratibha Patil, our newly sworn-in president, calls herself public’s first servant. The signs are clear; by public’s first servant she of course means that she is seeking to become Sonia Gandhi’s first servant; and Manmohan Singh, who so far had occupied the coveted position, should start seeing red.

The question is whether she will be able to cross the sycophantic standards set by Zail Singh, he said that he will mop the floor if Indira Gandhi asks him to do so. I wonder what Pratibha Patil will do? I think Sonia Gandhi will ask her to cook some food, and probably may even reward her by asking Madam President to accompany her for her next trip to beauty parlour – after all, presidents do make good companions for trips to beauty parlour.

And yes, now Madam Gandhi will not need to nag our defence minister to request for Indian Air Force planes to carry her, she will simply ask Mrs Patil to take her to different locations in presidential luxuries.

Good move Mrs. Gandhi – I suggest you even try teaching her Italian so that you can give instructions to her in public without degrading the dignity and sovereignty of the highest office of the country.

Electricity through Gymnasiums

I started going to gym around 2 weeks back, which is pretty cool. It has everything including power backup but I am particularly intrigued by those self-powered machines. They get powered on after someone starts doing exercises on for few seconds. They convert mechanical energy to electricity and these machines gave me this idea…

Most of the power generation converts mechanical energy to electric energy, if we could harness the mechanical energy wasted during exercises then some energy problems of India could be solved. I am not talking about them at large scale, though the solution is very much scalable.
For example, my own gymnasium must be consuming around a hundred units of power daily, with 5 AC to run and 3 high power amplified speakers, not to speak of the electricity consumed by light bulbs and treadmills. The cross-trainers and the bicycles we work on are self powered, cycle them once or twice and the display on them comes to life. I am sure the display consumes far less power than is generated at the time of exercising, if that extra power could be fed into a system for charging batteries and that power could be used when batteries are charged fully then a considerable amount could be saved on electricity and hence greenhouse emission.

Talking about electricity, in my housing society there are 300 flats, on an average one person per two household goes to gym which makes for around 150 persons. Each of them burn around 1000 calories per day which comes to around 150,000 calories which is 150,000 X 4.184= 627,600 joules (1 calorie = 4.184 joules) and 627,600 joules = 627,600/3,600,000 units of electricity = 0.174 units of electricity. This amount may look like too little but here is how to look at it, we have a power backup through a 0.5MW generator which translates to 0.138 units of power generation, get the picture now? We are talking of considerably higher power generation for free and all that while people improve their health!
If my own society had gym, which was free for its society members, which could harness this power, we would never need that generator! And the picture gets even better; because the gym will be free more people will join the facility which means more power generation. It does mean using humans as rats on wheels, but who cares, people will do it willingly.
Is anyone listening?!!

Does Senior Management Ever Use Rest Rooms?

It is more than 2 months since I joined my new company, it’s an amazing place. Of all the amazing things I have noticed so far the most amazing one is that I have not seen any of the senior management ever in any toilet so far. Even though my seat is very near to our COO’s seat and I see him going in and coming out of his cabin so many times, I have never ever seen him going to toilet even once, which has kept me wondering for a long time now. There could be many possibilities for this:
a. They have separate toilets, which are probably camouflaged as meeting rooms or restricted areas and can be opened only by special access cards or finger print scanning.
b. They take some sort of medicines to control their bladders or have got them removed altogether.
c. Possibly they do go the toilets meant for lesser mortals but at the right time, when no one is able to see them. Having toilets under camera surveillance is a preposterous thought, having toilet gates is not. There could be someone monitoring the people going in and coming out and then letting the COO or others in senior management know (by turning-on the 'all clear' light in their cabin) the precise movement at which coast is clear.
d. Another possibility is that they have done some trend analysis based on the peak traffic and avoid those rush hours. In the unlikely event of being seen by a lowly employee it is very easy for them to pretend that they are on inspection and checking if everything is all right because they belong to, well…senior management.
e. Another advantage of being in the echelon of management is that you can go anywhere you wish and you need not answer anyone. A sentence like ‘oh, I’m entertaining a client’, when you are actually answering nature’s call at your home, would mean that people should not dare call you for next hour – enough time to go back to your home (which is again hardly a kilometre away, another advantage) do your ‘client entertainment’ and to come back. And frankly, who will dare question them even if they are late by 15-20 minutes?

Ciao!

A new blog

I had been giving serious thoughts about the focus of my blog, on one part I wanted to write about defence technology, military strategy, and weapon systems and on the other hand I also wanted to write about lighter aspects of life. Having both the types of writing on a single page would mean losing the focus of the blog and letting the visitors essentially scrape through the entire contents to find relevant posts. Hence, I have decided to start another blog for military strategy.

Visit http://manandwar.blogspot.com

A new Myst genre?

I have just finished playing Riven; it belongs to a genre of games where you are required to complete the game objective by exploring, making deductions and solving puzzles which come on your way. You are all alone in the entire game-play and there aren’t many characters in the game who can help you. Needless to say, that it can not be liked by everyone and there are only a handful people who could finish this game entirely on their own without even once looking at some hint or other. It’s too difficult, to the point of absurdity sometimes, to be solved by a single person alone. I feel proud to declare that I looked up for help on only three instances, which I think is quite an accomplishment.
Once I had finished playing, I felt whether it is possible to make an even difficult game – ¬ not in the sense of puzzle solving but puzzle making. If you are familiar with the story-line of Myst/Riven, you know that someone, like Sirrus; Achenar; or Gehn, gets trapped in a surrealistic world and makes devices, machineries, locks and codes to escape that island. The player’s objective then is to decipher the codes and understand the machineries and then come back.
The objective of the new kind of games would be to let the players play the role of Sirrus/Achenar/Gehn or someone else who is initially trapped. With nothing to start they will gradually build the machineries and codes to survive in that island. This should involve understanding the physics of that world and the mathematics behind them. Maybe even involving calculus and differential equations, of course, it is going to be far difficult than the Myst genre and only those having high-IQ and knowledge of advanced mathematics would be able to solve it.
The game should not be available in retail store, instead, I suggest having a qualifying test for users to buy this game; the potential players should be tested for their basic knowledge, their aptitude and IQ and then only be allowed to buy the game. Once they are qualified, the game’s CD/DVD should be sent to their home directly. The media should have a unique ID which should map the media to their respective users, so in case there is a piracy then the company can track the ID with users and hold the user guilty for distributing pirated copies.
The users who demonstrate their exceptional intelligence by successfully completing the game can be listed on Cyan’s website where recruiters and head hunters can view their profile and find candidates who are exceptionally intelligent, highly motivated, and, can work in a challenging situations to get out-of-the-box solutions.