Dazed and Confused

How to make a record...

2009-03-08T17:51:00.007+05:30

Ok..
So, in my previous post, you had seen how Bernett used 1521 cubes to make a portrait of Marilyn monroe.. I just came to know that this was a record. But it is not a guinness record because they hadn't been informed about it beforehand.

Anyways, after seeing this, my crazy mind took over in wondering how it can be done. And what you can do to get yourself in the record book.

Let's take an example. You want to make a portrait with 10,000 cubes.

1) How can you make the portrait...?

Bernett used 1521 cubes, i.e with 39 rows x 39 columns.
Each rubik's cube has 6 faces. and each face will have 9 tiles (i.e 3 x 3) of 6 possible colours. So, thats 54 tiles. But for us we need only one face. so that means only 9 tiles are used from one rubik's cube..
Here he's used 39x39 cubes, and each face has 3x3 tiles, which means there are
39x39x3x3 = 117x117 = 13689 tiles.
Its the same as saying that the picture is made up of 13689 pixels. Or to say, it has a resolution of 117x117 pixels.

So, what we have to do is get a picture of whatever resolution we want and then get the details of each pixel. Now, in any pixel there will be three basic colours RGB, with a varying intensity of each colour, so what we can do is get the closest possible colour of that pixel to one of the six colours of a rubik's cube (white, yellow, red, orange, blue, green) so that we'll have the whole pixel details of the huge portrait that you want to do.
Take every 3x3 grid of the huge portrait and then arrange the rubik's cube's face to that combination of the colours. Do this for every grid and voila, you'll end up with the huge portrait.

In our example, since we'll be using 10,000 cubes. The resolution will actually be 300x300.

2) Cost
The cost of the whole thing will depend on how big your portrait is because that many rubik's cubes you will need.
The original rubik's cube cost about Rs. 250.. so, its better not to get those.
Get low quality ones that u generally find in jaathres and melas... they are only some Rs. 15.
Spending Rs, 10,000 will get you only some 666 cubes, the more you spend the more cubes you'll have and the bigger the portrait will be.

For 10,000 cubes, you will need Rs. 1,50,000/-
A really huge amount... :)

3) Time
It takes a maximum of some 45 secs for me to get any set of colours on 1 face. Its given that bernett actually took 13 hours or so and he did it all by himself. But lets see how much time I might need to get the whole portrait done.
45 x 10000 = 450000 secs = 7500 minutes = 125 hours = nearly 5 days non-stop....

phew!!!

4) Space
Each cube is around 55mm x 55mm x 55mm. Considering only the length and breadth for all the 100x100 cubes, it'll take about
5500mm
or 5.5 m x 5.5 m..
or to say 30.25 square metres

That size is actually bigger than the rooms in our hostel...

Anyways, If anyone is up for it.. one can make a record..... :)

Marilyn monroe out of Rubik's cubes

2009-02-24T00:37:00.005+05:30

I'm back after a long time..

Anyways, for people who don't know, I'm a little bit of Rubik's cube freak.. Here's an interesting thing that happened that I'd like to share..

But first let me give an intro..
Bernett Orlando is a 12 year old prodigy who's made his mark in the cubing world..
Some of the records that he's bagged are:
1)World record for solving 4 Rubik's(3x3x3) cubes blindfolded in the fastest time..
2)World record for solving a 5x5x5 blindfolded in the fastest time..
3)And so many other National records
a) fastest 2x2x2, 3x3x3, 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 solve..
b) fastest 3x3x3 solve with feet
c) fastest 4x4x4, 5x5x5 blindfold solve..
and a lot more... for more details check here

Anyhoo, two days ago on 21st feb.. he decided to arrange 1521 rubik's cubes to make a portrait of Marilyn Monroe..
Here are some pics of that event..
Here you can see him half done and

Here's the image completed

Another view..

This was done at Spencer Plaza in Chennai..
He used 1521 cubes, 39 rows * 39 columns. Each cube was scrambled to a predetermined position to get that appearance.
It took him nearly 13 hours or so to completely finish the portrait.
And also the whole process was filmed for the international best ad film for cannes film festival..
I'm hoping to see how that would come out...

I'll fill in more details soon...

Elections

2008-08-22T13:37:00.005+05:30

The elections just finished at our college some few days back.
Like always, nothing goes as planned. The same usual stuff at the beginning. We make pacts with some group. Then, we find out that it wont work and then we switch sides. This happens until the last day. The day of the election.
Anyways, Anything i say here might lead to some differences in opinions. So, i'm not going to say much.But, this elections had some new propaganda techniques with a 3rd year guy making a video. Here's it. Just sit back and watch. Watch it completely.

P.S - No offence, meena
Also, you need flash to view this.

US attacks Iran due to recession..? who cares!!!

2008-07-31T14:18:00.002+05:30

Placement season has started in NITK Surathkal. Everybody's slogging.
The first company to start recruiting was Accenture. Everyone's psyched about it. So, nearly half the final years attend the ppt(pre-placement talk) and write the apti. I went to try my luck too.
Round 1: Aptitude test.

55 questions. 1 hour. 11.40 a.m. Start the test.

I look at the questions. Even a 10th std student could have solved those. I looked behind at all the others writing the test. I knew i would have competition. But i was sure i was going to clear the first round at least.
"Now, i'm going to call out all those names who have been selected for the group discussion.
... Vighnesh U.. ...
.... Shashank shah....
........................
...Praveen Raj M S...."
"yes...??"
"Move over to this side of the room..."

It feels good when you are the center of attention even though if its just for 2 seconds.

Round 2: Group discussion
They called out names for the first group.. After those guys came out.. I asked one of my friends "hey what was your topic...??"
"It was silly dude.... they asked us to talk about 'pink', the colour."
" maybe they'll give us blue"
And then, the 2nd group...
"hey what topic did u get??"
" they told us some story and we had to give our opinion about that it seems. It wasn't that interesting also.."

I thought that this was going to be a piece of cake. Then they called on the 3rd group. My name was in it. So, i went in the room. The GD panelist made us all sit in a semi circle.
"okay, good afternoon everyone. Here's your topic..
Do you think US of A would or should attack Iran because of the on-going recession in their country...??"

And all of a sudden...........BLANK..............

I didn't know anything about it. I started thinking. It was the brainstorming session. ...

US attacking Iran ....
why would US attack Iran???
hmmm.... "OIL".... right on...

..... recession ........
what is it ??
value of money gets lowered...
hmmm.. speaking in economic terms... decline in country's GDP...
now, wait a min... where have i heard this....??
oh.. that's right, when jogi told me about his cousin who was working in KEANE got fired with another 400 employees... that was due to recession...
damn it.. i wish i had listened to whatever he said that day...
Coming back to reality.. how do i connect these two....???
"Okay... who wants to go first...?? "
Everybody's looking at each other's faces.
Some guy starts the discussion,
"I think the US should attack Iran.... .... .. ... ... blah blah..."
and then some other guy said otherwise...
" That's not really necessary... .... . ..... .. . blah blah......."
The discussion was going from the topic to somewhere else.. There was even a time when a guy said if this happens it'll lead to communal clashes and Al-Qaeda will attack US again..
All this time, I was just sitting quiet with a puzzled look on my face...
In the end, the GD guy tells " Let's give others also a chance" and asks me to give my opinion.
I gave a fake smile and started to tell some nonsense... and it was literally, nonsense...
And then, he gave the results and just as i expected my name was not there.

So, i thought to myself, " Whatever happens, happens for good "

And also made a resolution to read newspapers everyday....

Faviconise your blog

2008-07-04T19:47:00.014+05:30

Some of my friends who saw my blog asked me, " Maga, how did u get that P next to your blog title da ?? ". He was actually referring to the favicon. Lot of you would have seen that google changed their favicon and their reason for this change is given here.

Anyways, i thought i'll tell how simple it is do it and how i actually learnt to put a favicon in my blog.

A favicon is actually short for favorite icon. There are three steps to follow:

1) Create your favicon:
You can create your own favicon. Use paint or photoshop or whatever and create an image that you think suits your blog best. Try to keep it as close to a square and make its size as small as possible. Possibly around 32 x 32. And also it should be less than around 10kb - 15kb. If you have a larger image, then it might not be clearly visible or it might take longer for your page to load.

Now, initially favicons were all *.ico files but now most of the browsers like firefox, opera and others are compatible with .jpg, .png and other files also (And internet explorer is not one of them). You can also create favicons which are *.gif files. Check out the favicon on this website. This was the company where i did my training. DeciDyn.

There are different favicon generator websites also on the net. You can also get gif images generating favicon sites. Just give a search.

Now that you are done with creating your favicon. You need to have a place to keep it. Somewhere on the net.

2) Storing your photo:

There are a lot of free photo sharing websites. Picasa, Photobucket, Flickr, etc, etc.
You can upload your favicon into any of these websites so that its easy to access it. I preferred photobucket because its really easy to use compared to others.
When you upload any photo in photobucket, it gives you a list of links for that uploaded photo. Now, what you actually need is the direct link to the photo. The following image shows all possible links that you have in photobucket for every photo you upload.

If you prefer using Picasa you can get the HTML code of the photo. It would be something like this.
<a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/xxx/yyy/photo?authkey=XIjQw#521754">
<img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/xxx/SG-zrI/AAU/VOc/s14/xyz.JPG"/>
< /a>
The link in the bold letters is the direct link for your picture. (And the above is not an actual link)

You can upload it in blogger itself. Every photo that you upload has a link which is the direct link. So, you can upload it in a post and not publish it. Whatever you do, get the direct link.

3) Change your template code.

Now that you have your direct link, go to layout --> edit HTML

and just below the <head> tag, write in the following code :

<link href='your direct link' rel='icon'/>

Here's a screenshot of the code part.(Though not clearly seen)

And after that, voila!!!

You have your very own favicon...
It wasn't that difficult. was it ?

Amazing windows

2008-06-30T13:08:00.003+05:30

Exactly why windows sucks...

****wood

2008-06-26T23:22:00.000+05:30

So, it was lunch time on my last day at Decidyn(This is where i spent my 3 month long vacation doing training). Everyday we start talking about some random stuff. Sometimes, its about politics, sometimes about government, college life, different places, aarushi murder case, or whatever that comes to some crazy guy's mind in that room.

Well, today it was about how people try to copy others. Actually how the Hindi film industry took their name from Hollywood and called themselves Bollywood.
Now, that doesn't end there. After this, the Telugu film industry called themselves Tollywood and then the Tamil film industry called themselves Kollywood.
And just when you think the names can't get anymore weirder, the Kannada film industry calls themselves sandalwood.

I just couldn't believe this. Thats totally ridiculous. So, i opened wikipedia and tried to find out if there are some more film industries which have "-ollywood"ish names and found out this....

Mollywood -- Malayalam film industry
Tollywood -- even the Bengali film industry has the same name
Punjwood -- Punjabi film industry
Chinawood -- Some arbit Chinese studio which apparently is the largest in china.
Choliwood -- Peruvian film industry
Nollywood -- Nigerian film industry

and my favorites

Dollywood -- Bangladesh film industry
Lollywood -- Pakistan film industry

I just want to say if anybody has any plans of starting a film industry, pick your letter soon or else you wont be left anything.

Internet adda

2008-06-24T17:19:00.000+05:30

And finally a blog of my own...

I created a blogger account way back about 10 months ago itself around Sep '07 but i always used to think that i need a perfect start.
A perfect timing to start.

I told to myself let the mid sem finish, i'll start writing. And when that finished, i wanted Crescendo to get over and after that end sem was just around the corner. Holidays came. And then again, 6th sem started and the same thing over again. Some random club fests, mid sem, Engi, Inci and then again end sems.
A whole semester passed by just like that.

All this time, i was reading so many of my friend's and some random blogs on the net wanting to write my own.
And then, came holidays. Three months. I wanted to pass time. I didn't want to be jobless.
I was thinking of starting sometime now and like some kind of a sign, our very own Bheemboy said that there really isn't any right time to make public your blog.

And so, now that my training is over, here i am. New into the blogosphere. Making my mark on the web. Ready to pass the torch. To share my wisdom. Where lot of people hang out. This is the internet adda, where a lot of cool things are happening and are gonna happen.

And also to all my non-blogging friends and readers, there really isn't any perfect timing to start writing a blog.

Whatever you want to do tomorrow, do it today.
Whatever you want to do today, do it now.

So start writing whatever you feel right away. There's no rule that your first post should be a big hit. Once you start hitting the keys, its a completely different world. Believe me.