Find the Angle - A Revolution....A brain teaser !

Getting mechanical in our day to day grind, working hard or hardly working, sometimes we all tend to feel...
"damn, where did those days go, when we used to solve interesting Mathematical and Physics problems?"
Did our grey cells loose their luster ?
Or is it just that we became so busy with the laborious daily routine, that we lost the enthu and energy to tackle some real challenging stuff, that we were all good at, one point of time ?

Thanks to Caps (Ravi Kiran) for a forward he shot out a couple of months back, it did tickle the grey matter of quite a few around, in my work place.

Let me get started with the what is expected of this problem.

Find the Angle "a" !!

Although it might look too simple to begin with trust me, it will surely refresh your geometry and if needed Trigonometry too !

Once you get involved, Your mind will start running wild about 7th-9th class math (Indian Education System that is) or 9th - 12th grade (American of course, sure as for math for kids, they lag behind big time !) geometry/trigonometry/algebra, etc.

If you did not sweat too much to arrive at the solution to this question, then sure, its your perception and modesty that it came easy to you, coz in the background you did work quite as much as most of the others, trust me. :)

Why is it a Revolution?

A simple puzzle or a problem that challenges one's brain could very well tickle a hurricane, read through and you will know what I exactly mean.

Amidst my chaotic schedule, I did venture a good number of hours to revitalize my math to arrive at a solution to this problem. One would guess, apart from " Sum of three angles in a triagle = 180 degrees" there would be something else that might be needed to finish this one off. But what is it ? How do you recall it? Of course one can cheat by drawing the triangle to scale, and find the angle...but thats not what we are talking about. Thats the method of give-up-on-the-first-shot-ers.

To cut the long story short, I tried it for few hours, and gave up on it, feeling its really not worth (doh!) spending more time on it. It somehow stuck with me. I kept going back to it, on and off, starting all over, again and again and again. At which point I said, I need to get this out to other like-minded/challenge loving people, who like me at one point were too darn good at cracking these things, and somehow got busy with their daily routine and grind.

I've arrived at a state of mind where, solving the puzzle was not as important, as seeing the pleasure the brute enthusiasm, the zeal, the grut, the grind in seeing the folks around me (especially at work, for some reason) to enjoy the feeling of doing something intellectual for a change.

So, it started off with a casual conversation over a coffee at work, with Uvi, AjayJ, Keith, John D, SujitM and Sireesh. Their eyes lit up seeing a triangle, to start with. I mean, c'mon, how frequently will you see people at work do things like these.

During the course of the next week or so, this puzzle was changing hands faster than a spam mail ! Ok Ok thats stretching it a bit too far, but you get the point. People of all ages, backgrounds, ethnicity, were getting involved. It even went to the extent, that it made its way onto the board of one of the conference rooms, and people who gathered around ran around to pick up a paper and pen to grab the gist and go back to their desks to solve it !

The Solution
Thanks to the commitment and zeal of AjayJ, who by the way, derived way many things to motivate challenge and encourage himself to finally get to the bottom of the puzzle. Coming from a family of math scholars from India, as he recalls, he was quite obligated to spend that extra energy, to not to ignore and move forward with the solution. Again, most of us would be able to do it, but it takes what it takes to finally cross the finish line, and he deserves to get the credit for that !

So far its been an amazing experience to see so many people around me dig in and try to solve it albeit their backgrounds and no matter how busy they are, what problems they have or what position they are in.

To justify all, I will publish the solution, as we arrived at, a few days from now, and in the interim would appreciate other readers out here to chip in and see if they can arrive at the finishing line !

And the Solution is: http://www.mediafire.com/?9pf9kmhulye

Cool toys to get your hands on...

Wanted to do this post for quite a few days now. Ended up getting few cool toys recently, which did change my lifestyle a bit. Boys with no Toys is a no-no

Harmony 880 Remote Control

Now that the football season is picking up the pace, between Indian Idol, Gemini TV (A must for the N to have), I needed one single magic wand to keep jumping between multiple devices, multiple rooms. tada! enter the Harmony 880 remote control.


My equipment: Panasonic 50" Plasma TV, DVR 522, Motorola Cable Box
Harman Kardon 520 Receiver, HK CD changer, Tape Deck
Bose Speakers, Panasonic DVD changer, Sony VCR, Sony Playstation


That will tell you how many remote controls sit on my coffee table. And if I am shuffling around between the multiple input devices and switching between the aspect of 16:9 vs 4:3 etc, one can imagine what a task it would be, especially with a 2 year old at home, who knows what these remote controls do !

I know there are zillions of universal remote controls out there, get one and spend a day or so to scan for codes and breeze through manuals and at the end of the day, you might still be left high and dry, still expecting more as it would not have lived up to its expectations nine times out of ten. The Harmony devices beat that scenario hands down.

The 880 comes with a USB cable, a docking station to charge the Li-ion battery - Yup! Bye bye to AAA or AA batteries ! Now you have the freedom to use them in your kids toys even more. It comes with a CD that would install the Harmony software, which pulls the device codes on a regular basis from the web.

Like one of the old Hero Honda commercials from India says: Fill it, Shut it, forget it. The Harmony remote is that easy to setup and operate. Once you note down the models for your devices and punch them into the harmony s/w, it gives you the option to set up "Activities" which is the best part of this remote. "Watch DVD" "Watch PVR" "Listen to FM" "Play Game" etc, can be set up with ease. Once the remote is updated, bingo..one click and it turns on or toggles between multiple devices, switches between video 1, hdmi 1, and other inputs that you chose to operate your inputs on.

Just love it. Its one of the best devices one could ask for. Makes life easy and watching TV or listening to music more pleasurable experience. For a person like me who is not much into shows, predominantly a HD, News and Sports guy...its totally cool and amazing to have the Harmony 880. One might wonder why spend 120 bucks on a remote control...think again, its totally worth it !


Garmin Nuvi 350

Its needless to say what a device the nuvi 350 is. After a lot of deliberation and talking to my fellow 'tronics buffs, I ended up getting the Nuvi 350.


Again, for a typical NewJersian, it totally makes sense to have a GPS, and thats because, if we really calculate, on an average a normal not so crazy about driving around type of person would end up spending atleast 10 hours per week on the roads in NJ. Why? hmm...let me see...in NJ when we say "oh! we are right around the corner" it would mean a 15 min drive. When we say, "oh! Edison/Oak Tree is 40 min from my place" it means you are atleast 4 towns away. Bottom line, yes, we drive a lot in NJ just to exist, not even to live a decent social life...throw in the trips to JFK or sightseeing in the Big Apple...as we say around here...fo ge da ba dit !


Yes a GPS is totally handy and sometimes a must. No, one would not need a traffic update equipped one, coz pretty much most of the radio stations have nothing much to talk about other than traffic, weather and how convoluted the state political system is. One will have traffic analysis every 20 min atleast, encompassing reports on every major highway that cuts thru your social path.


Yes, I know I am not writing much about the device that I bought. It really would not need a review. Its pretty cut and dry when it comes to Nuvi's features and capabilities. The best part of the Garmin devices is, their pocket size. The TomTom XL was a close competitor in my quest, but as SasiKanth puts it, "It really doesn't matter dude! They are the same".


Its just surprising how few toys just elevate one's spirits, and just how few little things here and there make such a huge difference about how we deal with the day to day grind.


NO, I dont have the Nintendo Wii yet...I am not getting enuf time to play my PS2 even. Oh, and I forgot to mention the XBox with Halo 2 sitting in my basement that KK left for me, while he was busy changing his coordinates to NH.


So long folks!