Boiledbeans

Drama! Intrigue!! Geekiness!!!

2007

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Geek F1

—devadutta @ 10:25

These cars finished 1,2 and 3 in a race held recently. Which race?
(Sorry about the badly mutilated images.. they had their logo everywhere )

  1. 834144d6e7dd6dd7459fd04e4f37fac4.jpg

2.f6fa556f6a759f3fd573282b521e9f7b.jpg

  1. 1f49b59d82a99e8db0d29b72e415dd9b.jpg

Hint: Take a close look at the driver’s seat.

Cracked by: **srikanth , 2ndratequizzer , alephnull , Teju , Shreyas , yaksha , MGS , Mahesh , Biki ( *with a wide smile ;) *) , nihit , Tathagata Chatterjee , Vinod P.V , VikraM , vijayaraghavan , Rahul Ranade , BiGFooT , prasanth , Ganesh Prasad , Gammafunction , udupendra , jayanth and shivathilak. **

srikanth, 2ndratequizzer, alephnull, Teju, Shreyas, yaksha, MGS, Mahesh, Biki, nihit, Tathagata Chatterjee, Vinod P.V, VikraM, vijayaraghavan, Rahul Ranade, BiGFooT, prasanth, Ganesh Prasad, Gammafunction, udupendra, jayanth and shivathilak


All your base are belong to us

—devadutta @ 10:43

Connect

  1. 13172986b479f1a2075aafb2c6ca0993.png 2. ddfac59c994045cce571dc51f70543f9.jpg

Cracked by: **srikanth , alephnull , Gammafunction , prasanth and piezocake. **

srikanth, alephnull, Gammafunction, prasanth and piezocake

Show Answer

The key was to look at the menu options in 1. They would have given away that 1 was dbase. The strange dots kind of thing is a result of pixelizing the word “database” in 1 and its not Vulcan script :)


Monday, November 5, 2007

Shut up, or I'll eat you

—srikanth @ 09:56

To offset the extreme seriousness of the last few questions, here’s an extremely pointless question that’s worth wasting your time on:

First name:

30fb0fc0995c59c244b59917ee571ac1.png

Last Name:

396195b2b2f659a484a693631f78425f.jpg

Close associates:
1725682df1e528c58fbb18a055b8b61a.gif 80db139008a4609b33522be19dbaecec.jpg 04a84a05207c7cbd618efd86d8906392.png

Who is this character? (Extra-jobless people can please identify the character’s associates, too)

Cracked by: Tathagata Chatterjee , sidsen , Keerthi Kiran M , **VikraM **, **prasanth **, yaksha , udupendra , **BiGFooT **and nihit. (All the names in bold were extra-jobless.)

Tathagata Chatterjee, sidsen, Keerthi Kiran M, VikraM, prasanth, yaksha, udupendra, BiGFooT and nihit

Show Answer

Guybrush Threepwood, protagonist of the Monkey Island series of games. The designers saved his model as “guy” in Deluxe Paint, which saved it with a .brush extension and became the first name. The last name was chosen by voting.


Sunday, November 4, 2007

Duality is nature's way of saying it is inherently confused.

—srikanth @ 10:11

This question was sent in by Arjun. Thanks a lot, saar

(And for all the rest of you, we demand that you to get off your lazy backsides and send in guest questions to [email protected] , so that we can just post those and get back onto our lazy backsides)

This image below shows a strange phenomenon. It is an image of the shadow of an object, but there seem to be bands of light in the shadow!

2d764c531ba89cedf3e91ae582c5b7a5.jpg

What is this, and why is it significant?

And just in case you’re under the smart-alecky impression that this phenomenon is not significant, here’s a clue. A clue to get the clue: why is their logo so weird?

Cracked (in whole or in part) by: 2ndratequizzer , sidsen , iamniks , prasanth and VikraM.

2ndratequizzer, sidsen, iamniks, prasanth and VikraM

Show Answer

That is the picture of what is called Arago’s Spot. This phenomenon “proved” the wave-particle duality of light. In essence, it was predicted that if light was only particle, there cannot be any brightness in the circular objects shadow, and if it had a dual nature, there would be brightness in the shadow of the object due to diffraction. Further, Poisson hypothesized that the exact center would have a bright spot since all the waves would interfere constructively.


Saturday, November 3, 2007

Faster than fairies..

—devadutta @ 10:04

Connect

  1. 8647cdbf470e70047273098a573f3194.png 2.f2695d2c5ace333bc450a4f27078b36b.png

  2. a79e6814d3283f50b86242fa2532c102.gif

Cracked by: sidsen , vaibhav008 , Biki(of course..) , bobo , Tathagata Chatterjee , udupendra , Prithvi , prasanth , 2ndratequizzer , shreyas , VikraM , Keerthi , Varun.M , Gammafunction , iamniks , yaksha , Shakeel and MGS.

sidsen, vaibhav008, Biki, bobo, Tathagata Chatterjee, udupendra, Prithvi, prasanth, 2ndratequizzer, shreyas, VikraM, Keerthi, Varun.M, Gammafunction, iamniks, yaksha, Shakeel and MGS

Show Answer
  1. The Protein folding problem illustrated

Friday, November 2, 2007

Epi(demi)c..

—srikanth @ 10:07

What is so special about this MIT logo?

df7d8db5fe78628402c213fba63eca3d.jpg

Clue:

1ac31f0f241e682f13a5ccaacc6761fc.jpg

Cracked by: uma , BiGFooT , VikraM , shivathilak , Tathagata Chatterjee , prasanth and iamniks.

uma, BiGFooT, VikraM, shivathilak, Tathagata Chatterjee, prasanth, iamniks and sidsen

Show Answer

The logo is made of 15 E-coli cells. The cells were moved into place by using “infrared optical tweezers” to move them around; technology reminiscent of Star Trek’s tractor beams :-)


Thursday, November 1, 2007

The margin is not big enough..

—devadutta @ 09:22

This question is based on a suggestion from Purnateja.
If you have a question to share with us, you know where to send it… [email protected] of course :)

Analogically speaking,

9c2463ed13ad648d04019ea918e79895.jpg : 55f58edb7294a4535bed55bdc96328af.jpg::28a0f2f76df8a73930897b11d26c4d6f.jpg : ?

Tell us the name of the person missing in the analogy. Also, identify the other three.

Cracked by: **udupendra , bs , Atul Mathew , shivathilak , Gammafunction , bobo , shyam , samarth , alephnull , vijayaraghavan , SidSen , iamniks , Tathagata Chatterjee , 2ndratequizzer , VikraM , VikraM , arjmage , jayanth , nihit and Shreyas. **

udupendra, bs, Atul Mathew, shivathilak, Gammafunction, bobo, shyam, samarth, alephnull, vijayaraghavan, sidsen, iamniks, Tathagata Chatterjee, 2ndratequizzer, VikraM, arjmage, jayanth, nihit, Shreyas and yaksha

Show Answer

The missing dude is Henri Poincaré.


Wednesday, October 31, 2007

78 protons

—srikanth @ 09:57

This question was handed in to us by Prasanth. What is going on here?

Cracked by: udupendra , bs , Varun.M , sidsen , vaibhav008 , Biki , alephnull , yaksha , Tathagata Chatterjee , nihit , rajeshvj , C’na and Keerthi.

udupendra, bs, Varun.M, sidsen, vaibhav008, Biki, alephnull, yaksha, Tathagata Chatterjee, nihit, rajeshvj, C’na and Keerthi

Show Answer

This is a “Levitron” in action. Brand names aside, its a spin-stablized magnetic top. The magical floating being caused by repulsion between the like poles at the bottom of the top, and the top of the surface below the top (puns ahoy). The thing doesn’t flip over because the rotation keeps it upright on its vertical axis.


Tuesday, October 30, 2007

The holy trinity

—srikanth @ 10:01

I had a bit of extra time today, so here’s a question that may require you to dig deeper than usual. Connect the three magazine covers below.

1d8613957622832b29bd6cc66c259b40.jpg 910509c001f90deb1ecdc0a4d90c3623.jpg 2b5535fa7cd45bad450a9f9a77679b53.jpg

udupendra , 2ndratequizzer , alephnull , nihit , prasanth , Tathagata Chatterjee and SidSen have some real good taste.

udupendra, 2ndratequizzer, alephnull, nihit, prasanth, Tathagata Chatterjee and sidsen

Show Answer

(1) is the cover of Astounding Science Fiction, April 1946 edition. It carried Arthur C. Clarke’s first publication, “Loophole”


Monday, October 29, 2007

Loading...

—devadutta @ 10:30

1,2 and 3 are few of the many things which have a 4 letter name you would have heard a 1000 times over the past year or so.

What is it? ( and identify 1,2,3)

  1. 1f37e5d493d75c0342044b91b84ed05b.jpg 2. 4c83909c3a6895c0e20477845a5a506e.jpg

  2. 9c4c41ea24bc10f5330a91013bee2bbe.png

Cracked by everyone who tried. Namely, **Quehin , SidSen , srichand , jayanth , bs , Atul Mathew , vaibhav008 , Ganesh Prasad , Srivatsa , iamniks , Keerthi Kiran M , rajeshvj , sharath , udupendra , Gammafunction , Madan , shivathilak , Abhishek , Tathagata Chatterjee , prasanth , yaksha and nihit. **

AJAX: Asynchronous Javascript and XML is the answer. It has been the buzz word of the web 2.0 era, with every site (including mine) flaunting Ajax capabilities more as a fashion statement than need :)

Lemme quote Srichand’s answer for details

“The first chap is Ajax , the son of Telamon and Periboea and king of Salamis.

Second picture, is the city of Ajax, in Ontario Canada, famous for Sum 41 the band

The third picture, is… well, Ajax, the arcade game.

The title, refers to the message shown when gmail loads up.. Gmail of course, is the most popular Ajax application around.”

My other favourite Ajax products are :D

f0c504017bce3bbc5fd37e08f8318e23.jpg

and the AJAX company which is a competitor of ACME corporation :)

Quehin, sidsen, srichand, jayanth, bs, Atul Mathew, vaibhav008, Ganesh Prasad, Srivatsa, iamniks, Keerthi Kiran M, rajeshvj, sharath, udupendra, Gammafunction, Madan, shivathilak, Abhishek, Tathagata Chatterjee, prasanth, yaksha and nihit