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The Techhive.com Meetup was the place for Boston-area geeks to be on Thursday night, and not entirely for the two free drink coupons, either: the presence of many cool people was a not-insignificant factor, worthy of a footnote.
The capper was a bar trivia contest.
I've only done bar-style trivia twice. Both of these experiences underscored my many weaknesses and few strengths in this kind of event. During my years as a journalist, I've trained my mind to doubt every fact and conclusion at my disposal. So I'm truly not the go-to guy when "Instant recall and total certainty" is the sine qua non.
But! I also have to dig into lots of different sources of information. There's always an excellent chance that I'll be the one who comes through when everyone else is drawing a blank.
(I had a similar role on my high school math team. I wasn't exactly Professor Digits, The Human Buzzcalculator. But when there was a real stumper, I could usually figure out why everyone else's conventional methods were failing. I deduced how the question had been constructed, and then "rewind" it back to the lateral First Step required to get the final answer.)
Lex Friedman (@lexfri) hands out answer pads (sourced from a helpful but doubtlessly confused Marriott desk clerk across the street).
Stupid judges are stupid and ask stupid questions and are too stupid to know that we've given them the right answers.
Tech trivia is...dangerous. Doubly so when I'm competing, because my other real skill at pub trivia is bickering about questions that (I imagine) were poorly-composed.
(To be more specific: "Questions where everyone in the world but me knows damned well what the question means, but I somehow see some wiggle room for insisting that I'm still right.")
"In what year was Microsoft founded?"
Yeeps. Do they mean "what year was the company incorporated?" or "what year did this entity known as 'Microsoft' begin to exist?" 1975? (correct).
"What year was the first digital camera introduced?"
Oh, dear. I have no idea. First consumer model? First time a company assembled something shaped like a camera that could take photos and said "Behold! A digital camera!" despite the fact that they had no intention of selling it? First time an image sensor recorded a digital image?
I do pride myself on lateral solutions. I was in an onstage trivia thing at Macworld Expo one year, and one question challenged the teams to use the MacBooks before them to transmit a specific message to the moderator without using anything on a long list of obvious technologies or features. No email, no IM, etc.
Alas, my instinct is to find and exploit a weakness in the question. It didn't take me long. I smiled, launched TextEdit, typed in the message, placed my microphone on the speaker...and then activated the Text To Speech feature. Done.
Yes, of course, the moderator was looking for "search through the address book, notice that there's an entry with my name on it, notice that there's also a mobile number attached, and then use the OS' frequently-ignored SMS feature." It was a clever challenge. But he had failed to phrase the question in such a way that I couldn't use the auditorium's speaker system.
Yeah, I was technically right. But you can't be a party pooper by arguing balls and strikes.
This is Paseo de Roxas in Makati City, Philippines.
Back in the 1940s, this street used to be an active runway where Philippine Airlines (Asia's first airlines) took off for Baguio City, located north of Manila.
Its astounding to see works of our ancestors and the legacy they left behind.The precision with how it was constructed,the purpose behind it,the people who have given it form and the final outcome.
Is'nt it all about having a purpose in life,resting on it and shimmering it.
the final question was which six of the afi's top ten films won academy awards for best film. not only did we get it exactly right, ryan named the top ten.
It is my birthday... Here are a few bits of trivia from the year I was born.
* The Planet Pluto was discovered as the 9th planet.
* The first woman Flight Attendant began working for United Airlines.
* The comic strip first appeared in newspapers. Blondie started out as a pretty girl romance and became the most widely read strip in comic art history.
* Babe Ruth was given a two year contract worth $160,000
* Snickers Candy Bars were introduced by Mars, Inc.
* Hostess Twinkies were introduced by Continental Baking.
* New York City rejected the use of "amber" colored traffic lights and started installing "red" lights on a test basis.
* Sliced bread was introduced under the Wonder Bread label.
* Toll House Cookies were invented by Ruth Wakefield.
* Dry Ice was introduced commercially in the United States for keeping ice cream.
* Clint Eastwood, Neil Armstrong and Sean Connery were born.
* The Veterans Administration was created to help America's veterans.
* Grant Woods completed "American Gothic."
* L-T-L was born in Meadville Pennsylvania :-)
It was an interesting year! Some might even say a good year!
Animal Facts & Trivia - TURKEYS!
Rikki's Refuge, Rapidan, VA.
1. Turkeys are intelligent and sensitive animals that are highly social. They create lasting social bonds with each other and are very affectionate; similar to dogs.
2. The modern domesticated turkey descends from the wild turkey.
3. Turkeys are known to exhibit over 20 distinct vocalisations. Including a distinctive gobble, produced by males, which can be heard a mile away. Individual turkeys have unique voices. This is how turkeys recognise each other.
4. Turkeys have 5000 to 6000 feathers.
5. The area of bare skin on a turkey’s throat and head vary in colour depending on its level of excitement and stress.When excited, a male turkey's head turns blue, when ready to fight it turns red. The long fleshy object over a male's beak is called a snood.
6. The male is substantially larger than the female, and his feathers have areas of red, purple, green, copper, bronze, and gold iridescence. Female feathers are duller overall, in shades of brown and grey.
7.Turkeys have outstanding geography skills. They have the ability to learn the precise details of an area over 1,000 acres in size.
Victory for Team Condor Sharp!
First prize was a very nice double-walled vacuum water bottle (with the Techhive logo) and a $50 gift card to Best Buy. Gosh, if I'd known the prizes were so good, I might have actually stormed to the front of the room and argued the "first digital camera" answer...
Okay, folks, you know the drill. Today's prize is ... um ... I dunno. We'll figure that out later, since I never did get those granola bars to Burl that one time.
Only hint is that it's within two miles of the square.
GO.
Most of the time, there was quick consensus on answers. Or at least consensus on the wrong answers. It was all tech trivia, naturally.
Kerri was able to make two greater contributions than I. First, she has a quicker mind. Second, she was willing to actually walk back and forth to the front of the room to get our answers checked.
As the angle of most of these photos indicate, I wasn't even really willing to get out of my chair to take pictures.
Incidentally: the event reminded me I'd chosen very, very well when I bought this Panasonic GX1. Trivia was held in a dark bar, which normally would defy all attempts at casual photography. An SLR and a bag of gear can provide a solution to any problem. But what about a camera that you stuck in your pocket on your way out of the house, almost as an afterthought? You normally just take what you can get (or give up entirely).
The GX1 came right through. Lens wide open at f1.7 to get some light in from the background, ISO set to 3200, built-in flash locked into upright position to bounce straight down off of the ceiling. I freaking love this camera. I'm getting much better pictures with it now that it's my daily shooter and I'm starting to know its features intuitively.