TRP - What does it mean

We have all heard about TRP ratings of a program in news or papers or advertisements. Have you ever wondered what does it mean and how are the ratings calculated. Lets find out.

What exactly is TRP ?
TRP stands for Televison Rating Point is a tool to judge the viewership of any channel or programme for a period of 30 days. It gives an index of the choice of people and thus helps in recognizing the popularity quotient among different age groups.

How is it calculated ?
There are two methodologies used for TRP calculation :

A device called as People's Meter is attached to a TV set in a few thousand viewers houses across varied demographies. This device would store all relevant statistics about the viewership and sends the data to a central server periodically. After a month, an average is taken to judge the ratings score.

Another way of calculating the TRP is via picture monitoring technique where a specific signal is transmitted through satellite channels at particular intervals, which is then decoded at a central server station.

Who calculates TRP ?
In India it is calculated by INTAM (Indian Television Audience Measurement)

What does ATM means for our watches ?

ATM, unlike Automatic Teller Machine, stands for Atmospheres. It is a rating used to determine the water resistance measure for a watch. This universal ratings have been decided by ISO (International Standard Organisation for Standardisation). All watches carry these ratings either on top or bottom side of the dial.

Following are the ratings and sea level depth comparison, which has been defined  :

3 ATM= 30 meters (100ft) depth

5 ATM= 50 meters (160ft) depth

10 ATM= 100 meters (330ft) depth

20 ATM= 200 meters (650ft) depth

Wait a minute - there's an important fact which people misunderstand. And that is the above ratings does not mean that for a 5 ATM resistant, if you deep dive 50 metres down sea level, your beautiful watch will not become a paper weight, for rest of your life.

In fact, the environment in which these ratings are defined, are in still water. However, in real life, when we move in water, the pressure levels increase multifold and there are ample chances of water seeping inside.

So, considering the practical scenarios, here are some of actions that can be safely recommended :

3 ATM— can be used for walking in rain, very light shower

5 ATM— can be used for Shower/bath

10 ATM—can be used for Water sports, swimming in the sea

20 ATM—can be used for Snorkeling

Milestones - What does it represent ?

At a point of time, we have all done long road journeys - via car, bus, train etc. I remember, in my childhood, going on a road journey would be a thrilling experience - watching people across the street, vehicles whooshing in opposite direction - noting down the names of the places, stopping every now and then for a cup of tea or breakfast/lunch/dinner, looking at the speedometer - one for speed and second for number of kilometers traveled from source. I know many of us would second that feeling, even now.

This is about one of the things that appear during those road journeys - an integral part of any road - milestones.

One thing in a milestone is the color code on the top crescent. Well, it does have a meaning and a representation.

Yellow strip on a milestone indicates that we are on a National Highway.

Green strip on a milestone indicates that we are on a State Highway.

Black, Blue or White strip on a milestone indicates we have entered in a big city or district.

Orange color on milestone indicates that we have entered in a village.

What does train numbers imply?

Have you ever wondered whether there is any pattern of Indian Train numbers - well, there is indeed one !!

All the train numbers is a 5 digit numeric and each digit signifies a pattern. Here are more details :

First Digit : The first digit always represent the train type
0 --> Special trains like summer, holiday
1 or 2 --> Long distance trains like superfast or express trains
5 --> Passenger trains with conventional coaches
6 --> Memu service
8 --> Premium Express Trains

Second Digit:The second digit represents the railway zone.

Third Digit: If the first digit is 0, 1 or 2, the second digit is 2. The third digit identifies the railway zone where the train is maintained

Fourth and Fifth Digits : Are random numbers

Kryptos

In the language of Cryptography, Cipher is a secret or disguised way of writing. It can also be considered as a code, developed by its creator.

Kryptos is a sculpture made by an American artist, Jim Sanborn on the grounds of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley, Virginia, USA. It was dedicated in the year 1990 and had 4 encrypted messages. Cryptoanalysts around the world have delved into it and only 3 of the messages have been solved so far. The 4th one is yet to be solved, till date, and has already become one of the famous unsolved codes in the world, to reckon with.

Jim had confirmed that should he die before the 4th message is deciphered, the answer would be there with someone, safe, to affirm the solution.

Plastics Numerals - What Do They Say

Seldom can you find a place on this planet, where you would be hardly distant from Plastics. It would be ideal to say that plastics have become a part and parcel of our daily chores of life. But the thing which had always intrigued me was the numeral which would be written below a plastic bottle.

It stands out that these numbers indeed have a numeral significance and has been there to showcase the quality of plastic and whether they are relatively safer or needs to be avoided at all costs.

Have a glance at each of the numeral and what they really say about the plastic you are holding in your hands :

NO : 1 [POLYETHYLENE TEREPHTHALATE (PET OR PETE)]
Verdict : AVOID re-using them

NO : 2 [High density polyethylene (HDPE)]
Verdict : Relatively Safe

NO : 3 [Polyvinyl chloride (V or Vinyl or PVC)]
Verdict : AVOID re-using them

NO : 4 [Low density polyethylene (LDPE)]
Verdict : Relatively Safe

NO : 5 [Polypropylene (PP)]
Verdict : Relatively Safe

NO : 6 [Polystyrene (PS)]
Verdict : Relatively Safe

NO : 7 [Other (O) - all other plastics]
Verdict : AVOID re-using them

In the end, however, no plastics can be said to be safe for-ever.

English Language Trivia - Part 2

“Forty” is the only number which has its letters in alphabetical order.

SWIMS & NOON are words that can be flipped backwards and upside down and be spelled the same way! It is an example of an Ambigram which is a word, art form or other symbolic representation whose elements retain meaning when viewed or interpreted from a different direction, perspective, or orientation.

The only letter that doesn't appear on the Periodic Table is the letter 'J'. The periodic table is a tabular arrangement of the chemical elements, ordered by their atomic number (number of protons), electron configurations, and recurring chemical properties.

The most used letter in the English alphabet is 'E', and 'Q' is the least used. The letter E is over 56 times more common than Q in forming individual English words.

Typographical symbols such as '@#*&', that are used to replace swear words are called 'Grawlix'. It is a sequence of typographical symbols used to represent a non-specific, profane word or phrase.

'Q' is the only letter in the alphabet that does not appear in the name of any of the 50 American states.

English Language Trivia - Part 1

As per Guiness World Records, the English word with the most meanings is the verb 'set', with 430 senses listed in the Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, published in 1989. The word commands the longest entry in the dictionary at 60,000 words, or 326,000 characters.

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"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is a grammatically correct sentence. It is unpunctuated and uses 3 distinct readings of the word "buffalo" :

1) City of Buffalo, New York, United States
2) The noun buffalo (American bison), an animal
3) The verb "buffalo" meaning to outwit, confuse, deceive, intimidate or baffle.

Now read the below sentence, keeping the above words in mind :
The buffalo from Buffalo who are buffaloed by buffalo from Buffalo, buffalo (verb) other buffalo from Buffalo.

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The sentence " Are you as bored as I am? " can be read backwards and still make sense.

Longest English word without any vowel is "twyndyllyngs", which means "twins"

The division sign "÷" is technically called an Obelus.

Excel Tips And Tricks - Transpose And Worksheet Navigation Shortcut

Most of our job profiles require us to use Excel features in the most comprehensive ways which would give us meaningful yet effective results as soon as possible.

I had many such situations which required me to find out the easiest and the most effective ways to do our tasks in Excel 2007. I would be henceforth giving a step by step approach for few such features :

Requirement : How to change columns cell values into row cell values ? (It is called transpose)

How to Do ?

Select the full range of column cell values.

 

Right click and select Copy menu option.

Place the focus on any blank cell where you want the range of cell values to be pasted in the form of row cell values.

Right click and choose “Paste Special” menu option. In the Paste Special dialog box that appears, select the checkbox, Transpose, and click on OK button.

Note that the column cell values has been pasted into row cell values

Requirement : To traverse through the Excel worksheets tabs via Keyboard shortcut key ?

How to do ?

Most of us would use the mouse for traversing through the Excel Worksheets tabs. Keep focus on any of the Excel worksheet cell and then use the following keyboard shortcuts :

Ctrl + PageUp (Key) - Move left of the Excel Worksheets tabs from the current active worksheet
Ctrl + PageDown (Key) - Move right of the Excel Worksheets tabs from the current active worksheet

What do you mean by a Geoglyph on the ground ?

In NGC or Discovery there would be episodes which would say about unknown mysterious presence in the world. Geoglyphs happen to be one of a kind. Thought of uncovering the real meaning of such figures


A geoglyph is a drawing on the ground, or a large motif, (generally greater than 4 metres) or design produced on the ground, either by arranging clasts (stones, stone fragments, gravel or earth) to create a positive geoglyph (stone arrangement/alignment, petroform, earth mound) or by removing patinated clasts to expose unpatinated ground (negative geoglyph).

Some of the well known Geoglyphs made by Nazca Civilization guys ages ago were :

Nazca Lines


Nazca Monkey


Nazca Desert Spider


Just imagine the discipline and the real-time thinking of these old civilizations. No airplanes or so at that time but still managed to carve and niche their humongous drwaings on the ground...Impressive

Cricket World Cup 2011 Trivia

India -- as we all know is a land where everything seems to be a magic. And one of the magic is called CRICKET...And the magicians in India are named, Sachin, Gavaskar...They are like Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh of Hindu mythology. World Cup 2011 Fever has caught everyone in its frenzy!!! Cricket buffs are always constantly reviewing the Points system which gets interesting after every match completed.

Some of the lesser known interesting facts about the Cricket World Cup is :
1) The official mascot for the 2011 Cricket World Cup is called Stumpy, which is an young elephant.(the image displayed above)

2) Winning team takes home a whooping sum of 3 million $ and runner's home take home 1.5 million $.

3) There are 14 participants in this World Cup version. The 10 are Test Playing nations. Rest 4 were chosen based on their rankings in the qualifying matches...Ireland was first, Canada was second, Netherlands were third and Kenya were fourth. There were in total 104 entries.

4) Sachin, by appearing in this World Cup now shares the most number of World Cup tournament appearances with Pakistan's Javed Miandad

5) Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai would host this year;s World Cup finals. Interesting it was built in 6 months and was opened in 1975.

6) The record for the most number of ‘ducks’ in World Cup is shared by Nathan Astle of New Zealand and Ijaz Ahmed of Pakistan in 22 and 26 innings respectively.

What are QWERTY Keyboards ?

QWERTY is the most used modern-day keyboard layout on English-language computer and typewriter keyboards. It takes its name from the first six characters seen in the far left of the keyboard's top row of letters. The QWERTY design is based on a layout designed by Christopher Latham Sholes in 1873.



I never happened to take a serious note on this fact that the keyboards which I am using and in fact, I guess, if I am right most of us are using are of the type "QWERTY". Now, have a look at your keyboard and now you would have a reason to say as to how some letters placements have significance

What do you mean by Doodling ?

A doodle is a type of sketch, an unfocused drawing made while a person's attention is otherwise occupied. Doodles are simple drawings that can have concrete representational meaning or may just be abstract shapes.

Stereotypical examples of doodling are found in school notebooks, often in the margins, drawn by students daydreaming or losing interest during class. Other common examples of doodling are produced during long telephone conversations if a pen and paper are available.

Is quite interesting because during my childhood days my doodle design was a series of squares within squares. And a human face with a crown on top. God knows what it actually meant but atleast now i have a term to describe or give a name to that behaviour.