Deepak Mishra

How pets and being stress-free can help in getting pregnant

2021-04-05T00:08:00.001+05:30

We got 2 cats as soon as we returned from a 9 days vacation from Goa. As we were new to cats and with them playing around us, we were focused on them all the time and were enjoying every moment. The first week was a zero stress period. Within a week was our 12th day and we possibly conceived our baby that day.

There are some more incidents in my acquaintances:

One of my friends also got a cat and within the same month, they conceived too.
Another friend of mine got a dog and within the same month, they conceived as well.
One of my relatives and his wife went to her parent's place for a month and during the same month, you understood now. Right?

I am not a biology person but I am a pattern matcher.

What were common in all 4 cases?

The stress level of the couple is low.
They don't fight with each other.
Maybe less number of making-out opportunities.
Each of the 8 of us was above 32 years old.

I am no expert but free advice doesn't harm anyone. If you have checked with a doctor and have no major physical issues but are still finding it difficult to conceive, try including the below fundamentals in the routine. For people above 30, please try to do everything.

How to get pregnant basics:

Try to be stress-free all the time: This is rule 0 - a non-negotiable option. Doctors also recommend trying to be stress-free during this period. Even if you do everything right but are under a lot of stress, the chances will be very low. Over and above, if you are failing to conceive every month, it will only add to more stress.
Understand and maintain the female ovulation calendar: Every girl knows this. Anyway, for guys, the first day of the period is day 1. Reference: https://www.womenshealth.gov/ovulation-calculator
Folic acid and onions over other medicines: If you are trying to conceive, then you may want to add folic acid to your routine. You may not want any issues with the child. As our body is deteriorated by our lifestyle, our body doesn't get enough folate naturally. For guys, onion is a must-have to increase the sperm count. References:

Folic acid - https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/folic-acid
Onion - https://www.thehealthsite.com/fitness/health-benefits-of-onions-142940/

Exercise 6th-11th heavy and rest light: From the end of the period, the girl should exercise till one day before trying to conceive. Rest of the month, you should still exercise but light. Exercising also helps in decreasing stress levels. Guys can exercise throughout the month. It helps in improving sperm quality.
Maternal Instinct (Theory): This is just my theory due to the pattern. Women can develop maternal instincts from pets or meeting other children from the neighbourhood. That might release some hormones in the body that could help in conceiving.
Vacation: Vacationing regularly could help in reducing stress.
Pets: Pets help in reducing stress a lot, plus maternal instincts.
Make out on 12th and 14th days: Mostly 14th day is the day women ovulate. The chance of getting pregnant is dramatically increased if you have sex on the day of ovulation, or two days before that. - Reference: https://www.yourfertility.org.au/everyone/timing
Horny sex: Having horny sex helps. So try to keep a gap between make-out sessions and have horny sex on the 12th day. Guys shouldn't masturbate or have sex for some days before the 12th.

PS: This is all from my observation. Not proved by any scientific facts!

Modi is playing Big Boss during Lockdown and giving us tasks on a regular basis

2020-04-05T17:57:00.000+05:30

Everybody has been complaining about their boredom during the lockdown. They are not able to meet people because of WFH. As Biswa says, extroverts are like "Insaan kahan hai? Mujhe Insaan ke saath hang out karna hai thoda sa." meaning "Where are the human beings? I need to hang out with a human being." Not just extroverts, after so many days of social distancing, we all want to hang out with human beings. We want to celebrate festivals.

Our beloved PM Modi Ji, who is known to give tasks to the people of India, like make Aadhar cards, stand in ATM queues, donate cylinder, etc continues to give us tasks. First, he asked the people of India to come to the balcony to make noise. Now he is asking us to show lights. It has started feeling like Big Boss. Now I am wondering what his next tasks will be. Big Boss wants all the housemates to come to the balcony and pee to the ground?

Jokes apart PM Modi does know our situation here. He finds out ways to help us indirectly interact with each other and celebrate like festivals. First, he asked us to make noise as we do in Holi. Now he is inviting us to show lights like Diwali. He certainly needs to have a team to find creative ways to celebrate in the lockdown.

Game Of Thrones S08E03: How the Night King should have been defeated?

2019-05-17T02:28:00.001+05:30

Game Of Thrones S08E03: How the Night King should have been defeated?

Many are unhappy that Arya killed the Night King and not Jon Snow. I am not. I loved that it was Arya and her training paid off. Many are unhappy that she did it very easily. Here I am unhappy too. So much build up of Night King to die like that. Everything else has been shown perfectly, but the last 10-20 seconds spoiled the whole thing. Let's rewrite a more sensible ending for the S08E03.

When the Night King entered the Godswood, there were only two white walkers present. He comes and stands in front of Bran.
Jon is trying to defend himself from the wight dragon and shout "Go", which happened.
A white walker enters the Godswood and stands beside the other walkers.
A walker feels a breeze and sees to his left to the walker who just came, but there was no one.
When the Night King removes his sword and attempts to kill Bran, a white walker jumps to him with a dagger. Night King turns and holds the walker's neck with one hand and the dagger hand with his other hand. Realizing the secret of the walker, he scratches his nail on the neck and pulls out the fake face, who turns out to be Arya.
He thinks instead of choking and killing Arya, it will wiser to convert her into his walker general, a replacement of the one that she might have killed to show up and would have taken the face of. He places his fingernail on her neck, still holding her by the neck and tries to convert her.
Bran realizing that he is not only a three-eyed raven but also a stark and it is his duty to protect Arya, just like the same way Arya realized that she is not the noone.
Bran tries all his power to warg into the Night King. Night King finds out that Bran is trying to warg him, and looks towards Bran with anger. Night King gets distracted by Bran's attempt to warg him.
Arya uses this opportunity, drops her knife from one hand to another and kills the Night King.

This would have been a more sensible ending for the Night King and would have shown a proper team effort from Arya, Bran and Jon.

One Day Adventure: Left the Job on Day 1

2018-09-13T00:24:00.000+05:30

I was 100% sure I will be joining Clipshow (name changed) as an Engineering Manager, which was my eighth offer of the season. I even gave my confirmation to join the company, so that the CTO can inform the investors and roll out the offer letter. I changed my status to "not looking out". The scene with the other company suddenly got aggressive.

The offer from Lindakart (name changed) for Principal Engineer was the ninth offer I had. I had even had a quarrel with the CEO of Lindakart when I met him, but still, he kept his ego aside. The HRs from Lindakart were urging me to join them, even though they were offering me Rupees 2 LPA lesser than Clipshow. After hundreds of calls from those HRs, the founders, the VPs and other stakeholders, I started appreciating their perseverance and also started liking the importance I got. I hesitantly called the Clipshow CTO informing him that I couldn't join them. Surprisingly, he was cool about it.

I was supposed to join on Monday, which was the day before yesterday. On Sunday, I got a call from senior EM asking me if I could come to the office at 9 AM. They were having the new product discussion, and it will be better if I can attend it. He added me to a Whatsapp group, and the Project Manager shared a document on it. I read it and got prepared for making a mark on the first day.

The meeting started around 9 AM. One of the members of the product had not read the document. The PM scolded that person that he should have. This behaviour pissed me off very badly. Why in the world, he needed to work on Sunday and expect people to do the same? But, I did not say anything at that time because I did not know how things are in the company. The meeting went on till 1 PM. I had my lunch with the PM in the cafeteria. It was a Bharat Band that day, so almost all the shops were closed. The meeting continued postlunch.

In the evening, the PM and I went down for tea. Two of the people who were present at the meeting were already at the stall. One of them was saying that he is finding it difficult to pitch in the colleges, and he needs to make a new pitch.
I asked him, "What pitch are you talking about?"
He replied, "We work almost seven days a week."
I questioned him, "But the company has a five days working model from today. Right?"
He got defensive and changed the topic. I guessed that something was fishy.

I asked the PM about it. He got very defensively and asked me to confront HR. He said that it was wrong on the part of HR that they set a false expectation to me. I went to the HR, and he was sitting with the same guy who was talking about the pitch. I came back and waited for a few minutes and went back. He was still sitting with the same guy. I asked him whether I can talk to him for a minute. He knew what was I going to discuss.
I asked him straight, "Is it five days working or six days?"
He said, "We proposed that it should be five days working, but the management rejected it."
He was steadily asking me, "With you, we can strengthen the proposal, and go back to the management. Allow me to work on it."
I exploded, "Even if you succeed, what next? I came at 9 AM, and it's already 8 PM. No one seems to be making any move. There doesn't seem any work-life balance here. I have heard you guys work 24x7."

The HR went in a meeting with the CEO and other managers. After he came back, he called me. I was in a room with the HR and the VP.
The VP defended, "The engineering team is lagging behind the business team a lot. So they have to work a lot. We are going on a model where people work for weeks till the task is over. After that, they can take as many compensatory leaves."
I answered, "Both of us know that this won't work, and the tasks never finish. Even I have run a company, and I can understand your problem."
He defended that they don't work all seven days. But I was clear what I had to do.
I told the HR, "I am leaving for the day. If I don't show up tomorrow, tear off my onboarding form."

At night, the person, with who I had the introductory conversation, called me. I thought the HR would have asked him to talk to me. But he dropped a bomb. He said that he was very sorry about telling me earlier that they are five days working. He had said the same thing to many candidates, and he can't face them now. So he had quit too. Fuck! Not just him but 4-5 more people in the company had resigned the same day. Everyone was hoping that the tech team will adopt five days working model, but it did not.

The next day, I went to the company and went straight into a room with two of the HRs, who regularly interacted with me. I felt it would be rational to tell them face to face that I don't want to be a part of the company. I asked the other HR to give my three passport size photos too. It transformed into a joke that I came to the office to take them.

I met all the dissatisfied employees and few already resigned ones at the tea stall. We bitched about the company a lot. The two HRs were passing by for lunch, stopped to talk to us. I told the senior HR that we wished to get a hold of him outside the office, and we cracked many jokes on them and the company. Then they went for the lunch. After some time five of us left for food too. One of them told me that they officially have Diwali off, but still, everyone comes to the office on that day. Heights!

I realised that it was not only the work timings that was the problem, but also the management was inhuman. We made a Whatsapp group called "Linda Sucks", and they shared their resumes in it.

After a while, the other HR messaged me that she was sorry to mess up with my career. I wrote to her, "It's alright. Now, I need to get shameless and talk to the other companies where I had the offers from."

Two good things happened to me because of this company. One is that I got to learn their complete supply chain process and second, I met many fellow engineers who I can pull in other companies or start up another company.

I am officially an author now

2018-09-05T16:53:00.000+05:30

Finally, I published my first story on Amazon. The title is "Is Lal Bahadur Shastri Fine?" You can search and read it on Kindle. It is a science fiction short story. I hope you like the story.

My Author Page: Dr Mystique
Kindle Edition: Is Lal Bahadur Shastri Fine?
Paperback: Is Lal Bahadur Shastri Fine?

It felt great after publishing. It felt even better when one book was sold at Smashwords.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Updates: I have published another book through a publisher. This is science fiction as well. If you read it let me know how did you like it.
Kindle Edition: The Travellers.

Women empowerment gone wrong

2018-09-05T16:22:00.000+05:30

Policy 1: Sex ratio

Many companies have a policy of maintaining the sex ratio in the engineering teams. Most of them have separate bars while interviewing male and female candidates. The lower bar for female candidates has been pissing off male candidates for very long. The men in the office don't respect the management decision of having women with lower calibre. To decrease the displeasure among the men employees and to justify pay as per productivity, the management offers lower pay scales to women candidates. It creates discontent among the women.

If the bars are equal, the ratio decreases. Suppose, there are 80 boys and 20 girls in an engineering college and the percentage of smart ones is the same for both, say 20%. The set of selected candidates will have 16 boys and 4 girls. If the bars are different, the policies for maintaining the ratio will create unemployment among the male engineers or a shortage of women engineers in the long run.

What is the solution to this? How to create a 50-50 ratio among the engineers?

For having a 50-50 ratio in the companies, the colleges will have to select students in the same proportion. If an equal number of girls are trained to be eligible for the corporate world, then the ratio will be maintained. But it has been seen that fewer girls crack the entrance exam. So, the objective isn't achievable, unless the bar is lowered. Lowering the bar will create the same dissatisfaction in the colleges, instead of the companies. It will be a bigger problem because at least the employees in the companies are peaceful, but college students are not.

It is an old scientific myth that women are better in arts and creativity, while men are better at problem-solving. There are many great examples of female achievers in the engineering field like Gwynne Shotwell, COO of SpaceX and Priya Balasubramaniam, a VP in Apple. The training goes all the way up to the upbringing of the girls in the families. If an engineering mindset is instilled from the childhood, girls can be as competent as boys in engineering fields or even more.

Policy 2: Maternity leaves

Women have been dropping their careers after pregnancy for years to support their family and kids. It's an expectation from the women in the family as well as it's the choice a mother takes herself. This phenomenon had prevented the most of them to excel in their careers and also the companies to maintain the diversity among the employees. The Karnataka Government have passed a bill to increase the maternity leaves from 135 days to 180 days for supporting the female employees to maintain a work-life balance. This policy was adopted by the established private companies as well.

The median tenure for employees age 25 to 34 is 3.2 years. For companies, giving almost 180 days leave is an enormous loss of resources. So, the companies avoid having dependencies on the women employees and due to which the women are even more dissatisfied. This policy seems to be failing because of management enforcement.

Startups

Overall both the policies, sex ratio and maternal leaves, are creating chaos in the technology world. The startups, whose average life is three years, will surely avoid hiring a woman due to these factors unless the candidate is exceptionally skilled.

Is there no perfect solution to this problem? Please let me know if there are any.

All the measures are implemented to empower women globally. Is it mandatory to have an equal number of women in the realm of technology? Why? There are many fields where women excel a lot where men don't. I can't think of any practical reason, other than the vote bank for the Pappu.

In Bangalore, autorickshaw drivers never take a ride by the meter

2018-08-23T20:23:00.000+05:30

I have been in Bangalore for years, and I have not seen any auto driver accepting a ride by the meter. They have excuses to not obey the meter and always charge double, one and a half times of the meter or fifty rupees more. There are mainly three main excuses.

Between 10 PM and 6 AM, the reason is the night charges, which are double, saying that it's Government rule.
Between 9 AM and 1 PM or between 5 PM and 9 PM, they take more because of the heavy traffic.
Between 6 AM and 9 AM, between 1 PM and 5 PM or between 9 PM and 10 PM, they demand more saying that they have to come back empty.

  For point 1: The night charges are applicable from 10 PM to 5 AM, not 6 AM; also the night charges are 1.5x, not double.

  For point 2: Heavy traffic is a satisfactory justification, but they exploit it to extract out money from the customer's pocket, due to customer's critical obligation to reach on time.

  For point 3: This one is the shallowest and is not acceptable no matter what. These are the only time when the above two convincing excuses, night charges and the traffic, don't apply. "Coming back empty" is what they could come up with for these timings? Coming back empty, seriously? Bangalore is so abundant of human beings even at night. Every hour of the day in every corner of the city, we can find people trying to stop running auto rickshaws all the time. How can they go back empty?

  I have encountered many more excuses but could not recall momentarily.

  Please let me know in comments if you have encountered any other excuse or if you met any driver who agreed to take you by the meter.

Ensure near 100% safety towards pregnancy with condoms

2018-06-27T04:34:00.002+05:30

Since the time I started using condoms, I had a post-sex routine to ensure 100% safety towards pregnancy with condoms which also provides some empathy towards maids who clean the dustbin. I thought everyone does the same. That's why it did not seem to me, a big thing. But my wife was shocked when she saw me doing the routine. I told her it might be common. I used to see condoms thrown on the roads filled with semen. I thought they were the careless ones. I talked to few of my friends what they do after sex, everyone said they rest, then throw the condom in the dustbin and then clean up. No one mentioned anything close to what I do. I realized that condoms are supposed to be only 97% safe because of lack of this routine.

I think my routine might help many condom users, just that users should not be disgusted by their own semen.

My process goes like this:
1. I don't tear the condom wrapper completely while wearing and keep it safe.
2. After sex, I rest for some time with the condom on, go to the bathroom with the condom still on, taking the wrapper along with me.
3. Fill the condom with water to some extent and throw the water + semen in the pot. I repeat it 3-4 times ensuring the condom is clean.
4. Then I fill the condom again with water again to check for any leaks in a condom.
5. I put the condom back into the wrapper semi-sealed and throw into the dustbin. This is the part of empathy towards maids.

If there is a leak in the condom while step 3 or 4:
a. I buy an iPill as soon as possible.
b. iPill doesn't provide 100% guarantee though, but taking them asap might help in minimizing the risk.
c. I wait for the next period cycle which iPill might delay it 3-4 days.
d. If there is any further delay, I have a pregnancy test or contact a doctor.

Got an opportunity to help someone by accident

2018-06-07T14:17:00.001+05:30

Something interesting happened today.

I and Deepak were on his bike. Deepak saw a lot of 500 and 100 notes scattered on the road. He stopped immediately and dropped me to collect the notes and ran behind some bike. I quickly got down, collected all the money, also asked others who had collected some, to give it to me. Meanwhile, Deepak accelerated his bike. Deepak saw one guy was checking his pocket while riding his Scooty. Deepak chased him and asked him whether he had many 500 rupee notes. Deepak brought him back to the location and we gave all the money in front of others to him. After seeing this, people started giving money by themselves to me saying we had also looted some but after seeing a good job from me and Deepak, they also returned it to me. And we gave all the money to the right person. He had 8000 with him, though he can only find 7000.

It was extremely rare incidence.

We were coming via a different route, through DRDO, to avoid policemen and he picked me up on the way by chance and all this happened. Also, there was no plan to meet. He did not even need to pick me up and also his phone was busy when I called to inform him that I am done with the interview. Had it been I coming by cab or had there been someone else or some other biker was single on the bike, the man would not have got his money back. Initially, Deepak thought the notes were leaves and later he saw 500 printed on a leaf. That's when he realised those were notes. Luckily, Deepak's mind worked well that he dropped me immediately and ran his bike behind finding the man. Had there be no policemen on our actual way, we would not have come through DRDO. Some credit goes to the policemen as well.

We really felt awesome doing a good job today and inspiring others to do the same.

Nitin

How can we Indians use the Toilets in the West without Water?

2018-05-03T22:27:00.000+05:30

While travelling to the west, to me the main issue is not saving money, not the white people, not the long journey but the thought of going to the loo. Without using water, we Indians don't get the satisfaction that our ass is clean. I think I am not the only one who find this an issue. I want to share how I managed to shit without water.

The Jugaads/workaround we Indians can use to shit in washrooms without water?

1. Wet wipes
Carry one wet wipe (max two will be sufficient) whenever you use the washroom. Use tissue papers in the washroom first, then at last use the wet wipe.

2. Mug/Mugga
Buy a new mug in India and carry with you to wherever you are travelling. Fill water in the mug from any tap before sitting and use the water the clean your ass.

3. Tissue papers
Take 2-3 tissues from the tissue dispenser and put some water on it. At the end use the slightly wet tissue paper like the wet wipes.

4. Use bathroom
If you forget all the above in a hurry, don't panic. Use the dry tissues in the tissue dispenser to clean your ass like they do or spit on it. I know you won't get satisfaction.

If the bathroom is attached, remove your underwear and pants, carry your ass to the bathroom and use shower as hand shower if possible or put your ass below the tap.

If the bathroom is not attached, put few tissues in your underwear like diapers and come out. Use a bathroom when you find any.

I hope someone finds them helpful. Many of these methods I have used during week-long treks.

Thank you for existing

2018-02-27T12:49:00.001+05:30

Today I was feeling very low. I wanted to talk to someone. I could recollect only one person, an old friend Rohit Singh. I didn't have his number. So I took it from another friend and called him.

Rohit did not have my number. I said, "I am Deepak. Deepak Mishra."

He said, "Oh hi how are you?" But in his voice, I can figure out the curiosity of why I have called him after so long.

I asked, "Do you know Biswa Kalyan Rath?" He said yes.

I asked, "Do you know the part where he says 'har Hiroshima ka ek Nagasaki hota hai' (for every Hiroshima there is a Nagasaki).

He understood why I called him.

He laughed at being called a Nagasaki.

I said, "Thank you for existing" and we had a long laugh.

Dragon Ball Series is so monotonous

2018-02-21T01:57:00.003+05:30

Dragon Ball Super series is going on and it just proved that the series will continue to do the same that it had been doing since Dragon Ball Z.

In the tournament of power, Vegeta just got eliminated and Goku has become stronger than Jiren.

What the fuck.

First Vegeta fails and then Goku wraps up or shines.

Frieza Saga, Cell Saga, Buu Saga, Universe 6 Saga (against Hit), now in the Tournament of Power too.

So fucking monotonous.

If Akira Toriyama can think of so many good villains and plots, why can't he think of a different ending? Dumb Fuck.

There were so many good options in the ToP. Only Vegeta and Frieza are shown to be having a wish to the super dragon balls and also all the other universes hated Goku. Goku should have been eliminated before Piccolo and rest of the team could have taken from there. Vegeta and Frieza could have been the last two people left with Jiren at the end of 48 minutes. Jiren need not be overpowered in the ToP but his universe could lose by count keeping the strongest one the strongest till the end.

Or Vegeta, Goku, and Frieza all 3 could have stayed with Jiren till the end. Jiren losing by timeout and not by being overpowered.

Now Goku and Frieza will finish the same and Frieza can make a wish leading to a different arc.

The different arc is fine but Goku finishing the task, where Vegeta failed, has become so monotonous.

Vegeta trained several times in hyperbolic time chamber but Goku overtakes him every time without much training. It doesn't even make sense.

Vegeta hardly gets to shine over Goku.

Akira fucking Toriyama does hate Vegeta.

Pujo Fever

2017-09-29T22:05:00.000+05:30

Today Navratri Festival Celebration is creating inconvenience in commute for everyone. Just a few kilometers in Koramangala took about half an hour. Both sides of the road were Garba Dandiya events or shows.

Hundreds of cars were parked on either side of the road blocking almost half of the Ganapathi Temple road. People coming for the events were parking their cars slowly blocking the remaining half of the road. Ladies were getting down from autos and cabs very carefully trying not to spoil the fitting and pinning of their sarees and dresses. Many careless girls were adjusting sarees in the middle of the road. There were police everywhere for the security of the ladies in the events from the loafers who came for some eye-candy. Many Jaanbaaz heroes were dancing on the streets here and there ignoring the traffic and trouble they were causing. Many selfish drivers were driving recklessly, even on the other side of the road, as if they are the only one on the road and they are the only one whose time is important, jamming 15-20 other cars for minutes just to save their few seconds. This road was a nightmare for the buses. They couldn't move an inch in this chaotic narrow lane.

Everyone was honking and honking with a legendary common belief that the traffic moves faster when you are honking. The noise of the events was overshadowed by the noise of the traffic. Still, our problems were not enough. Lord Indra himself put the icing on the cake with continuous rainfall all evening causing the water logging on the road. Vehicles were splashing water on the cool people celebrating their festival.

Even though I was a victim of the traffic, I was feeling pity for the ones everyone hates. Poor traffic police.

By the time I came out of the event area and stopped at the signal, I was already feeling feverish. Pujo Fever.

Dragon Ball Z Buu Saga

2017-09-19T16:23:00.000+05:30

I may be behind time. But after having some illogical arguments with a friend regarding Buu Saga, I watched DBZ Buu Saga for the 5th time and came up with my ranking of strengths of fighters. All other saga where pretty clear, only Buu Saga is complicated. Here goes my analysis.

1. Kid Buu was always toying with everyone till he saw the spirit bomb.
2. Super Buu was warming up with Gotenks for Gohan.
3. Goku was stronger than Fat Buu fresh out of ball, but he wasn't at the same ease with Kid Buu.
4. When Gotenks timed out inside Buu, Goku told Gohan no need to fuse and turned to base form, means Gohan could fight Buu by himself. That time Buu with Piccolo and 2 Super Saiyan kids should be slightly stronger than Super Buu. This means Gohan might have taken down Super Buu, more easily than Goku or may be Goku couldn't.
5. Buu with Gotenks or Gohan made Goku run for fusion means he had no chance and so was Gohan when Gotenks was absorbed.
6. Going with talks and calculations, this can't be ranked. For example, Goku stating Buu is twice strong as before. But before what. Buu with Gohan or Buu with Gotenks, obviously not. He would not have had an equal fight with Kid Buu at all. He would have ran for fusion again. May be he meant twice stronger than initial Fat Buu he fought earlier.
7. Gohan was not transferred to Supreme Kai planet to fight with Goku and Vegeta. Means Kid Buu can be stronger than Gohan.
8. Buu can sense Gohan's power increasing from Supreme Kai planet but did not cared of Goku there, means Goku's power was way lesser than Gohan.

Here goes my ranking in Buu Saga
Vegito
Buuhan
Buutenks
Kid Buu
Mystic Gohan
Buuccolo
Super Buu
Gotenks/Goku (can not be determined)
Fat Buu out from ball
Evil Buu
Vegeta/Good Fat Buu (can not be determined)

DBZ if time machine was not invented

2017-09-19T16:19:00.001+05:30

In DBZ, if the time machine would not have been invented, it would not have been like future Trunks world because Androids were different in both the worlds. In current DBZ world, they are stronger but comparatively less violent. So here it goes.

1. Trunks would not have come to kill Frieza
2. Goku would have used instant transmission to come and kill Frieza

3. Z-fighters would not be rigorously training for Androids but Vegeta would have
4. Goku would have died of the virus with Dr. Gero unaware of that
5. Vegeta would have been equally strong

6. Vegeta would have defeated Android 19 (exactly same)
7. Piccolo would not have been confident about defeating Android 20
8. Vegeta would have defeated Android 20 as well
9. Somehow if Android 16, 17 and 18 would have got unlocked then check that out
10. They would have defeated Z-fighters first time but not kill them
11. Then Piccolo would have merged with Kami
12. Vegeta would have used hyperbolic time chamber with Gohan, but would not have trained like Goku did because Vegeta trains alone
13. Vegeta would have come out equally strong but not Gohan
14. Gohan would have hardly become a Super Saiyan
15. Vegeta and Piccolo would have killed the Androids

16. Cell would not have come to this world via time machine
17. Krillin would not have married Android 18
18. Goten would not have been born

19. Imperfect Cell would have been easily defeated by Vegeta

20. Buu Saga changes completely as Gohan would have been too weak; also Goku would have been weaker too as he did not use time chamber and probably not Super Saiyan 3
21. Goku would have come to the World Martial Arts Tournament (same)
22. Gohan would not have fought Dabura
23. Vegeta would have killed Dabura
24. Due to Vegeta's curiosity, Buu would have any way revived

25. Goku and Vegeta would have fought together without Vegeta getting killed
26. Goku and Vegeta would have run away to Supreme Kai's planet by instant transmission
27. Goku would have taught Vegeta the fusion and also would have tried the Z-sword
28. Older Supreme Kai would have unlocked hidden powers of Gohan (same), but this will be of no use as fusion of Goku and Vegeta would have been easier and sooner; also Older Supreme Kai might not have unlocked Gohan's power because Gohan would not have removed the Z-sword
29. No use of earring fusion as its permanent
30. Mystic Gohan would not have entered the fight

31. No Buutenks or Buuhan
32. Piccolo would not have entered the time chamber and would have become chocolate

33. Vegito would have been born
34. Vegito would have fought with the Super Buu, much weaker than Buuhan was
35. Vegito would not have needed to go inside Buu to get Piccolo, Gohan, Trunks, and Goten out
36. Vegito would have been much stronger than Super Buu and would have killed Super Buu with ease in earth itself

37. Dragon Ball GT will remain more or less same because Gohan will get stronger as he was in GT by unlocking hidden powers
38. Good Buu would not have been there
39. Goku would not have been stronger than Vegeta

13 Balls Problem

2017-09-19T16:17:00.001+05:30

Problem

You have 13 balls identical in size and appearance but 1 is an odd weight (could be either lighter or heavier).

You have a balance to compare the weights on the two sides.

You have only 3 chances to weigh the balls in any combination using the balance. Determine which ball is the odd one and if it's heavier or lighter than the rest. How do you do it? There is an exception in the problem. Find that as well.

Solution

Divide the balls into 3 groups having 4 balls each and one loner
A1, A2, A3, A4
B1, B2, B3, B4
C1, C2, C3, C4
D1

Comparison 1
compare(A1+A2+A3+A4 in left and B1+B2+B3+B4 in right)

If they don't balance, name the side which is heavier as A1, A2, A3, A4 and the side which is lighter as B1, B2, B3, B4

Comparision 2
compare(A1+A2+C1 and A3+A4+B1)

If left is heavier means either A1 or A2 is the heavier ball or B1 is the lighter ball

   Comparison 3
   compare(A1 and A2)
   If they balance then B1 is the odd ball and lighter
   Else the heavier of A1 and A2 is the odd ball and heavier

If right is heavier means A3 or A4 is the heavier ball

   Comparison 3
   compare(A3 and A4)
   The heavier of A3 and A4 is the odd ball and heavier

If they balance means either of B2, B3, B4 is odd ball and lighter

   Comparison 3
   compare(B2 and B3)
   If they balance then B4 is the odd ball and lighter
   Else the lighter of B2 and B3 is the odd ball and lighter

If they balance means the odd weight is among C1, C2, C3, C4 or D1

Comparison 2
compare(A1+A2+A3 and C1+C2+C3)

    If left is heavier means either of C1, C2, C3 is lighter

   Comparison 3
   compare(C1 and C2)
   If they balance means C3 is the odd ball and lighter
   Else the one which is lighter of C1 and C2 is odd ball and lighter

If right is heavier means either of C1, C2, C3 is heavier

   Comparison 3
   compare(C1 and C2)
   If they balance means C3 is the odd ball and heavier
   Else the one which is heavier of C1 and C2 is odd ball and heavier

If they balance means C4 or D1 is the odd ball

   Comparison 3
   compare(A1 and C4)
   If they don't balance means C4 is the odd ball and heavier or lighter

Else D1 is the odd ball (Exception: we can't find whether it is heavier or lighter in 3 comparisons)

Explanation for Exception
13 Balls Problem is exactly like 12 Balls Problem.

In 12 Balls Problem, if C4 is odd, we know after comparison 2 that C4 is odd. But compare it just to know whether it is lighter or heavier. We know its not going to balance.
In 13 Balls problem, C4 can balance if D1 is odd. But if it balance, we don't know whether D1 is heavier or lighter because D1 was never on the balance in the 3 comparisons. For this case (1/13th probability), we would require 1 more comparison to find whether D1 is heavier or lighter.

If the problem is minimum number of comparisons just for finding the odd ball, the answer is 3 comparisons.
But if the problem is minimum number of comparisons for finding the odd ball and also whether it is heavier or lighter, answer will be 4 comparisons.

12 Balls Problem

2017-09-19T16:16:00.002+05:30

Problem

You have 12 balls identical in size and appearance but 1 is an odd weight (could be either lighter or heavier).

You have a balance to compare the weights on the two sides.

You have only 3 chances to weigh the balls in any combination using the balance. Determine which ball is the odd one and if it's heavier or lighter than the rest. How do you do it?

Solution

Divide the balls into 3 groups of 4 balls each and name them as
A1, A2, A3, A4
B1, B2, B3, B4
C1, C2, C3, C4

Comparison 1
compare(A1+A2+A3+A4 in left and B1+B2+B3+B4 in right)

If they don't balance, name the side which is heavier as A1, A2, A3, A4 and the side which is lighter as B1, B2, B3, B4

Comparision 2
compare(A1+A2+C1 and A3+A4+B1)

If left is heavier means either A1 or A2 is the heavier ball or B1 is the lighter ball

   Comparison 3
   compare(A1 and A2)
   If they balance then B1 is the odd ball and lighter
   Else the heavier of A1 and A2 is the odd ball and heavier

If right is heavier means A3 or A4 is the heavier ball

   Comparison 3
   compare(A3 and A4)
   The heavier of A3 and A4 is the odd ball and heavier

If they balance means either of B2, B3, B4 is odd ball and lighter

   Comparison 3
   compare(B2 and B3)
   If they balance then B4 is the odd ball and lighter
   Else the lighter of B2 and B3 is the odd ball and lighter

If they balance means the odd weight is among C1, C2, C3, C4

Comparison 2
compare(A1+A2+A3 and C1+C2+C3)

    If left is heavier means either of C1, C2, C3 is lighter

   Comparison 3
   compare(C1 and C2)
   If they balance means C3 is the odd ball and lighter
   Else the one which is lighter of C1 and C2 is odd ball and lighter

If right is heavier means either of C1, C2, C3 is heavier

   Comparison 3
   compare(C1 and C2)
   If they balance means C3 is the odd ball and heavier
   Else the one which is heavier of C1 and C2 is odd ball and heavier

If they balance means C4 is the odd ball

   Comparison 3
   compare(A1 and C4) and you will know it is heavier or lighter.
   They won't balance because if they balance, none of the balls will be odd.

Configure Dongle in Mac

2017-09-19T16:14:00.000+05:30

Insert your Dongle
Go to Network Preferences from WiFi icon or from System Preferences and then Network
Click on Add or plus symbol (+) to open Create Interface Popup
Select Interface as HUAWEIMobile- and give a Service Name like 3G Dongle and click Create
Select Configuration as Default and set Telephone Number as *99#
Click on Advanced to open Advanced Options
In Modem tab, select Vendor as Generic, Model as GPRS (GSM/3G) and set APN as www
In DNS tab, add 2 DNS Servers, by clicking on plus (+) and putting the IP address and Enter, one by one, 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4
Click Ok and then Apply and then Connect
Now WAIT till you see Sent signal green, Received signal green and IP Address set
Now you are connected; do whatever you want
After configuring once, whenever you want to connect, just insert the Dongle, go to Network Preferences, select the service and click Connect

Courtesy: Pranav Rao

If this blog page doesn't help, try Elitmus

Lean Startup Machine

2017-09-19T16:13:00.000+05:30

Lean Start-up Machine Gurgaon Workshop: My friend told me about it. He registered for it in 3000 rupees but I registered late so had to pay 5500. We reached the venue on time. It was Friday. The complete building was vacant. There was no sign of any human population anywhere. There were no doors to enter. Somehow we found out a back door, which turned out to be the main entrance. The fifth floor office or the top floor was pipe-lined over it. The LSM guys might have got the complete floor at a very cheap price. If we don't see the pipe-line above, to avoid horror of the hanging corpse, the floor was very pretty. May be the pipe-lining was to create the ambiance of construction building. The floor had a reception, 2 egg shaped swing chairs, nice soft sofa, telephone booth like cabin with bean bag in it, many rooms, cafeteria and someone had decorated his tables so well with pictures and transformer toys that it added to the beauty of the floor.
There were around 35 people for the workshop. I and my friend was one of the most introvert among them. Other than me, all were good speakers. Some were lawyers, some were in sales, some were in marketing, some were freshers, some this some that and we were techies. They introduced themselves well and provided a nice pitch of their idea. We voted on ideas and top ideas were selected. The first evening went pretty smooth.
Next morning started with a breakfast of mendu vada. They were so hard to chew that you can kill someone by throwing it on him. Then we formed teams. I and my friend separated. I was in a group of 5. I dropped my idea and joined into someone else's idea. After that we had to bear, I mean hear, lectures so-called guidance from entrepreneurs and lean start-up practitioners. Then there was out of the building session. We were made to go out and talk to people. We were trying to contact people on phone to schedule meetings because it did not made any sense in our case as our was B2B idea. We went out to a restaurant, had ice tea and garlic bread. When waiter came to us with a tablet for feedback, it stuck to us to use the restaurant as our customer in B2B idea, though the franchise restaurant manager had no power to decide, we took our chance. Manager came and we had a half an hour talk with video on a mobile. Then we continued the same in a bar and came back. But idea was invalidated in this case of restaurant, but was a nice experience. Then few more lectures, then dinner and back home.
The third day after breakfast, we had to go out of the building. One of our team mate was sick. So we decided instead of wasting time in going out, let's only 2 of us go out and other 2 stay and make presentation. 2 of us went to saloons and spas this time. You might be wondering why we choose restaurant and spas; it's because on weekend nothing else is open and owners of these places are there in the shops as well. The guy with me was a sales guy. Right from the childhood his parents knew he was a sales guy, so they named him Mani. We went to around 15 saloons and spas, got pictures with 2 of them and the guy Mani even convinced them to buy the product when it's in market. He was so good in convincing people. We were back and presentation was ready. The idea owner and Mani decided to speak. Mani was a good speaker but he had stage fright. But he did well. Still we lost. A simple idea won. Somebody had rightly said, simplicity has lot of power.

SIMPLICITY ME ADBHUD SHAKTI HAI

While going everybody met everybody taking phone number making contacts. Yes that was the things people actually came for, for contacts of start-up enthusiasts. The judges gave suggestions to each of the idea owners. At the end the volunteers asked a lawyer about feedback and the lawyer so happily amused him with an answer, everyone had kept in mind. The lawyer said.

The people we met were good and ambitious, but the place we met is pathetic. No one helped in searching the venue. Building looked haunted. Lift were not working. Some registered at 1000 some at 5000. Volunteers themselves were not on time. They did not knew what to do. Breakfast was horrible. Speakers were late. We did not get time to meet them. There were too much disturbance. Not much learning.

And he went on and on for more than 2 minutes till the volunteers and others who were hearing died of laughter.
Now comes what I learnt from the workshop.

The only thing I learnt from the workshop is that starting up a business is not so difficult how much I thought it was, if the silly ideas of the speakers could work, it isn't so difficult.

NoSQL screwing up

2017-09-19T16:12:00.000+05:30

This post is regarding my current (previous in case I quit before you see this) company. The company has been using RDBMS since years, which is trusted. Architects here started using Couchbase just because NoSQL gives options to scale big time. But the user permissions of each control is in RDBMS, which is pulled while Login and saved in access token in Couchbase. Another problem arise that the admins can grant and revoke permissions of any user or user group on any content or any specific collection of contents, let's call it document X. To use triggers there were about 25 tables which were needed to be applied. Syncing with RDBMS for every query was a big problem. They decided to keep a copy of the permissions into Couchbase and sync only the permission documents. It was also too much effort to sync using the triggers or a scheduled job. This was the most unfeasible option to take, when the database structure is already too big. Let's see other architectural decisions which were made.
  The document X in Couchbase is very big. Each of such document contains multiple user and multiple content, duplicated in each. Though there is no problem with duplicate, the architects decided to break it down into several small documents. User document and Content document were pulled out and Mapping documents of 3 types were made. Mapping between User and Content, X and User, X and Content. But Couchbase doesn't support join. NoSQLs are actually not meant to support join. I made many views to get the data. But that multiplied the interactions with Couchbase 3 times.
  So to replace the use of views, architect decided to use another data-source, to which we will come back. If Couchbase is just used for querying using keys, then why do we need Couchbase. Can't we directly use Memcache? Couchbase internally uses pool of Memcache. But no, the architects want to keep the NoSQL scaling option open. Then to solve our problem of architects introduced Elastic Search.
  I strongly opposed the use of Elastic Search. If there is no future requirement that there ever will be search on this project, then using the Elastic Search for id search is an under-utilization. Keeping the big document X in the Elastic Search, indexing only the ids and retrieving only the required document fields. But id search is hardly 5% utilization of the Elastic Search. The option is still under consideration because of the confident opposition and also addition of third layer in the system for a single project is not preferred. Though in the future the other projects of the company can use the same documents, the addition of third layer and problem in syncing the three data-sources is a big headache.
  Now coming to the point. In Couchbase, if we don't use views in Couchbase, Couchbase is useless. It just a cache then. And even if we are going to put many different type of document in Couchbase, views made for one type of document will be applied to all types of documents. Its preferable not to use more than 10 views on each bucket. This make the Couchbase too restricted. Also as views work well only if the documents are not added or modified frequently, else it needs to update the views for the document and the cache of the stale data.
  The same goes with most of the NoSQLs. NoSQLs are not meant to support relational capabilities. May be I am thinking too narrow. But instead of developing NoSQL to have relational capabilities, its better to develop RDBMS to have speed and scaling capabilities. It can also have option of less structured data model, something like column family in Cassandra. It can also have Solr or Elastic Search like indexing, to support text search as well.

Time Travel Paradox

2017-09-19T16:11:00.001+05:30

Scene

A policeman Jack in uniform came to a beach for an investigation. He was searching for some clues in a murder case. After an hour, he got very tired and impatient. When he was about to leave the beach, he heard a whoosh behind him. He subconsciously ignored due to tiredness. Immediately after the sound, there was a constant buzzing sound and noticeable vibration in air. Jack turned in surprised. A strange looking black car appeared out of nowhere. He had no idea what type of car was that with a very big fuel tank. He became skeptical about it. So he removed the pistol and got ready for action.

The door opened and an injured man X in police uniform came out. His face was too bloodied to recognize. Jack ran toward him to help, as X too was in police uniform. But he maintained pistol in his hand to avoid any risk. X got frightened and ran away from him. X being policeman too, tired as well as careful, with hoarse voice shouted at him.

X removed his pistol and shot Jack. Not once but twice, one on his face and other on his left arm. X seems to have no intention to leave Jack alive, so he shoots few more. But Jack runs and escapes and takes refuge behind a rock. Bullets in X’s pistol finishes. Taking advantage Jack came out and shoots X on his chest. X dies on the spot.

Jack himself losing lot of blood and started feeling unconscious. He couldn't even go to his own car parked outside the beach on the road. He saw X’s car and decided to use it to go to the nearest hospital. The functions of car were totally strange. He pressed anything, any button he saw, to start the car. The engine started but the car didn't move. He tried for more than a minute. When nothing worked, as he was losing blood, he got impatient and he got out of the car.

When Jack got out of the car, he unconsciously saw a man in police uniform in front of him. He was shocked to see X back to his feet. X was coming towards him. Jack shouted at X and removed the pistol but due to his physical state, he was not able to aim at him.

Jack randomly shot at him twice, one on his face and other on his left arm. He shoots few more but X runs and escapes and takes refuge behind a rock. Bullets in his pistol finishes. Taking advantage X came out and shoots Jack on his chest. Jack dies on the spot.

Explanation

The car, in which X came, was a Time Machine and X was Jack’s older self (15 minutes older) who came from the future in the Time Machine.

When Jack got injured and killed his older self X and went in the Time Machine, pressed buttons in attempt to start the car, he went in the past (15 minutes in past) and himself became X for the younger Jack (15 minutes younger).

THE TIME LINE NEVER CHANGED AND STAYED IN EQUILIBRIUM IN SPITE OF TIME TRAVELLING.

For People

The body of Jack was found on the beach and no signs of the murderer. But, the body found was of X, the older Jack who came from the future.

People will notice that Jack is shot thrice with his own pistol and his own bullets. But X is shot twice in future and just once at present by Jack.

TIME MACHINE WAS NEVER INVENTED AND ALSO NEVER DISCOVERED BUT STILL IT WAS USED. Even if the time machine was invented, how did it come into this loop system in equilibrium? BOOTSTRAP PARADOX.

Arguable Flaws

There were 2 Jack’s at the same time (in those 15 minutes).

When X came from the future, the mass of the Universe increased by the mass equal to X’s Mass and when Jack went to the past, the mass of the Universe decreased by the mass equal to Jack’s Mass and regained its earlier state, because Jack is almost equal to X in every respect.

Theory doesn't explain the theory by third person point of view. Because for the third person (if any i.e. any other point of reference), X in time machine appeared and Jack in time machine disappeared.

If carbon dating is performed on Jack’s body before the incident and on Jack’s dead body, it can be found out that the body is older (by 15 minutes) than it should be.

Also for the people, Mr. Nobody killed Jack.

It seems the Time is in equilibrium, but it is not. The Time Machine which is used continuously is same all the time. What will happen if fuel in the Time Machine is finished? The loop will change for sure.

If fuel is decreasing, then with what amount of fuel would it have started? Infinite? When will the fuel end? Then what?

This makes the time machine independent of fuel. How?

No Change of state of Universe (other than those 15 minutes)

Only one (dead) Jack left in time line later, one who came from the future. Real Jack went in the past.

Also Time Machine came from the future and went to the past. So it wasn't found either.

Jack going in the past doesn't change the time line because he did the same in the past that X (Jack who came from the future) did.

The total mass of the Universe is regained as X came from the future and Jack went to the past and because Jack is almost equal to X in every respect.

Even the number of bullets and pistol in the time becomes same after 15 minutes.

The instant change in Mass of Universe

Going in the chronological order, when X appear in the present from the future, (forget about the future) the Mass of the Universe instantly increases by mass of X.

For conservation of mass and considering Einstein’s Mass-Energy equation E = M * c^2, it is possible that at that time, equal amount of energy in the time is decreased or equal amount of negative energy is generated by the time-shift.

And when Jack goes to the past, the mass of the Universe is decreased instantly by Jack’s mass.

It is possible that negative mass is generated and so equal amount of positive energy is generated to conserve the negative mass.

Or when X or Jack traveled in time from one time to another, the amount of energy equal to mass from the time where they appeared was transferred to the time from where they disappeared.

Game of Thrones Warriors

2017-09-19T16:08:00.003+05:30

I have seen many of Game of Thrones fans who desperately and childishly compare the characters of Game of Thrones to know who will win if X and Y have a fight. This grew with every one-on-one fights.

Ned Stark vs. Jaime Lannister (Season 1)

The Hound vs. The Mountain (Season 1)

Jaime Lannister vs. Brienne of Tarth (Season 3)

Prince Oberyn vs. The Mountain (Season 4)

Brienne vs. The Hound (Season 4)

The winner in each of these fights can not be determined due to circumstances and fitness level.

Ned Stark vs. Jaime Lannister - Ned Stark had become old and fat, certainly not at his best

The Hound vs. The Mountain - Hound was protecting Loras as well as he was aware of presence of the king

Jaime Lannister vs. Brienne - Jaime was chained

Red Viper vs. The Mountain - Red Viper was emotional

Brienne vs. The Hound - Hound was biten by Biter, which began to fester due to Hound's fear of cauterizing with fire.

We fans can deduce the better of Red Viper vs The Mountain. Prince Oberyn was clearly better than Mountain. He was just too emotional to avenge his sister's death.

Let's list down all the good warriors, mentioned in the series, worth listing down

Ned Stark
Jaime Lannister
Khal Drogo
Robert Baratheon
Jorah Mormant
Sandor Clegane - The Hound
Gregor Clegane - The Mountain
Daario Naharis
Loras Tyrell
Jaqen H'ghar
Syrio Forel
Brienne
Oberyn Martell
Rhaegar Targerean
Arthur Dayne
Barristan Selmy
Brandon Stark - Ned's elder brother

Let's analyse now.

Rhaegar Targerean defeated Arthor Dayne (competitive), Barristan Selmy and Brandon Stark in Tourney of Harranhal.
Barristan Selmy considers Arthor Dayne over himself.
Ned Stark was certainly not better than his brother, as the best of the house participated in Tourney.
Ned Stark defeated Arthor Dayne outnumbering him 7 to 3, so that doesn't count.
Ned Stark mentioned Arthor Dayne would have killed him if not for Howland Reed.
Robert Baratheon killed Rhaegar Targarean (2 cousins fighting over Lyanna Stark).

That makes

Robert Baratheon
Rhaegar Targarean
Arthor Dayne
Brandon Stark/Barriston Selmy
Ned Stark

Jaime Lannister mentions to Brienne that there are only 3 warriors who have chances to defeat him. Those 3 were The Mountain, Barriston Selmy, Loras Tyrell (or The Hound).
Jaime also mentions before Red Viper vs The Mountain that if he had both of his hand, he might have had chances to kill Mountain.
That makes Mountain over Jaime.
Hound and Mountain are alike in combats, probably Mountain is superior.
Brienne defeated Jaime and Hound both in one-on-one combat, under circumstances. But the two combats at least makes Brienne equal.
Brienne defeated Loras Tyrell fair and square without any circumstance advantage.
Red Viper would have defeated The Mountain.

Jaime and Ned Stark had a fight without result.
Hound and Mountain was also without result.

That makes

Oberyn Martell/Barristan Selmy
The Mountain/Barriston Selmy
The Hound/Jaime Lannister/Brienne
Ned Stark
Loras Tyrell

Khal Drogo, Jorah Mormont, Daario Naharis, Jaqen H'ghar and Syrio Forel have been in many fights, but not with the warriors we are ranking.
Khal Drogo can be named superior as he never lost, he was too strong and too agile for his size as well.
Rest are not known to be great fighters, though we haven't seen them lose. So lets keep them last.

Here goes my final ranking, though I am no expert.

Robert Baratheon/Khal Drogo
Rhaegar Targarean
Arthur Dayne
Barristan Selmy/Brandon Stark
Oberyn Martell
The Mountain
The Hound/Jaime Lannister/Brienne
Ned Stark
Jorah Mormont
Loras Tyrell
Daario Naharis/Syrio Forel/Jaqen H'ghar

Caterpillar Uneaten Leaves Problem – HackerEarth Interview Question

2017-09-19T16:05:00.000+05:30

QUESTION DESCRIPTION

K caterpillars are eating their way through N leaves. Each caterpillar falls from leaf to leaf in a unique sequence. All caterpillars start at a twig in position 0 and fall onto the leaves at positions between 1 and N. Each caterpillar i has an associated ‘jump-number’ j. A caterpillar with jump number j eats leaves at positions that are multiples of j. It will proceed in the order j, 2j, 3j, … till it reaches the end of the leaves, then it stops and builds its cocoon.

Given a set A of K elements, K ≤ 15, N ≤ 10^9, N >> K, we need to determine the number of uneaten leaves.

Input Format:
N = number of leaves
K = number of caterpillars
A = Array of integer jump numbers (one per line).

Output Format:
An integer denoting the number of uneaten leaves.

Sample Input:
10
3
2
4
5

Sample Output:
4

Explanation

[2,4,5] is the 3-member set of jump numbers. All leaves which are multiples of 2, 4, and 5 are eaten. Leaves 1,3,7,9 are left, and so the output 4.

Below is the working java code for this problem. The code seems self-explanatory, but the algorithm may be not. But for any explanation, comment below.

Note: As it is clearly mentioned that N >> K, this means the order can't be O(N). The order of my algorithm is O(2^K), which is still high but acceptable to HackerEarth.

Sudesh Lehri - A True Entertainer

2017-09-19T16:02:00.000+05:30

A comedian should always be a sport. Making fun of someone else is easy, but one who can make fun of himself to make others laugh is a true comedian.

I have always been a big fan of Sudesh Lehri, since he was in Laughter Challenge. When I heard him for the first time in Laughter Challenge, he said while standup that his sister-in-law praised him that when she listens to his standup comedy, she feels she is listening to a spiritual preaching (satsung). It was a literally an ROFL for me.

I loved him in Comedy Circus even more. He did everything he can for the sake of entertainment.

He created a fake character of his characterless wife Billo. He took slaps from a 15-years younger partner Krushna. Even he promoted his partner Krushna over himself when he felt Krushna's dialogue delivery is better than him. For promoting others he even degraded himself by getting called Sudya. Many times I pitied even him for that. And I hate Krushna and the writers for that.

Sudesh Lehri openly agreed his rival Kapil Sharma is a better comedian than him, though as a part of an act or maybe even behind the scenes. Actually by all kinds of numbers that is true. Be it the number of fans, bank balance, projects in the queue, public demand, etc. But I hate Kapil for many reasons.

Sudesh Lehri made fun of himself for not knowing English. In one act where he was portraying Sohail Khan, when everyone was laughing at some joke he said and he wanted everyone to listen to his next line, he said to the audience, "Listen Listen Listen". But one girl continued to talk, he said, "Hey you lisni", as if "lisni" is the female version of "listen". I died of laughter due to that.

The humble nature of Sudesh makes me like him the most. I don't know how innocent he is in real life but he looks so innocent onscreen. That's why he was once called Bholi Soorat Ajuba Sudesh.

That humble nature and also his jovial nature have helped him grab the roles he got in Bollywood in films like Ready, Jai Ho and Great Grand Masti. Other comedians are only seen making fun of others, but Sudesh Lehri is seen making fun of himself most of the time. Apart from being a comedian, he was a very good singer, musician and mimic too.

I always think Sudesh Lehri never got the recognition and adulation that he deserves. All other comedians and the peers, who worked with him, did. His performance, sincerity and hard work always get overshadowed and overlooked. Sometimes Krushna and sometimes writers took all the appreciations.

Solr Group Truncate vs Collapse

2017-09-19T16:00:00.002+05:30

Few months ago, I was working with an eCommerce company. Its products had different sellers with different prices of each seller. We called product data with seller data and price together as an offer. In document structure, we maintained document for offer and duplicated products data into offer document. For example

There are 2 offers for product p1

o11 having selling price Rs. 10

o12 having selling price Rs. 9

There are 2 offers for product p2

o21 having selling price Rs. 8

o22 having selling price Rs. 12

Below are 4 offer documents.

{ offerId: o11, productId: p1, price: 10 }

{ offerId: o12, productId: p1, price: 9 }

{ offerId: o21, productId: p2, price: 8 }

{ offerId: o22, productId: p2, price: 12 }

Solr did not had facility to Store offers as a child documents of a product document that time. We had to duplicate the product data into offer data. To query product we grouped the offers with the productId, sorted by price asc and truncated into one document; signifying lowest selling price offer as product. We faced several performance issues with these group queries. Check apache wiki to know in detail about field collapsing using group.

For example, displaying products with lowest price, we applied the following query and obtained following offers with lowest prices of products.

group=true&group.sort=price asc&group.field=productId&group.truncate=true&sort=popularity asc

{ offerId: o12, productId: p1, price: 9 }

{ offerId: o21, productId: p2, price: 8 }

This type of queries were very slow because Solr performs operations in following steps.

1. filter

2. sort

3. group

4. group sort

5. group truncate

Not considering O(n) time operations in filtering. Sorting takes O(n log n) time,

Then group takes O(n) and group sort takes O(n log m) time, where m is average group size or average number of offers per product

Overall O(n log n) . When number of documents is high, the grouping operation takes hell lot of time.

We compromised with the low performance of grouping using caching of results. But there was always a small problem and a known bug.

If user applied a desc sort on price, we needed to show him lowest offer price with product but the lowest price sorted in desc order. Consider the same 4 offer documents, what will be the output?

group=true&group.sort=price asc&group.field=productId&group.truncate=true&sort=price desc

Expected

{ offerId: o12, productId: p1, price: 9 }

{ offerId: o21, productId: p2, price: 8 }

Actual

{ offerId: o21, productId: p2, price: 8 }

{ offerId: o12, productId: p1, price: 9 }

Now let's analyse why did it happen step by step?

0. Document

{ offerId: o11, productId: p1, price: 10 }

{ offerId: o12, productId: p1, price: 9 }

{ offerId: o21, productId: p2, price: 8 }

{ offerId: o22, productId: p2, price: 12 }

1. filter -- ignore O(n)

2. sort -- O(n log n)

{ offerId: o22, productId: p2, price: 12 }

{ offerId: o11, productId: p1, price: 10 }

{ offerId: o12, productId: p1, price: 9 }

{ offerId: o21, productId: p2, price: 8 }

3. group -- O(n)

[{ offerId: o22, productId: p2, price: 12 },{ offerId: o21, productId: p2, price: 8 }]

[{ offerId: o11, productId: p1, price: 10 }.{ offerId: o12, productId: p1, price: 9 }]

4. group sort -- O(n log m)

[{ offerId: o21, productId: p2, price: 8 },{ offerId: o22, productId: p2, price: 12 }]

[{ offerId: o12, productId: p1, price: 9 },{ offerId: o11, productId: p1, price: 10 }]

5. group truncate -- O(n/m)

{ offerId: o21, productId: p2, price: 8 }

{ offerId: o12, productId: p1, price: 9 }

So the output were not in desc order in cases where seller price differ a lot.

It took a lot of effort to optimize performance by caching results and caching various parts of results and optimizing several small codes. Because of this debugging got difficult. Inserted logs and included several logging mechanisms. But code got messy and looked dirty. Solr 4.1 got a feature block indexing in which a document can have child documents. We researched on it but it did not work for us.

At the end, the company consulted Solr consultants, even who couldn't help us themselves because there was no option in Solr for solve our problems. But they connected to Solr committers and got a patch containing a collapse parser written for this slow group response case. This parser gave us more than 3-4 times faster results. Few of our heavy queries which took around 19 seconds came down to 900 ms. You can't measure speed on numbers because this depends on the number of documents (memory and CPU) and specifically average number of documents in a group (m). We will be verifying this as well. This parser actually solved our other problem of the known bug as well. The new parser itself had several smaller bugs, which step by step got resolved. Along with the consultants, even I started discussing with the committers the collapse parser behavior in Jira and debugging Solr code as well.

Check apache wiki to know in detail about field collapsing using collapse and you can go through expanding results as well.

Let me show you how this parser works.

Group query

group=true&group.sort=price asc&group.field=productId&group.truncate=true&sort=popularity asc

Transformed Collapse query

fq={!collapse field="productId" min="price"}

collapse is equivalent to group.truncate

field is equivalent to group.field

min is equivalent to group.sort

If everything is equivalent, how can it give high performance and faster results?

Let's leave the internal implementation for now and do the logical analysis. The parser is applied as a filter query instead of group.

The time complexity for filtering is O(n)

Then for sorting, but sorting will be applied on n/m documents and not all n documents, so sorting will be of order O(n/m log n). Overall O(n/m log n) .

This is why I said the overall time complexity depends specifically on average number of document per group (m).

And now about the known bug. Now the query we pass will be

fq={!collapse field="productId" min="price"}&sort=price desc

Now let's analyse why did it happen step by step?

0. Document

{ offerId: o11, productId: p1, price: 10 }

{ offerId: o12, productId: p1, price: 9 }

{ offerId: o21, productId: p2, price: 8 }

{ offerId: o22, productId: p2, price: 12 }

1. filter -- do not ignore -- O(n)

{ offerId: o12, productId: p1, price: 9 }

{ offerId: o21, productId: p2, price: 8 }

2. sort -- O(n/m log n)

{ offerId: o12, productId: p1, price: 9 }

{ offerId: o21, productId: p2, price: 8 }

Now the question is why the parser does this thing in time complexity O(n), apart from sorting. If you notice a requirement we just needed the lowest price offer; and not all the offer sorted by price.

Suppose you have to write a good (obviously) algorithm to do the same thing, you will do the same in O(n). I haven’t seen the parser code, but I can guess it anyway.

Just maintain a HashTable and iterate through each document. Check if the table contain the productId as key. If it doesn’t, save the productId as key with the document as value; else get the table document, compare their prices, and save in table the document with smaller price. At the end, you will have in values the required documents with lowest prices.

You can find the code to compare these two parsers in the below link. These are not the solr code. Its just algorithms implementation and comparison of their performance.

Download

I hope this article did not bore you much. For any help regarding Solr you can contact me or my friend Kanishka.

deepakmishra117@gmail.com

kanishka.pahwa@gmail.com