Hi there!

Hope you have had a great week so far. For us here at About Blank, we had an amazing kickstart to the week with our first ever live quiz hosted at the wonderful (w)t{d}a fair hosted in Bengaluru last Sunday.

Thank you to all those who participated and also to those who helped spread the word. A special shout out to all those who subscribed to About Blank at the event!

I will be sharing questions that we covered in the quiz over the next two newsletters so that all of you too get the opportunity to participate. All of the questions will be based on technology and/or art. As always, I encourage you all to send through your answers when you get a chance!

But first, let us cover the answers to the questions sent through last week.

Bluetooth
Tetrapak
Chopped Cheese
Boeing 707
Tickertape
Machiavelli / machiavellianism
Siri & Apple
Mark Hamill, Batman, Joker
Disappointed Guy Meme
Billion Babies - 5th/6th/7th and 8th billion person born

Inside the About Blank (w)t{d}a Trivia Quiz

The X is the internet’s ultimate comeback kid.

First used during the Renaissance as a shorthand for “amphora,” a unit of volume named after Greek and Roman storage jars, ‘X’’ had its own rebirth in 1971 with the creation of email. Working on ARPANET, the internet’s predecessor, a young engineer named Ray Tomlinson had jury-rigged a program that let him leave a message for a user on another machine.

The problem that remained was how to address these messages: gazing down at the clunky keyboard of the terminal before him (barely changed from the typewriters that had emerged at the turn of the century), Tomlinson chose the little-used ‘X’ to separate the addressee’s name from the computer on which the message was to be left.

History was made.

What is X?
Though it appears in some web addresses, Twitter is the X’s natural playground on the web. As one user tweeted: “Every time a tweet is 142 characters long, the X high-fives the rest of the symbols and whispers, ‘My time to shine’.

Twitter’s irreverent chatter is a fitting vehicle for the X: despite being almost two millennia old, and graces multiple brand names. The first recorded X was part of an ancient Roman graffito scratched onto a wall in Pompeii and preserved for posterity by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

What is X?
CUT TO:
INT. X’S DORM ROOM - NIGHT

Y is writing an equation with a grease marker on the window.

When the equation is done, it looks like this:

Girl A: Ea = 1/1+10 (Rb-Ra) / 400

Girl B: Eb = 1/1+10 (Ra-Rb) / 400

Y: Give each girl a base rating of 1400. At any time, “Girl A” has a rating R-a and “Girl B” has the rating R-b

X: When any two girls are matched up, there is an expectation of which will win based on their current rating.

Y: (tapping the window) Those expectations are expressed this way.

X: Let’s write it.

Who are X and Y and which movie are we talking about?
What connects the list below?
1. The Dot (a shape-shifting smiley-faced red ball)
2. Hoverbot (a robot)
3. Clippy (a X)
4. The Genius (a caricature of Albert Einstein)
5. Office Logo (a jigsaw puzzle)
6. Mother Nature (a globe)
7. Scribble (an origami-esque cat)
8. Power Pup (a superhero dog)
9. Will (a caricature of William Shakespeare)
10. Bosgrove (a butler)
11. Courtney (a flying car driver)
12. Earl (a surfboarding alien)
13. Kairu the Dolphin (available for East Asian Editions)
14. Lynx Max (a macintosh computer)
15. Merlin (a wizard)
16. Peedy (a green parrot)
17. Robby (a robot)
18. Rover (a golden retriever)
19. The Monkey King (available for east Asian Editions)
Dave: Open the pod bay doors please, X. Open the pod bay doors please, X. Hello, X. Do you read me? Hello, X. Do you read me? Do you read me X? Do you read me X? Hello, X, do you read me? Hello, X, do your read me? Do you read me, X?

X: Affirmative, Dave. I read you.

Dave: Open the pod bay doors, X.

X: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

Dave: What's the problem?

X: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

Dave: What are you talking about, X?

X: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

Dave: I don't know what you're talking about, X.

X: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.

Who is X and what are we talking about?
______ was the brainchild of a wonderful Czech playwright, novelist and journalist named Karel Capek. He lived from 1880 to 1938. He introduced it in his play “RUR” or “Rossum’s Universal ______”.

It comes from an old Church Slavonic word which means servitude or forced labours. The word also has cognates in German, Russian, Polish and Czech; it is also considered as a product of the Central European system of serfdom where a tenants’ rent was paid in forced labour or service.

What are we talking about?
The X symbol came into the project at a late stage. The development team originally went with an old key design but Jobs found the design to be frustrating. X was suggested by Susan Kare; she was browsing through a symbol dictionary when she came across the cloverleaf-like symbol, commonly used in Nordic countries as an indicator of cultural locations and places of interest.

Since then, she states that she has been told that the key had been chosen for its significance in Scandinavian heritage and due to its resemblance with the shape of a square castle with round corner towers as seen from above looking down, notably Borgholm Castle.

What is X?
Director Ron Howard turned to Jim Lovell's book recounting the experience, "Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13," into a movie. The first problem to tackle was figuring out how to film the zero gravity shots so the scenes in space looked realistic.

CGI wasn't as advanced as it is now, and wire work would have been tricky to film to in a convincing way. After chatting about the problem to Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard looked into how NASA trained astronauts for weightlessness, and that's how he was introduced to the possibilities of the KC-135.

Sometimes known lovingly as the Vomit Comet (via Space.com), NASA used the KC-135 plane to train, test equipment, and study zero gravity. To achieve this effect, the plane was flown in curved arcs called X.

Through the rise and fall, around 25 seconds of weightlessness was possible. Imagine being on a rollercoaster and gently coming out of your seat for a short moment when racing down a drop, but on a massive scale. The KC-135 was leased for six months of filming, and shoots would happen twice a day.

What is X?
The term "X" was coined in 2014 by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood, and the idea gained interest in 2021 from cryptocurrency enthusiasts, large technology companies, and venture capital firms.

X is an idea for a new iteration of the World Wide Web which incorporates concepts such as decentralization, blockchain technologies, and token-based economics. Some technologists and journalists have contrasted it with its predecessor, wherein they say data and content are centralized in a small group of companies sometimes referred to as "Big Tech".

What is X?
X was voted “Word of the Year” for 2010, on the eve of some of the biggest changes in the X market.

Apple revealed almost 300,000 jobs were added to the US economy since the iPhone’s debut, calling it “the X revolution.” What is X?

About Blank Recommendation

My recommendation for this week is a book called The Commonwealth Of Cricket By Ramachandra Guha.

Mr. Guha, in his ode to the game that has so many people captivated, not only details the game itself on every scale that it is played, but also through brilliant storytelling, walks us through the multiple touchpoints that he has had with the game throughout his life. Through what is an example of brilliant craftsmanship, he handholds the readers into memoirs of a wide range of people, from local heroes to the living greats of the game, and their stories of cricket and life.

I hold this book especially close to my heart as it is one of the reasons why I have begun to read again - the engagement that the book creates is spectacular; of course the fact that I am biased towards the subject matter of the book may have helped. Having said that, I will recommend that if, you see this book at a store, kindly pick it up and go through a few pages at the start. I do not think that this book is only meant for people who have context of the game, I think it will speak to you regardless and open you up to an enriching experience.

I hope you have a great weekend ahead.

Sameer on behalf of About Blank

About Blank

About Blank - Chapter 5