One of our collaborators for the upcoming educamp emailed me the dimensions of post-it notes we would be using to post topics. It was 127mm X 76 mm.  I was trying to figure out if these dimensions would be comfortable for people to write their topics . And I don’t have a ruler with me.  In such situations what I end up doing is googling for the dimensions of objects around me – for example the iphone. So this is what i did

And I got a page with the dimensions – they are 115.2 mm by 58.6 mm

Now that I have the dimensions of my phone, I can compare it to the dimensions of the post-it notes I got earlier – I found that the post-it notes have a bigger surfacer area compared to the iPhone, which works for us.  I can also use my iPhone as a rough ruler and measure other objects if I ever need to.

In the days of old, British India spies used to measure the length of their span, their stretch while walking and their average walking speed. This way they used to enter Tibet and other “here be dragons” places as pilgrims and collect geographic information. This way, even if they were searched at the checkpoints, no measuring instruments would be found on them.