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Tuesday, September 29, 2009

International Collegiate Programming Contest

I fulfilled a dream. A dream to participate in the ACM-ICPC. But the dream just got clearer. I failed miserably at ICPC perhaps exposing the flaws and innards that I kept hidden for long. But it's time for me to face the world now. It's so real and I have to be strong enough to be able to survive it.

Amritpuri was a hell of an experience, with us being in the 3 only teams to have qualified from West Bengal. A pretty stat indeed. NIT-DGP, IEM and us. The only consolation is that I still have 1 year in me.



Apart from all that gloominess, I won the first prize (with anKur, thats a first) at Haldia Institute of Technology. Avik Chatterjee had turned into a total drunkard of sorts!! And I will always remember HIT college of Haldia. 'HIT' really expresses the true morale and meaning of the college!

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

The Brainless Algorithmist

Well, that's me I feel. Since I've been doing algoz and algoz but still I can't say my brain level is up to the mark. Like, sure I won at IEM but I surely didn't deserve to. I didn't even get more than One solution completely accepted. Also, the duo of Neel-chitra is some-one I look up to. And their failuire in ICPC has really depressed me.

I mean, do I really deserve to be in ICPC? I know very well they are better. So does it mean that deserving candidates often miss the cut? Did I miss the cut?

I really cannot answer these questions. I am waiting for the moment when I can.

Oh well, right now I'm at the cyber cafe from where I started my journey into Computers, 'Singh Cyber Cafe'. I still remember the first time I came here with a Fritz 6 CD, hoping to get some chess practice. I didn't have a computer then. Things get really nostalgic at times.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Nice Math Links

Mathematics lovers will love this:

http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/bignumbers.html

On top of the world!

Perhaps after a long time I feel relieved. Relieved from all the pressure of the planet. Relieved that I have proved myself once again. Relieved at not having failed.

Winner (3rd) at IIT Guwahati gave me the impetus and courage I really needed for a long long time. By jove! It's an IIT! And I narrowly (only I know how narrowly) missed the top honor. Silly for me!

And then if that was not enough, I become one of the 3 teams from West bengal (yes, including IIT Kharagpur's teams) to qualify for the ACM-ICPC 2009 India Finals to be held at Amritapuri, near Chennai.

And perhaps the icing on the cake was the expected (??) win IEM, Kolkata.

Now what? I guess success makes you crave for more success. IIT-M, Frugal is on Sunday and IIT-M OPC is on 27th. Lets see.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Slackware Repositories

Slackware Linux is perhaps the best Linux OS for a hacker. I've been using it for 2 months now and felt that it's repos are grossly un-used.

Slapt-get, the apt-get clone for Slackware isn't quite the killer app, but it is swell! There is also a synaptic-like GUI for it too... GSlapt. So the first advice from me would be to get this wonder and add these awesome repos:~


ftp://slackware.mirrors.tds.net/pub/slackware/slackware-12.1/
ftp://ftp.slackware.pl/pub/gnomeslackbuild/gsb/gsb-2.22/
http://darkstar.ist.utl.pt/slackware/addon/slacky/slackware-12.1/

Just one more thing. The caches are arranged in
/var/slapt-get/packages
folder in neat directories describing what they do.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

I just turned anti-M$ basher!

From a person who would worship his computer with the Windows 98 OS installed, to the guy who felt Windows was the ultimate after a bitter experience with a pre-release version of Linux Ubuntu 4.1 Warty Wathog and then meandering to a person who was a proud member of the "I hate Microsoft" community onOrkut, I have changed yet again.

Only a few minutes ago I would curse Bill Gates for dominating the world with an pre-historic OS called Windows. An unusable OS called Windows Vista. Et Cetera.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

A satisfactory haul!

Techno India college organized it's annual techno management fest, named EDGE. I must say it was one of the best in Kolkata!

Fantastic competition and fabulous prizes too! It's the first place I (along with Shubhadip-da) finally beat the IEM team: IdleHeads and a great NIT-DGP team: CodeCrackers. Yes, we came first.

MadMen came on top!

The programming contest had a nice twist with 2 questions that had to be programmed in EDG programming language. We had to learn it and implement it on the spot. It was great!

There was a PC-(Win) hacking competition that I won, thanks to my ProcHack software. The HEAP-Walk mechanism edged me over!

After a total haul of 5.5Ks I am really satisfied. But I won;t wait, there's INSTRO (BESU) and one of Future. Let me test my limits!

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

A Heritage Not Worth

Heritage Institute of Technology hosted Dakshh 2009, their annual techno-management festival. As for me the competition comprised of only 2 events : C Debugging and C Coding!

The level of Questions in the prelims really made me think, wow! But the finals disappointed me a lot. The debugging event was ill-organised (we were actually brought to the venue 10 minutes late, but still managed to come third) and the coding event was pretty strange. Strange in the sense, that the 2 questions they gave could not be solved in an hour. The first one was tough (around 1 hour should be given for that) and the next was easy (around 20-25 mins.). For us, we erred in judgement and started off with the first and as a result could not complete any! Our plight was shared by 2 other VERY GOOD coding groups from IEM, Kolkata as the first prize was taken by an unprecended guy from St. Thomas.

Lucky for him though!

I really wish a college like HIT, could have done much better and a miserable prize money slab of 1500, 1000, 500 rupees.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

That is J.U.

How does it feel to compete in the festival of the best Engineering College of West Bengal?
How does it feel to win at the annual techno-management fest at the best college of Engineering that is J.U.?
How does it feel to beat the best of West Bengal and from many parts of Indis in Jadavpur University?
How does it feel to be (one of) the best in C Programming in the one of the most prestigious Engineering Colleges of India?

And how does it feel to receive a Sipper, a Cup and a pack of 4-CDs as an award?
That's how I felt when I (along with Suvo-da) came third at the C-Thru event of Srijan 2009. Distraught and very frustrated. My only consolation was a mobile phone (with connection) that I won as the champion in Open-Soft at that very fest.

So I am not complaining much. But I have taken a silent promise. An oath to never prefer this college to any other event. I missed out of the NSEC event.

Stupid TATA Guys

Normally I am a very calm person but this time I just could not take it. These TATA Indicom customer care guys are simply ass-wholes.

I could not connect to the internet for the last 3 days, i.e., my pages were not loading but I got connected (ping was okay)... thus it was awfully slow. I cleared my cache, tried Midori, tried Ephiphany, but all in vain. Thus I phoned 121, the TATA Indicom customer care. hey told me to clear my cache! I said I already did that and I was using Linux. Now this guy tell me to goto "My Computer"... imagine my angst! I kept still. He continues, and tells me to goto properties, and some blah-blah later, he tells me my bit-rate should be set at 115200, he knew very well I was doing well only 2 days ago. Yet, he suggests me the same. I tell him, what to do in case it does not work out that way. He tells me to call again. So I go ahead and check my baud-rate from /etc/wvdial.conf. It was 115200 all right.

I call again.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

The limits of Creativity

I had been to Kshitij recently, a techno-management event at IIT-Kharagpur. And I was exposed to the world! Yes... I lost both events I participated in but have I really?

Finalist in coding and Software Development. But a Loser. Wrong. A winner. Why? Well because I could learn even more that the world is an ocean, and I am a molecule of H2O.

My Software ranked after 6 others... but there were a few ties at the top. So what do I for next year? Oh... something on Linux. No MORE of that crappy OS again! But maybe I'll load it up on QEMU and run Windows on Ubuntu! Yes!

I will punch my current software into an installer and make a process explorer. And down the line I'm sure I'll come up with something more.

But I look forward. Next up is Srijan (of JU) and WILL rock it. But tomorrow we have Bitwise (!! IIT again!!)... that's something I'm desperate to do well at... Let's see.

Well... I'll leave this minimalistic blog and quit now... it's pretty late and I'm hungry!

Monday, January 19, 2009

Software Dreams

From London Dreams to Slumdog Millionaire, A.R.Rahman has really inspired me. From his music to an extent but also about what is music is really about... it's about being original.

He is genuine.

Being selected in the top 17 of Khitij '09 Software Development contest with an ignored software says that I can. I will keep saying that. I can. But then I have to do it!