Palindrome Formation problem

Recently in the BESU tech fest, the final round of programming event contained a series of interesting questions.

Even though I was unlucky enough to not win a prize (after making some kiddish mistakes), I happen to have discovered something of a problem that read:

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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!