The entire trip was amazing. The greatest experience ever. We flew to Paris, enjoyed the city and brought back 1st place in the interop award I’d write a huge detailed account but I’m too bored. Its been an age since I came back and writing down every single thing that happened during the 6 days at the competition and the 5 days we spent there on our own would be just too much. So here’s a brief overview of what happened

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Tags: Imagine Cup

Today was our visa interview. It wasn’t much of an interview to be honest.

An hour going to the consulate. 5 min wait to be called. 2 mins for QnA, finger printing and pic taking and 10 min wait for a visa Another hour back home

That’s it! The main issue is getting a date and since we had kind of an urgent condition, we had all our documents pre-checked and we called up the consulate for a slightly early date. We called on the 19th and got a date for the 24th. Yesterday, the agent who pre-checked our documents, went and submitted them as well.

The actual process was a breeze. The lady there asked me my name, occupation, college, reason of visit, dates of departure and return, all of which were less than 4 word answers. You can imagine how 14 words, 10 finger prints and one picture can be done in 2 minutes especially when the person on the other side is shooting questions immediately Before I realised I was being asked questions, she asked me to have a seat and wait for my visa

So its confirmed. We’re going to the world finals. I’ve had a look at the stuff they have planned for us and I can tell you its going to be off the hook. I’m trying to get hold of a lappy for work there and for dumping the immense amount of pics i take there because my cam can only take 2GB (yes, I said only. I need vids too you know! :P)

The entire trip so far (India SDI finals at Bangalore and Imagine Cup Innovation Accelerator at IIM-A has so far given me about 2.5-3 GB of pics and those were places I’ve been to before and I know I’ll go again pretty soon You can do the math :p

As the mail said last night, its time to start packing :-D

Tags: Imagine Cup

Not my favourite thing to do when I’m busy with my exams, completing paper work for the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2008 World Finals in France and working out stuff for the my Visa Application to France but yes, apparently this blog “killed” the dreamhost server I’m hosted on.

I checked up my statistics and it seems that my blog had 1106 hits yesterday. No brownie points for guessing that my post “AIEEE results are out” is to blame They guy at DH Support did see that I had WP-Cache on but evidently that wasn’t enough. He told me to get WP-SuperCache so I did. I replied and well, unlike what he said, site wasn’t up immediately and since I need the site accessible now for certain reasons, I had to manually remove the deny from all line they had added to my .htaccess Sorry about that but I waited almost an hour before doing that

As a test, I think I’ll add some adverts (though its against what I believe in) to that one post. That’s it. Lets see what happens. Though I’m already running out of time. Hopefully google will respond soon 1106 hits in one day is good enough for me to put ads up. May be I’ll put 3 ads on that page and just one on others and people who are regular here get no ads at all. There is a nice plugin I found to do that. Its called Friends don’t let friends see adverts. Lets see what I can pull up

I also added google analytics to get a better picture of what’s going on with visitors on my blog.  I have dh stats but I can’t actively access them. I need to switch off fancy linking in wordpress Also, google analytics is a lot more detailed and attractive =p

Back to Visa applications and SSOS

I can’t believe this but we’re going to the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2008 World Finals at France

How’d we get in? Thank the Software Design Interoperability Awardкомпютри втора употреба I am really ecstatic right now so I can’t say much other than France, here we come!

So far, I’ve seen us, DCites (who are with us at IIM-A), Novices@Work, Team Douleur Vue Ame (Embedded Development, India) and a few people in the Algorithms final. This is Team India for this year and I’m proud to be part of it

Now its 8:14 AM and if you’ll excuse me, I’ll start worrying about my DBMS exam right about now and the fact that we our return flight tickets are scheduled for 16:30 when our exams end at 18:00 (yeah, we’re waiting for new tickets :P)

You can have a look at the official announcement on the Imagine Cup Interop Forum thread named “Interoperability Award Finalists Announced!“

Tags: Imagine Cup

Oh good freaking god yes! Try working 20 hours day, every day at IIM-A then taking a flight back to Mumbai for an exam; A flight which was got us to Mumbai at 11 pm instead of 9:40 pm. Watching the match at your place.. seeing Ronaldo take the lead, seeing Tavez miss two dead easy shots and then Lampard poaching a lucky goal on a very bad surface to play. Second half honestly, I didn’t watch that well cause I was sleepy but I fought sleep and stayed awake only for my tv cable connection to die at the 88th minute
I check the connections, they are proper so its an tv cable provider thing.
So what do I do? I go to online scores. I talked to a few people on IRC and a friend was live commentating for me (quicker and more detailed than online thingo). It was dead exciting… You couldn’t have written a better script. Tavez misses the 2 chances, scores the penalty. Ronaldo scored a goal but missed the penalty. Terry had to score to win it but he didn’t! In the end, it was Nicolas Anelka who missed it. Sorry but this was just our year
Yay for Manchester United \o/ They have won the UEFA Champions League after drawing the match 1-1 in regular and extra time A special thank you to Drogba for getting a red Wonder why Rooney didn’t take a penalty
(As I was writing the line “so its an tv cable provider thing”, I checked on my pc and got the tv back… now I am seeing us get the trophy I’ll post it just as they lift it up Now only to see the replay :))

Here’s how the penalties panned out

Tags: ManUtd

I’ll walk you through the entire experience of the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2008 SDI India Finals which was held at Bangalore on the 8th and 9th of May, 2008. This could help other students who took part or want to do so next year

07^th of May, 2008

Amith left his place sometime around 2 PM and picked up SaM along the way to my place. I had just picked up a flex of our Architectural Diagram only a few hours ago and with my trusty bag and a laptop (which was borrowed from one of my dad’s friends) we left to the airport. Noel was already there at the airport when we came. We were scheduled to go to Bangalore on Jet Airways on a 737 which was to take off at 17:10. All I can say is that it was an awesome experience. My first flight and it was one to remember. Sadly I had to sit in the middle seat but it was fine. I was peeping out of the window to get the most amazing of views at 39,000 feet

The flight was on time though we were the fifth to take off on that runway so the take off was 15 minutes delayed but everything else was perfect. We landed in Bangalore an hour and 15 minutes later to a beautiful climate since it was just about to rain a bit. We had a pickup for the four of us which took us to Polo Nest. Me and Amith were allotted room 203 and SaM and Noel were in 205. We dropped off our bags and went to 205 to start off with work. We paid the Rs. 300 per night charge for Internet which was something we desperately needed. At around 10 we had dinner more or less alone. The entire crowd had gone back to their rooms except for мебелиBhavik and more or less the entire Novices@Work team. After dinner we went back to work and we did so more or less for the entire night. We took shifts to sleep 2-3 hours to maintain sanity for the big upcoming day

(I had written up a huge post of the other two days but I have no idea where it went.. I don’t think I can put it all down again like I did then but I’ll try none the less. Do note that the following part is written a month later so it might not be as detailed or as much fun as the original version, where ever it is :P)

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Tags: Imagine Cup

CBSE (according to wiki) is the group who manages the AIEEE examination. For those of who you don’t know, AIEEE is a national level examination for students who wish to enroll themselves in the prestigious NITs. The AIEEE is held around the last few days of April or usually the first odd week of May with the AIEEE results coming out online around the first week of July every year and the paper based result should follow in a month or so.

Ever since I gave my AIEEE examination back in 2005, I’ve had thousands of hits and a few hundred comments and a similar number of emails every year asking me about why their i-card’s aren’t here or why they haven’t received their results yet. Around six to nine hundred thousand students give the exam every year and I know how hard it is to manage such a large number of people for the exam but the whole thing about students having to go to different states and as far away as the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to give their AIEEE exams is just crazy and unacceptable.

I wish they’d have a better way to do the necessary tasks. I sure hope they do send the paper based results in time to students. Hopefully the AIEEE results will get to everyone before their admission process starts

I think I should take an active roll in providing AIEEE students with information like what they should do when students don’t have their AIEEE i-cards or their paper based AIEEE results. Its obvious that the AIEEE results are first announced officially on the AIEEE website which is http://aieee.nic.in/

Be it doubts about AIEEE i-cards, AIEEE examination, AIEEE results, AIEEE admission patterns, AIEEE admission cut off lists AIEEE councelling or AIEEE admissions, I’ll try to help. If anyone has doubts, please be sure to leave a comment and your email (in the box provided for the email). I’ll try my best to send you a reply asap.

I’m already pretty high if you search for things like AIEEE results on google. A bit more and I could show up well on further AIEEE results so that should help

Tags: AIEEE

Thanks to my TV service provider playing Musical Chairs with my TV Channels, I had to listen to the commentary of the match and see no video!
None the less, this was worth watching or rather.. listening to. Manchester United beat Barcalona FC 1-0 thanks to a trademark Scholes shot in the top corner! Nani could have finished the game in the first half if only..
Doesn’t matter. We’re through and as far am I’m concerned, we’re already European Champions. We have a 100% record in the European finals and we will do it this time again. Liverpool would be easy work. Chelsea would be payback for this week’s defeat.
I have my SSOS viva tomorrow, which is the last for this sem. I had promised to wear my Man United jersey if we won 2-0 (blame Nani) but I’ll wear the Man United jersey inside my formal attire. I’ve been told we’re going to have a party after college tomorrow
On a side note, ever had a professor tell you “What am I supposed to ask you in your viva? Just sign the sheet and you can go”? Ever given a viva win which you’ve not been asked a single question and yet you got 22 (apparently)?

Tags: ManUtd

Late last night, I got a mail from Microsoft India about a small promotional video we (the Imagine Cup India finalists) have been working on. For those who don’t know, the contestants made a small video for the Imagine Cup to be used for promotion on college campuses around the country and may be elsewhere? Of course, any promotion that this event gets is good It’s an exceptional event and a great platform for students like me to do what they really like.

Last week, amongst our submissions, we did the necessary recordings for our video. I have a few pics of it that I’ll put up sometime. I’m wearing my Messenger Plus! Live Script Developer tee and yes, it was a coincidence. I came directly from college after a long day of submissions I haven’t received a copy of the video that fellow team mate, Noel cooked up but I’ll just get a copy next time I meet him

Getting back to the point, the email I got at 2:06 AM today had the Imagine Cup ‘08 Anthem attached. I must say, the music is pretty awesome I love it! Nice catchy music. Pretty good lyrics and nice vocals. Its totally theme based and switches between English and Hindi. It makes references to programming and the environment (the theme for this year’s competition). At first, some of the former seemed funny but honestly, the song overall is great. I’d like to know the guys who actually sung the song I presume this song is going to be played at the finals in Bangalore in a few weeks time A job well done. This is labeled as a premix so I’d love to see the end result along with the other things they are planning
I don’t really mind putting it up for download along with some of the pictures we took the other day but I’m not sure I’m allowed to share the former and as for the latter, I prefer doing so with all the pics from that day

My tickets are already here Also, my vivas are still going on! So back to studies and then to continue with IC work

Tags: Imagine Cup

I’ll just run you through things as they stand. I need to complete more or less all my journals and I need to study for ever subject if I hope to pass. Not to mention the few odd projects I still need to implement. Screw that. This isn’t a time to think of all the things you have to do. Its rather a time to reflect on things you’ve already done.

First of all, we (team SKAN) has made it to the India finals in the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2008. You can read about this on the AXIS Forum. I am also the proud owner of karunab.com. I’ve moved j@x over there. Have a look at the post about the new site!

So that’s basically it. There might be more but I’m really tired right now so I’m sorry. Have a good day and god speed.

Tags: Imagine Cup, random