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

I’ll try to keep this one short because I have an OOAD exam tomorrow and I haven’t really done anything.

Abhiyaan is Bharati Vidyapeeth College of Engineering’s (Navi Mumbai) Technical cum Cultural Festival. I’ve not been attending for the past 2 years for different reasons but this year I had to, considering I was the event head of LAN gaming. We had over 165 entries for our event and that’s quite a lot considering not even the Technical Paper Presentation event, which is supposed to be the crown jewel of Abhiyaan drew that many entries despite what I believe was a Rs. 10,000 prize for each branch’s winner in that event (and there were 5 such branches I believe. Comps/IT, Electronics and Telecommunication, Instrumentation, Mechanical and Chemical). It was indeed hectic with 47 entries for NFS (an event I was in charge of).

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: college, competitions, interview, SKAN

I was off the computer for 10 days (probably for the first time in ages) because my motherboard had crashed. All attempts to fix it so far have failed but we’ll keep trying. In the mean while, I went out and got a new motherboard. Out with the Intel DG965RY and in with the ASUS P5KPL-E (Green).

That along with the fact that I got another gig of RAM (800MHz) means no more bottlenecks thus better performance. The 533MHz is out in the market so potential buyers for a Transcend DDR2 2×533MHz RAM in perfect shape should contact me.

I ran it for a few hours without an overclock but I just couldn’t resist. Pretty soon I’ll upload a bunch of pictures and cpu-z dump files in which I raised the overclock step by step.
Yes, I did kill it a few times. For one, the max speed I have had out of my RAM so far is around 840~850 MHz. For such cheap RAM (Rs. 1100), I couldn’t really expect it to go to 1067 MHz I hope to get it a bit higher though.
Kudos to ASUS AI CPR which allows CMOS recovery without jumper resets. Gotta love that.

Right now Mystic Gohan is running its E6600 at 3GHz and the RAM is steam away at 835MHz. System is stable right now but 5-6 celcius above its normal temperature. I just want to see what’s the max I can get out of it. So far my best Super-Pi timing for 1M has been 17.375 secs. A week ago that would have been 22-23 seconds so cutting off nearly 5-6 seconds is great news!

Edit: EIST is still on for some reason though I swear I switched it off from BIOS ¬¬!

My best over clock so far || JAllery pics || CPU-Z dump folder || My Best Time in Super-Pi

Tags: computer

Day 2 got off to a late start with me reaching VESIT by 11:20 and directly being summoned to the 4th floor for the first elims of Brainwave. We cleared that with not too much difficulty. Then it was off to the 1st floor for the SupremaC elims. It was 12:30 and my usual partner Anand was unable to make it. So was Amith’s usual partner so we teamed up for the SupremaC elims. The paper was really good. Had fun. Little did we know that we’d score a 108/125 and be in first place

Then came the second elims of Brainwave and we were screwed royally. We got around 20 marks worth of stuff right but probably so did another 5-8 teams of the 30 in this round. Of course, we hadn’t solved any of the 7 mark tie breaker questions which were, needless to say the toughest.

On to the SupremaC finals and this year, each finalist team was given 2 comps to work with. The questions were quite tough. Q1 was, as I just found out, BrainFuck. Looks like someone copy pasted. I had heard of it before but didn’t know what it was. I wouldn’t be able to remember the multiplication function that we didn’t solve there anyway
Basically we scored 90 marks out of a max of 150. The winning team got 120. So the results were…
Catch this space tomorrow for more.. Read the rest of this entry »

PRAXIS 07 Day 1 is set and done and I’m really tired after all the work. So let me just give you a brief summary of what happened today.

1. Me and Renuk finished first in Mind Benders.
2. Me, Renuk and Prasen finished third in the Open Software competition with Scribble Scrabble.
3. SaM, strider and motr_fresco finished first (tied) in the Open Software competition with Transperancy.
4. SaM, strider, motr_fresco and musicaltherapyworks finished first (tied) in the Open Software competition with expRSS.

So thus far the first day has been good. 3 certis bagged and a ton of cash The events I shall be taking part in tomorrow are SupremaC and Brainwave. Lets keep our fingers crossed and hope we can rack up as many things as possible

From what I heard, I was just one step away from winning the PRAXIS On Line Treasure Hunt (OLTH). Oh well Me and anna want to break our record with the first rounds of C Coding competitions.. lets hope we do

Edit: Seems some people want to see a screen shot of Scribble Scrabble. Lets show it to them. It might be just plain windows GUI for now but it will be spiced up in the end when all the back end for all the features are done. XAML (.NET 3.0) should show its worth then

Tags: AXIS, competitions

Sem 4 is done and Sem 5 is almost here. Almost the entire vacation has passed. Lets see how its been, shall we.
The vacation started off with me working on a project that I had thought of just a day before the final exam. I completed it asap and moved on to the next thing in my list. The term completed means that I’ve done everything on my side. All I need to do now is put some content on it which will come soon enough.
That very night, I had to rush to a town up north one night at 10 pm when I got the news that someone I knew there had passed away.
I spent about 4 days there and managed to goto Kandla port as well. I have 2 pics that I might up some other time (on my first project actually). OK that was 2 weeks back. What have I been doing since then? I certainly haven’t worked on the project whose phase 1 should have been almost complete by now.

Have I wasted 2 (very important) weeks? Have I lost sight of PRAXIS 2008 already? I didn’t even finish studying one subject at classes this sem. What have I done?

The answer is simple. No, I haven’t wasted 2 weeks, I haven’t lost track of my PRAXIS 2008 commitments and as for the one subject this sem, that’s a bit more complicated. In all my mid sem breaks prior to this one, I’ve worked on my projects and done one subject from the up coming semester. Though I might not have done the latter and hardly done the earlier, there is one thing that I did do now that I never did before. Something that was more important than my projects to be done this time that wasn’t as important then. I got my other errands done. There were a few decisions pending on my side. A few things to inquire about. A few things to figure out about my future plans (not that I didn’t have them planned for years before this moment, its just that this was the time to start execution for all the plans I had made ages ago). Oh did I mention, I played on my ps2 for at least an hour a day, albeit after midnight most of the times, but at least I got to have some fun

Now that the wheels are in motion, I’m free to work on my PRAXIS 08 commitments. I do realise that I do not have as much time now but I’d rather have it this way than have all my projects ready and not have done the work I’ve done in this vacation already because honestly, this was more important

This means that sem 5 is on my door step now. Starting this Monday, I’ll be back in class doing another 6 subjects and not to mention 2 classes. Haven’t done that since sem 1 so it should be a nice experience, getting my hands dirty and all. I think I needed that with all my laziness.

Now Playing: Linkin Park - What I’ve Done [Minutes To Midnight (2007)] [1:52/3:25@256kbps]

So let mercy come
And wash away
What I’ve done

After having not the best exam ever, I have spent my entire vacation working on one project or the other. May be be Uptime Challenge which I developed the night after a tiring Math exam or some of the projects I’m doing for the AXIS. I’ve spent the past month either studying or developing something and it just keeps on coming. I still need to work out 3 projects for the AXIS along with an update for UpC which I’ve been delaying for nearly 18 days now due to lack of time. This along with my PCOM classes and my re-analysed list of priorities means I don’t have time left for anything.. Over all of this I am now being accused for not putting in enough commitment into my projects whilst the same people want me to do 2 more projects (one for a client with an deadline) along with a few jobs for a few of my friends/contacts.

Oh for the love of God, I only have 16-18 (sometimes 20) hours a day to work in. People must think I’m crazy to work 18 hours a day in my vacations.. I wonder what the “toughest sem ever” will bring if my vacations have been so hectic. Not to mention the fact that bad results mean I’m dead. Literally.

So now if I don’t make my deadline, you know why..

Its been 3 years since our last big family trip which was to Udaipur so this trip was a welcome relief. I really loved Jaipur. Its by far the best non hill station tourist spot ive been to up north. Then came Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, Mathura and Vrindavan. I must say, nothing beats seeing the Taj Mahal at sunrise Fatehpur Sikri was a great place to goto.

I cba to up 500+ MB of pics but ill definately up the really good ones once i get time Especially the pics of the Taj Mahal for lopardo and the one special pic for ddunk

Thats the codename for my new box. Here’s the config.

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo ‘Conroe’ E6600 2.40 GHz with 4MB L2 Cache
Motherboard: Intel DG965RY

Graphic Card: MSI NX7600 GS (NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS) with 256 MB DDR2 Ram

Ram: 1×512 MB DDR2 533 MHz (Soon to add another chip)

HDD: 160 GB SATA drive by Samsung

All this wrapped in an uber smexy cabinet that i had to search for a lot. I got some pics the day after my pc got here. You can see the dual screens in action (the old crt now has been decomissioned). Get the pics

After 4 years, 8 months and 9 days (exactly down to the minute) ‘Goku’ has been decommissioned and is now on the market. The new pc was here on the 28th of November, 2006 at 18:30. If you know why i named the pc Mystic Gohan, tell me so. Lets see how many get it without google

Its precisely 7.30 pm as i begin writing this. I have the entire night tonight to complete my journals cause they have to be corrected today for submissions on tuesday. Else i could lose some of my term work marks if the teachers get pissed off. I havent performed exceptionally well in 2 papers while in all others im sure i did quite well.

Talking to my friend today, he told me if i wanted to score good marks, i should aim higher than what i need. I’m not one who works throughout the year for good marks but for once, i want to try what it feels like to study only in the preparatory leave (cause i didnt do anything in the regular days unlike the last two sems). Lets see how much i can get out of this. If I succeed in reaching my target, you will hear about it in my febuary’s “Sem 3 Results” post. Else on to sem 4 with bigger plans!

Since the components i need for my pc arent here and my bro hasnt told me the prices of the stuff available there, i really dont know the date by which my pc will come. The Playstation should come so thats good news. Yes i did say “should”. (You know my bad luck in getting things that i want. Look at the pc :P)

In for a rough 2 months. All buckled up for the ride cause damn, its gonna be a bumpy one

PR (Personal Reminder): Lunch today rocked! Remember that one year later

Note to readers, if you know me personally and can figure out what PR’s mean, good for you. Else just leave it alone cause it aint for you anyway. More and more of my posts need PR’s now a days =p