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)

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Imagine Cup

I thought it was about time I made this site a bit better to access. We now have wordpress sitemaps being generated by a plugin and they are being submitted to the Google, Live Search and ASK search engines. The Web Management tools for the first two are pretty cool.
If there is anything else I should do for better search engine results/more traffic, do let me know. Pics of dt could help but we want to try non extreme measures

Tags: site

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

Praxis 2007 is almost here and its time to prepare for the Open Software competition. You know of What I’ve Done and the reasons why my project isn’t up yet. I should have, ideally speaking, been done by now but what I didn’t expect was the fact that this sem, the subjects would be so time consuming, each having professors loading us mercilessly with work. Sure, if I didn’t have to work on my project, I’d do my work with almost no arguments but in light of my current status, I really can’t do much. Solution? Simple.. Bunk a few days of college until the 26th of August (self set submission date for the Praxis package) and stop spending time on anything that will not allow you to work at least 2 hours during college days.

Here is to hoping I can pull off this entire thing and yet not get screwed in college.
Its time to get ready for PRAXIS. Time to win ’cause “If not now, then when? If not us, then who?“

Enjoy your evening and don’t drink and drive

Tags: competitions

AXIS dominated at the Praxis winning 8 certi’s and a prize (which only the team members know about atm. Its a secret :P). Here are the final few words from my review of the event on the AXIS site.

Overall we bagged 8 certi’s and a secret prize (to be revealed soon ). Dont know about you sam but i started brainstorming the moment we were standing on the 5th floor and talking just before you got your certi’s. Next year, we want an AXIS 1-2 (and a 1-2-3 if we can get 3 teams/projects/packages up )

All hail, the AXIS is here. With its first major title under its weight, we annouce our arrival. If youre against us, you better be ready cause we’re coming all guns blazing

Just as a footnote for personal reminders, i rappelled down the VESIT building yesterday. Nice view standing on the side of a 5 storey building, i must say

Shit i cant believe i lost 650 lines of codework on ThunderBank (the project im doing for the programing group ‘The Axis‘ ) When i got up i thought i pressed F2. I guess i was wrong
The worst part was the saved part only has half of the 1st class. I lost 1 and a half classes So i guess ill have to redo the entire 2 hours work i put in yesterday Hopefully it will be quicker this time since i know exactly how to do it.
Yeah my exams are over and they were good i guess … i still doubt i’ll reach my target due to my ‘Academic Lamerism’ or maybe is should set lower targets due to i next time around

Anyway im thinking of starting with 2 subjects (unlike the last to sems where i did only one) in my vacations. So im going for EN/W (Electrical Networks) and EDC (Electronic Devices and Circuits). I know a good book for the latter but im still searching for a good one for the earlier … Ill do my math and DLDA (Digital Logic, Design and Application …. well its something like that :tongue:) when my college starts. Well i still have to do php, the entire thunderbank project and read 2 novels along with seeing 2 more movies and watch the soccer world cup. Seems like another busy month ahead of me … Dont you think i’d be used to this by now?

I have finished writing and correcting my journals (well except for the 1 mech experiment that will be corrected on monday during my submissions)

Submissions are on Monday and i am about to release my collection of C Programing Programs that i made for assignments sake. Well i have made more but i have deleted quite a few. Ill upload a few

Click here to view my C Program Collection
(Update: Link updated to link to Random Code Repository.)