Archive Page 2
ACM ICPC
i cant seem to be able to blog regularly, but will make it up now with two (mostly) meaningless post!! Coming up is an account of our trip to IIT Kanpur.. to participate in the 2007 ACM ICPC Kanpur Site .
The online contest was held on Sept 22 or so. We looked at problems from the previous year and decided tat only a miracle would get us there. But one of the problems was about our beloved ABO blood group from twelfth standard (zoology portion) !! [ The problem is a 2007 world finals problem by name 'Consanguine Calculations' ]. As always, we manged to goof it up.. we were the first to submit from our college (by 10.30 or so). We had given up by about twelve o’clock when mit vijay asked us if we had handled the file input part correctly.. Drat! Changed the code and submitted at around 12.20.. The worst (or maybe the best) part was that they did only offline evaluation of code.. no status, no information about whether you got acc, nothing…!!
What followed was a tense two days ( not to mention one of the costliest xerox of our college life) .. we had little hopes of getting through when aruna found out it was a WF problem and our code gave WA!! Our talk had shifted to amrita icpc when results came and we were in!! Not only tat, 4 teams from our coll got through.. 8 girls and 4 boys!! We were a bit apprehensive at first, but what fun it turned out to be 
It was a 2 night 1 day journey to Kanpur and the train was late (something that happens everytime with that route, we’re told). We had come to enjoy the trip, no doubt.. but we were more than lucky.. IITK’s cultural fest Antaragni was going on at around the same time and what a place it was. The college came to life only at night.. A complete show with so many food stalls ( we came back every night for the aloo chat!! slurpppppp!! ), a Salsa workshop, a nice stage (our banners do not come anwyhere near theirs) and to top it all, no stupid dress regulations.. what more could anyone ask for? Other stalls worth mentioning – Kanchan’s accessories.. it made Jhillmill’s prices look like a bargain; dart game – vinisha was the only one to give it a try; candy shop – shanmu bought something for 50 or so rupees and we decided our 50p orange mittai taste better!! :p
Then came the inauguration (with sumptuous snacks – the biggest gulab jamun i saw in my life, dhokla, kachori, something like the ‘kunukku’ they make at home and there must have been some more items i have forgotten) and the pratise contest. We are always lucky in practise contests.. we submitted the prblem as soon as they enabled the judge.. Everyone must have noticed the first team – Chocolat – tats us!! :d
We had the contest dinner that night and again what variety ( for the tongue as well as the eyes 
)!! what wouldn’t i give to get a double demotion and go to second year now?! sigh..
And at last the D Day.. we had no idea about how to solve the previous years’ priblems and were only looking at not coming out too soon. But looking the questions, most of them were as simple as 2006 amrita’s icpc. Thre was one on fibonacci numbers, one for which i used bfs, one about a chess board and one problem similar to the Play on Words problem at SOPJ and some other easy ones (i remember only these two). We solved 4 of these on first attempts, 1 took two attempts and we had no idea about the other two – problems A and B. We later learnt problem B was about maximal matching. Just like last year, we were continuously moving downwards in our ranking – we ended up 12th overall and 1st from our college. That was good enough – this was our second contest; but thinking of the previous years problems, i dont think i can complain.
The best part was that they called every team onto the stage to get their certificates – something that amrita dint do last year (one person distributed it to a crowd amidst much confusion after the function!!) Guess where we went after the function..? yes for our final ‘aloo chat’. Antaragni was ending that night. 
Thanks to Jayasree’s cousin, we visited Rave 3, a mall at Kanpur.. the only place worth visiting, they said. And you woudnt believe what 8 naughty girls did. The counters for the cine halls were right there at the entrance (our luck!) and the very first poster we set our eyes on was that of the super hit bollywood movie of 2007, anurag kashyap’s “No Smoking”. Aruna and Jayasree started jumping at the sight of him (Am i missing anybody’s name here? They were single handedly resposnible for dragging us to **THAT** movie, right?). So we halted right at the counters – 2 were jumping around, trying to convince others; 4 were thrilled at the prospect of going to a movie – Jeevitha, Jayalakshmi, Vinisha and I- I was going with people my age after a long time, so i was one of the first to join them; Pavithra was reluctant to come – she was only for sight seeing. But the most important reason we went was this Shanmuga priya. (Heard that the people who were really responsible for this mishap are still getting pothu mathu from other hostellers.. that gives me some pleasure ).
So that was it – a fitting end to our memorable trip – a movie with a title that attracts girls (**ahem**). I am still wondering what the movie tried to say. The Bipasha Basu song at the end of the movie was the only relevation. We were in a theatre with only 6 other people and this was only the 4th day from the movie’s realease. That movie took all our time, we had to gulp down a domino’s pizza (they would let me order a black olive topping, boo hoo!) and rush back to the hostel to check out. After a tasteeee cutlet at the railway mess, we boarded the lucknow express to home sweet home.
The train journey was the usual stuff – cards (Ass, Pick two, er and other names.. i forgot), thattai, biscuits (those hostellers would let us have a bourbon biscuit, ), oranges and apples (yo could tell those apart, they were equally bad). This train was no better, though it seemed to be running all the time, it was 3 hours late. Our own Chennai central at 13:30 hrs. We were back.
Our culinary experiments did not stop with the train (ground nut chutney, yuck!! ) or IIT. We had lunch at Saravana Bhavan before bidding each other adieu.
What we did at Kanpur – in chronological order:
Wed, 24th Oct – boarded Raptisagar Express at Chennai Central. It is the worst train i have travelled in, so far.
Day 1 at IITk – Fri, 26th Oct
Till 4.00 pm – Our fears that we would have to stay on platform from 8.30 am (the trains actual arrival time) till 3.00pm (when they would start providing accomodation) were not realised. The train was late, we reached the campus at 3.00pm only.
4.00 pm – Accomodation at Visitor’s Hostel. Heaven on Earth. A five star hotel would lose. Two per room. I am afrain of ghosts, but now i had to put up with a second one – my room mate. [:((]
6.00 – 8.00 pm – Our first visit to Antaragni 2007. Our first aloo chat.
8.00 pm – Dinner at boys mess. There was a brinjal-stuffed-with-tomato something, a roasted potato delicacy, some red syrup that only aruna claimed to be a soup while others thought differently [:d].
Day 2 -Sat, 27th Oct
Morning – Missed mess breakfast. Had to eat left over manchurian rice at Anatargni site. The inauguration, snacks & tea, contest environment and rules.
1.00 – 4.00 pm – Practise contest. We came first!! [bah, some consolation that]
6.00 – 8.00 pm – We have come back, Antaragni. Aloo chat ( with dahi for some and sans it for others ;D). I think i took videos of ‘clothes at IITk’ (thats a better way putting it!).
8.00 pm – Contest Dinner. Plenty of Google t shirts, dunno where they are being sold.
Day 3 – Sun 28th Oct
10.00 am – 2.00 pm – 32nd ACM ICPC. Came 12th. Ranklist is here.
6.00 pm – Prize distribution. NITT’s KIllAll were the winners.
Think we went to Antaragni after this. Not sure, will have to wait till someone reads it and tells me.
Day 4 – Mon 29th Oct
Till 4.00pm – Unforgettable. I’ll never see a movie for its hero. And i will definitely not come if shanmu is choosing the movie. No smoking.. bah. The scurity at the theatre asked us as we came out if we liked the movie!!
7.00pm – Lucknow Express to chennai.
30 Oct - journey by train. Groundnut chutney, yuck yuck.
31 Oct - Home sweet home.
and what did i bring back from Kanpur?
a…aa….aatishooo!! excusez-moi, i am back in chennai.. but with common cold.
cheers,
anusha
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a long due update
back after abt two months..
jus going to rant about my TC losses..
my TC has been dropping consistently for the past 2 months.. however easy the problems, i manage to lose everything to challenges!! and shaastra was a waste of time, we dint even try hard.. i realise i’m getting complacent, but i jus hope i get outta this soon.. (i shd, cos i got a zero again in today’s SRM )
leaving for iitk on oct 24, hope we do really well there!! ok, i dont trust myself, but my team mates have been working hard and they are passionate abt this!! 
. Four teams, but 4 witches among them, its going to be a great trip!!
for the brighter side of the past two months.. it hasnt been bright, but one or two things we’re happy with: we did prodigy’s debugging event, our first ‘big’ event.. the response from participants was ok but others comments were not, but who is bothered abt them!! And we may end up doing an event for Sync.. and we have managed to get quite a ‘good’ name for ourselves when it comes to conducting events!!
Our idea of bringing more girls into ACM is definitely going to take us to higher places , even though they dont seem to be learning anything from us. preparing for girls acm, getting angry abt the poor turnout, classes for 3rd girls, and poor attendance in even tat has become regular in the last 2 months..
Ah, jus saw the division summary for today’s SRM.. must be my worst performance in 23 matches!! i have been putting off preparing for TC for so many weeks now, hope this makes me take TC seriously..
Wanted to write a BIG post but this has really put me off, will edit or write a new one some other time. Navarathiri is here and is going on great as usual, wonder where we wud be same time next year!!
cheers,
anusha
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Ah.. after a looong time..
and with a post on my “poor” computer..!!
My first brush with linux was in Feb 2006, for my TOC assignment on lex and yacc, which i manged not to complete and got jus 11 on 20 while most of the class got much more, not to mention an interest in linux. i was to remain a winbie for one more year.
Feb 2007 and with placements nearing, i started looking at installing linux.. and i came to know abt ubuntu’s free live cd and had got dapper drake last sept. I installed it and let it sleep on my comp for some time. I never used it then. after about a month, i decided to remove it and rather than ask anyone else, just formatted the partition .. it was ‘linux is so easy..!! no wonder my class tries all distros.. perhaps i shd install something else.’ The surprise was when i switched on the system the next day..
Formatting the partition had taken away the grub..!! then i used the live cd to learn what a grub is, but not wanting to damage the system anymore, i just copied my valuable windows files and got my comp mechanic to re-install windows. Enough of linux for a life time.
May 2007. Placements here. Even otherwise, everyone on the net was raving about feisty. And i had to use linux to work on an online judge. Thus began the second innings.. lots of apt-gets (and consequently bigger telephone bills) later, i have grown to being on ubuntu all the time.
And you wudnt believe what my comp has been put through last week.
Seeing this hype abt fedora moonshine, i download openSUSE 10.2 and Fedora 7 to experiment with. openSUSE installation was simple and it recognised the existing oses, so no problems wid it.. But like ubuntu, it dint have gcc/g++ and on trying to get it wid a package manager, it asked for extra cds tat i dint have.. well tat was the end of suse on my system.
On to Fedora.
I feared tat the earlierprob wid grub wud resurface if i simply format the suse partition, so i installed fedora on it.. :d . But no.. fedora doesnt recognise other linux versions.. too late, restarting the system after installation i have only fedora and other (windows). Aaargh, cant they make it easier for people for me?
Ubuntu’s live cd came to the rescue again and i re-installed grub from it wid some commands from the internet. But yes, i lost fedora now.. Since i could always recover wid the live cd, i re-installed fedora (ah!) and lost ubuntu again and recovered it again. So my system now has windows, ubuntu, a fedora i have no way of reaching and plenty of free space..!!
Then i turned towards the grub-splash-images and spent a happy friday night on changing images and rebooting. “poor computer” indeed!!
and was tat without side effects?!! no.. from yesterday i wasnt able to get the gdm to display.. after the line ‘ starting cupsd’ i had a blank screen.. it dint end with re booting, so i used the live cd (once again!) and reinstalled ubuntu’s grub.. Now theres no visible problem and im here blogging..!!
No fancy grub splashes for me for some time, but i got a nice desktop pic in my splash-image-hunt. A screenshot is here:
Nowadays i’m on ubuntu all the time (not tat im a power user, still a newbie only) and i like it very much here.. I wonder what i’d do without the live cd..!!
In case you are wondering why this is titled ‘Woebuntu’.. ah well.. just for a catchy title!!
p.s.: try as much i have not been able to download java 5 here, so no Kawigi Edit on ubuntu… . For TopCoder its windows only.
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He lives on..
Its exactly a week after ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ release and i would say the series deserves a more action-packed, thrilling end than this. To be frank, none of the books after GoF lived up to my expectations, but this one being the last part, could have been better. Though there are relevations about the past, the book seemed to lack something.. every chapter just takes us towards a predictable end ( forgive me if i have missed anything, but the book simply isnt that interesting.. even hp 5 was better) .
come to think of it, i cant remember seeing anything abt Sirius anywhere in the book.. everyone seems to have forgotten that character.. Anyway, nothing can be done about it now and ‘Undesirable Number One’ will live on as one of the most popular fictional characters ever [:d]
and now i am switching to ubuntu and continue my tinkering ( which has resulted in uninstalling the gdm twice, misuse of apt-get and many ’serious warning’s from apt-get ) until now)
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random quote from the web -
thoughtful thoughts
Everything that I’ve learned about computers at MIT I have boiled down into three principles: Unix: You think it won’t work, but if you find the right wizard, he can make it work. Macintosh: You think it will work, but it won’t. PC/Windows: You think it won’t work, and it won’t.
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placed.. again!!
got into D E Shaw & Co today!!
more abt tat in another post
yawwwn,
anusha
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…—…
bloom filters, bloomier filters, binary trees, b trees, avl trees, hashing, hash lists, hash trees, tiger trees, queues, stacks, linked lists, xor linked lists,suffix trees, suffix arrays
…………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………….
checksums, cryptographic hashes, digests, b’day attack, catalan nos, ackermann function, binomial heaps, fibonacci heaps, treaps, .. yep am seriously preparing for placements [:d]
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i’m.. i’m.. well, am placed!!
yep, am placed in Cognizant Technology Solutions, one of the fastest growing it services company in india, … .. …. … (u can google for more info)
so first slot is over and have to start preparing seriously for second slot.. am still in a dilemma whether to skip DE Shaw.. and am postponing preparing for DJ because of this …
and the CTS interview was a piece of cake (of course, i wasnt this cool b4 attending it!! 
) wasnt asked even one quest in tech.. hr only.. but the company does seem good, they completed everything on time..and mention must be made of the CAKE they cut to welcome the freshers )
so tats abt it for this post..
feeling sleepy (yawn..)
cheers,
anusha
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updates.. wat else??
a post after a loooon time.. not that i have been busy wid placement preps ( tis is one highly overconfident soul dreaming of being placed in a ‘biggie’ )
my 6th sem results came on may28 or so.. got 9.042, totaly unexpected for tat disastrous semester.. not complaining , but as USUAL, ‘ i will do this 7th sem very well..’ ) lets see if i remember this resolution atleast in this penultimate sem
btw, feisty fawn replaced dapper drake on my computer today I am only a newbie so cant say more than this at this stage
placement preps have taken a downward plunge and so has my TopCoder score 1045 from 1066 in today’s srm.. graduating to a blue coder is delayed once again..
and am attending CTS on monday for the first slot of placements.. most of my friends attended tcs today and hearing their stories, i doubt if i’ll so much as clear the written Have to put these 2 days to good use.. 
coming to why i have posted after a long time , seeing the many tech blogs on the net, many of which have been very useful to me, i am thinking of blogging more about tech stuff rather than the usual yadda yadda )
My home page has been updated to reveal this secret blog to the world .. yup, www.geocities.com/pyramids2500 is up and pointing to this blog.. its still a wordpress-protected blog, so it remains to be seen if any non-wordpress person wud sign up and see According to webwait ( http://webwait.com/ ) my site takes 11.42 s to download.. but tats because of the (u’ll say this once u see the site ’soooperb’) pics i stole from someone’s flickr album )
tats all for today folks, am goin back to looking at aptitude questions for cts ( pah, i hate it.. its gobbling up hours that cud have been spent usefully at spoj/topcoder )
cheers,
anusha
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