I had represented my college (IIIT Hyderabad) in 2004 in ACM programming contest along with Jagan and Vandana. Just found this link and was somewhat happy to see my name there :) Our team had stood 8th all over India. This contest has some good memories attached with it. We had an internal programming contest in our college to select the team which would represent our college at the ACM ICPC, Roorkee. Programming is something that I have enjoyed since school days. And I might not be a genius at algorithms but yes I do manage to come up with a semi efficient solution pretty quickly. And when I was among the top rankers in that internal programming contest, many were surprised. But since then, people know me as a good coder. I was thrilled to qualify and the idea of representing my college was very exciting and a thing of pride.
The ACM Programming Contest we participated in was for the Kanpur Site and was conducted at two centers - Kolkata and Roorkee. The results were to be a combined list from both the centers though (as given in the link above). At the roorkee center, There was a small prize distribution ceremony to congratulate all the participants and award the winning team. But there was a small surprise element in store for us too. Since we stood 3rd at the roorkee center alone, we were also given a prize and our team was also called at the stage. Not that coming 3rd was any good as far as the final result was concerned but amongst all the disappointment that we could not solve more questions, this gesture was a kind of a relief and consolation for us :)
And now the biggest surprise which I think if Jagan or Vandana are reading here, they are gonna kill me or may be curse me :P I still have all the certificates of that contest with me ;) I don't remember how I ended up having them and why I did not distribute. But I have them safely in a file. Infact even Prof. PJ Narayanan's certificate is with me. He was the coach of our team. Thankfully Jagan is reachable since we both are settled in Noida for now. I'll have to post the other two certificates. All this off course after finding where exactly is that file which contains these certificates ;)
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
ACM (2004) Roorkee center results
Monday, March 31, 2008
Ubuntu rocks !
Installed Ubuntu - 7.1 today on my laptop and I am very happy using it right now. Downloaded the live CD from here. And then installed using the liveCD. It took almost 20 minutes to complete the installation and I had nothing to worry about my wireless and ethernet card drivers, sound card, screen resolution, touchpad, etc. All the drivers were automatically loaded at the time of setup. What more, the package manager is so easy to use that you can select any package that you want to install additionally. I am not sure how friendly this distribution is from a developer point of view but yes I do find it as a good alternative to the buggy windows. Installed picasa and azureus (my two basic requirements) and they are working just fine.
I hope I don't have to switch back to windows for a long long time (forever ?) ..
Friday, March 28, 2008
Koshish Karne walon ki haar nahi hoti
lehron se dar kar nauka paar nahi hoti
himmat karne walon ki haar nahi hoti....
nannhi cheenti jab dana lekar chalti hai
chadhti deewaron par sau baar fisalti hai
mann ka vishwas ragon mein sahas bharta hai
chad kar girna, gir kar chadna, na akharta hai
aakhir uski mehnat bekar nahi hoti
koshish karne waalon ki haar nahi hoti....
dubkiyan sindhu mein gota khor lagata hai
ja ja kar khali haath laut aata hai
milte na sehej hi moti pani mein
badhta dugna utsah issi heiraani mein
mutthi uski khali har baar nahi hoti
himmat karne walon ki haar nahi hoti....
asafalta ek chunauti hai sweekar karo
kya kami reh gayi dekho aur sudhaar karo
jab tak na safal ho, neend chain ki tyago tum
sangharshon ka maidaan chhod mat bhago tum
kuch kiye bina hi jai jai kaar nahi hoti
himmat karne walon ki haar nahi hoti
himmat karne walon ki haar nahi hoti....
~ Shri Harivansha Rai Bachchan
