What I’ve been doing

I haven’t posted anything here in a very long time. Lots of stuff has happened and I’ve longed to blog about them. But, I guess I’m just too lazy. Wish it wasn’t like that. I’ve been busy with third semester courses and preparations for ICPC. We qualified for ACM ICPC both Amritapuri and Kanpur Regionals. But wont be able to attend Kanpur  regionals because they clash with our end semester exams. Now exams are over and I’m eagerly waiting for Amritapuri Regionals.

Programming Camp in Bangalore Campus

As part of our ICPC preparations, Team Bhaktans (Sai, Akhilesh and myself) got a chance to attend a programming camp in Bangalore conducted for Amrita teams from all campuses. Camp was conducted by Harsha Suryanarayanan. Harsha is among the coolest people I’ve met till now. Even his topcoder handle is cool “humblefool“. He introduced us to topcoder. We solved a few problems to get used to the topcoder arena. Harsha gave us a lot of programming tips and taught us how to get better using topcoder. He told us the advantages of coding on paper rather than directly on a PC. This way you don’t have to think while you type and hence lesser chances of making mistakes. And participated in my first Single Round Match (SRM) in topcoder. SRM  is basically a programming game. It is divided into three phases:

• Coding Phase: You get 75minutes to solve the given problems. Now problems fetch you points based on their hardness. The faster you solve them, the more points you get. After the coding phase is 15mins break.
• Challenge Phase: During the 15mins challenge phase you can read codes submitted by other people. If you feel that their code wont work for all the test case then you can challenge them. You can throw test cases at their code. A successful challenge gets you 50points. But a failed challenge sets you back by 25points.
• System Testing Phase: During the system testing phase your code is tested with a big load of testcases. If your code fails either during the challenge phase or the system testing phase, you don’t get any points from that particular problem.

My first SRM was a failure. I couldn’t solve even the simple 250point problem. But I met Gautham and Sreehari of Team Tamals. There is no limit to how many cool people you can meet in a single day. The next day he wound up the session with more problems and tips. This was our first team outing and it turned out to be quite productive and fun filled.

After we returned to college I participated in the next SRM. I think I did quite well. Solved the 250 and 500 point problems and a successful challenge. I’m now green rated. Hoping to improve myself in the future 😀

Hide and Seek in College

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy

I’m 19 years old and I’m not ashamed to say that I played hide and seek in college. In fact I wish more of my friends had joined me. It must be the design of our college building that made the game exceptionally fun. I’d say its the best strategy game I’ve ever played. Yes, I’ve played Age of Empires and it doesn’t come close. Our college has long corridors so it is a little difficult to outrun the seeker. That made it all the more fun. I cant really explain much about it. You gotta try it yourself.

Hosting Judges

The online round of ACM ICPC Amritapuri regionals was to be conducted and the judges were Anil Kishore and Pratik Tandel. I was able to host the judges. They were really friendly and gave us (Karthikeyan, Nakul and myself) a lot of tips to improve ourselves. The online round went well and we qualified.

Thats all for now. I hope I blog more often 🙂