ICPC 007 !! B-)

The Amrita University Organised the ICPC @ its Amritapuri Campus, Kerela.

Our Team: CSpirit

Members : Me, Shankar, Siddharth (Shankar is the new member of the team due to unknown reasons !!)

Let me start with the Online Round:

We did the online round well but still i thot we were slow. We were supposed to use one login per team but still 3 of us were in our respective homes. We decided that I shd login and do the submissions and stuff but hell broke loose when i was unable to even view the mooshak page !! Sidd took the job and pasted all the problem statements in rafb.net. I submitted for 1 of the problem to get AC in 55th minute. 1st AC !! habba !!… “Wot are u guys doing ?”. “sidd: I am trying B da.. Try anything else”. I started doin the other problem (not B). The prob was to “represent prime numbers in words”. Sidd got AC for prob B by 1.15 or something. By the time i finished coding, shanky was also done. I was confident.. so Sidd submitted my code to get AC !! Hurray.. We are all Done !!

We came in 9th place. We were the only team to get AC(Accepted) for all the 3 problem in 1 shot with no penalties :D. They selected 2 Teams from each college. So The other team from m y class was not selected :(. (we had even got tickets) . The Juniors team got thro.

Regionals:

The Train Trip was not bad. The Amritapuri guys were very courteous. They received us in station even thought we didnt ask for a pick up. The hostel room given to us was very big. nice room. nice washroom. nice place. They provided us with free supply of mineral water bottles! We went to the college. They gave us Internet Facility, which we used to some extent. The Food was not that great though.

Another Notable thing about the college was that, wherever u go, the place would hv been labelled “Boys” and “Girls” in 2 sides. Be it the lab, canteen, auditorium. Is the college is very strict wrt to boys and gals…? (atleast the banners not there in my coll !!) . I knew I was wrong later. U cant see only boys or only gals doin something: Be it eating in the canteen or taking care of some part of the event.

I didnt talk with many of other ppl. except for ThreeAces and Chocolat from CEG. and Ckrackers from MIT-our coll !! CEG seniors were very free going. They said they organise some of events @ kurukshetra. Said they would come to Samhita too. I knew Anusha and Aruna of Chocolat from ICPC-2006 and had known them primarily thro the Internet. In Kerela, talked with them in real-time. We even took a photo.

 

I took Camera to kerela to take photos.. I forgot to take camera to all the places and ended up without any photos.. This is the only photo i have now.

In Kerela, most of the gals were better than tamil gals esp. manyfold better than my college ! hope u undstd… -> :(( … When we were in the internet lab, some gal volunteers were guiding us with getting print outs. We wished these gals dont come to the contest for obvious reasons !! One of them said us that Prasanna (aka Thala, Singam, Singa-Kutti …) would be delivering a speech. Thala was shivering all the time giving speech. After the speech, He was able to identify me to my surpise. He also Identified Shankar…coz they talked in Kanpur.

Prasanna: Thala…

Shankar: <mum>

Vijay: macha, wot is this, prasanna is takin to u. ur not talking ?

Shankar: <mum>

After some time,

Vijay: Y u didnt talk to prasanna? Clg Gals kitta than olunga pessa matta … Maintaining Ur Taaru Maaru Geth even with Prasanna. ?

Shankar: Dei.. avanllam range da..!

Vijay: He called u thala da !!

Shankar: Avan enna ottaran da.. In Kanpur, I asked him “Wen are u going to become target?”…adhunala than ippo enna Kalaikarthuku apdi sonnan da.

Vijay: Edo solra.

During our stay, we were late to all the events, from arriving at the station, goin to breakfast, lunch, dinner, attending speech , … getting bus for departing … We missed the Kaliripattu performance coz we slept !!

Practice Contest:

Did very very silly mistakes which drank our time. like

1) Trying to find the bug in prime function even without calling it !

2) counting no. of days in the year as 355.

3) Got confused with a simple if else statement involing &&, || operators

At the End of the Practice Contest… we were not in the first page of the rank-list… that too with easy questions. ofcorz it would hv been easy for everyone ! Chocolat was very fast and they were in 5th position. We were wondering may be we shd hav practiced together before. I remembered Anusha tellin me that they attended all contest together. We knew that they gave solutions for practice problems below the qns themselves only after the end of the contest !! Sidd said “when we solve the problems which chocolat solves in the same time penalty.. we would surely get gud position” haa.. but that might not be that easy. Sidd: “And ofcorz we should solve one more problem !!”… hmm pakkalam…

BackWater Boating:

The Amrita ppl also took us for Boat Riding along Back Waters. It was not bad.. it seemed that the scene repeated itself: coconut trees, fish nets, houses. The co-ords came to our cabin and asked to sing. The guy was seein just me and tellin to sing… reason being all others dont even seemed to hear to him. Jnr. Vikram said me “y dont u sing ?”… “Naan padina ellarum thannila kuthichiruvanga da!!”… “Super idea, senior, Ella teamum thannila villunthutta… neenga first vanthurunga, nanga second.”… lol.

The Main Contest :

They gave username and password for linux only with the Qpaper.. Ahhh… which meant I hv to spend the contest time for typing headers and stuffs :(…

We had decided to split the Qns and so that the easiest problem can be identifed soon by one of us. There were 8 problems. The first prob i read looked easy.. So i started… After some debugging, I got AC for it in 30 min. When we looked at the rank list. XTC++ was first solving each of the problems in 10 min. Chocolat was second with almost same time. (semma fast!! ). Sidd had hand coded that other problem. He started typing it.. while me and Shankar read the other problems. In more than 5 minutes, he finished it and submitted to get WA.. !! boo !! sidd: “Dei.. WA da chaaa” Others: “seri.. porumaiya par ethavadu thappu panni irrupa”.

After few minutes of debugging.. he identified his stupid bug and then got AC. That was our final AC. Shankar had finished one of the problems involing two balls rolling over and under irregular plane. He was struck up with some bayangaramana case. Sidd and Shanky was thkin over it. At that time, I was coding a Min. Spanning Tree for one of the problems. After much struggle, I was able to code it out. Sidd and Shanky decided to skip the ball rolling prob and switch to another problem which was simple but involved careful handling of many cases. They were hand-coding it. Tho I got correct ans for Sample I/O for the min. spanning tree prob,,, I felt something was missing something. I got WA when I submitted. I got print out and Sidd and Shank Coded the prob they were doing. I helped them out in finding out beautiful no.s which was part of that problem and also in debugging some logical error in it.

I left the minimum. Spanning tree prob and went to simulation prob. which involed rotating a cube in various directions. I was able to handcoded it in a short time. When Sidd and Shanky gave up on their prob when only 10.00 min was left.. i started coding the simulation… The time was not enof for me.. but i got some output in some 20 min. after the contest ended.. I would hv done that had i started on that long bk !

We tried all the problem except a couple of them. When the contest ended, We were in the 22nd place. Our juniors had Solved 3 probs( ). They were in 15th place.

Ranklist can be found here.

We talked with prasanna after the contest. We found that bayangaramana case for ball-rolling problem is not present and that such a case is not possible as per the problem statement.. Alas.. !! May be we should hv tried submitting it without that case.

Prasanna said for that min. spanning tree problem.. we should apply shortest-path-algo after finding the min. spanning tree.. I got that only after some thinking. Prasanna had set 4 of the contest questions. He was also one of the judges.

Post Contest Analysis in the hostel showed us that we would hv got AC for 5 of the problems if we had worked little more smarter. The other 3 required us to hv more knowlege on Algos and only one or two teams solved them. Much more to learn about teamwork, co-operation and stuffs.

Symps this sem

I did attend some symposiums this semester. I got first prize in debugging or programming in all of them. Now wot does this mean ? This means one or more of the following :

1) I cheated.

2) In all the places they asked the qns for which i already know the answer.

3) I had a gud team mate .

4) Its an event which is a part of one of the corners of the Binomail Distribution !!

5) man, i am gud at programming !!

The Colleges i attended tech symposiums are Sairam, Crescent, SSN-Paradigm and also Juggernaut which took place in my college !

I wont say i learn a lot by attending these… But I do see lot of ppl [:D]… and most importantly i learnt more things that wot i would learn by attending classes this semester…

C ya sooon, Byee !

Abacus PC

We went to attend Abacus 2k7 @ CEG…

I would say… of all the tech fests i attend, i like Abacus the most…

It was basically due the type of events which take place…. basically related to programming, problems ,puzzles and stuff… and ofcourse the quality….

And it takes place for 3 days…. hmm.. wot else could a guy like me ask for….

I enjoyed all the events, i attended wid my friends…

We got first prize in programming event…

I took these pics when we were busy during the finals !!!

We got interview call from Efficient Frontiers

We attended the interview and did well… they were ok about us.. then told us that internship wont be possible unless its atleast 3months… or we do part-time after hols….. so… the possibility… was chucked out!!

The guy later mailed us sayin.. that they already got interns from IITs… so our case can be considered later and to keep in touch… grr…

Converita !! (continued…)

We went to attend the prelims contest… It was choose the answer type…

I and Sidd were team mates yet again… Sidd dint allow me to even thk the answers for prelims.. he was bombarding continuously the answers for each question …. hmm … thats cool right… hmm may be!! but the real thing is that… the ppl from SSN had just copied questions from a site.. which Sidd had seen just the day b4 !! And not even a single question was not from that site…!! -> (This is not double exclamation … dis is double ‘NOT’) -> (and dis is not forest!!)
So we were selected for the finals… The only team from MIT..!!!

A seniors team which came was not too appreciative about that… One of them asked us… how much did u attend?? wid a rather not so nice way…. They even fought wid some poor gal who was one of the incharge for the contest… We didnt know wot happened but even their team came to the finals..!! We just went there and gave our best…

To comment on the questions…
There were 3 questions..
1) It was just some simple ad-hoc kinda thing wid processing on strings….
We did that problem… together at first and we did it very carefully and artfully!! considering even some weird type of test cases… we did it as if we are coding for some hi-fi OPC… It was a BULB for us when the evaluators came and tested that prog. of ours wid a only one trivial test case..!!
2) The second one was a code which has to be debugged!!….
The code was given to us in paper… To our surprise… it was ANSI Standard C code…capable of executing in Linux… But … we were asked to work on TC @ Windows !!! We have to debug and show them the executable…. We just told them that its not possible…. but a gal there said confidently that.. “That is the error in the program and U have to correct it!” Later they said we can write the errors in the paper itself….
3) Implementing the Traveling Salesman Problem…!!
We just didnt know how to do it… we were about to leave without trying that….but wen the gal there said just write something and we may consider giving some marks for it…. it is enof if u write wot u will do as a algo… !! hmmm…. well we just kinda twisted the dijikstra’s algo…(since both of them are concerned wid shortest paths!!) and came outta the lab…

The Sens told us that u have to use Floyd Warshall for that… they told that it took time for them to implement it… hmm.. One of them even commented that its Tough to code standard algos… and that adhoc things can be done by anyone…!!! Later We found that the Floyd-Warshall has nothing to do wid TSP…. and implementation of Floyd Warshall Algo…(All Source Shortest Path) is as easy as taking a candy from a baby…!!
OK… The results were about to be declared… Some team got the first prize… And WE WERE SECOND !!! [:D] … The Sens team came Third… Do u expect they were happy!!?? …
Rs.2000 was the prize money!!! I and Sidd Shared it… Felt that attending contests is a nice freelance way of earning money!!! [:p]….

Converita !!

OK… i iam bloggin after a reaaaaaaaly long time…. sidd was telling “continue ur blog da… it was going on interesting…!!” …. so here i go again….
Converita!! the moment i heard this word for the first time….in the clg notice brd, i thought may be its some word synonymous to EUREKA !! and later i dreamt this should be the name of some damn gud lookin gal in that dept !!:P…. and this ones the IT tech symp. @SSN…on 13th september, 2006 !! ( and i still donno wot that word means )
We…. decided to bunk the college that day as usual and were eager to get the prize as usual!!
We had checked the bus timings from the college website… and all other guys were to start off from the college while i would be boarding from near my house… Thou i were in the bus stop well before the timing of the bus… i was waiting, waitin., waiti.., wait…, wai…., wa….., w……, and i lost hope.. and asked the gal who was standin beside me whether SSN bus would come in that stopin…. she said “The bus just went past a minute b4!! “…. I didnt know how to respond… I said.. “oh, thanks !!”( nyway cudnt hide my stupidity thatway )….I thought then how i could hv missed the bus while i was just staring at the vehicles without break..hmm… then i decided to break the thought… and decided the follow the travel instructions given in the website for Govt. bus. boarders… (luckily i had read it…)
As per that.. i boarded some bus to go to kalavakkam… and then from there i took some van to get tot he college… I entered the campus to see that there were not much trees to be spotted… infact it was kinda desert…. (it was noon by then)… i made my way to the hall.. for inauguration..
It was a very cheerful crowd filling the audi. The intro for all the events was the spotlight… some of them i remember r….
1. Vijaykant was standing in the stage and was giving speech… he was telling things like.. “A computer has a monitor, cpu, mouse…. blah blah…”(edited clip of Gap10!!)…. That was the intro for paper presentation…!!
2. Vijaykant was sittin in front of the computer…… he looked very serious….. the monitor showed him debugging some code…. he compiles it to find too many errors!! (ahhhh!!)… Gap10 did not lose hope…. He was so involved and devoted… his eyes turn red….!! Suddenly… he gets enlightened….he makes all the lines in the program as comments… and compiles the code…. (hurrah…. the code compiles succesfully !!) and Gap10 gives a proud, winning Smile…!!!! That one was the into for debugging contest!! — LOLZ…

The debugging event was late in the afternoon… so we thot… we would listen to Paper Presentation… so that we cud get some idea of wot it is…
To our ultimate regret, we found the ppl coming and presenting some papers on very generalized topics and they had not done ny kinda research … they had done gud home-work by mugging stuffs from net… and it was DAMN mokkai… so we got ourself out of da hall… to attend some other events…
It was time for debugging!!!

Vetti Sympos !!

This sem seems to be much better!!
Hey… i have already won a couple of programming contests… isnt that gr8!!
well… the first one was at SVCE… and i would say that the questions asked in
the finals was ultimately out of my scope!! this is the first contest we attended in our 2nd yr…
and we came first in this.. wow…. we got Rs.750 as prize..!!
but luckily Siddharth (da Topper) was able to handle it… so we ultimately won that..
Day b4 Yesterday i attended… Enigma..Our intra-college festival organised by the computer society of MIT (http://cs-mit.org/) …Though myself and Srivaths (aka DR) managed to come 2nd in the prelims.. We flopped in the finals… i would say due to my nervousness…. tho i did everything correctly early… swapped 0&1 in the return value of a function which is very important… but Sidd managed to come first..!!
Happy bout that… gave us treat!!
Today… we cut our class and went to Xaphon(a mythological character they say!!) at Vellammal Engg.. College… My-self and Sidd were a Team once again… we Came second during the prelims!! some team from SSN managed to come first…. The result was same in the finals with that team coming first and we were 2nd….The finals was very interesting wid the question being to code for the computer…. They were evaluated by playing against each other… kinda Cooool right!! pretty much satisfied wid the prize got Rs.750 once again!!
Day after Tommrow its Targe Converita at SSN!!