Recent events

Once again, it's been a long time since I last blogged. Seems like it always is. Anyway, here's the latest update on stuff I've been doing/am doing, as well as other stuff in which I'm mostly a passive component, so that it's being done to me, as it were.

First off, I finally received my Google Code Jam t-shirt! Whoopee! Wore it to college a few days ago, and received a bunch of 'New Pinches' in return. (NB: A 'new pinch' is a rather quaint custom which involves pinching someone who has recently acquired something new. As far as I know, it's limited to India, but my experience is limited...) Thought that was rather childish, but then we let children have their fun...

Second, I took part in the first round of Code4Bill, and cleared the first round(held last Saturday) without any major problems. Eight questions, six hours, out of which only two and a half were really required. Made me realize how much my problem solving ability has grown since I started TopCoder. The next round is tomorrow, and only three hours long, AFAIK.

Third, I've been reading Gödel, Escher, Bach all this while, and I can say this - it is absolutely PHENOMENAL! Excuse the caps - they're rather reminiscent of a stylistically-challenged friend of mine, but they're the only way to express the sheer superlativeness of this book. Extremely thought-provoking, beautifully structured, fascinating ideas - I could sing its praises all day, so I'd better shut up quickly. Perhaps I'll put up a review of it when I've finished. That won't be any time soon, since the book isn't exactly light reading - it takes a lot of thought to process(this I like), and I also like to keep an eye out for the weird recursive structures he's left all over the dialogues, so I often go back and forth searching for common features.

TopCoder seems to have suddenly increased the difficulty levels of their Div 1 250s, leaving a whole bunch of blues bouncing back and forth between divisions. I'm not one of them so far, but I haven't been having any great matches lately. Started up a new style of practice, based on the Coding Kata idea mentioned here. Hopefully this will work.

On the college front, we have the usual 4/7 week, so we don't suffer too much. At least not yet. In stark contrast to our previous semesters, we have two thoroughly bogus teachers, whom I shall not talk much about, having essentially given up on the 'Univ/College sucks' rant concept. Suffice it to say that one of them requires a translator to understand, and the other continually produces a never ending stream of WTFs. Each one also has some proficiency at the other's 'super power', so we often end with a bunch of WTFs delivered in poor excuses for spoken language...

In MU, it's often helpful to mentally decouple the subject from the person teaching it, as well as the inevitable exam, since you might end up mistargeting your hatred/annoyance/angst/general boredom. In this spirit, I shall now consider the subjects we have, while banishing all thoughts of the person teaching them from my mind. Not an easy task, given the urge to burst into laughter in two cases...

Robotics: Incorporates elements of Mechanics, and as those who know me will testify, anything with sensible mathematics in it makes me happy.

Multimedia Systems: I'm not generally a big fan of this sort of subject, since they often boil down to remembering all sorts of weird standards and specifications, which is almost always a complete waste of time. Still, we get to mess with Flash, Dreamweaver, Maya, and so forth, so it can't be all bad. Plus there might even be some algorithms in it, so it might actually be fun. At least I hope so.

System Security: This sounds absolutely fascinating, but I fear it will lack the pragmatism that's necessary for a real understanding of the subject. Plus there's always the risk of pointless classifications which are of no real use, except to give certain kinds of teachers some questions to ask without having to think too hard. However, we have some cryptography, and this makes me very happy. As a matter of fact, I have Stallings's book already open right now, and will probably consume a bit of it today.

Distributed Systems: This sounds pretty interesting too, but the prof teaching it is due to come back from leave only at the end of this month, so I really don't know much about what it's like. Time will tell, I suppose.

For those of you who might be interested in Junior and his family, I'm afraid that the story ended rather sadly. First Junior vanished, having ostensibly decided to leave home for good. A couple of days later, the crows filched Mrs. Pigeon's two eggs. She put on a few heart-rending scenes searching for the eggs, but my mom eventually got bugged and removed the flowerpot, ending the association of the Pigeon family with our kitchen windowsill.

Hopefully I'll have something new to blog about soon. For now, I intend to introduce myself to the very delicious bowl of chicken soup next to me. Tallyho and all that...

PS: Looks like my visitor counter finally crossed 2000! Not a huge achievement, but thanks are due to anyone who reads my frequently senseless rantings. I salute your masochism.