Code Warriors – Page 6

Am back from my vacation now. From the looks of it, a lot of people seem to be feeling really uneasy over seeing my blog not being updated for a while and / or their email inbox being deluged with feed updates. Past week was quite eventful:

Getting attacked by langurs. That’s a first. Bunch o’ them took a fancy to my jeans and started tugging at it. Then they wanted to check out my cellphone (which was in my hand). Fashion-conscious, obviously. Mercifully, dad rushed to the rescue snarling at them to ensure that I didn’t have a wardrobe malfunctioning because of all that tugging-shugging.
CORE 2008. DPS VK Code Warriors won the overall runners-up trophy (automatically disassembled itself on-stage). No clue about individual results as CORE’s website doesn’t give it. Intro video was excellent (except for the beginning, where that guy they show thinking about CORE looks like he’s about to burst into laughter any moment, which made moi burst into laughter, which ruined the first time I saw the video…and so on). A lot of homage was paid to CW, and I’m glad that I’ve traumatized those poor chaps enough to make them remember ’42’ for at least the forseeable future. Quiz finals saw significant contribution by mini Ankit Sud; the connect round was superb.
Saw the Exun 2008 intro video too. Really good – again, except for the beginning. Why start off with one song, and then switch over to another? Also a break from tradition, with Fatboy Slim replacing Rage Against The Machine. Me prefers the latter.
TCS IT Wiz 2008. I’ve heard a lot of feedback which flies right in the face of the official press release. Going through some of the questions, it seems like deja vu – loads and loads of sitters separating loads and loads of quizzers from loads and loads of goodies. More of luck than quizzing prowess. Regardless of that, CW’s performance in TCS and CORE has been dismal, to put it mildly. On some days the guys are real good, on others they totally screw it up. No consistency. I was shocked to hear the teams which beat DPS VK to the final line-up. I dunno why Pickbrain chooses to keep it this simple. Maybe he just underestimates the level of quizzers, because I know that his research team is top-rate and has come up with some really tough quizzes in the past.
My Motorola phone has gone for repair two weeks now (it’s motherboard and LCD screen need to be replaced, after it fell down a flight of stairs at Exun Oh-8). Need to live with my old LG phone. One of the biggest problems I’m facing is that I no longer have my phonebook with me. And the fact that accessing Net was a pain in the a** during the vacation.
Airtel has removed the monthly rental for its Mobile Office plan. (Vivek found this out after speaking to a female customer care executive named Kuldeep.) 30p for 50kb now, so it’s way cheaper than the earlier plan. Dial *567# from your Airtel mobile to activate.
WordPress 2.7 ‘Coltrane’ was released soon after I left Delhi. Oh, the agony I’ve been in to try it out for so many days. Feels nice to a see a lot of the things I voted for in its surveys making it to the final product. No plugins seem to’ve broken – till now. The ability to respond to comments from the admin page itself is a heaven-send.
Can’t wait for OpenSuse 11.1 to release on 18th December 2008 to ditch this Frankensteinien monster of Vista+Ubuntu on my laptop.
Access 2008 is culminating today. Probably won’t be able to make it to watch, but should be an interesting fight. CW has no hope, given the new rules which prohibit juniors from participating in senior events – which was the norm at Access earlier, and still is allowed in most other events including Exun. By sticking to this rule Modern School is basically handing over the trophy to DPS RKP on a platter since they’re the only ones who’ve the numbers to send members for their respective categories.

Phew. That’s the update. Can get back to posts and applications now.

Exun 2008 got over around a week back (check out some posts on it by other people) and one of the most asked-for things has been the quiz / crossword archives. Gursartaj was kind enough to hand over the printed copies of the material to Vivek, but unfortunately he hasn’t been able to put those up yet because of practical exams and problems with his computer. Vishesh was nice enought to later send over a copy if the archives. So here you go: download the Exun 2008 Quiz and Crossword Archive (ZIP, ~4.1 MB), which contains all the questions papers of the quiz (both senior & junior) and the crossword event prelims and finals. Exun 2008 papers were good and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did watching it.

Another thing which people have been asking me a lot about lately is on how to prepare for the TCS IT Wiz Quiz to be held on 11th December at IIT Delhi. (I’d have loved to come down and see this one too, but I won’t be in town at that time.) For starters, it’s essential to know the basics. There isn’t much time until the day of the event however, so the method described earlier simply cannot work within this short space of time. Instead, what you can do is go through Trivial.net’s archive of computer quizzes. Doing that should give you an idea of some of the most basic computer history stuff. Once that is done, spend your remaining time reading up news articles from either of these two sources – PC World or Ars Technica. Go for the former if you aren’t that highly experienced with tech quizzing, since it provides its articles with background perspective required for a beginner. Go for the latter if you already have a base in tech quizzing. Point to note is, Ars Technica will be overkill for the TCS IT Wiz standards, but when you already know a bit of tech then reading through PC World kind of stuff aimed at laymen will quickly induce boredom.

TCS IT Wiz is a quiz which has damn simple questions. Your task is NOT to get the maximum number of questions right, but to get the minimum number of questions wrong. It’s about making the least number of slip-ups. Be nice folks. Click pictures and compile a few questions so that I can come back and have a look at ’em.