Symposium Saga 2010 Episode 2 : Warming Up (Interface)
Wednesday, 25 August 2010, 11 am
Millennium Hall, Senior Quiz Final
Quizmaster: Right Answer DPSN. Moving on to the next team.
Me: Dude, this is fucking boring. Bhaad mein gaya quiz. Uth ke chalte hai.
Mihir: Check out the semi-cute Xavier girl on your side.
Me (to girl): Who made this stupid quiz?
Girl: You think you’re too smart for it? What kind of quizzes do you have?
Me: The sexy kind.
Will send you an invite for sure.
Girl: Huh? Which you school are you from?
Me: DPS Noida.
Girl: Aaah!! Attitude waale bachhe!! DPS mein manners nahi sikhate?
Me: Nah. They focus on speed flirting instead.
Girl (suggestive smile): Do you hate convent school girls or what?
Me: Na Na. Hum to aapse pyaar karte hai
Quizmaster: Next question for DPSN.
Interface 2010. Chose it over Silico Battles 2010 (Ahlcon, Mayur Vihar) only because I had to go to Code Wars (DPS Vasant Kunj) the next day. (Silico clashes with everything). We split up the eSpice squad and sent half to Code Wars + Interface and the other half to Silico Battles.
Started from DPS Noida after some MAJOR confusion over who was going to which event. Me and Rohan tried sneaking in a hot girl (name classified but well, she just might be reading this and smirking to accompany us under pretext of of having a full team, but that plan got nuked. Reached St. Xavier’s in 25 minutes where we the male escort PK Sir escorted us one-by-one through the rain under the only umbrella we had.
St. Xavier’s looks like a typical convent school from the outside, but not as sucky from the inside. In fact the main hall, “Millennium Hall” was pretty big, almost a replica of Cambridge Noida’s Auditorium. After being treated to a torturous performance (during which someone swiped the Interface invite on Sawhney’s ass like a credit card) by the school band (see pic) we were sent off the various events. Me and Mihir for Quiz, Tushant and Nitesh for C++ Programming, Srijan for Java, Utkarsh and Rose for WebD while Karan & Karan (Malik and Sawhney) presented the PPT in the hall.
Quiz prelims were of MCQ type :/ Ranging from sitters like the developer of Java, to WTF? like last MSDOS version (6.0 or 6.2 or 6.22), it was a pretty disappointing one. Obviously, we owned it. Halfway through, in walks Akshay Kumar.
Erm… no, not that one. Akshay Kumar is the quizzer from DPSMR who had to attend Silico but turned greedy and decided that he could manage both. (He eventually lost in Interface finals and won in Silico prelims. Silico finals tomorrow)
After the prelims, we headed back to the hall to catch K&K in action. Malik was presenting with an iPhone in hand, reading off the notes. When he receives a SMS from a girl. In the middle of the presentation (see pic)! Fortunately, he chose not to reply to it and carried on with the thing, while our team rofl-ed.
An interlude followed, with more tortuous music. The iPhone had a cool app which repeats whatever you say into it in Hamster/Dog/Horny-Bitch tongue. We tried everything into it, until Sawhney got a little too excited.
Sawhney (loudly into the phone): Teri Maa Chod Doonga.
Some Random Teacher of Some Random School sitting across him: MIND YOUR TONGUE!
iPhone-Hamster: Teri Maa Chod Doonga.
After the first block of events, it was time for Video Editing (Rohan and Swayam, our winning-streak video team), Crossword (Dhananjay and Vishesh), Gaming (Malik) and Quiz Finals (We had topped the prelims). Turned out that Srijan forgot the syntax during the Java event, C++ programming was a farce of loooooong programs, and WebD was okayish. Overall trophy was a distant sight, basically.
We walked on to the stage for the finals like we were born to do just that, untucking our shirt midway (it brings good luck, seriously)
Quiz finals were a joke. Have you ever heard of a quiz with MCQs, True or False questions and NO passing??? I had’t. Until now. Easily the yuckiest quiz ever. We were reduced to making fun of basically everything to keep us interested.
Quizmaster: For DPS Noida. Jack Kilbi invented the IC. True or False.
Me: Pretty hard question, you know. Jack Kilby invented the IC, Jack Kilbi did not. Would you say its wrong if we say False on this pretext?
Quizmaster: Just answer.
Me: You won’t even clarify anything. We know the answer, that should fetch us points. Why do you base a question around a spelling mistake?
Quizmaster: Just answer, dammit.
Me: True.
Quizmaster: Yeah.
Lousy quizmastering:
Quizmaster: What is the name of the new motion sensing technology for the XBox?
Me: Kinect
Quizmaster: No. Its Project Natal. No points.
We fought. They didn’t relent. Suckiest quiz ever. We still won, of course by a landslide margin over New Era. And yeah, the girl WAS semi-cute (if you had the eye for it).
Video Editing was mixing and mashing trailers for the first 3 Twilight films to make the trailer for the fourth film. Twilight is gay and they removed all music, taking “Video” Editing a bit too seriously.Rohan-Swayam said everyone else was overdoing effects and making it tacky, so they might win. Malik lost in the Burnout round of Gaming. The finals were between MSM and DPS, Rohini — SFIV, FIFA10 and NFS Shift on an Xbox. They were sooooooo bad at NFS that half the people (including us) left the hall in boredom.
In a sudden call of hunger, we called up Dominoes and got a pizza delivered in the school 
Reached prize distribution with a full mouth, but I don’t think the Chief Guest even noticed. We won 1st in Quiz, 1st in Video Editing and 2nd in Crossword AND THE OVERALLL!!!! w00t!!! Never thought we’d have won it after Jaata Main Kaun School Mata Jai Kaur School got a podium in around 4 events, but whatever.
On the way back, we wanted to rape Sawhney (he’s kinda fat and cute, so we rape him after every symposium) and make a video out of it, but he wasn’t in the mood.
Well, This was practice.
Tomorrow is the real thing.
Code Wars. We’re in.
Symposium Saga 2010 Episode 1 : Short Notice (MINET)
Saturday, 14 August 2010, 7 am. Jogging in the park behind my house. Phone rings.
Mihir: Yaar Mrinal, aaj free hai?
Me: Haan. kyun?
Mihir: Sorry yaar, thoda short notice ho gaya. Abhi pata chala aaj MINET hai. Chalega?
Me: WHAT THE F**K
And so begins the IT symposium season of 2010.
I owe you some background, so here you go: I’m a Class XII student of DPS Noida, the president of its computer club, eSpice, and well, hot. Schools in Delhi (and elsewhere, for that matter) organize annual IT symposiums comprising events like quiz, photoshopping, music-mixing, movie-making and Stuff. They are pretty fun and I’ve been doing well in the quizzes and the Photoshop events.
I promised myself to go to fewer events this season, mainly because of studies. Missed the ones at Montfort (G@teway), BVB and MSM (Matrix EComm). So, MINET at Mother’s International was to be the first. Back to where I left:
Reached school in an auto and joined by Tushant Jhaat Jha, the super-Maths- programming guy and Mihir Paul a.k.a. BedBoy Head Boy, my quizzing partner and a good gamer as well. Turns out that nobody else can come at such short notice, but Mihir really wants someone to go for Gaming (Gaming and Quiz clash, so he can’t go). We call up Lohit Nagpal, the most awesomest FIFA player and above average CS player
Mihir: Aaj MINET hai. Daud ke school aa. (He lives behind the school)
Lohit: Meri FIITJEE hai aaj.
Mihir: BHAP! DAUD KE AA!!
Lohit succumbs and reaches school and 5 minutes. We take an auto to Mother’s International, and reach 10 minutes after registration closing time. Fortunately, this is India, so after running through the entrance (which incidentally, has a grocery store and what looked like a clinic) we reach the reception desk and they (obviously) relent. Turns out that only 6 schools showed up for the event and we are alternating between cursing the event’s size and praising our chances of actually winning something.
Surprise Event is first up. Its an open event which clashes with nothing else, so everyone from the school (4 in our case) took part. It was a Maths+logic+shit paper which had questions like “How many times does a clock’s hands get superimposed in a day”
Me: WTF. THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE AN IT SYMPOSIUM, FOR GOD’S SAKE!
Anyway, I lost interest in it, but believed Tushant would crack it, being the Maths guy and all. After the event, Me and Mihir stayed on for the Quiz Prelims while Tushant went for Programming with Lohit. The prelims were a mixed bunch, ranging from acronyms to visual like:
Me: I’ve seen this!!! I can’t remember where. SHIT!
Mihir: Think, dude, think!
Me: I think it started with Alt or something
Mihir: Altair?
Me: Bang On!
And then there were sitters like Turing Machine, Jaron Lanier’s oxymoronic term and total “I don’t have a clue ones” like IRIX, Futzing and full form of VIRUS (For the record any fullform of virus is supposed to be an unofficial backronym, MINET morons) (We wrote Viru Sahastrebuddhe)
After the prelims were wrapped up, we checked out the school canteen the grocery store. Had a few bars and drinks (as in chocolate bars and soft drinks), caught up with the Vasant Kunj guys i.e. Vivek Nair, Karthick, Aditya Kumar and Co. (who tried to scare us into believing that the upcoming Code Wars at VK would actually be challenging). At one point we stumbled across a hall where a couple of MINET guys were playing FIFA on a Wii. We began talking about something in that hall which led to Aditya Kumar proclaiming that I’m gay. (I’m not)
Aditya: Dude. You are gay.
Me: No, man. Wii is gay.
Pun unintentional.
The results of the three events were out. We didn’t qualify for the second round of Surprise Event (which was, infact, a FIFA match on Wii), nor for programming. (We can’t win an event attended by 6 schools = We suck.) We did qualify for the quiz finals though, unsurprising since we’ve had podium finishes for the last 7 quizzes (excluding TCS IT Wiz Delhi 2009, where instead of me, a classmate won the first prize). The most excruciating mistake we made in the prelims was of the pic above.
Quizmaster: And that pic was Alt..
Me and Mihir: Oh Yeah!
Quizmaster: Alto. Xerox Alto.
Me and Mihir: F**K! Wasn’t it Altair?
Quizmaster: Altair didn’t even have a screen.
Yeah. Whatever. We qualified, so its okay.
The quiz finals began in another room while Lohit went for gaming. We had no one for Group Discussion OR Web Designing OR PPT, so were just hoping to win the quiz.
The finals (6 teams) were good, an infinite bounce of ~30 questions followed by a visual round. I don’t really remember the questions (the event was a week ago), but the team from RKP got into the lead first and maintained it throughout the quiz. We answered some nice ones relating to charging batteries with urine and and bot which ran on H-cells and stuff, alongwith a few sitters like the developer of Bada OS. By the end, us, DPS VK, and DPS-RKP team 2 were on a tie for second (and third) place. The quizmaster gave us 3 questions, whose answers we had write on paper and show it to him. Maximum (correct) answers in minimum time wins.
Q. Which wireless signal uses the 2.45 GHz frequency?
Q. Who said that he was a total as***ole in computers in 10th grade?
Q. How do we better know the Victor Company of Japan?
2.45 GHz reminded me of the radio frequency of 2.4 GHz and I was sure it was either WiFi or WiMax. The second one could either be Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. No one else makes such quotes. No clue about the third.
We wrote WiFi, Steve Jobs and Samsung. All wrong. But everyone else’s too.
Now instead of giving us new questions, the FatGuy (quizmaster is a long word) told us to just guess randomly on the 3 questions. Halfway through the guess, he picked up Nair-Karthick’s paper and said that he had one answer correct but he couldn’t “decipher their handwriting the first time” Way to go. They came 2nd. But its still a tie for third place. Fatso asks us to just randomly guess the answer aloud (weirdest quiz ever, I tell you). Me and Mihir are fast and not shy in any manner, so we blurt out, before RKP could even open their mouth:
Me: WiMax!
Fatso: No.
Me: ZigBee!
Fatso: No.
Me: BLUETOOTH!
Fatso: Yo.
iFTW. There wasn’t a trophy for the third place, just a piece of paper certificate, but we managed to smile. Lohit came third as well, so the trip wasn’t as bad as expected.
We were wrong.
After the event, Mihir took an auto for his East Delhi home, while Me-Tushant-Lohit were looking for a way to the nearest Metro station to get back to Noida. We figured we’ll take an auto to the station.
The Heavens burst.
Rain, like you’ve never imagined, was upon us, and we were in the middle of a road, no shelter in sight, screaming for an auto. There were hundreds. And they were all full. We spotted a bridge and took shelter for nearly half-an-hour, shouting for a taxi/auto/bus/whatever, whenever one passed. As fate would have it, all our drivers were on a holiday today and Dads busy somewhere.
35 minutes later.
We finally found an auto and jumped in like a tiger on a deer boarded it.
Me: Sabse paas waale Metro station le chalo
Autowaala: Bhaiyaa. Aaj 2 baje se kal 2 baje tak metro band hai.
Me: FML.
We were short of cash, so taking the auto to Noida wasn’t an option, so we went THE OPPOSITE WAY to Nehru Place , braving through the swamps on foot, and then took a Blueline to Noida, in what could be considered one of the most uncomfortable-st bus journeys of my life
It felt so good to be back in familiar territory.
Minutes later, we saw a Metro pass on the overhead track.
TinEye – Reverse Image Search Engine
Sometimes, a service comes up and and makes you think, “Why didn’t anyone think of this before??” TinEye elicits precisely that reaction.
The idea is simple. You have a picture. Its something which you think might be taken from the net. You want to know what it is. Just upload it to TinEye and the engine searches through its database of 1.26 billion images (and growing) to find a similar image. By following up to that image’s context, you can extract information on its subject. Of course, it won’t work for every photo, but does so 80% of the time.
Check it out. Someday, it’ll help you.
P.S. I stumbled across it while solving an online quiz… the type where using any help is allowed and the quizmasters give many connect-the-picture’s-subjects problems thinking that since people can’t search using images as keywords, it’ll be hard. Ha! Hope they don’t read this blog
jDownloader – For all your (~pirated~) downloading needs
If you have an unlimited internet connection, chances are that you download a lot of movies, music and games. The most common method is through torrents but in some cases people prefer normal HTTP downloads (eg: when there aren’t enough seeders). Rapidshare, Megaupload, Mediafire etc. have emerged on the scene providing upload space where people upload such files, often in parts of 100 or 200 MB (Mediafire’s best, if you ask for my opinion)
jDownloader is a free, easy-to-use download manager which does all the dirty stuff of downloading each part one-by-one (or a few at a time) once you provide the links. The links, of course, are easily available all over the net on warez forums.
What makes this program stand apart is all the features crammed into it. Once you copy the links in your browser (don’t even have to paste it), the LinkGrabber module automatically checks if each part is online… so that you don’t have to go through the agony of downloading 99 parts and finding that the last part has been removed. It also has a built in extraction feature which automatically extracts .rar and HJSplit files after downloading. It also compatible with most download sites, the popular ones are certainly covered. Another interesting feature is although Rapidshare and some other sites don’t allow you (ie your IP address) to download more than a few files daily, the reconnection feature can be set up such that it automatically disconnects and reconnects (to obtain a new IP address) after each download. You can also set the password for files which require one so that the download process doesn’t pause in between to ask for it. Files can also be prioritized, those which have higher priority are downloaded first and so on.
The program is open-source and is available on all platforms. You’ll need the Java Runtime Environment to run it.
PS: A temporary bug, as of 6-Oct-09, shows a plugin out-of-date error while downloading from Mediafire through jD. This is supposed to be fixed ASAP but meanwhile you can try replacing your <jDownloader folder> \jd\plugins\hoster\MediafireCom.class with this. (Updating to the next version will remove this patch)
