Wednesday, February 27, 2008

A nice gazal by Jalan Matri

તકદીર ખુદ ખુદાએ લખી પણ ગમી નથી,
સારું થયું કે કોઈ મનુજે લખી નથી.

કેવા શુકનમાં પર્વતે આપી હશે વિદાય,
નિજ ઘરથી નીકળી નદી પાછી વળી નથી.

શ્રદ્ધાનો હો વિષય તો પુરાવાની શી જરૂર?
કુરઆનમાં તો ક્યાંય પયમ્બરની સહી નથી.

ડૂબાડી દઈ શકું છું ગળાબૂડ સ્મિતને,
મારી કને તો અશ્રુઓની કંઈ કમી નથી.

મૃત્યુની ઠેસ વાગશે તો શું થશે ‘જલન’,
જીવનની ઠેસની હજુ કળ વળી નથી.

- જલન માતરી

Saturday, February 09, 2008

Programming Challenges

Today, I had a chat with ali on different online programming challenges as IOPC is going on write now and ali has taken part in it. I was remembering my glorious days when I won a jacket in bitwise.

I am just going to enlist a few programming challenges. Obviously, the list is not exhaustive.

1) ACM ICPC : I believe it is one of the most prestigious programming challenges. It is an IBM sponsored annual event.

2) Top Coder : This too is one of the most prestigious programming challenges. General belief is that the emphasis is more on programming rather than algorithms.

3) IOCCC : Well, here one can find the weirdest C programs. Most of the time it will seem that the winning entry programs won't even compile. However, they do but it is difficult ( rather next to impossible ) to find out what they would do by merely reading the code. My favorite program is here. And yeah, it DOES compile and run.

4) Bitwise : One of the most prestigious INDIAN programming challenges. I used the word "Indian" because it is held by Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. The challenge however is open internationally. It is really a pity to see that since the inception of the event, only once an Indian team could grab the first prize. Ameya Karkare ( aka crack-kare ) and Navneet Lohiwal ( aka lollu ) from Indian Institute of technology Bombay (my alma-matter :-) ) played with handle "AK47", undoubtedly shooting down all competing teams.

5) OPC : Held annually by Chennai Mathematical Institute. One of the toughest programming challenge I have ever faced.

6) CodeCraft : Held annually by International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad as part of their technology festival Felicity.

7) IOPC : Hosted by IIT Kanpur as part of its technology festival techkriti.

Monday, February 04, 2008

A nice encouraging quote

Saw this quote as a status message of my friend poonam.

"Don't be disheartened if no one notices your efforts, the sun puts up a beautiful show every morning, but most of the audience is sleeping!!!"