Memories of Kerala

:-)

ACM ICPC Regional at Amritapuri site was held during 5th December - 7th December at Amrita University, Amritapuri Campus, Kerala, India. I got the opportunity participate in this fabulous event for the 1st and last time in my life.
The event was well organized (Compared to the Kanpur regional for which I fortunately did not participated), Hospitality, Acomodation, Food and other facilities were superb. It was a great experience participating in this contest and I wish I'll have another chance in future to participate as a coach as well (Of cource then it becomes all about having fun without the burden of the contest ;-) )

December 4 - Day1

We reached at Amrita University, settled down and had a brief visit around the campus village.

Amrita Vishwa Vidya Peetham

Let's play some TT

December 5 - Day2
Official commencement of the On site regional and Practice Sessions and Visit to 'Asram'.

A Heartiest Welcome!

Practice Session - What?! 1 is prime in India?!!

On the way to the Asram

A Snooker round. Aim it and Pocket the Glory B-)

December 6 - Day 3

The big Day. Battle of Brains, Cultural Program

The Big Battle.

All relaxed after the hefty battle. Well We also scored a balloon B-)

Awards Ceremony

Cultural program. - The legend of Rama.

Cultural program. - Rock'n Roll Sonia. ;-)

All's Well. Ends Well.

December 7 - Day 4
Visit to Tenmala.

On the way to Tenmala.

Shoot 'em Up! - Bang! Bang!!. B-) :-P

Let's have a ride.

December 8 - Day 5
Back to motherland.

Glad to see the motherland again. :-)

Links:
ACM ICPC 2008 Amrita Regional
http://icpc.amrita.ac.in
ACM ICPC Amrita 2008 Blog (Photos)
http://amritaicpc.wordpress.com/icpc-2008-regionals-photo/
Onsite Problem Set.
http://acmicpc-live-archive.uva.es/nuevoportal/region.php?r=as10&year=2008

JBenchmark - Benchmark your J2ME mobile

:-)

Benchmarking is the act of running a computer program, a set of programs, or other operations, in order to assess the relative performance of an object, normally by running a number of standard tests and trials against it. It's more popular among computer enthusiasts as a method of comparing there workhorse with others. B-) B-) 3DMark and PCMark by Futuremark are popular benchmarking tools for PCs.
So why not have your mobile also benchmarked? Well now you can benchmark J2ME enabled mobiles as well. JBenckmark suite, developed by Kishonti Informatics has few benchmark tools to measure the CPU performance, Graphic performance and Multimedia capabilities of the device.
I have used JBenchmarkACE - ARM CPU Estimator and the result was a ARM9 Family processor running at 105MHz for my LG KU250. So how about yours?

Links,
http://www.jbenchmark.com/index.jsp

Regards,
Aravinda D.P.

Anexure

Test results
MIDP2 Imaging - LQ	173 Frames | 190 Frames (91%)
XML parsing	17 | 350 (4%)
Business math	76 | 556 (13%)
MIDP2 Game - MQ	771 Frames | 2884 Frames (26%)
Audio - MIDI	833 | 8333 (9%)
Route planner	165 Frames | 1783 Frames (9%)
Image Processing	10 | 122 (8%)
Game Physics	108 | 859 (12%)
Composite MIDP2 Game - MQ	624 Frames | 1763 Frames (35%)
JAR reading	120 | 2083 (5%)
Video - 3GPP	55 | 1234 (4%)
ZIP compression	13 | 194 (6%)
MIDP2 Game - LQ	998 Frames | 4836 Frames (22%)
Composite Business - MQ	173 Frames | 936 Frames (18%)
RMS read-write	12 | 400 (3%)
Composite Business - LQ	328 Frames | 1607 Frames (20%)
MIDP1 Game	504 Frames | 1522 Frames (33%)
Composite Business - HQ	Failed / Not supported
Composite MIDP2 Game - LQ	807 Frames | 2619 Frames (30%)
MIDP2 Imaging - MQ	161 Frames | 179 Frames (89%)
Audio - MP3	88 | 1724 (5%)
Business Charts	266 Frames | 1390 Frames (19%)
Image loading (JPG)	9 | 106 (8%)
Image loading (PNG)	21 | 265 (7%)
Composite MIDP1 Game	354 Frames | 1270 Frames (27%)
Chess	11 | 164 (6%)
Shortest Route Search	21 | 197 (10%)
Map	261 Frames | 2137 Frames (12%)

* Data Shown as, Score obtained | Best Score (Percentage)

T-Mobile HTC G1 - 1st Android phone

After almost a year from the introducing of Android platform, T-Mobile has launched HTC G1 as the first Android phone to the market. It’s a touchscreen-enabled mobile phone with a full QWERTY keypad hidden underneath its decently-sized screen. While it has indeed been launched, it only go on sale starting October 22 and will be exclusively available on T-Mobile only. :-(



Prices are tagged as 179 US$ and the device is equipped with a 400 Mhz Qualcomm processor, 3.17" HVGA 480x320 display, 3.1Mpixel camera, WiFi, A-GPS, 3G/HSDPA. However the features lack are a desktop Sync Application, Video recording and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

More Details: http://www.t-mobileg1.com/

Google Code Jam 2008 Online Rounds are over.

Prev: Google Code Jam 2008 Starts

:-)

The online Round 1-3 of this year Google Code Jam, a coding competition hosted by Google continued during 16th June to 9th August. Online Rounds were 2 hours long and consisting 3-4 questions in each round.
There were 2520 advancers from Round 1 (4 from Sri Lanka), 1000 advancers from Round 2 (2 from Sri Lanka), and finally top 500 advancers from Round 3 (1 from Sri Lanka). This top 500 contestants will compete compete against those in their region (Asia Pacific; Europe, Middle East and Africa; and the Americas) on a local Google Office to advance for Onsite finals at the Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California on Friday, November 14.

Stats:
http://acm.csci.unt.edu/~eleusive/round2Stats.txt
http://groups.google.com/group/google-code/browse_thread/thread/09d1230cd6e68121#

#132# - MobileCert

:-)

Few Weeks agoThe Sri Lanka Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (TRC) has issued a new set of guidelines in using mobile and CDMA phones. This step was taken to avert irregularities and illegal activities while minimizing threats to national security created by the irresponsible use of telephones. Under this the mobile operators in Sri Lanka was requested to implement a method to issue a certificate so that it can be validated that whether the registered owner is using the particular connection.
http://www.news.lk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6426&Itemid=44

Few days ago Dialog has implemented this and with effect from today Mobitel is also activated this feature. Now issuing code #132# in a mobile phone provids a message with the registerd user name, ID and mobile number. So it is expected that the armed forces and other security institutions will start to inspect this in near future. So the user's are adviced to make sure that they use the connections with regulations set forth to avoid unwanted troubles.

Google Code Jam 2008 Starts

:-)

Google code jam is a coding competition in which professional and student programmers are asked to solve complex algorithmic challenges in a limited amount of time. The qualification contest of this year started at 16th 23:00 in UTC time and ended at 17th 23:00 in UTC time. 7154 contestants attempted 3 problems and 6773 were qualified to participate in this years competition.
The Online Round 1 will be held during the week starting on 25th Friday to select 2520 advancers for the Online Round 2.

More details : http://code.google.com/codejam/

Happy coding!

No more Project Hoshimi Invitationals in Future :-(

:-)

Microsoft has decided to discontinue Project Hoshimi invitational which is a great strategic programming competition, from future Imagine Cup competitions - the world’s premier student technology competition. It is not known officially what was the reason to remove one of the most popular invitational from the competition. But there was rumors that the reason is there is not direct connection with the theme of the competitions in later years than it was first introduced where the theme was about health and eventually media was no longer interested in this invitational.

However the Project Hoshimi Lead Manager desides to continue support the project personally for the educational benificial of the student community.
Project Hoshimi website : http://www.project-hoshimi.com

ODF plugin for MS Office

:-)

The OpenDocument format (ODF) is a free and open file format for electronic office documents, such as spreadsheets, presentations and word processing documents. ODF if primarily implemented by OpenOffice.org office suite and the main file format of the respective product.

This file format was popular among linux (Primarily open source developers as well) fans but the pain was using these documents under a Windows PC having MS Office. MS Office does not natively support OpenDocument currently. However you can download ODF add in for Microsoft Office at http://sourceforge.net/projects/odf-converter. And the MS Office will natively support the ODF format from SP2 of Office 2007 onwards.

Enjoy!

Few cool things in about URI scheme in Firefox 3

:-)

Firefox version 3 was released about a week ago. While I was browsing with Firefox 3 I came to find out few cool things as well. In fact the guys at Mozilla has really a sense of humor than last time. B-)

The changed places I noticed were about: config and addition of about: robots

In about: config there is a kidding warning message as follows.
There is an about: robots Easter egg as well.As usually they have included a new phrase from Book of Mozilla at about:mozilla

Try these with your copy of Firefox as well.

Enjoy!

More bout about URI scheme can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/About:_URI_scheme

Long Filename Problem in LG KU250

:-)

There is a bug in the LG KU250 firmware (at least as of software version 10d) that if you transfer a file with a long file name which is longer than that the phone supports the file simply disappears but the space is occupied from the common memory of the phone. (This problem may not occur if you used external MicroSD card.)

The only option appear to be to restore the firmware into default state. The reset function as well as clear all memory function doesn't solve the problem. A factory reset code wasn't available to be known at the time of writing.

Note: LG KU250 is The winning handset in the GSMA's "3G for All" program 2007.
http://ae.lge.com/products/model/detail/ku250.jhtml