Thoughts of a Psych/Code Monkey/Guitarist

For those people having a bad week...if only there were some way for me to lend you some hapiness, i seem to have more than enough...why, you may ask? Well, programming (again, no suprise), in summary: 1) Made it to round 2 of TopCoder Open. I've never passed quals before, this is two steps further, and top 400 in world! I get my free shirt, and have chances at winning $$ :D 2) Made it to the first round of Google Code Jam. This is cool too, cos first round here is top 500, out of over 4000 coders. I also went really quickly, and came high in my room (check here) which made me feel -> :D I was rather relieved to qualify, because onsite has 100 competitors, and i'd be seeded about #100, so if I perform consistently i might get a free trip to Google headquarters! 3) Got enough points to get 1st in a design :D...$$$...awesome 4) I've had hardly any work at uni...everything seems to be stuff from last week that i finished then because i didn't realise we had two weeks to

Hmm...i seem to be tired quite a lot recently, and this week is no exception. This is mainly because it's coming into programming competition season :) That's right, I'll be competing in the TopCoder Open (TCO), Google Code Jam (GCJ), ACM (university-level) and TopCoder Design competitions, plus keeping track of the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) at which I know all of the australian team. This week was a bit messy on the designing side, as I was the only person who was working on this particular project. I knew this was going to happen, because I had intentionally signed up for a difficult program in order for the practice, and a few days in I asked for an extension. Then, when it was more obvious that noone else was doing it, as well as the project specifications being changed twice, I asked for the extension again (I'd had no response from the first time). This time, they actually said no...so on wednesday i didn't go to uni and instead worked on the

Ahhhh! Gotta breathe in the bimbo-free air. I know it sounds mean, but in a 40min bus trip to uni, sitting behind me were two 17-yearold Vicky Pollards (from the TV show Little Britain...If you've seen it you'll know :p) ...oh the agony, 40 mins of non-stop high-pitched mindless chatter about anything and everything requiring no thought...Here's a few memorable quotes: "I like Playboy.....and Barbie, " "Why do we always look slutty in pictures??? I don't think we should take pictures on the bus." (said when taking a picture using a phone camera.) "We were watching that Britney Speares documentary...do you think Alyce looks like her?" "No way! She's just died her hair! Anyway, she's a mole!" "Hey, can you go up to my boyfriend, and ask him who he thinks is prettier...me or Joss?" "ok...i'll go up to him and be like 'hey, who is prettier? Nicole or Joss' and he'll be all like '

Rightio, Blog Watcher 1.0 is officially ready :) I'll try and give you brief introduction. 0: Site is to be found hyar: http://padster.webpal.info/xml/blogwatch/checker.php 1: You must have a username / password account with me to log in. Please comment here with your address if you want a username, and I'll give one to you and a default password, and tell you how to change it. 2: Once you've logged in, add your blog watches in the "Add a blog Watch" Page. The blog formats accepted are: *** atom .xml feeds - so long as the blog has a <title>, and each post has a <title> and <issued> date. *** .rss feeds - so long as the blog has a <title>, and each post has a <title> and <pubdate> date Note that these MUST finish with their appropriate extensions (.xml and .rss) This is why live journals /rss is supported, but you should not use this with their /atom feed because it leaves off the .xml As you can see, probably any xml-based

OK: My Blog-watch site is virtually up and working, more info tomorrow when I'm awake and hopefully when I add support for .rss files (multiply and MSN spaces), and feel i've tested enough for it to work. Basically, i've already set up a watch for me on this site, and want to post here to see whether my watch turns up as having been updated. *fingers crossed*

Ok, wow, so much to report since last entry...it's all so cool, anyway, here's a summary of my week: 0) Last Friday (i know, it's not part of this week, but hey!) WIN indoor soccer division grand final! Get hit in the eye and partially blinded by the ball :( Score a goal while I can't see :) Get hit again in the same eye :( Score *again* using my now-patented cornder-drag-move :) miss penatly :( win 5-2 :D get free beanie :S Anyway, special congrats to Sarah on her hatrick + Ron on his super-keeper skills. 1) Monday...back to uni, meh, but free-pooling & darts til 5 was nice. 2) Tuesday...not much, i guess you could say Algebra tute is actually looking rather nice (good other students, audience participation and all), but nothing much happened cos i was getting ready for: 3) Tuesday night / Wednesday morning: TopCoder SRM 256 (yes, 2^8, also had 666 registrants...) i came 13th overall!! Got 2nd highest score (=2nd fastest soltuion) out of anyone for the hardest ques