All Jammed up

Following my usual trend of only blogging when I travel and have some pictures I need to post, here's some photos from my last trip to the Googleplex for Google Code Jam. I was somewhat off form, but still managed to make 10th. If you want to see some seriously scary problems, take a look at the site. There is also an article about it here, including a video showing some of my ugly mug.

Photos from Bulgaria

I'm back in England. The contest was great fun and I'm going to miss the Bulgarian warmth and sunshine.

How not to be seen

Don't turn up.

That seems to be the view of most of the people I've talked to about the IOI planned excursion to the Black Sea. It apparently involves 4-6 hours on a bus. Each way. Not including the time you spend waiting around at the beginning until everyone gets on the bus. And leaving at 6am. When the time comes, I for one won't be found wanting. I won't be found at all, since I will be sleeping the sleep of the just, or possible just very tired.

Apart from the attempt to inflict long periods of time on buses (which in my case normally consists of periods of boredom interspersed by vomiting), things have been going pretty well here - in fact far smoother than usual. The SA team also did pretty respectably on the first day, and the second day is finishing in a few minutes. I haven't been on any of the excursions so far (being on the scientific committee seems to involve lots of work, but it's all been fun), but I plan to take myself off to the old town tomorrow (hopefully with some other leaders to make it more fun).

Bulgaria, land of enormous hotel rooms

It's blog time again! As usual, it's because I'm travelling - this time to IOI again, in Bulgaria. Haven't been here long, but so far I've been blown away by the size of the hotel room. More news when I've actually been out and about more.

Fording the... ox?

So, now that Tim is living in Oxford, I had a sufficiently good excuse to go and visit, and so I did so last weekend. The weather was rubbish, the company was good, and the town is quite pretty, in a more spread-out way than Cambridge. We went to see the science museum (which had lots of surveying stuff), and otherwise just wandered around the place. Um, not sure what else to add to that really.

We came second!

I don't have photos to post yet, but there are more details and pictures at http://www.challenge24.org/2009/blog

And the contest was... was... I still don't know!

There were technical problems (a fair number of them) during the contest, so the closing ceremony is only at 12. And since the scoreboard was one of the casualties, we still don't know how we did. But talking to one or two other teams, it sounds like we did reasonably well. Details to follow.

Also, I have now been awake well over 24 hours, with more to come. If you feel yourself going a bit squiggly and turning into a 6-foot chicken, do not be alarmed - I am merely hallucinating.