Sunday, November 04, 2007

Free stuff

Despite having finished my PhD, I haven't graduated yet, which means I'm still required to hold to the post-graduate code: grab anything that's free. Today I'm grabbing the free wireless internet at Orlando International Airport. Very nice, since every other airport I've used in the US requires you to pay for it.

I've taken the opportunity to upload all my photos to http://people.cs.uct.ac.za/~bmerry/photos/tccc2007/. There aren't that many, since one programming contest looks pretty much like another, and I didn't spend a lot of time in the parks.

That's probably all I'll be posting until my next jaunt overseas, which is probably when I move to Cambridge to start work.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

You win some, you lose some

And, today I lost. The round was just a disaster for me. The hard problem (normally 1000) was worth 900, which sucked me into thinking it would be an easy problem. In the end, my approach was not sophisticated enough, and I had to abandon it. That left me without enough time to work on the medium. I was a few minutes away from putting the finishing touches on by the end.

So, the TCCC07 is basically over for me. But as somebody pointed out, that also means I can relax and enjoy the rest of it instead of stressing.

So far I haven't felt motivated to take any pictures. When I've been outside there hasn't really been time, and the contest area looks basically the same as every other time.