Saturday, October 28, 2006

Google Code Jam (not edible)

As promised, I'm posting again now that I'm gallivanting. The current gallivant is to New York, for a programming competition called the Google Code Jam. It's powered by TopCoder (a company that runs a whole bunch of contests). There are some scarily good people around.

Due to difficulty with internet access (over an hour on the phone with some surprisingly clued up tech support people - a nice change from SA), I'm only posting this now, after the contest is already over. I came 14th (our of 100 at the finals and about 20000 who signed up). If I hadn't done some silly things during the contest I could probably have made the top 10, but oh well.

Today and tomorrow are free time/sightseeing (there is an organised cruise at 3pm this afternoon). Tomorrow I'm meeting up with my cousin and just spending some time in New York. Not quite sure what I'll do today.

If the wireless connection I'm using holds up, I'll see if I can post some pictures a bit later (I found a wireless signal that requires signup for web, but allows other ports, so I'm tunneling out to UCT and back out via the proxy, and I have to tilt the laptop at exactly the right angle on my lap while sitting in just the right place for it to work).

Update: photos at http://people.cs.uct.ac.za/~bmerry/photos/codejam2006.

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