Daily Archives: December 21, 2006

MY FC5 Crashed

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Well , seems this is the first time linux hates me. I have seen lots of problems with linux but most of them are generally a software not installing coz of failed dependencies or some file system error which a fsck will solve without any major issue . But this time it really screwed me .

The reason why it crashed is simple . “Improper Shutdown”. Was in a hurry when mom shouted the n th time to have breakfast that instead off the normal shutdown , switched off the power button . But never realized that will lead to the tragedy. Next time the comp never booted and even when i tried to boot in single mode , it just displayed two linesof error ( which i donn remember now , one of those lines had something about journal ) .

Tried hard to rescue my files but in vain .

Lost lots of work coz of this crash :( :( , like

1. Files related to the hacking contest i planned to conduct. Though i have the files uploaded in website , they are not the latest and anyway lost the mysql db )
2. Spider SMS ( not exactly. The prev night sent the code to prasanna , so almost got the files except for the todo and some other files )
3. ByteCode . A single web page which i managed to design for bytecode . Had to start again
4. Glug-t site . Set of web pages designed for the Gnu Linux User Group- Trichy :(
5. Spider site . A few extra features for the Spider site .
And ya all the downloads i did :( .
6. A patch written for ldtp as an extra option for ldtprecord

So learnt a few lessons from this crash

1. Always shutdown the comp.
2. It is better to have your /home and /var in a seperate partition
3. Backup the files every now and then in a seperate partition
4. Backup myqsl regularly

So one good thing about the crash is that now i have installed Ubuntu and recording can be done in that even if it is gnome 2.14. And i certainly like apt-get than yum . Hoping the get the repo’s soon :)

ACM Regionals @ Coimbatore

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The ACM ICPC 2006 Regional Contest was held on December 16th & 17th , 2006 at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, coimbatore, and our team ( me , evo and vasu ) was one of the top 50 teams selected for the onsite contest .

The travel to coimbatore was really weird this time. This is the second time i am going to coimbatore (last time with Manas ) and never knew where amrita is :( . To make things worse , the train stopped at thirupur coz of some technical fault . Had to travel from thirupur to coimbatore by bus and then from there to amrita . As usual was late by a few hours and missed the tour of the contest :( ( actually it does not matter since it was Day1 ).

Then after meeting evo and vasu there ( OMG , they were discussing some problem already ) , we went for the “grand” campus tour . The cook book said “Campus Tour – Teams and coaches tour the plush greenery Amrita University Campus, campus facilities” . But it turned out to be one of the worst tour . The guys who came with us for the tour were so “dumb”. They used to show us a basketball court and say “This is our basketball court ” . As if we all thought it is a football court. Anyway another sad part is that the “greenery” we expected in amrita is nowhere to be found . Bad that this time the contest is during hols :( :(

After lunch had the first practice session . We were able to solve all three ( though presentation error rapped us and the guy who seems to answer our doubts is one of the dumbest i can ever find. We used to ask him , what is the presentation error . Our output seems to be fine and he used to reply “Yes, there is a presentation error.” ) . And anytime our Codelabs is far better than mooshak. Our Codelabs has a better interface than the mooshak , since codelabs is not a single web page and hence one can predict what will happen if the page is refreshed ( unlike in mooshak you have to remeber your last action )

After dinner , had the second practice session and this time we did not get one question :( . Anyway it was total fun being with vasu and evo around . Especailly vasu always had some funny stuff to tell us.

Day II
Break fast at 6.30 :-( and i got up at 6.40 ( One of the difficult thing for me to do :( ) . Contest started at around 8.00 PM and ended at 1.00 PM. We were able to solve three problems and ended up 23 rd . The final standings can be viewed here . Planned to start early but had to wait for the certificates .

The problem set can be found here

Came back to chennai the next day.