Posted by Skrud at Saturday, March 31st 2007 at 4:19pm
I came in 4th place and I’m going to the North American Finals in Seattle!!!
(Actually, I think I actually came in 5th … there was a mistake in the rankings chart. Brad was ahead of me by two points).
But before I get into the details, I’ll give you some context.
Last night was a party and a half. I’ve been meeting up with so many people here in Toronto: Linda and Brit who came down to visit from Waterloo; Erik (Rickster) who came from Fort McMurray, AB where he’s been for far too long; Alex and Trelaine and Chris from University of Ottawa that I met at CUTC this year; Mark from Waterloo; and Jackie from Infusion, whom I’ve run into and virtually every conference event this year, and Kurtis, CEO of one of the Infusion-related companies. Jackie recommended Madison Pub, so we went there.
Microsoft gave us all American Express gift cards with 125 “points” on them. 1 point = 1 US Dollar. It’s supposed to be used for the taxi cab to/from the airport as well as dinner. Well, a lot of places don’t take American Express – taxis included. Luckily, the pub did. So we all opened up tabs.
After the drinking (and lots of nerd talk), Jackie and Kurtis led Guillaume, Rickster and I to Burrito Boyz – which was packed. To add to the randomness, I ran into Bob and Jeff from McMaster there. They’re not even here for ImagineCup, they were just getting burritos. The burrito was delicious. And huge. I wasn’t hungry at all today and could barely eat breakfast or lunch. So much fun!
So I get back to the hotel at 4:15am, where I meet my roomate, Lucas, since my key card mysteriously ceased to function and I woke him up with my repeated attempts. Two hours later we wake up shower and head to breakfast at the MaRS centre.
Of course, nearly all the delegates from Quebec were hung-over. But that’s no problem, I’m used to coding hungover (thanks, CS Games). About a third into the competition, I had implemented the entire problem with the exception of the shortest-path algorithm, and jumped up to 2nd place. I then spent a lot of time researching Dijkstra’s algorithm, which I should know, and have definitely learned, but couldn’t for the life of me remember how to implement. Eventually I got bumped down to 5th place and kind of stayed there. At the end of the competition they announced a 4-way tie for 4th, and so there are 7 people in total going to Seattle in June for the finals!
So tonight, we celebrate!
Tags: 2007, competition, events, imaginecup, microsoft, toronto | 11 comments
Posted by Skrud at Monday, January 15th 2007 at 9:34am
The last day of CUTC was a blast, despite the TechTeam presentations early in the morning, and the fact that we didn’t end up winning (I’m only slightly bitter).
The Second Life seminar was interesting despite the fact that I was struggling to stay awake. I really was listening and enthusiastic, I was just tired. Second Life itself seems pretty cool – I like the idea of a development platform, that anyone can use, that just so happens to be in the context of a massively multiplayer game world. I downloaded the client at the hotel so I’ll give it a try sooner or later.
The Google keynote was also pretty good. We learned about a lot about Google’s mobile apps, since that’s what they’re developing in the Waterloo office. We also learned that Google does your laundry and dry cleaning for you, has free mechanics for its employees, and lets you bring your dog (but not cat) to work. The best question at this keynote session was going to win an iPod Video.
I walked up and asked “The problem with mobile apps isn’t lack of innovation, it’s the cost of using mobile internet because of the high fees that telecom companies charge per kilobyte. What’s Google doing to ensure that people can afford to use GMail and Google without paying a ton of money in bandwidth costs, especially for people like the students here who likely won’t have data plans?”
I got a really good answer, too. Google has been working on something called the “Google Transcoder” which essentially dumbs down web pages for your cell phone. This includes the ability to shrink images on Google’s server before it gets transmitted to your phone, saving valuable KB as well as the ability to block images completely.
But I didn’t win the iPod. Some other guy won the iPod and I didn’t even understand what his question was about – neither did the Google speaker. Oh well. I got a consolation prize from Fiona, a Microsoft programmer that was mingling with us throughout the conference. She gave me a handy Microsoft Wireless Optical mouse, because she thought my question was better. Thanks a lot, Fiona!
Finally we had the TechTeam awards ceremony and banquet. Our delegation was dapper as hell.
Our fellows from across the hall at University of Ottawa (and our best friends at the conference) forgot to bring fancy clothes:
But that’s okay, because we got Table 42.
CUTC 2007 was a blast! Thanks to everyone we met and hung out with! It’s a shame the SFU guys couldn’t make it this year, but hopefully we’ll be able to go to their NTCU conference in May.
Tags: 2007, cutc, events, geek, tech, toronto | 1 comment
