Preparing for the ACM ICPC

We (Darshit Patel and Raj Negi) have been meaning to do something for the ACM ICPC participants from our college. However, due to our commitments, we haven't been able to do sufficient justice.
Here we are though - with this small guide to preparing for the ACM ICPC.

Parallel Universe

This poem was penned by Hiral Raval.

Notes from the Road

This post was written by Sanchita Rao.

The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page. – St. Augustine

YEAH!!!!! It’s really very important to explore the world and see different cultures and traditions. It mainly helps you to unplug yourself from the push and pulls of technology.

ACM - An Unforgettable Experience

This post was written by Amrita Nair.

What an awesome year it was! A year full of responsibilities, new learning experiences and a welcome change. ACM is the best thing that ever happened to me. A great platform, for which I will always have immense love and respect.

ACM brought about a beautiful change in me and my life. I may sound as if I'm exaggerating, but it's true... A journey from a quiet, reserved and introvert girl to a bold, strong and confident individual. Every moment of this journey was a moment to be cherished.

I still remember those intimidating moments of the interviews and those questions which were bombarded one after the other. It was my first interview ever and a memorable one indeed! After the results were announced, I was simply flabbergasted! It took me days for the feeling to actually sink in, and to believe that “I” was the “Chairman”. Well, that feeling was something I can't express in words.

What’s the truth about ISRO, India’s primary space agency?

This story was written by crypt221b 

Ever since I can remember, there weren’t many Indian things I thought highly of. ISRO was a rare exception. Capable of developing and deploying geostationary satellites and cryogenic rocket engines, launching lunar probes which would later go on to confirm presence of water on the moon, and now recently, a spacecraft orbiting Mars. For a country that has one of the biggest slum area, gaining a spot in the top 5 space agencies in the world is a pretty remarkable feat. ISRO made India proud among the world’s intellectual circles.

I always wanted to be a part of ISRO. These scientists and engineers had my utmost respect. You can only imagine how religiously I look up to my Dad who actually worked there! No, he wasn’t a scientist or an engineer. He was a Senior Networks and System Admin, basically in charge of all the computers. But that didn’t alter my regards for him in any way. He was loving, supportive, geeky, and the smartest guy I knew. He was my hero. 

Then I turned 18. The charm wore off. I started noticing weird oddities about ISRO. You know how you have these internal flags that can tell when something’s offbeat. You can’t really explain why since these flags are built from your life experiences and act on instinct. Some of these flags were waving bright red for ISRO. No matter how cool my Dad was, you could ignore these oddities only so many times until you realized that something was fishy about the organization. It was enough to make me give up my seat at IIST and go to US for a computer science degree.

When Life Gives you Lemons...

There are times when you have no control over what you are doing and what you should be doing. You get frustrated at small incidents that happen and wonder what the problem with you is. There are times when you feel that you have been left all alone. You get depressed and undermine yourself. What should one do when one fails to please the insatiable world, when everything seems impossible?

This post was written by Amrita Nair.

A Noobs guide to registering for the ACM ICPC.

The ACM ICPC Season is here!

For those of you who don't know, ICPC stands for the International Collegiate Programming Contest. (ACM stands for Association for Computing Machinery)
If you show your talent here, companies are head-over-heels over you. Because it's the greatest programming contest of this universe!

This post was written by Darshit Patel.

This is a no holds barred guide to registering for the ACM ICPC 2015.
This steps were quite confusing for us too. So, I thought of explaining these to you all.

Faith In Humanity

          I’ve always wanted to share this with someone for quite a few days. So, I thought why not write it and post somewhere and just share it with lots. 

This post was written by Vaishakh Gulab.

          I’m not a dude who is an expert in English literature, but if there’s a mistake in my grammar or I spell something wrong, please bear with me.

          

Childhood

This post was written by Surabhi Sarnot.
 
This is for the first time that I am trying to put my thoughts on paper. So, I was looking for something easy and simple to write on. I thought upon many topics such as day-to-day issues, current hot topics, historical personalities and so on. But I couldn’t find a familiar bond with any of them. So, as I continued my search, I came across an article on childhood. And I thought, yes! This is where everyone could relate their own childhood memories and cherish them.  

This Blog - A Place For All To Share

Hello!
It couldn't have been a better beginning for this!

This post was written by Darshit Patel.

What you are seeing here is a Blog that we, I, Raj Negi and Nishant Pai made. As you might have guessed from the title itself, this Blog is a place for all to share. I'll go into the details later in this post, but first you all must understand why we made this blog.

Why?

This is the IM (Instant Messaging) Generation. We all chat incessantly on WhatsApp, hike and other messengers. Our English has become a bad example of this generation. 

e.g.

• Mah LyF Mah RuLzzz
• Appy bdae

As we all know, industry jobs require a good amount of proficiency in written English. So we three thought, why not we make a Blog for our class and invite everyone to collaborate in the initiative? 

The Result?

This Blog!!

The Making.

The Blog that you see here is the result of a week's worth of Practicals. We gobbled up every free minute of our practicals to turn a crappy interface of the default theme to this awesome minimalistic sight for eyes. We fiddled around HTML, CSS and a good enough of image editing sites to turn this out. 

"So, what's the deal?", you ask.

The Deal.

As stated above, we want to improve our written English. 

Here's what we propose:

1. Each week, we will randomly select three people from our class according to their Roll numbers

          2. These selected people, will write something for this Blog.
       
          3. You want to volunteer to write? You are welcome!

You can write about anything. Anything? Anything!

Feeling frustrated about the continuous college work? Bad mouth here!
Had a breakup? Express yourself here! There will be many supporters! (And hopefully a new boyfriend/girlfriend here)
You write poems? We'd love to hear it!
It doesn't matter what you write. Hell, it doesn't even matter how you write. But what matters is that you write. Because life is an adventure of continuous learning, and what's something new to learn than this?!

"But we don't know any writing!", you reply. Fear not! We're here to help. If you can't figure out what to write about, come to us. You are free to come to us for any help at any time. 

Those who want to write a Blog post voluntarily or are selected to, contact us at therivista@gmail.com. You can also personally meet us. 

What matters here is your support. We're doing what we can to develop us all. We need your enthusiastic responses. This is what will make us to take other better initiatives.

Do comment below! :)

P.S. 'Rivista' means a 'Magazine' in Italian. And 'Scrittore' means a 'Writer'. Hence the name.

Fun Fact: 'e.g' stands for Exempli gratia in French.