The Welcome Reception was pretty nice, which took place about an hour after the with some speeches by TopCoder staff, people went around getting to know each other and there was plenty of good food to go round. I was pretty exhausted so I couldn't write an update at that time.
The sponsors (AOL, betfair, NSA, BT, Verisign, Eli Lilly) were all set up and apparently, they're competing for more attention from coders. Every one of them have gaming systems with large screen displays setup, except for the NSA. Small wonder no one really likes them. Okay, just kidding.
Looking forward to the algorithm semifinals tomorrow. It's going to be fun. We're just getting warmed up! Additionally, AOL is organising a scavenger hunt for a chance to win an iPod Touch. Looks like AOL is in the lead for grabbing everyone's attention so far.
I put something together to help out with knowing what games are available.
AOL System: XBox 360 Games: Guitar Hero III (although I've only watched it being played, this game is awesome), FIFA 08
betfair System: Nintendo Wii Games: Mario Kart Wii, Wii Sports
BT System: Nintendo Wii Game: Mario Kart Wii
Eli Lilly System: XBox 360 Game: Burnout (I'm not sure of which version)
Verisign System: Nintendo Wii Game: Mario Kart Wii
Meanwhile, some more gaming at the event
And did I mention that Guitar Hero rocks?
Chances are there'd probably be a six-way Mario Kart showdown. I'd like to see that happen.
With the Marathon Match over and the Component Design competition coming to a close in a few minutes, we are getting close to the end of the first day.
Meanwhile, every one of the sponsors seems to have set up a gaming system, so there's apparently lots of fun to go round.
The day's been great so far.
I'm currently working on a way of integrating appropriate photos from the photo album with each individual post. I will be looking into the Picasa Web Album API which I just came across.
The Component Design Competition has just started. Meanwhile, the Marathon Match competitors have just taken a break for lunch. Met argolite, who has consistently been the top designer for quite a long while now.
I also uploaded some videos to Youtube, but the video compression is awful so I will upload them elsewhere and update this post as soon as I do so.
It took me quite a while to find the Mirage, but thankfully, I didn't have to go through too much trouble. I'm just simply going to do incremental updates and will have to implement organisation of posts based on time (I was too lazy to do this the last time I touched the source for this blog).
In any case, I arrived at the Mirage just in time to catch the Studio Design Competition in progress. This is my first time here, and I have to say it is pretty cool. Nice, huge and fun. The Marathon Match also started on schedule at 9:00 am. Everything is on schedule so far. The Component Design competition will be starting in about 30 minutes.
If there's one word I've got TCO, it's "awesome." It's really nice seeing people from all over the world coming together and interacting.
So far, I've met TheCois, d000hg, mess, and ivern and a bunch of others whose handles I haven't been able to get ahold of, yet.
The sponsors are also setup, and apparently, the most fun appears to be coming from Verisign and betfair, each of them having a Wii setup with a large TV screen. Pretty cool. Also the first time I got to play with a Wii and it's very, very nice. I'll have to look into obtaining one as soon as possible.
I will be creating photo albums based on the day; the album for today can be found here. I will also be updating the album with tags and descriptions regularly.
The entire trip took about 19 hours - about 12.5 hours from Lagos to Atlanta, 2 hours to get through Passport Control (talk about being efficient) and 4.5 hours from Atlanta to Vegas. I got to the airport around 11:15pm Vegas time on Friday, the 9th. It's been pretty nice so far. The weather is alright. The Internet is fast! Everything is pretty well organised. Of course, I'm just stating the obvious, but compared to Nigeria? Well, I can say that Nigeria is lacking, and that's me being modest.
I couldn't take any pictures during my trip since I hadn't got a camera during the trip. Had to pick one up (Canon Powershot SX100IS; initially planned to get the Powershot SD1000 but they were out) at the Wal-Mart Supercenter. Not exactly what I wanted, but the picture quality's great, at least. I find it weird that they have the products on display locked up, so you have to get a store attendant to actually help you pick up the items that you wish to buy. What's with that? That's got to be one of the most inefficient ways of shopping, ever. I'm staying at the Palace Station Hotel and it's rather nice here.
The TopCoder Open starts in a few hours at the MGM Mirage, which is located on the strip and I'll be writing my own perspective of the event for the next 4 days. I'll be taking a lot of pictures and probably record some videos as well. So stay tuned!
What? That's right. I'm giving away a free copy of Half-Life 2 and a free copy of HL2: Episode One.
Why? Because I can. Okay, I just purchased The Orange Box and since I already own copies of Half-Life 2 and HL2: Episode One, I can give out the extra ones as gifts on Steam to whomever I choose.
What's the catch? There's no catch. The publicity would be nice, though.
Who's eligible? If you're eligible to own a Steam account, then you're eligible for the giveway.
What's required? Just a name and a valid email address.
How will the winners be selected? Pseudorandomly. Simple random selection from a list, really.
What are you going to do with my information? Sell it for profit. Okay, kidding. You don't need to provide a real name if you don't want to. However, I would assume that the email address that you provide has to be associated with a Steam account.
Any important dates? Entries will be accepted up till May 14, 2008. The winners will be announced on May 15, 2008.
I turned 21 eleven days ago. There were lots of caek to be had! It was a pretty alright day. Being 21 doesn't feel any different from 20, and being 20 didn't feel any different from 19, except for the occasional back pain that I started to experience recently. It's either my chair or my bed that's killing my back. I'll be getting around to replacing both soon.
I implemented some additional features in TriviaFrenzy (my entry for the OpenAIM competition) which include a general chat section, the ability to save preferences for future visits (handled automatically) and retrieval of the user's buddy list. Making use of wimas3 (an ActionScript 3 library that interacts with WebAIM for Flash/Flex/AIR apps) made a lot of things easier since I opted for the WebAIM API. I initially spent a lot of time trying to decipher how to make proper use of the WebAIM API, especially the request-signing part (Curses!) and then wimas3 was recommended. If only I had discovered the library earlier; but it's all good.
So I've been playing Eve for a while now and I actually do like it. I initially started with a trial account in December during the holiday period and didn't get to do anything productive for 14 days! Okay, maybe less, but yeah, I was addicted to the game. It's pretty neat. I paid for a month's subscription and got into it for a while, but actually decided to take a break after the first month because for someone who isn't usually productive, productivity was going down the drain. Okay, I lied. I had to use the cash for some other useful resources. I renewed my subscription a week ago, and yeah, it's still nice. I'm currently considering getting into PvP (Player vs Player) matches, after I finally raise enough money to purchase a battleship. Eve is fun.
I still haven't obtained the Orange Box (Blasphemy! I know), but I'm working towards that. I'd probably organise a competition to give away free copies of Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One since I already own them and I'd be getting extra copies as part of the Orange Box package. I'm too lazy to do a proper competition so it's only going to be a simple program to pick a random name from a list of names.
In other news, I subscribed to the Microsoft Action Pack after I stumbled across this and all I can say is that it's awesome! For $295, you get quite a lot of software to use. I just received the April update yesterday which includes a license for Windows Vista Ultimate. I agree. Microsoft rock!
I'm working on an entry for the OpenAIM competition. It's basically a trivia game with general questions ranging from word scrambles to the meanings of baby names. I've been able to get it to a complete state so far.
You can access the application here. Before you can start playing, you need to authenticate using an AIM account. If you manage to come across any errors, please let me know. I'm hoping a lot of users can test it out so I can monitor how it performs under load and make necessary optimisations.
On to the technical details. I'm using Flex 3 for the front-end and C# for the server application. The client basically connects to the server through a socket and performs actions when a socket data event is raised (indicating that data was received from the socket). The server application is being hosted on a Linux box using Mono - it's pretty neat that I built the application on my Windows box and ran it without any problems on Linux. Essentially, the server simply connects to a MySQL database and fetches a random question/answer pair which is then sent to the connected clients. The application then acts based on the responses received from clients within the specified time limit. Pretty simple and straightforward. I'm also thinking of adding chat functionality, but we'll see.
And the usual screenshot (Flickr's pretty neat, btw):
It's bloody hot. And overrated. And I'm not coming back. Oh, yeah, I had to come here to keep an appointment with the US embassy for my visa application (I got the visa, btw) because all dates for March and April were booked in Lagos. Srsly, what gives? So I'll be attending the 2008 TopCoder Open which holds in May (not as a finalist, though, as I didn't make it to the top 12).
In other news, I had a rather interesting conversation with someone which I thought was pretty funny and had to share (name changed to protect identity, obviously). Of course, I am me.
[me] Well, it's not every day you meet Nigerian men. [me] Obviously. [B] lol, you'd be pretty surprised. [me] I see. [B] I actually had brunch with one today [me] Well, it's not every day that you meet Nigerian men like me. [me] Winnar. [B] And I meet one basically every day in London [me] Oh yeah [me] London's full of 'em. [B] Yeh [B] I simply adore when they come up to me [B] Asking if I want them to take care of me [me] lol [me] I don't do that. [me] That's.. [me] ugh [B] Fuck no I don't want any strange man taking care of me. [me] Srsly [me] What sort of person uses that sort of pickup line? [B] They're totally serious, too [B] "You look nice. I want to take care of you." [me] lol [B] They make "nice" sound like a dirty thing. [me] hahahaha [B] They want to take me home and feed me [B] One actually said so [B] Seriously, if that's how you learn to court in Nigeria... [me] ... [me] Don't look at me. [me] I don't do any of that. [B] Am I talking to any other Nigerian here?! [me] Depends. [me] Am I one person or two? [B] -_- [B] Don't even start with me. [me] o rly [B] ya rly. [me] no wai! [B] I will hit you, don't think I won't.
Quite a reputation we have. I'm thrilled! And one other thing...
Dear Internet, Why is Nigeria not on the list of available countries when I want to purchase a product online? Kthxbi.
Does a lot of bad things to you. I won't be able to make a submission for the GameDev 4E6 contest, and I'm skipping Digital Overload. My work load's been a lot recently, and I haven't had enough time to do a lot of fun things that I want to. Oh well, I guess that's what happens when you're actually trying to make a crap load of cash.
