My Multimedia keyboard works.!!!

What a wonderfull feeling.......yesterday by accident i moved the volume scroll on my system.... It is a multimedia keyboard .... however i never expected that linux has installed the appropriate drivers for it .The above screen shot is that of the volume and the bottom is that of mute. Besides the play,next,previous,stop all work..By the way i am using kubuntu :) . Go linux !!! Go!!!! You rock

An dissapointing topcoder contest....

Yesteday topcoder conducted its srm contest at 10:30 pm . Even though it was pretty late for us i did not mind since i usually sleep late into the night. It was damn cold in my room which was pretty unusual in a city like chennai . I donot know whether it was the climate or was it my body that started freezing ? This was my first top coder srm and i wished i did properly . I was not able to get the gist of the first problem . I got a bit confused . the second problem was regarding a problem validating a knight's move .
the full code is here :http://www.topcoder.com/stat?c=problem_solution&rm=263249&rd=10658&pm=7245&cr=20718854
for (int i = 0; i < cells.length; i+=2) {
if(!this.valid(parse(cells[i]),parse(cells[i+1])))
return "Invalid";
}
this loop was the mistake i did. here what i did was that i paired up two consequtive moves instead of sequence
so suppose you have a sequence of moves say

"D5", "F6", "C6", "A5",

so what my code did was validate knights move from D5->F6 and then the next validate C6->A5
however it should have been

D5->F6, F6->C6,C6->A5 .

then the corrected loop looks something like this
for (int i = 0; i < cells.length; i+=1) {
if(!this.valid(parse(cells[i]),parse(cells[i+1])))
return "Invalid";
}
so its i+=1 and not i+=2!!!!!
damn this seemed to be the easiest that top coder could ask and i messed it up!!!!

the next 1000 sum was easy.......but never did it strike me to use dp or memoization .
so i did the normal way and it took too much time to execute ! :(
http://www.topcoder.com/stat?c=problem_statement&pm=7244&rd=10658&rm=263249&cr=20718854
and here is my solution
http://www.topcoder.com/stat?c=problem_solution&rd=10658&rm=263249&cr=20718854&pm=7244

better luck next time!!!

My First Music Class!

perhaps for too long have i been writing about my theories... for a change i thought i could write something about my life experiences....... so here goes one of them!

Well.... long long ago when i was still a small kid.......when the world was waiting to hear my beautiful voice, i thought of going to a music class to enhance my singing skills.........so near my house there was a karnatic music teacher

So i went to his house with the notion of mastering carnatic music.... so he gladly accepted me as his disciple and went on to teach me music.......well you know me! i showed him how loud i was.......he was wondering whether he made a mistake of taking me in!(though he didn show it out!)

so days went on and i was gradually improving in my singing skills......now each day the master had a visitor from the neighbourhood! they were asking the master "who is singing in such a beautiful voice"! and he directed them to me! So on the fourth day of my class as usual i started walking towards my music master's house......but i found his house locked for unknown reasons :((.... probably he was'nt well... so i walked back home! He didn come back even after 3 or 4 days.... i started getting impatient..
Suddenly one day my parents got a letter from my music master! And it said

"Your son has such a beautiful voice that teaching him is beyond my powers.... you would and should definitly find a better music teacher!"

and so on.........
that is what my mother said to me......how ever i recently am starting to guess that he ran away from his house due to some compulsions from his neighbours regarding his music class and i was his dear disciple! LOL! my god , my first music teacher ran away trying to teach me music........my parents decided not to send me to any music class from here after..........

well well! that explains why i dont know karnatic music........ but that doesnt mean i cannot sing ! well if you wanna hear mine you can surely write to me and i shall show you! :p

Cd Rom Busted

Well i hate this computer drives when they malfunction and mine does toooo! i have a cd writer/dvd reader which got busted for no reasons! now it is not reading any free space on my cd's and it is not writin either! damn cd rom i am so pissed off!