Phineas And Ferb – The Indian Education System

My friend Mudit modified the Phineas and Ferb Title Track Lyrics and made them appropriate for the Indian Education System:

There’s only 44 days for summer vacation
and skool has started before it
So the annual problem for our generation
is finding a good way to spend it.
LIKE MAYBE…..
Building a model or colouring a chart or climbing up imagination tower
Discovering something that already exists or giving ourselves a shower.
Surfing the internet, creating project works or locating our own brain.
Finding our homeworks, painting the covers or being driven insane.
As u can see there’s a whole lot of stuff to rack
before school starts this rainfall
So stick with us & miss all the fun cuz we won’t b able to do it all
So stick with us & miss all the fun cuz we won’t b able to do it all

Here’s the original version

Publish Your Blog Using Word 2007

When Microsoft released Office 2007, I was overwhelmed at all the things it could do, and it never ceases to impress me. Especially PowerPoint – it’s got those great reflection controls. It’s one of the best office suites for Windows I’ve ever used – except iWork, which is only for Mac OS X. Yes. Better than Symphony and OO.org.

A great feature, this time from Word 2007, is blog publishing. Publishing a blog is just as easy as typing a document along with the ease of putting all those great headlines and super-efficient spell checking. So here are the steps. Follow closely!

1] Open Word 2007. Vista or Windows 7 users can type “word” in the search bar in the Start menu.

2] Click on the Office button on the top left corner.

3] In the menu, click Publish and click Blog.

4] A new document must now open. A dialog box will appear, telling you to register an account. Click Register Now.

5] Choose your blog provider now. A list of the common blog providers is already available; however, you may add another one if your blog provider isn’t listed. I chose WordPress, as your favourite blog Shadow Line is hosted on it.

6] Click Next. A windows will appear asking you to enter your blog information. Do so.

7] This is an example of the information which I’ve entered for my blog. Notice that the URL is http://crystalunicorn.wordpress.com/xmlprc.php, and not http://www.crystalunicorn.wordpress.com/xmlprc.php. Do not forget to exclude the “www” part. It doesn’t work otherwise. Enter the User Name and Password. You do know that, don’t you. Don’t you? Don’t you?!

8] Click Picture Options if you want to change the way pictures are posted on your blog – whether you host them on the blog server, or on another server. Click OK when you’re done.

9] Your Blog Provider will now be contacted to register Word with your blog account.

10] Success! Click OK to start blogging.

Gmail Offline

No no. I’m not talking about accessing Gmail without the internet. To hell with that. You can’t even access your Gmail account online. Damn. Gfail is finally here. Every other Google service is working fine – Reader, Picasa, Documents, Orkut, etc. Even iGoogle and Google News! Not Gmail, though. Here’s what Gmail Support has to say.

We’re aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a number of users. This problem occurred at approximately 1.30AM Pacific Time [3.00 PM IST] . We’re working hard to resolve this problem and will post updates as we have them. We apologize for any inconvenience that this has caused.

I write this post at 5.54 PM IST, and Gmail still isn’t working. Hope it returns.

If anyone of you knows how to make Gmail work, please comment and let me know!

Update

Forget it, guys. The second I posted, Gmail has begun to work again.

If it still doesn’t work click here or here. It will ask you to Add Gmail to you iGoogle page. Go to iGoogle and access Gmail. Once I clicked on Compose Mail, Gmail worked fine!

Poll #1

I signed up with PollDaddy, and thought of posting a poll here. You’ve read a read a review of all the symposiums I’ve visited throughout the year, and of course, there are some I haven’t and you have. Feel free to add more options. And please, do not try to vote more than once.

Be honest.

Competition Success Review #7: Virus 2008

There was no quiz at Virus 2008, and I refused to go for surprise event. So Shikhar writes a guest post about Virus 2008, held at Bluebells. Take care that “Me” refers to Shikhar, and not Aditya.

“ Energy, nitro, acceleration and combustion- overall a high octane filled adrenaline rush powered by the brains of the members of this club.”

That’s how the ENIAC club describes VIRUS.

ENIAC here is not – Electronic Numerator Integrator and Calculator, but Energy NItro Acceleration and Combustion, the Computer Club of Bluebells International School. And with Virus, I’m not talking about malware but the annual computer event at Bluebells.

It was the first time that we were invited at Virus.

I called up Aditya the day we got the invitation-

Me- “Saw the events?”

Aditya- “Not yet.”

Me- “I’ll go for Short Movie and Digital Imaging.”

Aditya- “Alright, I and Mridul will go for the quiz.”

Me- “Er… There is no quiz.”

No quiz. Yes, Virus at BlueBells didn’t have a quiz. The second tech-symposium I’ve heard of without a quiz, the first being Techchamps at Maharaja Agrasen. Three years back they had 2 events- Digital Imaging, for Class VI to VIII [with MS Paint] and PowerPoint, for Class IX. So there was no other event where Aditya could go. Tough luck.

I started preparing for my event Short Movie. The topic was “Superhero Movie”. I thought of making a spoof on Star Wars and relate it to Malware. I had Lord McAfee as my hero, and the mighty Trojan as his rival. The fight took place on the XP Republic. It took 8 hours to make the movie (1½ hour acting time, 4 hours special effects, ½ hour media generation, 1 hour rendering time). The video came out to be quite good. Quite good would be an understatement, especially after seeing the works of other school students, but that comes later.

The day of the event came and we were ready to leave. Shakespeare Mrittunjoy had not come. We went to his class to call him up. He didn’t know he had to go. But we still brought him from his Maths class.

We started for Bluebells quite late, courtesy Shakespeare, so on the way I called up at Bluebells (the mobile number they had given in their invitation) and told them that we’ll be late so please register our school.

The reply I got was

“I’m sorry but my son doesn’t take his cell phone to school. I will convey your message when he comes back.”

We reached late but none of the events had started by then.

I submitted my Short Movie Entry at the registration counter.

Mayank and Mridul went for Programming and Mudit left for Audio Building (in Fruity Loops). Shakespeare Mrittunjoy went for HAM: Half-A-Minute.

Arpit and Aayush stayed in the hall.

The Short Movie event started. The schedule said that only the videos which qualify the prelims will be shown onstage. But all entries were shown because half of the schools didn’t submit an entry.

And this is a brief summary of the Superhero movie presentations I remember:

First movie was by Bal Bharti.

The best effect used in the video was Fade In. Yes, and that happened when a scene of two children (in school uniform) engaged in combat smoothly fades away to a give away a fight sequence from Final Fantasy XII.

Second was by some school I don’t remember (and I don’t regret it).

One could say that they did a great job by animating the characters Optimus Prime and Megatron, rendering them in full 3D, doing an industry standard compositing and sound-editing job, and getting Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox to act for them.

Or one could also say that they stripped off scenes from Transformers.

Next Up was DPS RKP.

I was expecting something good here. But I was turned out wrong.

The plot- A boy fails in his exams. Everyone teases him. His teacher takes him out of the class and tutors him. He tops in the class in the next exam. TZP2?

Superhero connect? Our teachers are the real superheroes.

After that came St. Xavier’s. They called their presentation “Urban superheroes” or something like that. During the entire video they had people jumping up and down the buildings. The special effect was application of grayscale tint.

The audience had already started to moan and groan.

After that my movie was shown. The crowd had started applauding halfway through the presentation. The judges were astounded by the presentation. It was very clear during the interjections.

Meanwhile in Audio Building Mudit was supposed to prepare a Superhero music theme. He cleverly copied the music from the presets and modified it. Judges were quite happy with the final output and they never noticed it. He could have won only if some guy from Bluebells hadn’t seen what he did and told the judges. I went for my second event digital imaging. The topic again was ‘Superhero Anti-virus’. We had to prepare an anti-virus advertisement.

During the prize distribution ceremony:

Announcer-“ And the awards for Short Movie are-“

Third prize is announced.

Second prize is announced. It doesn’t go to me.

Mridul- “Chal Shikhar. Tera award aaney vaala hai.”

Announcer- “And the first prize goes to Shikhar Gautam from Montfort school.”

We got 3^rd prize in Programming. Mridul and Mayank go onstage to take their awards certificates. There was no trophy for 3^rd prize.

In digital imaging I get 3^rd yet again. The next time I ascend the stage, the principal remarks-

“It appears that Montfort has great multimedia labs. Keep it up.”

Yeah. Ask anyone at Montfort how great our multimedia labs are. Anybody who has read the Oxford Computer Textbook for Class IX will say we have the best computer labs in the world.

THE Requirements

By the time the event ended, we had an overdose of superheroes with each event having superhero as the theme (except Programming). The ENIAC club promised us an adrenaline rush. But the only rush I witnessed was the rush to leave the hall at the end of the event.

Competition Success Review #6: TCS IT Wiz 2008

“Toh finally CodeWars jaayenge ki nahi?”

“Pata nahi. 11 December ko tayyar rahiyo”

“Aur Exun?”

“Nahi. Us din meri FITJEE ki class hai. Par 11 December ko tayyar rahiyo. Us din mein ekdum free hoon.”

Mridul of ecstatic and obsessed with going to TCS IT Wiz, on 11 December. Last time, I was in Manali, and missed CodeWars as well as TCS IT Wiz. Mrittunjoy and Mridul went together, were coming first, and then lost out due to their overcautious mentality. This time, Mridul wanted no mistake whatsoever. He wanted to win it this time.

So he told me to be ready. 11 December was the big day. Shikhar and Arpit were going together; the latter went only to see IIT, which was the venue. TCS was to be held a long time ago (usually at Siri Fort), but the venue was changed to IIT, Dogra Hall. Mrittunjoy was going with another kid, whose name I wouldn’t reveal. He is the trump card in Montfort quizzing.

On the 10th of December, Mridul and me were preparing furiously for TCS IT Wiz. I paid extra attention at all Apple-related stuff. Especially watching the older Mac ads. Finally, tomorrow comes, contrary to the popular belief of our teachers.

“Tomorrow never comes”

Mridul and I have already circulated the Halloween Documents, which is a secret 5 MB PDF consisting of trivia and quiz questions. I have it stored in my mobile, ready to access it anytime. I knew reading Babel was useless, as no acronyms would be asked anyway.

Until last year, I had never been to a big quiz like this. In 2009, TCS IT Wiz the third one, the former two being Jack Kilby TI Quiz (to which I have a certain fondness, as I own a TI modem), and the Aqua Regia T.I.M.E Quiz. Both were Science quizzes. And both were tough.

But this time, it was different. I knew I stood a chance of qualifying, and winning. Because of Montfort’s impressive form at all tech quizzes, where we won at least something.

We reach the place, which is packed. The event starts off schedule, as there are answer sheets being distributed. Finally, it begins, and Giri “Pickbrain” makes a dramatic appearance. After the traditional hi-hello-welcome, we come to know about the delay in the programme. An unprecedented number – 650 teams have turned up, and IIT Dogra Hall has run out of seats – people are sitting on the floor. LOL! New answer sheet photocopies have to be made, and more refreshments are ordered.

The prelims are officially underway.

1] Name the general purpose very-high level programming language designed by Rossum. [Hint: It is dangerous.]

“Kya ho sakta hai?

“Its dangerous… Python?”

“Haan!”

2] It was created by James Gosling, and is alternatively known as the  Oak Project.

“Obvious hai yaar. Java hai. Maine ye answer class 6 mein diya tha.”

9] Which product led Cisco to file a lawsuit on trademark infringement against Apple Inc.?

“iPhone.”

“Mridul, sure hai na?”

“Of course. iPhone Cisco ka modem hai.”

“Hoga.”

10] The acquisition of which company by Google Inc. marked their entry into the world of mobile device software?

“Arre yaar Mridul. Lifehacker par padh padh ke bore ho gaya hoon.”

11] Photorealistic Renderman or PR Man is the product owned by which company? [Hint: It is owned by a company which makes many animation films.]

“Pixar. Pakka Mridul. Meine iCon mein padha tha. Hint ki zaroorat hi nahi thi”

19] Which service do all Apple Inc. devices, such as the Macbook, the iMac, the iPhone and the iPod Touch, use to synchronize data?

“Hmm. Pata nahi yaar. I don’t remember reading this.”

And those were a few prelim questions. Download the entire prelims archive here.

Then answers. We got about 15 correct. Then refreshments time. Which means its time to meet up with the others. Just before we go out, Mridul has to go to the loo. I meet V.S Karthik there.

“Last wale question ka kya answer tha?”

“Kingston”

“Oh no!”

“You didn’t get Kingston?”

C’mon, it was the easiest question in the quiz!

Now, we meet Prashanth Kanduri, who is looking confident.

“Kitne aaye?”

“15″

“Same here.”

“Prashanth? Game ka kya likha?”

“It was Gears of War.”

“You wrote it?”

“No. But I’m sure its Gears of War.”

Shikhar, former X360 owner, who heard this conversation, had the following words to express:

“Jab Prashanth ne Gears of War kaha, itna gussa aa raha tha! Gears of War mein when you’re hit, there’s a hand which appears in the centre, when you have low health. Then you recover.”

Whoa. When Shikhar takes interest in something, he learns about it in perfection. Like GoW, and the entire Adobe suite. He is an expert in working with After Effects and Photoshop, and even knows their CS3 and CS4 codenames, which most quizzers might not know. Most includes me.

Finally, we are back. Now for the results.

Giri- “Before I announce the qualifiers, a special mention on certain teams who missed out. Coming eighth, Vivek Nair and Karthick from DPS Vasant Kunj!”

<Applause>

I was clapping really hard. So hard that my hands and the nearby listener’s ears turn red. Such was the case with Shikhar.

“Itni zor se kya mar raha hai?”

“They deserve it. They really do.”

</Applause>

Mridul- “Did you know, last time Ramit Singhal came seventh.”

Me- “Unlucky chap, to have missed out like that.”

Giri- “And coming seventh, is a team which comprises of a young quizzer from 9th…”

Me- “Can’t be us!”

“… and a quizzer from 12th…”

Me- “Damn”

“… Mridul Kapoor and Aditya, from Montfort School, who lost out by just 1 mark!”

Mridul- “Groan…”

We go up in silence, and collect a pair of Philips headphones each, and a dinner for two at Trident hotel in Gurgaon, which we haven’t used till date.

This is too much man. We lose out just by one mark! Unbelievable stuff. Kalka, DPS RKP, DPS Noida, Springdales are amongst some who qualified.

I saw the entire quiz. Mridul and me know almost all of the answers. One was even repeated.

“A Microsoft codec was reverse-engineered to form another codec. Name it”

It was XviD. But the quiz finals were great. Some questions were really good. DPS Noida (who won in WarP) were winning, but DPS RKP fought. Fought hard. And they stole the quiz in the connect round. I think they got nearly 30 points there.

In the last round, Springdales gave a charge and threatened to displace DPS Noida from 2nd spot, but the latter prevailed. DPS RKP won a lappie each, and dinner at Shangri-La. Very bad.

We went home in gloom. I hope I win it this time.

No Posts For A While – Again

CSR #6 is on hold as my exams are on, and the modem stopped detecting the Adsl wire. Feel free to comment on any post! I’ll reply via mobile.

Download The TCS IT Wiz 2008 Quiz Archive

Shikhar was kind enough to provide me with the questions of this year’s TCS IT Wiz. Download links below:

TCS IT Wiz Quiz Archive [PDF Format] ~130 KB [Direct Link]

TCS It Wiz Quiz Archive [PDF Format] ~130 KB [MediaFire Download]

Competition Success Review #5: CodeWars 2008

[10th November, 2008]

Mridul- “Code Wars ki website khol.”

[There's a calender with a 15 circled on it]

Me- “Nahi ja sakte yaar. 16 ko Mega Event hai.”

——–[Later]——–

[13th November 2008]

Mridul- “Arjun ne bataya ki Code Wars cancel ho gaya. Koi sponsor nahi hai.”

Me- “Sahi hai na. Nahi jaane ka regret toh nahi hoga.”

——-[Later]——-

Mridul- “Code Wars ki website khol. Arjun ne bataya 21st November ko hai. NIIT sponsor hai.”

Go. No go. Go.

That’s how agonizing it was, to go to Code Wars. I was in Manali with friends last time, and missed it. Wanted to go this time. Badly.

So finally, its on. We are going to Code Wars. I’m really looking forward to Ankur’s quiz. Heard about it from Vivek in WarP. Sounds like a really tough quiz. So this time its a really stripped down symposium of only 5 events. WebD and DI are online, and Arjun has made some mind-blowing rules which ensures people didn’t cheat. Like providing the PSDs, and involving any number of participants in the team. Entries are to be submitted online. WebD topic is Anda Beta restaurant [for which Shikhar instantly designed a logo] and DI topic is Eric Cartman for President. God knows when VK will get over 42, Eric Cartman, the Simpsons and “reading  between the lines”. Don’t mistake God for Shikhar.

21st arrives, and I’m ready to miss my Computer practical test. I would have got full anyway. So we reach, and it begins [after leaving shoes outside the wooden audi].

Me and Mridul leave for quiz, Shikhar and Mudit for Surprise Event [which could be onion chopping], Arpit and Tapas for encryption, and Aayush and Mayank for programming.

Ankur is there. Looking short. Shorter than me! Blue T-shirt, heavily trimmed hair. Seemed barber-ic. Distributes papers to everyone. We have some 20 minutes.

Tough, but good paper. We topped with 8 from 20. Don’t know about Mridul, but I could have got Pierre Omidiyar (founder of eBay. I bet this question was lifted from Download: The True Story of the Internet). There was a good question which is my personal favourite.

Which was the first OS Microsoft’s Office ran on?

Ans: MacOS X

See? Its not Mac OS X, it only MacOS. I read it in iCon. Mridul made a mistake, but I corrected him.

Last question was the usual nine-by-six.

As I told you, we qualified. And so did DPS Dwarka, St. Xavier’s, Kalka, DPS RKP and another school. New Era didn’t qualify! Yay! Not that I don’t like any healthy competition, but its like one major threat eliminated.

We stay in the room for the crossword, which is HUGE! Some 50+ clues, all brain twisting. There were some which we could have easily got. I kick myself now for many. Look at these for example:

Renders the whole world

I thought Maya, but this was five letters. The answer was Dunia, but we didn’t get this.

Illusion

We didn’t get this, and the answer was Maya.

Freely flowing MP3 codecs…but not like beer

It was Fluendo, which helps you buy media codecs for a big price – 0.00 EUR. I had a post about this in Google Reader, which I received a day before. Only if I had read it…

Three-pronged Evil engine (Hint: submarine-launched ballistic missile)

C’mon, it was Trident! And I did make a post about IE on my blog, and Jimi Hendrix told me about Trident. I didn’t remember it then

What Lindsay Lohan had in Freaky Friday

GarageBand. It was the whole damn reason I wanted to install Mac OS X.

Lost in translation

I thought AltaVista, but it was BabelFish.

AV.com

We didn’t get this either, and the answer was AltaVista. Lots of !@#$% there!

We got about 11, which could have been 18; way above Jimi Hendrix, who got 14. We were third here, and we could have been first. Of course, we came third because of me. He he. Mridul couldn’t have done it without me at all. Actually, I could have got all those by myself, but I brought him along for company. You see, others will feel bad if this ninth class kid walks away with all the prizes.

While walking back to the audi, we encounter Lord Vader

“Crossword mein kitne aaye?”

“11″

“Sahi hai, yaar. Hume sirf 7 aaye.”

“Abbe aur aa sakte the…”

And the list goes to him too.

During refreshments, Tapas and Arpit tell us about the N-Crypton, which was fabulous. This was my personal favourite:

Time. Ctrl+S Ctrl+S Ctrl+S Ctrl+S Ctrl+S Ctrl+S Ctrl+S Ctrl+S Ctrl+S

Get it? “A stitch in time saves nine” Ruddy brilliant, I say. Our team didn’t get this.

98 blue screens paved the way for the new  ___________   of green bars.

Vista.

Now, its back to the audi. We go on for the quiz on the stage. And Ankur. Is. Running. Windows. Vista. And. The. Quiz. Is. In. PowerPoint. 2007. Unbelievable. Whatever happened to Linux (“My preciousssss”)?

And no OO.org? I am told later, that OO.org crashed, and GQ had to shift to Uncle Bill’s OS. Aww

The quiz not so good in the beginning. Montfort is not leading at 15, and both answers were given by me.

Who is Sean Miller?

It struck me suddenly.

“Isn’t he the guy who comes in Microsoft’s I Am A PC Ads, that fat guy?”

It was right. Smart thinking, eh?

“How does Firefox’s AwesomeBar work?”

“It actually indexes the titles of web pages from Google, and relates them…”

I started off, with some inputs from Mridul. We formed a crude answer to win half of Ankur’s heart. 5 points.

And then the dry run started. No points in sight. At all.

And then, Mridul Kapoor begins the show of the night.

“What is Unix time?”

“Its epoch. Seconds elapsed since 1st Jan 1970.”

“Charles Geschke … PostScript … Identify the company.”

“Adobe”

“… Harry Potter…”

“Richard Stallman”

Bang bang bang. 30 points. And Mridul didn’t even read the entire last question. Just read the first line and “Richard Stallman”. How he got these so well? Must be my presence. I know i train well

Then a weird question about a temple where lappies are blessed.

Then the AV round. I see a picture I’ve remembered for months…

I get all jumpy and excited. I’ve been waiting for this question for a year! My on-stage excitement is evident. It comes to me.

“Jade Raymond”

“Okay… So?”

“She er… was the developer for Assassin’s Creed, at Ubisoft. People at newsgroups discussed that she was, er… hot”

“Well, I’ll give it to you; she tried to sell the game on her looks.”

Well, so we get this one. Now the thing is, St. Xavier’s offered an awesome fight. They were actually second before this, but we overtook them and were second with 5 points. Then there’s the last question of the quiz. There’s a video of a person doing a jig against a purple background. It St. Xavier’s chance

“Er… Yahoo?”

“Well, it is. Yahoo! wear purple campaign.”

“Groan…”

We lost, 3rd But they were awesome. Too good, I say.

We came first in N-Crypton, and second in WebD for Anda Beta. Nothing in surprise event.

Surprise event was not about chopping onions. It was typing the entire Lorem Ipsum with the fewest mistakes (tracked by a clever program). It was tough, eh? Nice brains, whoever made it.

We also won the overall trophy. Yay! VK won G@teway, and Montfort won CodeWars. Tit for tat.

While receiving the trophy, the principal said

“Ye trophy football wali se chhoti hai na?”

Awww But I’m not so materialistic (which is also the reason why I don’t own a graphics card), and so its the sentiments I carried with that huge trophy.

On the way back, Shikhar snapped open the crown of the trophy and said in a Vivek Nair style

“It gives you an empty feeeeling to win the overall, and not any individual.”

Refer to the official Converge Clan blog for more.

Competition Success Review #4: WarP 2008

Venue: Delhi Public School, Mathura Road

Just three days after the Mega Event, crops up another symposium. WarP 2008. I thought it’ll be great. DPS events usually are, you know. Not that there is none better than them. Read to find out how it was.

Thankfully, we reached on time. Or should I say, just in time. Mrittunjoy Shakespeare had to wait for GD, while I, as usual, was going for quiz, with you-know-who.

Shikhar God was going for Design A Tatoo [in Ps] with nobody. That guy is best when alone. He also went for Surprise Event. With either Arpit or Mudit. I think it was the latter.

So the quiz prelims started, and we get this huge question paper consisting of 30 questions! Some were easy…

[Google's Doodle on Laser]

… and some were not so easy.

Hoarders may get piles of money,
That is true, hackers, that is true.
But they cannot help their neighbors;
That’s not good, hackers, that’s not good.

I had seen this before, but couldn’t identify the singer/song. It was the Free Software Song by Richard Stallman.

There were many other songs. What crap.

Then we though we should qualify. Meanwhile in the Surprise Event, we were own3d. Shikhar had a brilliant idea in the first round. There was an apple with a knife. You had to do something “creative.”

So using his scale, he cut the apple into half, and carved four “windows” on one half, using his compass. He wrote below : BootCamp.

Amazing na? Windows in an Apple. XP in Mac OS X. Boot camp. Great creativity! But in the next round, they had to solve Minesweeper, on expert mode. Even Lord Vader was there. He won the event. How? He used a cheat! xyzzy + Shift. This brings up a white pixel on the top left corner [0,0 position] of the screen. When your mouse is over a mine, the pixel turns black! Very bad.

Shikhar now wanted a partner for DI. He took me. I set it up with Mridul to call me when the quiz finals started.

I go with Shikhar to the room. Its designing a tattoo. Vector. So Shikhar thought of taking the pen tool and drawing up the tattoo, and later save it as .eps.  Nobody did that, and that vector part was not considered. They had good PCs though. What was I doing? Nothing. I’m exactly a n00b in Photoshop, but I did feel like in front of Shikhar. The mouse pointer was a blur. I was always two steps behind. Fifteen minutes into the event, and Mridul calls me for the quiz.

Quiz finals begin. DPS RKP, DPS Noida, DPS VK, New Era, and another school makes it besides us. Prateek Vijayavargia is there, and so is Vivek Nair and VS Karthick.

First round – dry round. I think we scored.

Next round – Tunes. Again, songs. All tech songs. Rubbish round. I hated it. Then dry rounds followed. I was shocked at the craziness of the participants. I was the youngest quizzer there, and nobody got this simple one:

Identify the game which is being referred to here: “I feel like being in paradise while taking revenge and domination on my PlayStation.

Sitter. Burnout is the game. My excitement was evident on the stage. I thought everyone would knew this. I mean, it is the best racing game ever made.

Unfortunately for Vivek Nair, there was a question about his favourite game Portal. But before it could reach him, it got scrapped. *sob*sob*

So the last round is called Grand Finale. Adhish Sharma jumps onto the stage and announces.

“Surprise! Only the top four teams remain, bottom two get eliminated.”

We are leading with 25, and we remain. So does RKP, Noida and New Era. The Grand Finale is asking the teams a set of 10 questions, with a format of plus 10 minus 10, and 20 seconds per question.

Starts with RKP. They get one right and one wrong. Zero.

Then us. We are on thirty, and this question comes:

XMPP is used by which popular chat client?

For all quizzer [or Pidgin users] we know that GoogleTalk is most popular. We say that, and its wrong. We argue after out round of questions is over. Adhish Sharma says its Jabber.

As New Era and DPS Noida are questioned, I whip out my phone, turn on Opera Mini, search for XMPP on Wikipedia, and get it. It clearly mentions Google Talk. By that time, DPS Noida has won, and are celebrating. They were on 30, and we on 20. If we got that one right, we would be on 40. So we requested at least to have a tie-breaker with DPS Noida.

Adhish- “No”

Mridul- “But our answer is right! I’ll show it on Wikipedia”

Adhish- “Aise toh koi bhi internet khol kar dikha sakta hai.”

Me- “Dikhaya toh nahi na? XMPP is correct.”

Adhish- “How can you be sure?”

Me- “Pidgin clearly mentions it.”

Adhish- “What’s that?”

Upon asking who made the paper, it was Ramit Singhal who was unavailable on that day. He said not to accept any other answer.

Even Prateek supports us. Thanks dude! We are tied with them, and he doesn’t mind coming third. Finally we have a tie-breaker. New Era and Montfort. We agree to their demands, after a private discussion.

Question 1: Who said “Never buy a computer you cannot throw out of the window?”

I read this in iCon, but kinda forgot that it was Steve Jobs, and not Wozniak. Both of us wrote wrote Jobs. I felt it was Woz, but Mridul asserted on Jobs.

Question 2: Who said “The Internet: We are not interested in it”

Sitter. Bill Gates. We got this, and settled for a second position. I was really grateful to Prateek [and his team mate] for supporting us during this problem. I gave him a quick handshake on stage. Felt professional that time

Now the agonizing wait for results begins. Arpit and Mudit tell about the WebD event. Its on any topic. Taking a cue from CodeWars, they made it on Al-Qaeda. They got a prize. Second, maybe. I’ve forgotten! Poor memory.

After the quiz I went for refreshments to FastTrax, to which the school canteen is outsourced to. Frankly speaking, food was great. Sat in a proper room with tables and chair and had it. When I came back, Shikhar told me we won nothing in DI. For the first time in two years have I seen Shikhar not winning anything.

While waiting for the prize distribution, Vivek Nair has a chat with us, about CodeWars, which is day after tomorrow.

Vivek- “Is bar ka Surprise Event itna mushkil hai, you’ll cry.”

Me- “You’ll make us chop onions?”

<Mridul and Shikhar guffaw>

Vivek- “Ankur ne itna tough [quiz] paper banaya hai. Bahut tough hai. Poore saal to vela baitha tha, koi kaam dhandha to tha nahi, quiz banane me nikal diya. Crossword bhi mushkil hai.

Mridul- “Chal dekhte hain.”

Vivek- “Aaj ka quiz itna bekar tha. Pehle toh kuch aata nahi tha, phir eliminate bhi ho gaye.”

During the prize distribution cermony:

The third prize for Design A Tattoo goes to Montfort School!

Whoa! We replaced DPS VK (much to their outrage). I was applauding Shikhar, when I realised that I too participated. I ran to collect my award.

Then came quiz. I collected the second prize reluctantly.

DPS VK were the overall winners. Everyone won something, I guess. After they collected their overall trophy, Vivek Nair comes up to me and says:

“It gives me an empty feeeeeeling to win the overall and not win any individual trophy.”

So the atmosphere on the way back was quite good. WarP was quite fun.

Refer to the official Converge Clan blog for more.

Comment, please!