Friday, September 09, 2005

All Glory Be To Him

Hello my fans (as if I do have fans :)),

Haven't been updating my blog for a really long time. This could probably mean two things, either nothing interesting is going around my life that I have nothing to write about, -or- there's way too much going around my life that I don't really have enough time on my hand to write about it. Apparently, the last time I wrote was last March, and it's been 5 months. Well, I'm glad to tell you for sure the last 2 months have been the later case. Now, I definitely have soooo many things to document (documenting my life, experience, etc). Tons of things are in my head, that I really should put them all here in order not to forget it and share it with the rest of you. But not yet right now, I'll be writing pieces of them in the coming days/weeks/months, whenever I have the time (I couldn't promise you when) and when I'm in the mood to write it :). This second case is actually the most difficult. A friend of mine once told me, it's not necessarily the task itself that took a long time, but it's the time to start the task which might took a really long time. What a great procrastinator (now, this is definitely a word that I just learned about). But I couldn't agree more, it took me a long time to come to this writing-mood mode :). But once you do, you'll want to write like, hmm, like you want to write forever. Now I got to stop, because I have to start that other works, don't I? :).

Anyway, enough the prelude, the reason I'm writing is I'd like to dedicate this special time and blog space to my Dear Lord Jesus Christ. For what? Well, for everything. We wouldn't really need a reason to thank Him, wouldn't we? He has given us, who believes Him, the greatest gift of all, His Son to be our Saviour, and what could we possibly ask for more? Nothing, zip, nada, zero. Nevertheless, He's still giving me so much much more than I had ever expected or imagined! Way things beyond my own capability, strength, and dreams. And if I could make it so far, no, it's really not me, but thank Him. There have been lots of tiny-to-huge bad/good things that happened, and they're just too unfortunate to be called coincidences or lucks. These are things that God intefered, things that I might not even realize as His inteference, but believe me they are. Hope I didn't forget it and could write more details in the coming days. So, let all glory be to Him.

Now you all might be wondering. Ok, just to give you a sneak preview, check this out:
TopCoder Open 2005 comp-dev press release.. Now, you know I really mean what I wrote above. Thank you again dear Lord. I'd also like to thank TopCoder, with all its staff, for giving me this golden opportunity.

One very special thanks to my wife too who's been very supportive and encouraging these days. She's also my main motivator. Without her, this might not possibly happen as well. So thank you my wife. Love ya.

Oh, last but not least, congratulations to Ardian Kristanto Poernomo again for doing so extraordinarily well. He made it to TCO05 final at the algorithm side. WOW! Wish you the best for the on-site final.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Google India Code Jam 2005

Just came back from a very exciting event: Google Code Jam India 2005 in Bangalore, held by Google India and TopCoder. I guess I'm lucky to be among the top 50 finalists to be invited to compete on-site for the final round.

Here's the complete list of the final result:
http://www.topcoder.com/pl/?&module=Static&d1=gicj05&d2=advFinal

Congrats to Ardian Kristanto Poernomo & Pascal Alfadian who make it into #1 & #2. You really are making the news:
http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/03/will-code-for-rupees.html
Go Indonesia! I hope Google will consider opening an R&D centre here in Indonesia :) *huh* *dreaming* Well, who knows? Maybe in the year 2100. :)

I was placed at #31, not too good. Nevertheless I really enjoyed the on-site competition. This had really been one of the most exciting experience in my life. I'm very happy to meet my fellow coders and especially to make new friends with several Indonesian coders sharing the same passion & energy.


lars2520, TopCoder's head problem writer, with the 7 Indonesian finalists
(Left->Right, Up->Down: Rheynald, me, Ardian - our champ, lars, Pascal - our 2nd champ, Felix, Prima, Bram)

[Updated 4 Apr] Add links to Felix & Pascal's websites. Here they are:

Friday, February 25, 2005

Petals Around the Rose

Someone gave me this link: http://crux.baker.edu/cdavis09/roses.html.

It took me almost an hour to solve it. I feel such a fool, the a-ha feeling is comforting though :-).

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

What You'll Wish You'd Known

If you could go through high school again, what would you do?
Sir Winston Churchill once said, "Those whose work and play are one are fortune's favourite children".

Click here to read Mr. Paul Graham's opinion.

Friday, July 09, 2004

Test your typing skill

Feels like want to test your typing speed.
Relax your fingers and hit this http://typera.tk/.
Oh, you'll need a java enabled browser.
Here's my score.

Thursday, June 24, 2004

About blogging

Blogging is actually pretty cool. Try it and you might like it. I hope I could make this my personal website too. Uhmm, check back later, I'll update it whenever I have spare time.

Meanwhile, if you have lots of spare time :).. check this game, beware it could be pretty addictive :)
Tontie - I got to level 7.
Vanilla - I got 28 feet.
Beat me and let me know, ok :)

GMail account

Just got my gmail account: sindux@gmail.com.

My first impression is... WWWWOOOOWWWW... 1 GB of email. Maybe this could be my email of a life-time. I couldn't think how to spend those 1 GB space. Thanks to Google for their great service. Anyway, 1 GB is plenty today, but who knows 5 years from now. 1 GB maybe like 1 MB today. :)

My second impression after using GMail just half-day and started receiving replies from my friends: Cooooolll guys!! You really need to sign-up. My outgoing message has no ad (at least now, not sure later). And the interface is colorful. The thread view is the best of all. Heavy use of shortcut which is good since I'm a fan of keyboard :). Excellent auto-completing address. Excellent heavy use of JavaScript, it really helps improve the interactivity experience. It's fast!

What I think still missing from GMail, but I believe they'll improve it:
- Address book is too simple & primitive.
- Email notification (something like we got from Yahoo messenger)
- Virus scanner

I've been using Yahoo all this time, no complain about them. They're great too, and in fact they just upgraded my mail box to 100MB last week. Thanks to Yahoo! too. I guess I'll still be using both.

FAQ :)
Q: How do you get one?
A: Uhm, I was invited by a friend. Here's his page: http://rgrig.blogspot.com/. He told me that after about a week, I'd be able to invite my friends too.

Q: Invite me! Invite me! Invite me!
A: Ok, don't worry. As soon as I can invite you, I'll do it. Post below and leave your comments OK. It's a FIFO queue. so hurry up, post. I was told that you can only invite 5/6 people. Depends on my activity, so post your comment to increase my activity, OK. Thanks guys :)

Q: Is it really 1 GB of space?
A: Dunno, maybe, because that's what the counter below said. Send me mail-bomb, etc and we'll find out :)