I’ve been waiting for this a loooong time. Finally got my hands on one of these.

Delivered by Flipkart.com .

(Sadly, I must refrain from reading it until this Wednesday)

This was one long weekend. DPS RKP organised their 16th Exun, and there was a lot of pressure on us to win the overall (which ultimately, we didn’t). This pressure was mainly because we’ve been winning it for the the past 5 years, and we were expected to carry on the streak.

I participated in the Quiz, Crossword, and the Creative Event. People were awestruck by the ‘Noogler’ cap (Nalin and Aditya forced my to bring it because they believe it was ‘lucky for them’), and I probably explained to a 100 people how I got it.

After a demoralizing Quiz prelim, and a we-will-qualify-for-sure Crossword prelim, we went for the Creative Event, which was WebD and DI. Some intriguing rules of the event:-

The participants will be given a creative brief for a website. They will also be provided with the HTML markup containing the content for this website. Their task will be to take that HTML markup and design their sites using CSS, JavaScript and any images from a provided pool. They also have the option of using any open source CSS or JavaScript libraries to assist their design. (jQuery, jQuery UI, MooTools and Blueprint will be available by default). Adobe Photoshop will be provided for image manipulation. Participants will NOT be permitted to modify the HTML markup.

Nitin had already chosen a computer by the time I rushed into the lab from the prelims, and was fiddling around. Then the topic was announced:-

Create a website encouraging people to use public transport.

(Well, it was longer than that, but that’s the gist of it)

We were given a single web page, with a helluva lot of content in it about myths and benefits of using public transport, and other details. We had 4 hours divided into 3 segments to do what we could do with it to make it look good. The powers of CSS and Javascript were given to us, and we were limited only by our imagination.

The scene at the lab:- Confusion on the faces of most of the participants, wondering what to do and how to start. Other participants (aka Achal Verma) had broad smiles on their faces. Me, I was super glad to see that we had to work on only one page .

We had a good start, ended up choosing good colors, and sorted out most of the design quite quickly. Then on day2, we had come prepared, armed with a new-found knowledge of jQuery, but we decided not to use it. So we just made some finishing touches, cleaned up the CSS, oh and we made the title a Hindi-English hybrid style logo. Nitin handled this like a pro. His hands are like a blur when he’s on Photoshop. Then the judge came, asked us a few questions, and to explain our website, and I thought we did pretty well.

Now, a few reasons that I liked the event.

• They prohibited us from modifying anything inside the body tag. This automatically meant that participants who did not know CSS were forced to learn (which is only helpful to them in the long run). They were kind enough to include a CSS cheat-sheet too, so such participants’ time wouldn’t be completely wasted, and the guys were ready to help out too.

• We had to make only a single page. This let us concentrate more on the design of the site and less on making more pages and filling them with content that no-one is even going to read. (I’ve had really bad experiences working with multiple pages, which ended up in none of the pages looking good.)

• The entire event was split into segments. Obviously everyone will go home and learn stuff that supplements their design. Again, you learn so much. For example, I learnt how to make a fadeIn image slider using jQuery, and insertions of html using javascript, and lots of other things, things I don’t think I would have learnt otherwise.

I guess I’ve been going on and on about the webD event now. So this is how our school fared in the rest of the events.

Day1: We didn’t qualify for the quiz (Pulkit became super-depressed on hearing this), but both our teams made it for the crossword finals. And Vaibhav along with Mohak qualified for the JQ.

Day2: We flopped in all of these, and we all became depressed because our chances of an overall trophy were next to nothing.

But after lunch (THEY DITCHED DOMINOES, they gave us Pizza Hut this time) the good news started pouring in. We got Runners Up in the Creative Event, Pulkit and Aditya won the hardware event, Mrinal and Ratik won the Gaming.

MIS came first in the Creative Event with a superb squeaky clean design (When you tell some-one you came 2nd, before congratulating you 80% will ask ‘Who came first?’.)

The SQ was going on, and we were still wondering whether we had a chance for an overall trophy. Tanay managed to keep everyone entertained as a scorer. :)

And then we got the Overall Runners Up. It wasn’t first prize, but at least we weren’t going to return home empty handed. That was a relief. The Overall Winning Trophy went to DPS Dwarka who just dominated the symposium. They just kept piling on trophies. I guess we’ll just have to do the same to them in C.O.R.E.4

Which brings me to the issue that now, most of the 12thies will resign themselves, preparing for their board exams. And that just depletes half our squad. So I guess we need to improve our HR, get new members. That’s something we really need to deal with.

(PS: I realise this has been one of my longest blog posts ever. I didn’t intend for it to be this long. I just started and 20 minutes later, voila.)

 

 

I was really excited about the concert today. I thought nothing could go wrong, I thought that since the organizers had MONTHS to prepare for this, they would be equipped to handle anything, that they would have learned something from the mistakes made during Bryan Adams’ trip. Well, clearly I couldn’t be more mistaken.

After the gates open, we find out that our spots abnormally far away from the stage, and there’s just one pathetic screen in the middle. Fine, we come to terms with that  (even though it deeply saddened me that a lot of people in the section in front of us had probably never heard a single Metallica song before). Then we find out that the so-called ‘barrier’ separating the stage and the people has been broken. Great. So, different people/organizers/bouncers come and try to make the people go back, and try to correct the situation. But they fail.

Excerpts from the announcements made today.

- Sit down everyone. This is to facilitate movement.

- Stand up everyone, we need you to step back.

- Move back pliss.

Then this other guy from the crew comes along.

- Listen, you fu… buttheads, take a giant step back.

(he controlled himself, but also got the bird from hundreds of people at that moment)

Then he says that he’ll tell someone who ‘we can understand’ to come explain it to us, which was kinda insulting the way he said it.

Anyway, after waiting for hours, they announced that the concert was postponed because of security issues.The crew guys took all the equipment before anything could happen to it. Yeah, people threw bottles, and some guy got onto stage

Oh, and also, for almost the entire duration (after displaying the annoying ads) this is what the big screen read.

There went 4 hours of our lives, just standing and doing nothing. I guess the only one who made money was FastTrax selling way overpriced stuff. So, we need to go again tomorrow. If there’s a problem tomorrow, the crowd’s gonna go mad.

(Update- So it seems that after we left, they really trashed the stage. But the stuff was insured and the crew had already moved most of the important stuff, so that doesn’t really matter. but this was after the announcement was made)

(Update- And now I hear that the concert is canceled. NOOOOOOO!!)

(Also read- Abhishek’s post , CoolBeans post)

 

Peace is a lie, there is only passion.

Through passion, I gain strength.

Through strength, I gain power.

Through power, I gain victory.

Through victory, my chains are broken.

The Force shall free me

Awestruck each time I read it.