Today my team(me,Ishaan, Aritra) as well as 2 other teams from our school went for a Quiz at Carmel Convent named QUIZOTTICA. By sheer luck we lost out in the semis as all sitter questions were going to our neighbours. Bhavya’s team came 2nd, and first, you can guess! MIS.

Some questions were nice computer related questions. Here they go:-

Which animated cartoon was made entirely on Flash?(sitter)

Which word in latin means ‘First Glue’? (we got the second part of the word right which was ‘col’. We said Fevicol. The answer- Protocol)

Just another question:-

Which instrument’s name literally means ‘made of clay’?(everyone knew this)Mridangam

Anyway it was a pretty good quiz, could have been better, if we won something.

It has been released. Check out:

www.apple.com/imac for more information.

–Karan

Great Event (I’m saying this because we won and not because it was actually a great event!). We won 3 out of the 4 computer related events and bagged the overall First Position for GenX (The computer wing of the event). Prateek and Swati came first in programming, Gursartaj and Abhisheyk came second in the Quiz, and Gursataj and Dhruv (c’est moi) came second in the web designing competion.

A quite unexpected win as the TapsFest is a very large event and our school didn’t take part in most contests, and also because we didn’t know there was a separate computer trophy.

This is also our first overall victory for this academic section.

Hope we making winning a habit!

Congratulations!!! Winners deserve 3 cheers … Great !!! Keep it up for coming events (Mukesh)

Senior – Classes 9-12

Junior – Classes 6-8

Sub-Junior – Classes 3-5

The information quoted is “as is”. So there might be [many obvious] mistakes.

Events

• Ringtone Composition (Senior) : The teams will be required to compose a .midi file using Fruity Loops. The Ringtone should have a maximum length of 9 seconds. Total time given to each team will be 60 minutes. The size of the file and compatibility of the ringtone with different Symbian OS will also be a criteria of judgement.
  
  Participants per team = 2
• Crossword (open) : A preliminary written round will be held to select 8 teams for the finals on stage. Crossword questions will be based on technology, current events, softwares, new hardwares, etc.
  
  Participants per team = 2
• Logic Programming (Open) : The teams will be required to complete a set of four programs in 2 hours. All teams will receive the same problem set and the programs will be tested on the spot using standardised test data. The SEARCC/CSI scoring method will be used, i.e., there will be time bonus points. Software: Turbo C++/Visual Basic.
  
  Participants per team = 2
• Junior Gaming (Sub Junior) : A preliminary round will be held to short list the finalists. The games will be announced on the spot.
  
  Participants per team = 2
• Digital Imaging/Greeting Card Making (Junior) : Each team is required to bring their own DIGITAL CAMERAS along with their connectivity kits (USB wires, floppy cards, memory card readers, etc.) Teams must also get the drivers for their devices to operate on Windows 98/Me, 2000, XP. Teams will have to go around school and capture photographs.Then, using the above stated softwares (CorelDraw/Adobe Photoshop/Adobe Illustrator) along with the pictures captured, they have to create a GREETING CARD.
  
  Time Limit : 60 minutes for capturing photographs within the school premises, 90 minutes for creating the Greeting Card.
  
  Participants per team = 2
• Senior Gaming (Senior) : A preliminary round will be held to shortlist the finalists. The games will be announced on the spot.
  
  Participants per team = 1
• Group Discussion (Senior) : There will be two batches of teams for the preliminary round. Four top speakers from each batch will take part in a group discussion conducted on stage. Topics will be given on the spot.
  
  Participants per team = 1
• Digital Promo Making (Senior) : Teams will be provided with Video Clips, using which they will make a Promo on the given topic. The Promo should not exceed 120 seconds. Software: Adobe Premier.
  
  Participants per team = 2
• Cell Phone Screensaver Competition (Senior) : Teams have to work on a 178 x 208 pixel canvas size. The screensaver should not exceed 15 seconds. Software: Macromedia Flash.
  
  Participants per team = 1

Schedule

Day 1

Day 2

Names will be submitted to Modern School Vasant Vihar on 1 September 2004. Once you drop your name for a particular event in the comments, there should be no change of heart. Please submit your name only if you’re sure you want to participant in that event.

Contacting Modern School Vasant Vihar

Phone: 26146469, 26144388

Fax: 26146369

Email: msvv@del2.vsnl.net.in

Exun does not have any more information. Please contact Modern School Vasant Vihar for clarifications.

–Karan

Information about Modem 2004 (Modern School Vasant Vihar) has been received and will be posted soon.

–Karan

A little head start on the password protected Exun Members Only download area. All download URL’s that require to be password protected can be stored in the directory “downloads” in the “logexun” directory on the FTP server.

I understand not everyone has access to the FTP server. But indirectly (through blogger) you guys can upload material into the directory. Just make sure, it’s “logexun/downloads” in Blogger.

For example http://logexun.exunclan.com/downloads/MYFILE.DOC (yeah, logexun.exunclan.com works just like exunclan.com/logexun) is not accessible without the password, but after you’ve supplied a correct password, you’re on your way to downloading the file.

A PHP solution to this password protected thing is

http://logexun.exunclan.com/download.php?url=http://logexun.exunclan.com/downloads/MYFILE.DOC

For those interested, the PHP source is also available.

Hail to the Power of PHP.

Questions and Answers from the Quiz Finals at Mother’s International School’s MINET 2004 which took place on the 8th of August 2004 are available for download: click here to download the Word (.doc) file.

The file is protected with a password. Until I can figure out a PHP method to make secure downloads (for only Exun members) possible, you will have to send an email to karanm@gmail.com or exunclan@gmail.com and request for the password.

–Karan

The Class X Inter-section IT Quiz took place on Friday the 13^th of August 2004.

The Results are:

1. First Position – Section F
2. Second Position – Section D
3. Third Position – Section G

Exun would like to take this opportunity to thank Rohan Kharbanda (Exun 2002-03) for being the most important part of the Quiz, the Quizmaster.

This Quiz was organized by Exun members:

Gursartaj Singh Nijjar, Dhruv Kumar, Abhishek Suri, Abhisheyk Gaur, Maanick Nangia and Karan Misra

PS: Shall try to add the names of the participants if possible.

If you’ve been keeping up with Windows Longhorn or Mac OS X, you will see that ever since Apple released OS X in 2001, both companies have been trying to make their operating systems look “prettier”. Although Apple completely rewrote the millions of lines of code comprising the Mac OS from scratch for version 10, I think that both Apple and Microsoft have moved in a terribly wrong direction.

Mac OS X

To a certain extent Mac OS X’s interface is very good indeed. For example, the buttons for closing, maximizing and minimizing a window are marked with distinct colours. Also, Exposé along with anti-aliasing make Mac OS X a really sweet sight. Now many of you may disagree with me on this, but I find two very basic things in Mac OS X to be fatally flawed:

1. The Dock
2. Minimizing and Maximizing

By default the dock is at the bottom of the screen where it takes up more than 1/10th of the screen, and that vertical space becomes completely unusable. Secondly, the bouncing action of the icons (by default, it can be changed) when an application starts is really kiddish and one gets fed up of it pretty soon. Minimizing: firstly, all software don’t support the standard Apple-M keyboard shortcut for it (for example, FireFox doesn’t) and secondly, once you send a window into the Dock, there’s no way of maximizing it again with a keyboard shortcut. This is, in a word – bugging. These are not all of the GUI troubles with Mac OS X, there are many more, but these tend to bug you a lot in regular everyday use.

Windows

There’s no point in arguing that Windows XP wasn’t inspired by Mac OS X, because it definitely was. I have no qualms with the Windows interface. In fact, I happen to believe it as being one of the most well-designed and most accessible user interfaces, beating Mac OS (elegant though it may be) and Linux (really not a challenge) in many many areas. When I see the Windows UI, the word that comes to my mind is “efficient” – this is the UI you want to work on, compared to the word “cool” that comes to my mind when I think of Mac OS X. Windows XP was supposed to look cool; however, I think that if you ever get around to doing serious work on XP, you almost always switch back to the Classic (Windows 95 to 2000) look, simply because it’s just more efficient, and those jazzy animations, shadows and transparency really don’t help at all.

Mac OS 9

“Ultrafast, Efficient” come to my mind. The OS 9 (or Classic) GUI beats the Mac OS X, Windows and Linux GUI in every area. It is the most usable thing on this planet. In fact, it’s always been a major reason for the fact that Macs were used extensively in graphics and video development (Intel’s ads were until recently made on Macs). Not only that, but with all its efficiency, it’s also much better, more space saving and easier to use than the current Windows or Mac OS X GUI. If somebody could just slap the Classic GUI on top of Windows or Mac OS X, I would be the happiest person on this planet.

–Karan