Vienna - Day 4: Minesweeper Championship

Saturday was championship day. But since the championship was in the afternoon, I took a walk in the morning...first I went to a market where the was supposedly an interesting flea market Saturdays (there was nothing much there, actually) and then to the Belvedere castle.

the castle

the garden

It was awfully cold, and raining a bit. So I didn't hang around outdoors for long; I went to the university right after a quick walk around the castle grounds.

Oh yeah, and I should mention that I bought a most delicious fish sandwich from a stall at the market. I didn't take a photo of it because firstly, it wasn't that spectacular anyway, and secondly, because when you are holding a sandwich in one hand and an umbrella in the other, you would have quite some trouble getting out your camera to take a photo :P

What comes next will be a sort of "report" about the championship; I actually wrote it a few weeks ago, not long after coming back to Lyon, while it was all still fresh in my mind. That's why all the details are there...

First, a brief description of the system:

The championship was played in sessions, with each session lasting 999 seconds. In each session, each player has to complete 10 beginner games, followed by 6 intermediate and 2 expert ones. After they complete the 18 games, they will be free to play whatever they want.

After each session, points are calculated. The point system is a little complicated to explain, so I will only say this: we get points for completion (completing the 18 games in the least time), expert, intermediate and beginner (the sum of the 5 best times achieved), and these with a weight of 4, 3, 2, and 1 respectively.

When the player who is leading reaches a predetermined amount of points, a number of players (also predetermined) who have the least points will drop out of the game. The other players continue until a player reaches the next predetermined amount of points, and so on.

For full details on the scoring system, read about it here.

The event:

Now that you know how it works, let me tell you how I fared. I did pretty well in the first session, completing my 18 games in a little less than 600 seconds. I came in 4th in points.

However, the trouble immediately began. I started having a lot (and I mean really a LOT) of trouble finishing my expert games. On the next few sessions we played, I finished my intermediate boards faster and faster but was simply unable to finish my two (let alone one, in one of the sessions, I believe) Fortunately for me (and unfortunately for some others who played good sessions) there was a computer bug and most of these sessions were cancelled. (I can't remember how many)

So it turned out that in the 2nd real session (where points were counted) I only managed to finish 17 games. After the points were counted, I tied with Arsen for 6th and 7th place.

In the 3rd session I had finished 17 games and had started another when the 999 seconds were up. The rules were that if you were playing at that time, you could finish the game. So I took every precaution (not caring how long I took) and luckily managed to complete the game.

At the end of this session I was 6th.

By that time I knew that my only chance to catch up to the others was to complete the 18 games quickly. (since completion carried the most weight) In the 4th session I managed to do it in 569.48 seconds, only behind Jon who finished in 538.29 seconds. This put me in 5th place in points.

In the next session I finished slightly more quickly, in 527.51 seconds. But I was again behind someone - this time Tommy who managed it in 479.38 seconds. This 5th session was my last because Tommy had (yet again :P ) reached a number of points that asked for the elimination of certain players. My final place was 5th and then there were the playoffs for the top three places.

Tommy came in first after leading almost throughout the whole tournament, Reid was second, and Christoph came in third.

Full results are on this site.

After the tournament:

We went bowling (and for some, drinking beer ;) ) in a kind of shopping mall. It was the first time I tried bowling, and it was pretty fun, even though I hardly knew what I was doing, especially at first :P I didn't even know that the balls were of different weights until Robert told me! There were about ten of us on two lanes.

Unfortunately I didn't take any photos that day (or night) and I still haven't received any of the group photos taken, so I can't put them here. :/ However I will put a photo of my prize for fifth place ;)

A wireless keyboard and mouse set, and I am using the former right now ;)
(I still prefer my old mouse)

It was Gergely, who had already organised a few minesweeper tournaments in Budapest, who managed to get a few prizes sponsored by Microsoft Hungary. There were six prizes, but they didn't determine the prizes for each place, so the winners chose the prize they wanted, starting with the first-place winner, of course.

Another thing I should mention: Johnny and Dave, our cameramen were of course filming the whole tournament and prize-giving. So I suppose that right now they are putting together their documentary, and we might see it some day...

Other Vienna posts:
Vienna - Day 1: Panic attack
Vienna - Day 2: City sights
Vienna - Day 3: Bratislava trip
Vienna - Day 5: Schonbrunn Castle

Vienna - Day 3: Bratislava trip

Visiting Bratislava was an adventure! ;) The night before, the four Americans - Reid, Sam, Johnny and Dave - together with Eduard and myself had decided to meet at the Vienna south station (Sudbahnhof) to take the train to Bratislava. That was what we did, but we missed a direct train by seconds and had to wait about an hour for the next one. So we took another train that went to another station where we could then take yet another train to Bratislava. (we bought a ticket for 14€ comprising the return train ticket and public transport in Bratislava)

So we reached Bratislava pretty easily. But to go to town, first we had to check which bus to take. And that was hard, because we couldn't understand a word on the bus route map. We managed to figure it out (I've forgotten how) and off we went...

We went to the Bratislava castle, but it was "under construction" (it's a plague in European touristic spots), so we had to settle for the view from the hill:

which was pretty nice, actually :)

and yep, to prove that I was there ;)

after we came down from the hill; the castle is in the background

I didn't mention it before, but Johnny and Dave were in Vienna to film a documentary about Minesweeper (seeing as there was a Minesweeper tournament going on). The wanted to interview all the players (or as many as they could), and they thought that Bratislava would be a good place to conduct a few interviews.

Here you will see the pros at work:

setting up Reid's interview

Eduard's turn

yours truly being interviewed against a lovely backdrop :P
(I think they were setting up the equipment...I wouldn't have been looking away otherwise)

After sightseeing (we spent most of our time on the hill where the castle was situated, so we didn't walk around much in town) we went to the train station to catch the 3:50pm train. Upon arriving at the station, we had about 5 minutes before the train left, so Sam and Eduard went to use the bathroom. The rest of us waited and waited...but they did not come back...so we missed the 3:50 train. Then came the piece of information that made this such a great adventure: Sam and Eduard were already on the train! It seems that they expected us to be already there. We did contemplate going on first, but Reid insisted that we wait because "Sam wouldn't go on the train without us." :P

So we went into a nearby cafe while waiting for the next train, which was at 5pm. And those two who left us behind felt so guilty that they didn't go home, but waited for us to arrive at the Vienna train station :P

That night we met up again with the other sweepers, including those who had just arrived that day. But I still have a couple of things to mention:

First, the train ticket we bought. Curiously, on the train to Bratislava, no one checked our tickets, but on the way back, they were checked twice! Proof's on the ticket:

see the two different stamps?

Besides, I had the occasion to visit toilets at the train station (Sudbahnhof) once. It was certainly an experience in itself. First we had to pay the unsmiling lady there 50 cents. Then when a toilet was free (when I went there all were occupied, but I was the only one waiting) she would open it and - get this - LOCK YOU IN. (okay, maybe it was automatic locking, I don't know) And the doors weren't lightweight either. It was like a safe door closing or something. As Sam said, we couldn't help wondering whether we'd be able to get out later! (and that lady in charge was really unfriendly...makes me think of a prison warden!) In fact the door had some kind of mechanism that somehow allowed it to be opened from the inside, but not from the outside unless you had the key. So the lady there had to stay around waiting for "customers" to lock in...

Hmph. Lovely job, huh.

Other Vienna posts:
Vienna - Day 1: Panic attack
Vienna - Day 2: City sights
Vienna - Day 4: Minesweeper Championship
Vienna - Day 5: Schonbrunn Castle

Say it with stamps

I have lots of photos to blog about. (amongst which those from my Vienna trip) Now that it's holidays and there are less people in my apartment building, I hope that the internet will work better...already, I've managed to upload these two photos! (Yay!)

You see, I went to buy new stamps a few weeks ago, since I only had a few left. (three, to be exact) And I was surprised when the person at the counter handed me a colourful slip:

(click on it to see the photo in actual size)

I had to look at them carefully to see that they were really stamps!

I know that stamps usually do come in all shapes and sizes, but just look at these old stamps that I've always bought:


No resemblance at all, wouldn't you say?

Malfunctioning link

The "read a random post" link on the sidebar isn't working! Instead of sending me to one of my posts, it sends me to a page asking me to subscribe to a feed for comments. :?

What do I do? Someone help me!!!

And your eyeballs?

Actually I wanted to post a photo of a dish I cooked today (today's special :P), but I don't want to start another (losing) battle with my internet connection, so I guess I'll leave it aside for the moment. Instead, here's an interesting game to try:
The eyeballing game

Here's the evolution of my scores for the first 4 games:
4.70 -> 3.25 -> 2.39 -> 2.31

And I managed to put the marker right in the centre of the circle once! (error 0.0 units)

Vienna - Day 2: City sights

My second day in Vienna wasn't really very eventful. It was my "purest" sightseeing day, in a way. I walked all around the city of Vienna until I felt like my feet were about to drop off.

I don't know much about the places, so I'll just put the photos here with whatever I know:

Albertina

the opera

we see quite a few horse carriages clop-clopping along in the street; I saw some tourists riding in them

Museumsquartier; there's a whole bunch of museums inside

more museums and their surroundings (there's a kind of park between the 2 almost identical museums)

the parliament

Burgtheater

Rathaus (the town hall); construction work again!
(I've lost count how many monuments I've visited were under construction)

Votive church

St. Charles' church (unfortunately the sun was behind it so the photo's a bit dark...)

Konzerthaus

Volkstheater

The following photos were taken in Stadtpark, which is a kind of park in the middle of the city. The metro station (of the same name) entrance was right beside the park entrance; I would have gone in there instead, since it had a big sign saying "Stadtpark" on it, except that I noticed that this "other park" was kinda interesting as well :P

upon entry; the metro station is on the right

beside the river

from the bridge, towards the entrance

somewhere in the park beside the river

Next is Hofburg palace, a palace situated in the city itself.

this last photo was taken in the compound

I also went to Praterstern, an amusement park a little outside the city centre. I wouldn't have gone there but for the fact that a ferris wheel was featured on almost every postcard I saw. So I decided to go and check out this famous ferris wheel (which is called Riesenrad, by the way)

the park entrance

we can see the ferris wheel from there

a slightly closer view, from somewhere inside the park

I also saw bumper cars; I haven't seen those for ages!

in a souvenir shop
Pretty cute, huh?

I have several photos of the St. Stephen's cathedral (very famous, it's even on one of the euro coins!), but they're all partial (it was too big) and it was under construction, so I won't put them here.

Now for those who don't know, the main reason I went to Vienna was to attend the World Minesweeper Championship organized by Christoph. The championship was on Saturday, and not having been to Vienna before, I went there a few days earlier to visit the city.

I was so tired out from all the walking (as you can see from my photos, I visited a lot of places!) that halfway through all that, I went to the university (where the championship was to be held) to see Christoph, rest my feet and use the internet :P We were to meet some others for dinner, but since it was still pretty early, I went off to do some more sightseeing before returning to meet Christoph (I didn't know where the meeting point was!)

We ate at a place called the Centimeter. We had bread to start, and it's quite a pity that I didn't think to take a photo of that, because it was served on a chopping board :P The bread was cut into small "sticks" and spread with whatever you chose (and there were a lot of choices!)

I ordered an Austrian dish that Christoph recommended, it was called black pudding if I'm not mistaken. In fact, a whole lot of us ordered it, even the waitress was surprised by the popularity of that particular dish! It was really good, but unfortunately there was too much potatoes in it (and if you've seen me eat in INSA before, you might have noticed that I can't eat much potatoes!) So I was sadly unable to finish it.

served in a frying pan

Christoph ordered soup, one of the reasons was just to let us see it! And I must say that it was interesting; see for yourself:

served in a bowl of bread; can you get more creative than that?

I don't have any photos of us at the Centimeter, but I can say who was there: I met Christoph and his girlfriend Eva at the metro station near the university, and there we also met up with Eduard and Andreas (Christoph's brother). After that I can't remember who turned up first at the Centimeter, but there was Tommy, Reid and his sister Sam and their friends Johnny and Dave. Gergely and his girlfriend (oops, I don't think I know her name) turned up last.

After dinner some of us decided to go somewhere and get a drink and chat, since it was still pretty early. Christoph had to go to the university to finish some programming, so it fell to Tommy to take us somewhere. At first we were going to an Irish pub, but the first two we went to were too full (there were places but no table for seven) By that time we had already walked quite a bit, so even though Tommy said he knew another Irish pub, we decided not to take another long walk and go somewhere close by instead. So we ended up in a coffee house...where I finally had the presence of mind to take a group photo. So here it is:


And then the guy on the far table offered to take one for us:

from left: Gergely and his gf from Hungary, Eduard from Spain (Barcelona), yours truly, Sam from the US, Tommy the local, and Reid (Sam's brother)

Other Vienna posts:
Vienna - Day 1: Panic attack
Vienna - Day 3: Bratislava trip
Vienna - Day 4: Minesweeper Championship
Vienna - Day 5: Schonbrunn Castle

Internet gripes

A slow internet connection costs a LOT of time. These last few days I've spent at least two hours doing nothing other than waiting for pages to load. And I can't get any photos uploaded, which is why my second Vienna post is still not here, even though I wrote it last weekend. A week ago, get it? I even went to use my uni's internet connection to upload the photos, but by some "unexplained phenomenon" (which I think was probably my carelessness) one of the photos disappeared from the post and I can't manage to put it back there. So I have to upload it again, and my internet absolutely refuses to cooperate.

So, you'll have to wait till my internet decides to be friends with me again, or when I manage to use the internet somewhere else.

By the way, at this moment I'm again waiting for pages to load...I have to book train tickets to go to Tours at the end of the month (raya gathering ;) ) and I really wonder whether this will work, because this website has an annoying habit of forgetting you if you don't do anything on it for several minutes (a security precaution, so to speak)

Argh. I really have to get better internet.

Summer reading

It's probably time I posted this here.

During the summer, I kept a running reading list on Facebook, adding to it as I read new books. I planned to transfer the list to my blog at the end of the summer. So now that summer's gone (and it's cold!) here's the list:

I started off with 2 issues of Reader's Digest (April and May 2008)

And on to the books:

1.To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
2. Sight Unseen - Samantha Graves
3. The Art of Detection - Laurie R. King (very very slow book, only got interesting towards the end)
4. The A.B.C. Murders - Agatha Christie (read before)
5. The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith
6. The Double Eagle - James Twining (great book! Very good plot.)
7. The Killing Hour - Lisa Gardner (good)
8. Grave Matters (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) - Max Allan Collins
9. The Concrete Blonde - Michael Connelly
10. The Rule of Four - Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason (okay, but with rather messy chronology)
11. Double Dealer (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) - Max Allan Collins

Reader's Digest (July 2003)

12. Last Witness - Jilliane Hoffman (boring start; slow "acceleration")
13. Second Watch - Lowen Clausen

Reader's Digest (November 2001)

14. The 5th Horseman - James Patterson
15. Harry the Poisonous Centipede Goes To Sea - Lynne Reid Banks (looked like one of Roald Dahl's children books, so I thought I'd give it a try. It's hardly as good as Roald Dahl's, though)

A would-have-been number 16, except that I didn't finish it:
(16.) Dead I Well May Be - Adrian McKinty (I don't like the writing style, too many details, too slow)

16. A Garden of Vipers - Jack Kerley (good!)
17. Cat Among the Pigeons - Agatha Christie
18. After the Funeral - Agatha Christie (read before)
19. Hickory Dickory Dock - Agatha Christie (read before)
20. Third Girl - Agatha Christie (read before)
21. Hallowe'en Party - Agatha Christie
22. Body of Evidence (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) - Max Allan Collins
23. All Night Long - Jayne Ann Krentz
24. Shopaholic & Sister - Sophie Kinsella
25. A Conspiracy of Violence - Susanna Gregory
26. A Stain on the Silence - Andrew Taylor (not recommended)
27. Elephants Can Remember - Agatha Christie
28. Lord Edgware Dies - Agatha Christie
29. The Anodyne Necklace - Martha Grimes (not that bad, but missing quote marks and misspellings/typos make me wonder what the editor was doing...)
30. Icing on the Lake - Catherine Clark
31. No Mercy - Colin Forbes

Reader's Digest (August 2008)

32. Curtain: Poirot's Last Case - Agatha Christie

...and curtain on my summer reading as well.

Scheduling problems

Really, I don't know what's going on in INSA this year...they don't seem to be communicating very well with the profs!

Yesterday we were supposed to have 8 hours of lectures (a full day) But the prof scheduled for 8-10 am failed to show up. I toyed with the idea of going home, but finally decided that it wasn't worth it: I didn't have anything to do at home other than use the internet anyway. After hanging around for a bit doing nothing, I went to the Humanités library and borrowed a book (Boy and Going Solo, a 2-in-1 book by Roald Dahl, which I had read sometime when I was small) to pass the time. At 10 am, the teacher was nowhere to be seen and we were thinking that he wouldn't show up either... but in the end (at almost 10.30, I think) he arrived and we had the lecture.

And today we had TD (tutorials) so the two groups in 4th year were in different classrooms. For the first class, everything went fine...then at 10 am, there was a problem: according to the time-table, both classes were supposed to be in the same classroom, even though we had different classes scheduled. In the end the prof for my class arrived first, so we stayed in that classroom.

In the end it turned out the other group's prof never arrived, and since that was the class we had at 2 in the afternoon, we also ended up waiting for a teacher who didn't come. So I took out the book that I had borrowed the day before and read it while waiting for the next class (which happened to be sport, and I was doing badminton :D ) I do hope they get this sorted out quickly...there aren't enough books in Humas to let me keep on doing this! :P

(the Vienna posts will have to wait...I'm feeling extremely lazy to write about them or sift through my photos...let alone upload them on my lousy internet connection)

White Rabbit creamy candy

One of the most delicious sweets in the world.


is. contaminated.

I’m so sad. :'(

I loved this sweet when I was small, and I just bought a packet in Malaysia the other day, after not eating it for years. I brought some to France...only to throw it away. *sniff* (I did eat one or two before I found out)

Edit (17th Oct):
The sweets are cleared! So maybe I'll find new batches in M'sia next year...