My hair grown too long, I was about to cut it, when one question come to mind:

Let's suppose I cut each of my hairs to a length uniformly random, how will my head look like?

instead of uniform random, other distributions like normal, binomial, can be applied.

Many people asked me how I became a Pokemon Master.

The following song describes it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ8heSeHX48

A long ago TwentyOneHundredOrBust asked me to write a sp song, so I modified it.

Is this the first sp song?

I want to be, the
very best, like
no one ever was


solve them, is my
real test, to train
my cause


I will travel across
CF, searching
far and wide

Each algorithm to
understand, the 
power that's inside

SP, gotta
solve them all! It's
you and me, I know
it's my destiny

SP! Ohh, your
my best friend, in a
world we must 
deffend!

Algorithms, gotta solve
them all! A heart so
true, Our courage will
pull us through

You teach me,
and I teach
you, Algorithms

Gotta AC
them all, gotta
AC them all

yeah

every challenge
along the way, with
courage I wil face

I will battle every
day, to claim my
rightfull place

come with me, the
time is right, there's
no better team

arm and arm, we'll win
the fight, it's always
been our dream

Algorithms, gotta solve
them all, it's you and
me, I know it's my
destiny

SP, oh your
my best friend, in a
world we must 
defend

Algorithms, gotta solve
them all, a heart so
true, our courage will
pull us through


you teach me and I teach
you, SP, gotta
AC them all, gotta
AC them all.

gotta solve them all!

yeah

I always thought that cf colours follows the vissible light spectrum.

However that is not the case (purples would be the lowest in the hierarchy of power).

What was your graduation final project?

I think that most top coders (i.e tourist, petr, Mr weak mind, ...) did something amazing. After all probably reds are better in the academia rather than the industry, so I expect many interesting researchs.

If you did something interesting share in the comments!

Yesterday I found this manga: internet explorer, it is about web browsers. You can see all the characters int the last pages.

So I came up with the idea of creating a manga about sports programming! the characters could be the online judges (there are plenty: cf, tc, ac, csa, cc, etc)

If you want to join me, just post below a sketch of the character of some oj.

Currently I have >100 points in contribution, however I feel that I haven't contributed nothing to CF.

I think that contribution should be reserved for the people that really contributes to the community i.e problem setters, testers, and also to people that writes educational content.

Mwa ha ha ha ha I'm the mad sports programmer (sp) Hououin Riela! after beating Mr weak mind, I moved to Wonderland and started a hidden base with Dormouse.

I noticed that in order to improve you have to train. It took me a lot of time to notice this because I'm a genius, but even the most talented people have to work hard to become better. Sports programming is a sport, so you have to keep training to be in shape,

How many hours per week do you train? do you have a routine? how do you train? do you choose just random problems from gym?

btw, Is there other sites like codeforces but oriented to maths?

Mwa ha ha ha ha I'm the mad sports programmer (sp) Hououin Riela! The organization sent Mr weak mind to nominate me as the most annoying person of cf, I have to counter attack.

There are many kind people in cf, some of them write nice posts about algorithms, others helps preparing training camps, others invent cool problems and prepare contests for us, ...

I want to make a vote for the most loved person on CF in 2018.

If you want to nominate a candidate, but feel ashamed, you can PM me their handle(s), then I will write a comment to vote.

I know that I'm an obvious candidate, especially after fighting the organization and writing useful content in cf.

Note that this is the antipost of Um_nik's post so to vote for a given person you should upvote the comment with this person's handle.

Congrats to the winners!

1. rng_58 +187

2. Errichto +176

3. hmehta +162

4. Um_nik +127

5. MikeMirzayanov +116

6. misof +82

7. Petr +81

8. adamant +77

9. SerezhaE +70

10. SoMuchDrama +64

Mwa ha ha ha ha I'm the mad sports programmer (sp) Hououin Riela! I was busy stopping the organization plans and didn't had time to write blog entries.

My archnemesis teja[some numbers] once told me that I was shit posting too much and I should start writing contests, so I searched in the web and found some problem setter guides:

1. codeforces: https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/49569 (It took me a while to find it, I think it should be more accessible in cf

2. topcoder: https://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=Static&d1=help&d2=problemWriter&node=algo_write

3. codechef: https://www.codechef.com/problemsetting

4. hackerearth: https://www.hackerearth.com/docs/wiki/developers/setter-guide/

It turns out that online judges pay for writing problems! I know that most people set contests just because its fun, but the payments are not negligible:

codeforces (300$ 400$ for div1+div2, 150$ 200$ for div2)

topcoder (750$ 1125$ with that amount no wonder why they have high quality problems!)

codechef (They pay per problem, for short contests 475$)

I don't know how much they pay in hackerearth, hackerrank, ...

Now I'm curious: are there professional problem setters that makes a living just by writing problems?

Mwa ha ha ha ha I'm the mad sports programmer (sp) Hououin Riela! The organization is acting again, and as consequence the last round was unrated. However I'll break the convergence to change the worlds control structure.

The last cf round was an important one ― it is part of a tournament. However it was unrated because problems with the servers, many people downvoted the announcement post simply because the contest was unrated, however the problems were interesting. It is not the fault of the setter that the round ended unrated, and a decrease in contribution can be demotivating.

I know that contribution is just a number, but I would be affraid that if I set a round and there is a problem with the servers, then my post will be heavily downvoted.

Do you think is a good idea to remove the downvote button for cf round annoucements? what other solutions do you propose?

I think removing the downvote button is good, because there is no sense in downvoting those kind of posts. Also since I have many enemies (not only Mr Duck and teja[some numbers here]) if I set a round, I'm affraid it will get many downvotes!

Some weeks ago, I was coding a solution in c++, and by mistake I was adding an infinite amount of numbers to a vector. Suddenly, my computer got frozen, and it didn't respond to keyboard neither mouse events. I had to reset my computer, and it took a lot of time fixing the disk.

Did you had similar experiences during important contests?

Is there a compìler configuration to prevent this kind of scenarios?

Mwa ha ha ha ha I'm the mad sports programmer (sp) Hououin Riela! The organization sent my archnemesis "teja[put some numbers here]" to interfere with our operations. However I'll break the convergence to change the worlds control structure. __

To the point gentlemen, in my opinion, topcoder was always one of the best sp sites. The main problem with tc is that we have to use an applet to compete, and you have to install java, configure security options, then configure plugins, ...

They tried to create a web arena, however it was a failure (you can't even practice in that arena, and there are no plugins). Afaik, they are again constructing a new arena (not sure how is the current status).

Some people think that the rating formula in tc is not accurate, there are usually 3 problems, there are no strong pretests and sometimes even reds end up without solving a single problem! and that cause big fluctuations in rating. However, I think that the rating formula is good, and your points will eventually converge to some interval.

Usually tc provides high quality problems (they used to have a legendary admin), however imho the last tco featured very easy problems (sorry misof).

I noticed that now tc is sending emails as reminders, and also hmehta is posting announcements and editorials in cf.

Last week I realized a cf experiment by posting here a trivia/survey. One of the questions was "who is the biggest competitor of cf?", these were the results:

Do you think topcoder is getting great again? how can they improve?

btw, help me improve my english by pointing grammar, syntax, ... errors

cp addiction is a very common disease among coders. You can check the symptoms in the following link http://codeforces.com/blog/entry/12968

cp addiction impacts on many software companies. Many coders spend more time on codeforces rather than on their projects, also some employees skip working days just to take part in cf rounds. That is why some companies have considered to block codeforces by adding it to the firewall!

Even Mike was trying to find a cure by adding a [delete account] feature, you can see it here: http://codeforces.com/blog/entry/59406

... However so far curing cp addiction is an open problem.

Since now I know that cp T-shirts exist, I got courious about the distribution of t-shirts per contestant.

How many cp t-shirts do you have? who has the more t-shirts?

I heard that some people keep an influx of t-shirts in such a way that they don't have to wash them!

If Petr competed during 15 years, getting 6 t-shirts per year, I guess that he has about 90 t-shirts!

I've seen some cp sites that ussually offers t-shirts as a prize.

If I'm not mistaken even cf has an official T-shirt (btw, how many of you have one?)

However it seems is just a myth because none of the t-shirts I won has arrived. In particular, neither topcoder open, facebook cup, yandex, ...

Does cp t-shirts really exist?

It seems USA is excelling in recent competitions.

This year USA won both IMO and IOI. Congrats James Li and Benq! (note that both have chinese surnames :) )

The challenger for the world chess championship is Caruana (also from USA, although some people says that he is italian).

Is USA getting great again? does the Trump administration is the cause of this notorious coincidences?