2006-04-09
Losing sleep over something. Literally. Running the Coding Contest is quite a challenge. With around 10 hours left in the contest, the heat is one for the contestants and while I try to make things as smooth as I can for them, there have been some bumps in the road:
- Time zones: Midnight for me, the contestants get started. Today this was a problem when one contestant had trouble downloading the contest details. Luckily, I woke up 4:30 hours early and another contestant helped him out an hour before then.
- Server bandwidth: Little did I know that my server bandwidth would break over the weekend and cause contestants not to be able to download the contest details. I have another server I've set the file up on now which has a much bigger bandwidth.
- The bat is too slow: My math was out by a factor of two on this. The bats couldn't receive 50% of the serves sent to them because they couldn't move fast enough. A late rule change in the code fixed this, but that's harsh for the developers who then have to deal with the change.
- The code is too slow: Another mistake, the algorithm I used for speeding up the balls in-game was as brain dead as it could be and this had consequences for slower machines, ie: the more the balls sped up the slower the game was. About 1/3rd of the way through the contest this one was fixed, so hopefully it had little impact on the contestants (apart from making me look like a fool!)
So with just 10 hours remaining, my fingers are crossed that every thing else from here will go smoothly. Boy-o, running a contest is harder than I thought it would be! Here's hoping I haven't made things too difficult for the contestants.