SLEEPING FOR RECORD TIME

Yesterday, i made a record by sleeping for 18 hours at a stretch. I went to bed in the morning at about 0400 hrs in the morning and woke up at around 2200 hrs same day.

It was a strange feeling for me. I was feeling as if i have missed one complete day from my life, i.e; a complete day passed without my notice.

Anyway, it was a nice experience.

ST MICROELECTRONICS PLACEMENT PAPER IN BIT MESRA

We had ST MICROELECTRONICS in our campus on 28th of july 2007. Their placement procedure was highly unorganised. First of all, they were late by around 3 hours to arrive in the campus. Even after arrival, they managed to give the ppt but when they saw huge crowd ready to appear for the written test, they revised the eligibility criteria debarring many to appear.

I was allowed to appear,however. The question paper consisted of 20 questions of 1 mark each and then 15 questions of 2 marks each. Out of these 20 questions,

----8 were aptitude questions which were very easy.
----2 were from operating system.
----5 were from microprocessor.
----5 were from core electronics.

In the second part, out of the 15 questions,

----11 were programming questions to predict the output which were
basically based upon the concept of macros, memory allocation, pointers,
function calls and pragma.
----2 were from computer system architecture like cache memory.
----2 were from microprocessor

.

Apart from marking the correct answer on the answer sheet, we were asked to give the justification for each and every question in the question paper itself.

The questions in the 2nd part were really nicely set and i enjoyed solving them. However, i made some silly mistakes and could not make to the interview.

Wish all the best to all those appearing for ST MICROELECTRONICS.

ORACLE AT BIT MESRA FOR PLACEMENT

Oracle visited our campus for placement this year as well. The written test was conducted by PAC on 21st of july 2007. The names of the students shortlisted was displayed on 24th night as the interview was supposed to be held on 25th and 26th.

I was shortlisted for the interview and here is my experience in the interview.

Round 1 :

First of all, i was asked why am i in formals with tie? Next, i was asked about my favourite paper for which i replied DBMS. Now the questions started :

------ if i open a SQL session and update the value of
value of a quantity 'x' to 7 which was initially 5. This is neither
committed nor aborted. Now in another session without closing the first
session if i try to print the value of 'x' , then what would be printed?
again if in this window i
try to update the value of 'x' as 9 and this process is also neither committed
nor aborted. Now what value of 'x' will be printed?

------i was asked to sort an array of strings? I wrote that in JAVA
easily.

------i was asked to write a code which could output the entered rational
numbers in the simplified form like if the input was 78/36, the output should be
13/6.

------i was asked how memory is allocated when an object is created in java
and how can we create references for any object and what would happen if the
original object is set to null?

------then i was asked about my experience in the coding and debugging
contests.

------the gentleman also gave me 2-3 puzzles which i solved pretty
easily.

------and many more HR questions.

Finally i was selected for the 2nd round of interview.

Round 2 :

The huge man asked my favourite subject. When i said "DBMS", he asked ' r u sure ' to which i replied in affirmative. Then he asked my favourite topic to which i replied 'transaction management'.

------i was asked the two phase locking protocol which i explained very
well.

------then he asked me application of locks on the data items in real life
with full detail which i explained by taking example of the stock market.

------then i was asked to explain how can we avoid the occurence of
deadlock and how to detect and recover from the deadlock if occured?

------he asked then to design a dictionary and write the code for searching
any word in the dictionary and later he asked me to write the code for the
binary search?

at this point of time the huge gentleman was convinced and satisfied as well with my answer and then he started asking me puzzles and he asked around 6-7 puzzles and i solved them all which led me to the third round of the interview.

Round 3 :

Here i was interviewed by the senior director who asked me to write the toughest code which i had ever written and after that he came straight forward to DBMS and asked me a lot of practical questions of the same.

------he asked me to design a database for PAC which should contain all the
information about the test takers necessary for analysis while preparing the
shortlist for interview.

------then i was asked to change the design if there was a change in the
test pattern.

------then he asked a few HR questions after which i was asked to wait for
the result.

All other guys were being called for the fourth and final round which was a complete HR by the lady but i was not called for the same. So, it was clear to me that i have been eliminated.

The interview was quite confidence booster for me particularly.

MICROSOFT PLACEMENT PAPER IN BIT MESRA

Microsoft visited our campus on 23rd of july 2007 for placement. Only Computer science and IT guys were eligible for the placement test.

The first round was a written round in which we had four questions. First one was to debug a program which contained a lot of errors. The second one was to predict the output for the given recursive program. This one was quite easy.

First 2 questions carried 5 marks each.

Question no 3 was to write a complete program. The question was as under :

there was a string of regular expression given
by a*b?a*c or it could be anything. The point is that

'*' denoted any number of repetition of the previous
character.

'?' denoted only one or zero occurence of the previous
character.

Now i was to input a string and output whether
the entered string is of the given format.

Question no 4 also was to write a program. The question was to convert a given binary search tree into a doubly linked list.

Question nos 3 & 4 carried 10 marks each.

I could write the correct output of the second question and could write only 4 errors in the first question. Along with this, i wrote the code for the third question.

However, i was not shortlisted for the interview. The main thing which they were looking for was the approach of the candidate.

Afterwards, they had three rounds of core technical interviews in which they asked to write all sorts of codes mainly stressing on data structure along with core C programming.

Wish all the best for all those appearing for the Microsoft.

MY SEMESTER PROJECT

THE AIM OF MY PROJECT IS TO DEVELOP A SOFTWARE WHICH CAN RECOGNISE A SLEEP SPINDLE FROM THE GIVEN EEG (ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPH) PATTERN.

AN EEG SIGNAL IS A BRAIN SIGNAL RECORDED OVER A PERIOD OF TIME.

PRESENCE OF SLEEP SPINDLE INDICATES SLEEP DISORDER IN THE SUBJECT.

SUDOKU TECHNIQUES

Sudoku solving technique #1

Sole Candidate

When all the other possibilities for the sudoku cell have been removed, and only one choice remains - then it must be the correct value.

Sudoku solving technique #2

Unique Candidate

If a cell is the only one in the row that can contain a certain number, then it must have that number. This is because every row of the sudoku must have each of the values 1-9. The same applies to columns and 3x3 blocks in the sudoku.

Sudoku solving technique #3

Col/Row/Block interactions

If you know that a number must occur in a certain row, then you can eliminate that number as a possibilty for other blocks in the same row. Eg, if you know that the number 4 must appear in the 1st row of block 1 (2nd and 3rd rows being full) then you know that the number 4 cannot occur in block 2 or 3 in the sudoku. This applies to columns as well.

Sudoku solving technique #4

Naked subset

if 2 squares in the same col/row/block have the same 2 candidates, then you can remove those numbers as candidates in the same col/row/block. This rule extends to cover 3 squares with the same 3 candidates, 4 etc.