A* search

Try finding *that* on Google. But here's a nice, dense description for ye, from the U of Toronto: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~mitchell/ai-course/s2.html


And if that wasn't fun enough, check out Lenny Nimoy singin' The Hobbit Song.

Big server cleanup today.

Then more work on the workstation, some additional web hosting brought online.

I have more servers than I know what to do with. It's sick, the capacity is sick. I'm sure I can fill it satisfactorally, but jeebus. Should definitely be using those spare cycles to benefit humanity.

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DISCLAIMER: This blog could be edited by anyone. Never trust what you read on the internet, it's a public place and Blogger don't encrypt. ( Why not?? )

NOTICE: Blogger can be used with PHP. Is php enabled? (if so, you'll see the version number)

ADVISORY: Regarding message-threading and syntax of posts: it is asked that ( parentheticals ) be considered separate threads.

Post-literate captcha

Print a sequence of colors, whose choices from associated drop-down menus must match.

The form presents an image field thusly:

for ( $ix=0; $ix<$sequenceLength; $ix++ ) {



  

    red

    orange

    yellow

    greeen

    blue

    violet

  



}



?>

You'd want to find colors with a high degree of distinguishability, even for the color-blind.

One of the things I have to get a handle on is having a single, lightweight, OO code library that I can deploy with confidence on an ad hoc basis.

Laugh all you want, but it ain't Java. There's something wrong with Java, and I can't quite put my finger on it. Guess I'm just not wired that way, but it makes me want to retch every time I see it.

If Blogger be Java, then this is an exception. I like Jira too, but only because I haven't seen anything better.

No, PHP is just fine. It's the working coder's solution.

Today was a productive day.

Finally got a FreeBSD server online (stay away from the 5.x branch until they declare it stable -- seriously!)

Wrote up my first two project proposals today, one for the next phase of development on the Primary Product, and another for a big cleanup of the development server.

Created some additional hosting space on the Primary Product server. It's funny after all these years how creating a new webroot is still just a little bit thrilling. "Hello world."

The webosphere is a much bigger place than just get and post. And the semantic web makes everyone a rock star.

So what are we going to do with it?
Chew.

I'm reading Melville's The Confidence Man right now, which is apt I suppose-- I have an awful lot of confidence these days, but it's all in my head. They say it suits me, but I think they're just being nice. I try to earn it, I suppose. That's why I'm shy.

That's why I don't like to write in public.

That, and a tendency toward solipsism. ;-)

the Flash fishtank meme:

Line up 12 laptops, and open what is essentially a single flash movie of a fishtank across 12 screens.

We create the contents over a few weeks from images, audio, video and animations. Fish, plants, your basic aquacultural props and trappings. And anything else that might be swimming around on a laptop. Cooperation, self-expression, distributed computing, actionscript, a php script, and a truckload of imagination.

Can be viewed (and used as a tutorial) in any computer lab anywhere.

What are web robots?

I remember thinking of web robots as perl scripts. Spiders. Crawlers.
But now they're 1U dual processor threading machines, and they weave a tapestry of information onto spinning wheels, using light and magnetism. "A picture of the web. A picture of the world." Writ on the nanometer.

Web robots *are* robots... windy, glowing, clicking, clockwork robots dressed in greige and cabled into the hivemind of the internet. They tend to have spare time on their hands. Hacker and cracker alike knows this, but it's the sysadmin who really gets to turn them loose ( display 5 stories in those feeds with these keywords ). Comb newsfeed collections (subscriptions), filter requests, proxy requests, process the mail queue, and keep me informed about it.

The robots help us do this. The robots will help us win the war for peace, but we have to get them now. Free and Open. And we need the most talented coders and wisest wizards in all the land to be on our side. Heh.