2002

An interesting application of genetic programming. Two people at the University of Sussex wrote this genetic program to make a circuit produce sound. The circuit became a radio instead.

Programmers: learn from this. Laymen want documentation they understand. (Wish someone told me 5 years ago.)

Beautiful backrounds with a bar-code theme. In Russian. But the pictures make sense. And yes, there’s an English version.

I’m trying Mozilla. It has native SOAP support. So I can make a web page that has dynamic Google searches (and Amazon booklists, etc) without a web-server.

Good summary of superconductivity at kuro5hin.

I’ve seen the Economic Times server have lots of problems. But this is a new one on me. (Didn’t last long, though…)

Google toolbar: experimental features.

Ever since I started using NewsIsFree.com, I manage to run through my morning news much faster. Now, I’m trying to use some of these RSS newsreaders to see if they can speed it up even further. (Note: Though I read news faster, I’ve ended up spending more time on it, not less!)

Google-watch is against Google, because they’re unfair, and don’t respect privacy (via Salon). I still don’t mind, as long as I get good search results. But this “unfair” part I kind-of agree with. Wish Google would search recently updated sites better. And they’ve also got a point about the ordering. Sometimes, I would like to see the “less important” (low pagerank) sites on top.

Garth is working on audio-blogging tools. Given the amount of poetry I see among bloggers, this might unleash a host of blog-singers.

America’s population ageing seems to be less than was expected, thanks to more kids per couple. kuro5hin has a good discussion.

Zen stories. Read some of these first in Douglas Hofstader’s Godel, Escher, Bach. Searched for a collection for a long time. This looks like quite a comprehensive one. If you want a flavour of these, Zen Master Gutei’s story is one of those bizarre ones.

India’s first eunuch mayor has been dismissed because he/she was occupying a seat reserved for women.

Asimov’s Foundation was translated into Arabic. Title: Al-Qaeda. The Guardian explores the link between Asimov and bin Laden.

Progress on the polynomial-time computability of prime numbers.

Deepti: a Hindi chatterbot (sic). Apparantly, it’s downloadable, but I couldn’t find it.

The Invisible Library. Has books that exist only inside other books. Neat stuff. Talks of various books by Holmes & Watson (Doyle) as well as Oolon Colluphid (Douglas Adams), though I was disappointed that too little of Lewis Caroll is mentioned.

Contract research by Eli Lilly. They put up problems in chemistry. You solve them. You get paid.

P K Rappai has been banned from restaurants because he eats too much.

The flip side of copyright: Hindi songs featured in albums.