Glimpses of the websurfing habits of a computer science professor, obsessive crafter, occasional gamer, and all around geek
It doesn’t matter if you hate chess, you must check out this chess playing applet. The gimick? While the computer is thinking, you can see the lines representing the different moves it is considering – color coded for you and the machine. Very, very cool. Very interesting to see which moves take longer for it to figure out than others. And pretty. [via #!/usr/bin/girl]
Physics World surveyed readers and compiled a list of The Greatest Equations Ever. The linked article discusses the most popular equations as well as te various criteria which make an equation “great”. I’m happy with the placement of Maxwell’s equations at the top of the list. [via Critical Section]
From Knitty.com, a special mini-issue to support breast cancer awareness, published under a Creative Commons license and packed with wonderful patterns. If you’re into knitting, the rest of the site is worth a browse as well. [via not martha]
Squeeee! A Bad News Bears remake with Greg Kinear and Billy Bob Thorton! I loved the original movie, and I watched the television series religiously (which, by the way, check out the cast for that show: you’ve got Jack Warden who’s been in every movie ever made, Catherine Hicks and Phillip Allen who are both alums of Star Trek movies, AND a pre-Stand By Me, pre-Goonies Corey Feldman!) I’ll definitely be seeing the 2006 remake. Of course, the burning question – who will be playing Amanda?
I’m surprised that I’ve recently found reading e-mail to be more of a hassle than it used to be, and not just because of the spam factor. The Tyranny of E-mail has some good thoughts on why that might be. [via #!/usr/bin/girl]
I somehow didn’t know that IBM Redbooks are available free on-line at their website. I spent many hours yesterday browsing their fabulous TCP/IP Tutorial and Technical Overview. Coming in at 21 chapters and over 900 pages, it’s wonderfully thorough and yet very easy to read — possibly even worth the $49.99 it would normally cost.
I like to cook. By some definitions, I’m an engineer. So no surprise I enjoyed browsing Cooking For Engineers. Some recipes, some kitchen experiments – plus a yummy looking Chocolate Pecan Pie. I love the chart-based recipe formats; I haven’t seen them before and they seem to be a nice shorthand for what to do in simple or familiar recipes. [via not martha]
< rhetorical question> Why is it that PowerPoint defaults to creating objects with such a horrid green as the default fill color? Is it so that we can all tell if a presenter is lazy and didn’t make their own color choices? Or to force us all to play with their stupid color selection tool? Because nobody actually wants to use that shade of green, for anything.