Welcome to PGSS 2005!
The FishNet Tournament prize this year went to
David Bunker! Congratulations, David! More details soon...
If anyone wants to talk with me one-on-one, send me email.
Fri July 1: Not really relevant, but way cool: http://www.nasa.gov/deepimpact.
Tue July 12: Naturally, right after class, the
Random Contra Dance Generator
was working fine.
Maybe the wireless in the lecture hall was down.
Wed July 13: I mentioned that the Minimax algorithm was
based on "game theory", and that a CMU grad got a Nobel Prize for work in that field.
His name is John Nash,
and he was played by Russell Crowe in "A Beautiful Mind",
which you may have seen.
Wed July 13: It seems like every year, while I'm teaching
about the Internet, it gets in the news.
This year it's about a new top-level domain called .mobi.
Here's a
short article
and
the Google News search results on it.
Wed July 13: The FishNet server is up, so you should be able to try out Assignment 2 programs. Email us if it goes down.
Fri July 15: Fishnet Tournament plans: While Assignment 2 is due Monday July 18, you will be able to continue working on your program for one more week (until Monday July 25), at which point we will run the tournament and determine the winner. Note that you must handin your initial version by the usual time this Monday, July 18 in any event.
Tue July 19: We talked about mechanical computers; there's a
website describing a fully-functional computer made out of
Lego blocks.
(Although it turns out it's not purely mechanical, one
could build a purely mechanical one.)
There are also several websites about the
DigiComp I
"computer" I brought to class.
(Again: the DigiComp is not a full computer; the Lego one is!)
Thu July 21: Since I'll be talking about translation next
time, I thought this article on the world's languages
might be interesting.
The Ethnologue website
itself is worth poking around some if you're interested in language.
Mon July 25: The Atlantic Monthly article I mentioned requires a subscription to access it now, but here it is, for the record. (A Google search for wallraff what global language turns up several pirate copies for free, though.)