I got into Su Doku in Cornwall – both sets on in-laws get The Times, which of course prints 3 every day. It’s a very pleasing puzzle to do; not too taxing but yet still stimulating. So I got to thinking about how one would write a computer program to solve ’em, and have now finished version 1, which only has a pretty basic rule set, but non-the-less managed this Tuesday’s easy, mild, and diffcult. I was surprised it managed the difficult, actually, as I thought the rules I’d pogrammed were not sophisticated enough. I’m pretty sure it will trip over fiendish puzzles until I add the rules to do with when you don’t know exactly where a number goes, when the options left open for it tell you something else. H’mm, that’s not very clear, is it? 🙂
Another holiday thought was about this nanny who got the sack because she was keeping a blog. I find it extraordinary how indiscrete a lot of ‘bloggers are – I always work on the theory that friends and colleagues may read this, and so I don’t say anything that I would mind be printed in a newspaper. I guess if you’re writing an anonymous blog that’s one thing, but to tell your employer about a ‘blog (complete with URL) and then procede to (a) post when you should be working, (b) admit regular hung-overs (and as good as admit to throwing the odd sickie), and (c) generally diss the family and the appointment is barking. Any one of these is bad enough on their own, but to effectively and blatantly shout them from the rooftops…
That’s what I think, anyway.