14 Aug 2006
When on holiday, one can kill time solving Sudoku puzzles. When one has done a dozen of those puzzles and one happens to have a wandering mind like mine, one starts wondering how those Sudoku challenges are created, and if it would be possible to describe an algorithm that can make such a scarcely filled-in 9-by-9 grid. Some sunny hours later one has a system that might work (I haven’t implemented it fully yet). For my future reference: here’s how I would do it.
REMARK: this algorithm is quite logical and as such, I seriously doubt I would be the first one to think of it. I can imagine that Sudoku puzzles are already made by the hundreds with a program that uses this or a quite similar system. I’m not claiming it’s an original ‘invention’, just a fun problem to tackle.
27 Jul 2006
12 Jul 2006
Imagine my amazement: when processing the numbers from the Belgian traffic accidents in 2005 (statbel), Brussels turns out to be a lot safer than one would suspect. Or let’s just say: there’s worse:
10 Jul 2006
UPDATE: also read my post about testing the Netgear ReadyNAS (it doesn’t suck)
06 Jul 2006
I am working on a timeline of animation movies: specifically to see when Disney started to fade and Pixar/Dreamworks took over. What films were made when, who made them and in what way do they coincide with activities of e.g. Steve Jobs. Oh, and to see where that new contender, Blue Sky Studios (“Ice Age”) fits in.
30 Jun 2006
Trackbacks are a good way to alert other bloggers that you citing them on your blog. It also helps to drive traffic to your own site (if your comment was insightful or tempting).
Unfortunately, some blog hosts like Blogger, Skynetblogs do not automatically send a trackback ping to all the blog URLs in your blog post. So how do you send such a trackback from your blogspot.com site to other blogs (provided they support receiving them, obviously)?
28 Jun 2006
I (used to) have a blog called Sample Spotters that talks about whose songs have been sampled by whom. With the help of sites like the-breaks.com and datraxer.com, I make a list of an artist’s songs and where they were used: e.g. Roy Ayers, Patrice Rushen or Labi Siffre. I also did it the other way round once (what songs were sampled BY George Michael), and for some pivotal songs, I dedicated a whole blog post to just 1 song: Funky Drummer and the “Amen Break”.
24 Jun 2006
While searching for something really innocent on Google (honestly!), I got the following warning:
21 Jun 2006
I.T.Works, one of Belgiums leading technical training organisers, has cooked up its first RubyOnRails seminar on Thursday July 6th. Alain Ravet and Werner Ramaekers, both experienced Rails developers, will talk about the advantages of this application development framework.
