An Educated Guess

I was talking about Sudoku with my dad and my brother the other day over lunch, when we got into an unexpected argument. I had been considering how a computer might go about solving a Sudoku. I talked about how it could test many possibilities near-instantly; it could look at a square and think, "Could a 1 go here? Well, this would lead to that, and then we'd have a conflict. So, no, it can't be a 1." And my brother objected. "That's just guessing," he said. I was certain, however, that this was how people solved the puzzles, too. What my family was calling "logic, not guessing" was no more than mental guess-and-check. I set out to demonstrate it.

Chop Sticks, to Taste

It's summer time, and that means unlimited access to a fully-stocked kitchen. That, coupled with the mounting anticipation of having to cook every meal for myself in Scotland (who needs a meal plan when the supermarkets have haggas?) means that I could really benefit from learning a few recipes. My hunt for a fun  recipe program for my PC may appear in a later post (sources report that the PC culinary app market far exceeds Mac equivalents; take that Apple-lovers), but for now, I'll focus on the few new dishes I've been cooking up this summer. They're Asian-cooking-themed and can easily be done vegetarian. Enjoy!

This side of chicken-less chicken goes great with the chicken-stock soup behind.

Forever Floor

My days of RAing a freshman dorm at Tufts are now months gone, but I'm still feeling a bit reminiscent about the year. The new Pixar-themed forever stamps couldn't help but remind me of our hall. Sure enough, we had a door (or more) decorated for each of these stamps. Let's check it out:

"...and from way up here you all look like little freshman"