Here is
a paper (via
robots.net) on evolutionary programming that gives a good overview of
genetic algs vs.
evolutionary strategies vs. evolutionary programming.
One of my mentors in this industry once told me that he thought evolutionary programming in some form would be needed to tackle the complexity of future applications. These applications would determine the best solution to a problem using evolution and fitness tests that the programmer would create. Would this ease the burden on the programmer? Probably not. But it will allow one to create much more complex applications.
But how do you take this model of programming and turn it into a tool that can be used by many?
So I set up a shell account with
mono for my friend Kevin. Without even a local compile he managed to get his app botspawn up and running in no time. More details at
Kevin's site. I was pretty impressed. That shows that the general compatibility is there. It's not a gui based application so the transition was relatively easy. I imagine a windows forms based app would be a bit more challenging.
I'll be experimenting more with mono and detailing my exploits here in the coming months.
Well, I have left my job at
SAIC and yesterday started a new one working as a sub-contractor for the
FAA where I'll be working on internal systems. I kind of miss the coworkers I left behind but I felt that I couldn't pass up this opportunity to work within the aviation sector and move myself forward. I will also get to play with some of the newer toys like .Net 2.0. I'm pretty stoked.
Unbelievable, 4 vehicles have actually
finished the Grand Challenge! That's quite a feat considering last year the farthest any vehicle made it was 7 miles. This is gonna change the world of transportation.
Coming to a mall near you:
When the Comedy Central program The Daily Show With Jon Stewart canned its original set for a slicker, newsier replacement, much wailing and rending of garments could be heard throughout the land.
But while the old set may be sorely missed on TV, one group of die-hard Daily Show junkies plans to resurrect it for a cross-country tour -- and a new life online.
Am I the only one that doesn't get this? This has got to be the dumbest goddam idea I've ever heard. Sounds like a dotcom reject.
Looks like some guys across the pond are working on a
high-altitude (100k ft+) UAV based on the
NSLU2 and
Slug-linux The slug is choice for embedded hackers because it's got a great 32-bit intel CPU (PXA255), USB, and it's pretty cheap. You can usually pick one up for about $55 on ebay.
Alien loves Predator has to be the funniest comic I've read in a long long time. I sat and read every single one.
I'm posting this in case anyone has the same problems I had hooking up a USB joystick in GNU/Linux. Although there are plenty of articles on how to load the
USB modules necessary to support USB devices, there was something missing for me in the steps outlined so I'm gonna share what I had to do. It's pretty simple, since I had the USB HID modules already compiled into the kernel it would recognize my joystick. I could see it recognized using
dmesg. But when I tried to
cat /dev/input/js0 it would give me a "no device found" error. So I then installed the joystick package using apt-get. This setup my joystick and it was working fine.. until I rebooted. It turns out that you need to load joydev module using
modprobe joydev. Make sure this module loads on boot and you'll be fine. Use the
jtest util (provided with the joystick package in Debian) to test your device, or just cat the device as I specified above.
And why do I need a joystick? To fly my
virtual r/c airplanes of course (x-plane):
Ten things to say when you get caught sleeping at your desk My favorite:
"I wasn't sleeping! I was meditating on the mission statement and envisioning a new paradigm."
Two lunatic brothers have created a
robotic sentry turret designed to keep intruders at bay. Looks like an x86 computer was used for control and 2 servos for 2 axis pan/tilt of the camera/gun. Interesting. The video alone is worth a look, as one brother volunteers to play attacker and gets pummeled by his BB spitting creation. I guess sometimes you gotta suffer for innovation.
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