Checkers. The 3000 year old game just got beat.
Game over. Computer scientists at the University of Alberta in Canada have solved checkers, the popular board game with a history that dates back to 3,000 B.C. After 18-and-a-half years and sifting through 500 billion billion (a five followed by 20 zeroes) checkers positions, Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer and colleagues have built a checkers-playing computer program that cannot be beaten.
Bikini Martini Party!
Well ok there weren’t a lot of bikinis but it does rhyme nicely with martini and it’s also what our gracious hosts decided to call their inaugural summer bash. Drake and Charlotte Pruitt invited a group of us over to celebrate the sunshine at their newly renovated Madison Park home and no expense was spared as the dj rocked the house and summer cocktails flowed. This was Seattle at its best and if anyone’s got a mind to top this house party I’d say you’re in for an uphill battle.
Click on the photo above for my pics.
Also, I didn’t have an easy way to download those taken by Mary Tacke but you can view those here!
Footnote.com: Get ready to kill A LOT of time
This is one of the best new sites I have seen this year. It’s called Footnote. View original historical documents. Learn some history. Imagine a mashup of Flickr + Diigo + a little of Genealogy.com for historical records and you get some idea of the function.
Viewing the Gettysburg Address:
60mph in 2.1 seconds! Ford’s Group B rally car.
I recently posted some pics from the Pacific Northwest Vintage Races. One of the most interesting cars of the day was easily this Ford RS200.
Four wheel drive and 650bhp from a 2.1 litre engine made Ford’s Group B rally car one of the most outrageous racing cars ever made. But then, weren’t most of the Group B rally cars insane? Group B rally cars had performance comparable to Formula One cars of the same era. The death of spectators at rallies forced the FIA to ban Group B rally cars leaving many of these supercars without homes as the rally teams looked for other cars.
Pistonheads.com gives a great review of this incredible car.
Pacific Northwest Historics Vintage Races
Photos I took while at the Pacific Northwest Historics Vintage Races during June 29-July 1, 2007 in Kent Washington.
Another image from around Seattle
I’m starting to notice that Seattle has some very interesting urban areas that aren’t always like the visions people have of our Microsoft-centric community. Some parts are poor, dilapidating and melancholy. I hope to capture a series of these images over the next year. I took this image in Kent Washington, south of Seattle. Appears to be some old and abandoned warehouse.
Microsoft Silverlight brings great new tools to multimedia development
Have you spent time checking out Silverlight yet? I’m getting anxious to do a project with the technology.
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight
http://www.silverlight.net
http://silverlight.net/learn/learnvideos.aspx
http://www.telerik.com/products/silverlight/overview.aspx
http://www.silverlight.net/quickstarts
http://silverlight.net/community/communitygallery.aspx
http://www.aisto.com/roeder/silverlight
Silverlight Solution Map
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/asp.net/bb187358.aspx
http://labs.microsoft.com/japan/xbap/dominoken.xbap
http://sessions.visitmix.com/
http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=304508
Better flickr integration for Imagekind
Check it out. Now our Imagekind link is above each image within flickr. Very cool. More convenient for flickr users to print and frame and certainly better for us!
Every sales guy out there gets some YouTube vindication
What the world eats
My friend Toby Padilla over at Vulcan posted this to his del.icio.us bookmark list. It shows what various families around the world like to eat. Pretty neat browse actually. Look at the huge variety of prices that sustain each family.
http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z92/rocketvox/whateats.jpg
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Rainbows
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Vanishing America
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Friends from Monaco
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Cadillac
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Old stamps
