London Bombing

Al-qaeda has once-again proven that they are a force to be reckoned with by testing their mettle against tin-cans full of people. Bombs were detonated on the Underground and a bus earlier today in London, with the terrorist network claiming responsibility.

A spokesman for Al-queda put the attacks into perspective for western viewers:

Fighting trained soldiers was starting to get a little ‘old-hat’, you know? We had heard whisperings of the great mechanical dragons and their riches living beneath the Misty City. The stories of sneaking weapons into such a tightly guarded and private sanctuary will live on forever.

Anyway, weblogs seem to be the way that people are getting information. They can usually be trusted:

Bombing mass-transit is absolutely despicable. You see photos roll in from Jerusalem, Tokyo, Baghdad and Madrid and you have to wonder what people are thinking when they do these things. They’re only hurting people like themselves.

God’s Little Toys

God’s Little Toys
William Gibson essay about the tools – “Our culture no longer bothers to use words like appropriation or borrowing to describe those very activities. Today’s audience isn’t listening at all – it’s participating”.

Sudoku Primer

Sudoku
People seem to be searching for information related to the puzzle game called Sodoku, so here we go. The game (officially known as Sudoku) was first popularised by Japan in 1986, but in the past few months it’s been appearing in many newspapers around the globe. The Sodoku surge is primarily the responsibility of Wayne Gould, who wrote a computer program that allows for the easy creation of puzzle boards.

The puzzle itself is relatively simple; the common format consists of a 9×9 grid, that’s further sub-divided into nine 3×3 grids. The object is to fill each column, row and 3×3 grid with the numbers one through nine (other characters or symbols can be used) without any repeats. The game’s difficulty lies in the initial board configuration — both the quantity and frequency of the given numbers. True Sodoku puzzles have only one unique solution per puzzle.

Further Links & Reading:

That’s about it for now. The next thing up will be cryptic crosswords — I’ve been figuring out how to do them over the last week or two. Alanah, Will and I managed to finish off the Globe’s Canada Day cryptic puzzle (it was a little on the intense side of things).

Updates:

Cottage-time

I’m heading up to Will’s cottage for a couple days, I’ll probably be back Tuesday night, so there likely won’t be any updates around here for a few days. Hopefully you can find something else to occupy your time. If you can’t, spend some time on the July Contest. There should be pictures when I get back, the camera still kind of works, it just doesn’t have the lcd anymore.