Month: September 2007

Death Blossom

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Death Blossom strategy, which, sadly, has nothing to do with The Last Starfighter and everything to do with Sudoku.

This strategy is based on extending Aligned Pair Exclusion but uses Almost Locked Sets to make some clever reductions. From the components used it could be named Aligned ALS Exclusion but Mike Barker, who formulated it first in this thread, hit on “Death Blossom” because it starts with a cell designated as the “stem” which points to Almost Locked Sets, or the “petals”, and is a great deal more flowery.

That’s right – a Sudoku strategy given the same name as the ultimate weapon in The Last Starfighter is actually based on an advanced strategy for Sudoku seemingly (but not really) named after primates. And it’s an even more advanced strategy. That makes for some crazy ultimate weapon monkies, or something.

And the provider of all this Sudoku strategy awesomeness apparently has a new book coming out soon for more Sudoku madness. If you aren’t doing Sudoku, you should be – and this book could be the perfect introduction for you.

[tags]Sudoku, Death Blossom, Crazy ultimate weapon monkies, The Logic of Sudoku[/tags]

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The car of the future – details today

MM-car_of_the_future.jpg

In the future, we can expect some great advances in automotive technology.

LIGHTER, more powerful and comfortable cars, that will cost less, run further without adjustment and will be easier to handle, are being forecast, by automotive engineers.

. . .

In Europe automobiles have been made to run as far as eighty miles to the gallon of gasoline. Supercharging, or forcing the gas into the cylinders instead of allowing it to be drawn in by the suction of the piston, has enabled the weight of the motor to be cut down and resulted in performance undreamed of a few years ago.

Puts the cars we suffer with now to shame, doesn’t it? We’ll soon see improvements in pick-up, quieter and more fuel-efficient city driving, longer lasting tires, more resilient finishes on the paint jobs, and better long-term driving.

Continue reading “The car of the future – details today”

Lights out? Lights on!

You’re working at your desk late at night. It’s dark outside. There’s a storm going on that makes you just want to curl up in bed and and sleep through it. You just have to finish a tiny bit more work and you can go to bed. Suddenly, the power is out in the house. You might as well go to bed now, since you can’t work in the dark. But getting to bed can now be tough, since the kids didn’t finish cleaning up before bed and you were too focused on your work to clean right away. Now there are obstacles between you and your bed, and man is it dark.

If you just had The Power-Failure Light installed, this wouldn’t be a problem.

lights-on.jpgThis device attaches between the socket and bulb of a standard table or floor lamp and automatically provides up to 8 hours of uninterrupted light from six bright LEDs as soon as power is lost, eliminating the need to search for flashlights during a blackout. Powered by built-in rechargeable batteries that automatically recharge via the lamp socket once power is restored and never require replacement, the device has an integrated photocell that detects ambient light and prevents the LEDs from turning on during the daytime or when power is restored. Compatible with incandescent and compact fluorescent bulbs. 5″ H x 5″ W x 3″ D. (3 1/2 lbs.)

It’s $40 (minus a nickel), but I can honestly say that I think it would be worth the price for 1-2 of these on each level of the house. I may just end up ordering one of these before the week is out. (via Gizmodo)

[tags]Hammacher Schlemmer, Power-Failure Light, Lights on when the power is off[/tags]