National Geographic has a brief article about some interesting research at the University of Sussex. The authors of this paper (irritatingly, behind a paywall and my University doesn’t have a subscription) suggest that swarm behavior may be disproportionately influenced by its most weakest, hungriest, or otherwise most desperate individuals.
This does suggest some interesting approaches for controlling (or subverting!) self-organizing systems. I’m reminded of a paper I read recently by Franco Zambonelli, “Self-Management and the Many Facets of “Non-Self“, which suggests controlling swarm-inspired computing systems by introducing a (relatively smaller) number of manager agents that, by their actions, guide the overall collective behavior.
Photo Credit: CC-licensed image of a grackle swarm by Adam Baker
Yesterday, I gave a presentation to the PLUG North chapter of the Philadelphia Linux Users Group, delving into some of the cooler features of the Z shell. I slandered other shells outrageously, but, disappointingly, failed to start a religious war.
The entire presentation was given from the command line using GNU screen and tpp (a text-mode presentation program).
- zsh-2009.pdf: A quick conversion of the presentation to PDF by way of LaTeX
- zsh-2009.tpp: tpp source for the presentation
- zsh-2009-demo.txt: Notes to myself containing possibly interesting examples to put zsh through its paces
I’ll be posting my .zshrc as well, once I get around to sanitizing it.
If you’re in the Philadelphia area and didn’t make it to the talk, you have another chance: I’ll be giving a newly-enhanced version in February at the newly-formed PLUG East chapter. Check the PLUG meetings page for schedule and location information.
Edible Fractals: Evil Mad Scientist Labratories' Sierpinski Cookies
Recipes are often cited as an example of algorithms encountered in everyday life, but Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories have taken this a step further with their iterative process for producing these tasty-seeming cookies in the pattern of a Sierpiński carpet.
Sadly, they only take the process to the third iteration. I have to assume this is a limitation of the floury medium as they have another post with some stupendous seven-iteration Fimo Sierpiński triangles.