2006, Sudoku and Munich.

Happy New Year everyone!

I pray that I graduate and get a good job and get on with life. That all my friends and family do well and find happiness and contentment. I hope the world at large grows towards a greener, more sustainable, future and that our policies are shaped by more long term self interest. So that we don't see huge weather changes and natural disasters that seemed to bug us through 2005. World peace would be a good idea too. Rule of good liberal laws to make the world less of a dog eat dog place. Basically, best wishes to all. One can hope.

Here is my Excel based Sudoku solving helper file. It completely solves all easy and medium levels puzzles at the Websudoku site, but it does get stuck on the difficult or evil ones. It's an easy way to cheat and get a fast time for the Telegraph Sudoku, where they'll display your name. But I guess that's not ethical. It basically can't do scenarios or anything using higher level logic, when the logic itself begins to get fuzzy. Come to think of it, at that stage I tend to get stumped on the puzzles too. . . maybe if I could figure out how to do them, I could teach my Excel sheet to do the same. Anyway, if people have comments on how to improve it do send me a line.

Saw a bunch of good movies over the holidays. The Squid and the Whale is a touching portrayal of a slightly obnoxious failing writer, his wife, a divorce, and the effect of it all on their two kids. Laura Linney is becoming one of my favourite actresses now, for her roles as silent and complicated women. . .like other intense women like Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep. The other really good movie was Spielberg's Munich. It is a fairly violent but thought provoking movie about justice, revenge, and how far one can go to find these things without losing ones self.

In other news, I have (finally) submitted my book chapter. Hopefully it will come out in print soon. Hurrah. Now back to work.