Time and Evolution
Another week has come to an end. I’m afraid I haven’t been as motivated this week, but hopefully the weekend will re-energize me. I find the event of the weather to be fascinating. When it is raining out, I’d rather been indoors, so having to transit to and from school gets me down over time. However, when it is sunny and clear, I miss the entire day and the brilliance of it; also bringing me down. This is one reason I fully intend not to stay in Mario for longer than three terms. The lack of sunlight is detrimental to my health.
On the subject of evolution, I attended a very interesting lecture at the Dorkbot group on Wednesday night. I likely should have been doing work instead, but I’m glad I went. Presenting was Jeremy Thorp on the usage and possibilities of evolutionary code. What do I mean by this? Primarily, programs that use evolutionary techniques to become better and better. One example he gave was regarding NASA and launching satellites into orbit. In one of his examples, Smart Rockets, a set of rockets are given a goal of reaching a certain point and after all rockets failed (they were rather stupid to start with), the program would take the best two, “breed” their flight paths, and launch a new set of possibilities. Then it would repeat the process until all the rockets achieve the best flight path to the goal, as close as they can manage or as close as they think they can manage. All in all it is quite interesting. His ultimate point is that these evolutionary systems can help people arrive at solutions they had not thought possible via inherent mutation in the system. I find myself being more and more drawn to explore the possibilities involving this kind of biological process. It almost makes me want to learn coding for Processing and Flash so I can get started. Almost. Well, we’ll see.
This weekend shall be another work weekend, but I will strive to let the sunlight in and get some fresh air. The accursed work-room, “Mario,” shall not hold me down!
