Microsoft is running a contest called "Made in Express" that will pay out \$10,000 to the best application written in Microsoft's entry-level version of Visual Studio. The proposals chosen as finalists are, to put it kindly, ambitious: an AI psychotherapist (assuming that the person doesn't just cut-and-paste Eliza); an …

"Vista has a beautiful face but poor bone structure. She's lovely now, but I'm worried about how she'll age."

That's too vivid to slip into a column that uses another metaphor throughout. Darn it.

Does anyone know Patrick Logan's email (patricklogan.blogspot.com)? If so, can you forward a note to him that I want to reference this post in a column and need his title.

::: {.Section1} The first issue of SIGEVOlution, the newsletter of SIGEVO, the ACM Special Interest Group for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation, is now available for you to download. Via http://feeds.feedburner.com/illigal?m=493

Obviously, if you’re interested in the subject matter, it’s a good read. It …

Living in Hawaii makes you aware of the shortcomings of the USPS. I received a Christmas present on April 17 (and yes, it was sent in December). A few weeks ago, we Express Mailed some x-rays to Oahu, a distance of about 80 miles as the sooty shearwater flies. It …

::: {.Section1} Via a comment by Gregg Irwin, here's a REBOL-based control language \< ?xml:namespace prefix = o />for Excel by Robert Muench. (Wow, REBOL: There's a blast from the past!). Sample code:

goto cell "B6"  
change to "Testing"  
select "B7"  
set to "=B4 \* B5"  
select "A5:A9"  
change to "=\$B\$5 …

What with all the talk about language directions, I was thinking about a hobbyhorse of mine that spreadsheets are proven to be something that a lot of people "get" and that it behooves language designers to pay attention to them. Usually, I speculate about a spreadsheet-like development environment, but in …

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We received a letter on the SD Times reflector with lines such as "you guys mindlessly regurgitating the marketing hype of the self-congratulatory X committees....X is essentially nothing but a tacit admission...that the previous 4 versions of the spec were nothing but an incredibly expensive series of mistakes …

Ouch.