Hypoploid eclosion

hypoploid (n.): The aneuploid, almost always fatal condition in which there is less than the normal diploid number. Aneuploidy is a change in the number of chromosomes that can lead to a chromosomal disorder. Aneuploidy is common in cancerous cells.

eclosion (n.): The emergence of an insect larva from the egg.

So I haven't posted for a while now. The very good reason for this, of course, is that Josh's logic puzzle 4 is evil.

Not evil as in, hard to do. Au contraire, if you play around with any of them by hand for a minute or two, you'll find the answer. But programming a computer to do this is a different story.

Pruning gets very ugly on the grid - particularly for the '2' (sneak by then attack) units. Nevertheless, it's definitely possible, but I think I might opt out of pruning for convenience and look for a heuristic.

Actually, a genetic algorithm could be adapted to the problem quite well. I'm a bit reluctant to use one since from what I've heard about genetic algorithms, I take that they're pretty crappy in general and you can almost always find better heuristics (hell, binary search for some problems would be fine). Plus a genetic algorithm might converge at a local minimum, which would be a bit annoying, but if I perturb it enough each cycle it should be fine.

I'll probably play around with this idea and post whatever results I get with it. Hopefully it'll work out. I don't have much experience with genetic algorithms - really the closest thing I've done was a half-baked evolution simulator where moving dots would compete for food, attack eachother, reproduce, etc. Of course, it turned out that the optimal solution for the ants were to just evolve as fast as possible and ignore attacking completely, so it didn't turn out too amazing. I might try reprogramming that scenario also but to a bit better depth (so we don't have a stupid endgame).

Despite the fact that almost all such methods generally suck, people seem to enjoy coming up with many methods of genetic programming. But, everyone uses it, so it must be good for something? Right?

That's all I'll say about genetic algorithms for now. Unfortunately, I don't really have much else interesting to say. Our Biotech project is going really smoothly. And I mean, really smoothly. Hopefully we'll get positive results though - and even if we don't, it's not even a big deal.

Meanwhile, there's really no need to learn French anymore today, and biology is taught really pointlessly in school, but those are rants for another day. By the way, blogging happens to give you interesting ideas. When I started this post I thought I would just rant a long time about how easy it is to make evil problems that are hard to prune, but then I realized I could probably use a genetic algorithm (for once in my life) instead.

As for whatever else I might say, Portal is an amazing game. I played it at my friend's house for a while on the week-end. And I randomly happened to like this song. I'm not sure why though.

The cake is a lie. Ciao.

-squid out.