Mixed Bag Goodness

Here's some cool links to sites, and a couple videos, read on else you will truly be missing out.

Did you know that Free Dial-Up Internet Access exists? At least in California, and a couple other states too, I've set up a couple friends with it. Its not fast (I'd buy DSL over it any day), it takes up your phone when you connect, but for many of us, it is free, and that what counts! You don't even need to create an account, any user name or password works.

Check it out: http://www.fastfreedialup.com/

Someone posted some AWESOME audio/visual representation of sort algorithms in action

Insert Sort, Bubble Sort, Selection Sort, Merge Sort, and Gnome Sort The second one is just Heap Sort

These represent six different methods some programs use to get data in order, like alphabetizing names, or addresses. There are many many sorting methods, some are designed to sort on a dataset like above, others are sort-as-you go type in that it indexes the data as you input it to always have a sorted version. For many programmers sorting is one of those technological puzzles, where you can gain notoriety by making a more effective sorting method then other have.

Watching these makes me think there must be a faster sort that can be easily done… and look even cooler…

Here are a few blog/news sites, I follow:

http://www.slashdot.org - Nerd News and Interest tidbits with lots of nerdy discussion following each article. Your mileage may vary on getting and useful information out of it, but it certainly will make the isolated nerd feel less alone in the tech world.

http://www.neatorama.com/ - One of the kitschy blogs on the Internet, never know what your going to see or read about, but usually it is quite interesting (Check out the NeatOGeek blog on the site too)

http://boingboing.net/ - Science fiction author Cory Doctorow's blog about Tech, Culture and News, similar to Neat-O-Rama with some political bits and other cool stuff (mainly posted by a crew of editors, but you do see Cory post stuff from time to time.)

http://makezine.com/ - The Make magazine blog. (nuff said, check it out!)

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