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the google matrix
This morning there was an intriguing post on arXiv/math.RA entitled A Note on the Eigenvalues of the Google Matrix. At first I thought it was a joke but a quick Google revealed that the PageRank algorithm really is at the heart of Google technology, so I simply had to find out more about it. An […]
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NOG master class
Yesterday I made reservations for lecture rooms to run the master class on non-commutative geometry sponsored by the ESF-NOG project. We have a lecture room on monday- and wednesday afternoon and friday the whole day which should be enough. I will run two courses in the program : non-commutative geometry and projects in non-commutative geometry…
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antwerp sprouts
The game of sprouts is a two-person game invented by John Conway and Michael Paterson in 1967 (for some historical comments visit the encyclopedia). You just need pen and paper to play it. Here are the rules : Two players, Left and Right, alternate moves until no more moves are possible. In the normal game,…
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homemade .mac
The other members of my family don’t understand what I am trying to do the last couple of days with all those ethernet-cables, airport-stations, computer-books and the like. ‘Improving our network’ doesn’t make much of an impression. To them, our network is fine as it is : from every computer one has access to the…
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combinatorial game software
As I am going to give a talk on Combinatorial Game Theory early next month I have to update my rusty knowledge of canonical forms of two-person game positions, their temperature theory and the like. As most of the concepts in this field are recursive they are hard to work out by humans but easy…
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SSL on Mac OSX
A longer term project is to get the web-server www.matrix.ua.ac.be integrated in our home-network as an external WebDAV-server (similar to the .Mac-service offered by Apple). But as this server runs all information about the master-class on non-comutative geometry connecting to it via HTTP to use WebDAV is too great of a security risk as all…
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WarChalking
What then is all this WarWalking, WarDriving, WarChalking and so on? In particular, why the aggressive War-word in them ? From what I learned, the historical origin of these terms comes from the 1983 movie “War Games” in which a kid sets up his modem to dial numbers until it finds a computer to hack…
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iMacBondiBlue
We still have an original iMac (Bondi Blue). It runs at 233 MHz, has 192Mb RAM and a hard-disk of 4Gb, so is pretty outdated. Still, when Mac OSX was introduced I had a hard time installing extra RAM in it (for this model you have to take it apart disconnecting all sorts of cables)…