I read recently of an invincible checkers-playing program call Chinook. Apparently this computer can never be beaten because a bunch of scientists sat down and literally mapped out a metric crap load of moves and combinations (39 trillion) that would lead to a tie or a win for Chinook.

What is amazing here is that it took 18 years to solve what appears to be one of the simplest board games on the planet. Do not get me wrong this is an amazing landmark for computer science, I find the topic fascinating and I always wish that I had done more with neural networks and fuzzy logic while at University.

Ultimately I feel a little sorry for all the real word games that can/will be mathematically resolved to win, lose or draw. I think it takes away from the mystery of competition. Even the success  of IBM's Deep Blue falls way short of invincibility. The complexity of chess, or should I say the variations of chess, make mapping every move almost impossible. Resolving chess "would require an effort so massive that the world’s fastest computers would need eons to play out every possible move".

"Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think." - Ambrose Bierce

I was watching NBA greatest games, Detroit vs Chicago. MJ went for 47 points and while I really enjoyed the game and the trip down memory lane I realized something was missing. MJ is still the greatest ball player I have ever seen, Joe Dumars was as classy and smooth as ever, Dennis Rodman was the hustle and rebound king, so what was it that was missing in the game. Then it hit me ... STATS!

I have grown so use to a steady stream of constant information on every single player. Not just team field goal and free throw percentage, but shot selections, and where a particular player hit and miss shots. Even the color commentators did not seem to have all the information that we have just grown a custom to hearing. Today we seem inundated with stats, and information, we can Twitter our lives away if we choose. Seemingly useless pieces of information are available for everyone to consume.

I prefer the NBA of yesteryear but I must admit I love my stats. I wanted to see how much MJ averaged vs every defender he faced on the pistons, and what he was averaging against the pistons during the 1989 regular season ... to 2 decimal places.

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple." - Oscar Wilde

Due to the simplicity of the XCOPY deployment strategy in ASP.NET you can easily set your self up for dumb mistakes. It took me a good 15 minutes (a little embarrassing) to realize what my deployment issue was below.

Configuration Error

Description: An error occurred during the processing of a configuration file required to service this request. Please review the specific error details below and modify your configuration file appropriately.
Parser Error Message: Unrecognized attribute 'xmlns'.
Source Error:

Line 1:  <?xml version="1.0"?>
Line 2:  <configuration xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/.NetConfiguration/v2.0">
Line 3:  	<system.web>
Line 4:  		<compilation debug="true">

Source File: C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\TTCOG\web.config    Line: 2

---

Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:1.1.4322.2032; ASP.NET Version:1.1.4322.2032

It screamed at me in the red line (and the version information) but I could not quite see it ... then I realized when you manually create a virtual directory for your project it defaults to version 1.1. This was my first official 2.0 deploy so I can be excused for this oversight.

"Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work." - Booker T. Washington

I am doing a doing a fair share of work that makes use of automated and semi-automated builds using NAnt scripts. I am loving the convenience, however, I usually come into the project after all that stuff is set up. So while I am encouraged and able to make significant changes to NAnt build files, I am never really in on the ground floor construction.

Don passed on this really useful series of posts from Jean-Paul S. Boodhoo. He successfully explains the steps and considerations when setting up a fully automated build with NAnt.

• Solution Structure
• Build Process - Cleaning and Creating
• Build Process - Compiling
• Build NUnit test
• Running NUnit test

I am pretty confident I could complete this quite quickly from scratch ... in theory!

Transformers is everything I was hoping it would. This is simply the best action film I have seen in at least two years! It blows Spiderman 3 out of the water.

There are many stand out scenes, however, the battle between Optimus Prime and Bonecrusher was sweet! This is a must see!

I ended up purchasing the Western Digital My Book (320 gig). This has helped me stop worrying about the years and years of digital photos that my wife and I have accumulated. I have also started backing up my music ... it is truly a relief I can now officially rest easy. I guess I should consider offsite backup but there is a point of diminishing returns when it comes to backups.

I was very disappointed that Western Digital (WD) only include the basic back up software with the more expensive units. I am going to continue to use the XP back utility. I may try modifying the startup initialization file on the My Book in order to run XP backup utility automatically when I connect it. Not sure if that will work!

"All men profess honesty as long as they can. To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse." - John Quincy Adams