Wouldn’t it be nice to be the first to know when something big happens? To get that alert to run for cover delivered automatically to you in time? I give you the front row seat for Judgement day: The Doom-O-Meter. The Doom-O-Meter works by querying various webpages for important indicators such as the price of gold (and other important commodities),… Continue reading »
Someone put consumerism like this: Buying things you don’t need, with money you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like. There are at least three inconsistencies in the above description.The current Credit Crunch brings one to attention: Buying with money you don’t have. If you’re buying a house, then you’re quite the exception if… Continue reading »
A while ago, I made OptiMap, a Google Maps mashup that will take a number of locations and give you the best way to visit all of them. By best, I mean fastest. Since then, I have been exposed to various ideas on applications for this tool. One is in the real-estate business, where prospective home buyers… Continue reading »
UPDATE: This widget no longer works. Please consider the Commodities Widget instead. Apple Mac OS X (version 10.4 and above) has this neat feature called dashboard. It lets tiny programs, called widgets, run as an overlay to your screen when you press ‘F12’. There are widgets that show the current time in any timezone, hurricane… Continue reading »
What really happens when you hit the ‘Calculate fastest roundtrip’-button in OptiMap? The problem we attempt to solve is a classic and is called the ‘Travelling Salesman Problem’ or simply TSP. Before we dive into this intrigueing question, some definitions are useful. Each location will be referred to as a node, with location number denoted… Continue reading »