Neat planting diagram for zones 6-7 (North GA is 7).

Planting Schedule - Vegetable Gardening Forum - GardenWeb

Chris Jurney, a senior programmer for Relic, offered the example of the state machines in its RTS, Dawn of War 2, to illustrate this. "The AI for Dawn of War 2 has roughly three main layers: the computer player, the squad and the entity," says Jurney. "The squad and the entities are both hierarchal finite state machines, and we have roughly 20 states at the squad level and 20 at the entity level. The states at the squad level pretty much map directly to orders that can be issued by the user.

"For example, if you issue a capture order to a squad, the squad will enter the SquadStateCapture state," continues Jurney. "This state might find that it’s not close enough yet to capture the point, so it will sub-state to SquadStateMove. In this state, the formation movement system will kick in and start issuing Move orders to individual entities, and the entities receive these commands and enter the StateMove state. Inside that, paths are found, dynamics are applied and generally, the individuals try to look smart as they perform their orders."
Some states will also be shared among multiple character types where relevant, and most characters spend most of their time using just a few standard states, with the others waiting in the wings for extraordinary circumstances.

bit-tech.net | Feature - How AI in Games Works

The xargs -P flag can also be useful for parellelizing commands that depend on a large number of high-latency systems. Only a week ago I spent hours to write a script that would resolve IP addresses into host names in parallel. (Yes, I know the logresolve.pl that comes with the Apache web server distribution, and the speedup it provides leaves a lot to be desired.) Had I known the -P xargs option, I would have finished my task in minutes.

blog dds: 2009.03.04 - Parallelizing Jobs with xargs

In February 2003, Notarbartolo was arrested for heading a ring of Italian thieves. They were accused of breaking into a vault two floors beneath the Antwerp Diamond Center and making off with at least $100 million worth of loose diamonds, gold, jewelry, and other spoils. The vault was thought to be impenetrable. It was protected by 10 layers of security, including infrared heat detectors, Doppler radar, a magnetic field, a seismic sensor, and a lock with 100 million possible combinations. The robbery was called the heist of the century, and even now the police can't explain exactly how it was done.

The loot was never found, but based on circumstantial evidence, Notarbartolo was sentenced to 10 years. He has always denied having anything to do with the crime and has refused to discuss his case with journalists, preferring to remain silent for the past six years.

Until now.

Notarbartolo sits down across from me at one of the visiting room's two dozen small rectangular tables. He has an intimidating reputation. The Italian anti-Mafia police contend he is tied to the Sicilian mob, that his cousin was tapped to be the next the capo dei capi—the head of the entire organization. Notarbartolo intends to set the record straight. He puts his hands on the table. He has had six years to think about what he is about to say.

"I may be a thief and a liar," he says in beguiling Italian-accented French. "But I am going to tell you a true story."

The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist

Taking these requirements into account, we've created a new EC2 pricing model, which we call Reserved Instances. After you purchase such an instance for a one-time fee, you have the option to launch an EC2 instance of a certain instance type, in a particular availability zone, for a period of either 1 of 3 years. Your launch is guaranteed to succeed; there's no chance of encountering any transient limitations in EC2 capacity. You have no obligation to run the instances full time, so you'll pay even less if you choose to turn them off when you are not using them.

Steady-state usage costs, when computed on an hourly basis over the term of the reservation, are significantly lower than those for the on-demand model. For example, an on-demand EC2 Small instance costs 10 cents per hour. Here's the cost breakdown for a reserved instance (also check out the complete EC2 pricing info):

Term One-time Fee Hourly Usage Effective 24/7 Cost
1 Year $325 $0.030 $0.067
3 Year $500 $0.030 $0.049

Every one of the EC2 instance types is available at a similar savings. We've preserved the flexibility of the on-demand model and have given you a new and more cost-effective way to use EC2. Think of the one-time fee as somewhat akin to acquiring hardware, and the hourly usage as similar to operating costs.

Amazon Web Services Blog: Announcing Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances

Step 1: Think of an idea that you think (or know) that can be monetized in the future. Even if you don’t know exactly how to do it, think of something better than “I’ll just get a lot of users”.
Step 2: Let your startup grow, and do the numbers to see when you’re going to NEED to be profitable. If it gets out of control, it might cost you a lot of money
every month just to keep the thing running. Does that sound like a good business?
Step 3: Profit your ass off. After you do this, then you can retire to your very own Caribbean island and watch South Park all day.

Don’t Be Like the Underpants Gnomes | KillerBlog

So, which books are just right- hard enough to have things in them of interest, but not so hard that you can't read them. Demanding you be able to read it `cover-to-cover' is rather demanding and also ambigous- do you need to understand everything? I'll define this to just be `read/understood over 90% of the book'

Computational Complexity: Math books you can actually read

Caffeine in soil

I did a web search to see if the effects of caffeine in soil has been studied. It has. Too much caffeine will inhibit root growth. Of course, caffeine gets broken down by certain bacteria, so the levels of caffeine will depend upon how recently the caffeine has been added to the soil

I will be modifying my gardening techniques to avoid the use of fresh UCG in the springtime. I will also be sure to add compost to those areas where I had previously applied UCG.

I suppose the regular application of UCG will ensure that the appropriate bacteria (Pseudomonas) remains available for the decomposition of caffeine.

This spring, I had turned a lot of coffee grounds into a bed where I was attempting to grow peas. The germination rate was disappointing and I wonder if the fresh coffee grounds were to blame.

Caffeine in soil - Soil Forum - GardenWeb

Abstract A strain of Serratia marcescens showing the ability to degrade caffeine and other methylxanthines was isolated from soil under coffee cultivation. Growth was observed only with xanthines methylated at the 7 position (caffeine, 1,3,7-dimethylxanthine; paraxanthine, 1,7-dimethylxanthine; theobromine, 3,7-dimethylxanthine and 7-methylxanthine). Paraxanthine and theobromine were released in liquid medium when caffeine was used as the sole source of carbon and nitrogen. When paraxanthine or theobromine were used, 3-methylxanthine, 7-methylxanthine, and xanthine were detected in the liquid medium. Serratia marcescens did not grow with theophylline (1,3-dimethylxanthine), 1-methylxanthine, and 3-methylxanthine, and poor growth was observed with xanthine. Methyluric acid formation from methylxanthines was tested in cell-free extracts by measuring dehydrogenase reduction of tetrazolium salt in native-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis gel. Activity was observed for all methylxanthines, even those with which no bacterial growth was observed. Our results suggest that in this strain of S. marcescens caffeine is degraded to theobromine (3,7-dimethylxanthine) and/or paraxanthine (1,7-dimethylxanthine), and subsequently to 7-methylxanthine and xanthine. Methyluric acid formation could not be confirmed.

SpringerLink - Journal Article - Caffeine Eating Bacteria

Conclusion

Although I made a lot of mistakes with Advice Monkey, it still could have succeeded. The problem was, I didn’t learn from my mistakes. If I realized them when Advice Monkey was still around, I could have made the necessary changes to improve upon it.

Really down to earth.

7 Reasons My First Business Failed