Yesterday, I bought The Animatrix on DVD (for the very good price of £12). So, finishing off where I started with my Animatrix Preview, here are short snippets on the remaining parts:

• Kid’s Story – Tied in loosely to Reloaded, this is how Kid (the boy who bugs Neo in Zion) escapes The Matrix. It’s got a very visually pleasing style: a dynamic liquid form of anime. Good, and slightly revealing.
• Beyond – A haunted house story set in the matrix. Blends traditional japanese anime onto subtle 3D backdrops, with slightly westernised characters. Not the best of the bunch, but certainly not the worst.
• World Record – A story about a sprinter who, through sheer determination, starts to push his way back into the real world. I can’t describe how the characters look very well: they’re bizarre, without being too deformed or quirky. Interesting statement on the human spirit.
• Matriculated – A group of rebels set out to teach a machine why the way is wrong, and to convince it to join their side. Standard anime in the real world, but an abstract Tron-like view in the construct (albeit more colourful).

I recommend the bundle to anyone, even just for Program (the best part).

It was bound to happen at some point. Downhill is a way to automate six degrees of separation between blogs. And it works surprisingly well.

For anyone who has never heard of six degrees of separation, it’s where you try and find links between 2 things (people, actors, websites) via links between other similar objects. It’s hypothesised that, by following links from one object to another, you can get from any object to any other object in 6 steps or less. The idea works very well.

To illustrate, consider the case of people: finding a connection between person A and person B, who have never met. Person A, in their lifetime, has probably met thousands of people (take time to think about how many people you’ve spoken to in your life – it’s probably huge) who have, in turn, met thousands of others who have met thousands of others etc. By following the links from person to person, we find that we can get to person B in 6 steps or less, no matter who person B is.

If you add more people to your universe of possible people, you do not increase the number of links taken to go between people. In fact, you likely decrease the number of links (since more people means more connections).

Back to the original point, Downhill does an admirable job of find the shortest path between two sites, given its dataset. Plus it has the bonus of providing an API to the blogging ecosystem. I think that might come in very handy later on.

Via Stuart, comes the online version of Twenty Questions. Think of an animal, vegetable, mineral (yeah, anyone ever picks that) or object and it asks you questions to hopefully guess it.

It works quite convincingly most of the time, just stay away from “cafe” as an object. Although, it learns in time, so even that might not be a problem soon.

Updates should be back to normal now. Well, at least until next week. I’ve just finished this weeks batch of exams (for more information on those, I suggest reading the round-ups on Derek’s site, although I thought Algorithmic Foundations was much harder than he apparently did), and don’t have any more until next week – which is the last block.

So, for at least a week, normality will return. That is all.

Due to changes in the layout, a few bugs have made their way onto the site. They should die as soon as the site cache is emptied (which will be when I add this piece of content). If you see any residual bugs, try reloading by pressing CTRL and F5 together.