Frontal lobe massage

Maybe it’s been the heat, but I’ve been a little run down lately, so I’ve been doing some serious … resting … on the weekends lately, as well as finding some simple, short-term problems to engage my programming faculties on.

I think too much multi-tasking, or multi-tasking during the wrong phase of programming, can train your brain into becoming a “make a start”er, and I like not to slip into that, so I like to find a problem or two that I figure I can tackle fairly quickly, and that I can only tackle if I can get my brains attention on it.

My only issue is that I won’t solve abstract problems. They have to be practical to me in some sense, so it can take a little effort finding a problem on which I will engage in all aspects.

This weeks problem, I will present for your entertainment, but in an abstract form ;)

You haven’t lived until you’ve died in MUD

Playing MUD1 has been both a trip down memory lane and a nice, gentle mental exercise. But its also been a strange experience; MUD1 is so tiny and so disjointed that it seems much less removed from the sample adventure (“Precious Days“). But then according to his book at the time, Artificial Intelligence & Computer Games, part of the purpose behind MUD1 was to create a system that both people and AI/expert systems would interact in. MUD1 has that clinical compsci feel to it, eclectic puzzles and mind ticklers like “aucg minus O = ?”.

So this weekend I decided to give MUD2 a try. The same guy that runs MUD1, Viktor Toth, also runs MUD2.com, but MUD2 isn’t free. (Cheap, but not free). I downloaded a client, clio, and was setting it up when I noticed it had links to both MUD2.com and MUDII.co.uk…

Being a limey, I felt inclined to check out this co.uk version… As well as stiring thoughts of home, I noticed it was run by some guy calling himself Foddy. Wait a second, that name rings a bell.