On Bicycles, and.... what else is there?

As I noted last time, the maze algorithm doesn't know are care about topography or dimensionality. All it cares about is a list of nodes with each node's initially unconnected neighbors. How the nodes are laid out is post-processing. One-dimensional mazes aren't so challenging: each node has 2 neighbors. Two directions, for example east and west. With a 2-dimensional maze with square nodes, each node has 4 neighbors (no cutting corners). Obviously 2-dimensional is more challenging than one-dimensional: there's no the opportunity for dead-ends and multiple path options. Sample directions are north, east, south, and west: two more than the 1-dimensional case. To three dimensions, each node (assuming cubic nodes) has 6 neighbors. In addition to north, east, south, and west, you can add up and down to the list of directions. So there's a pattern here. Each time you add a dimension you add two more neighbors and two more directions, the two directions bei...

Okay, so this is mostly a bike blog, but since I got a new job in October, my time for riding has dropped off substantially. I'm trying to ride into work more often: once to twice per week would be good. But it's 42 miles one-way, so I've got to "make time" for that to happen. Anyway, in my job, one of the products I use is a structure generator for semiconductor device modeling. So, for example, I can build models for field-effect transistors, bipolar junction transistors, p-i-n diodes, photo-detectors, light-emitting diodes, even static random access memory cells and other small circuits. Fun stuff, really. The models do a remarkably good job of matching reality, even though the reality of semiconductors can be fairly complex. Knights of the Lambda Calculus But when I found myself home sick with a bad cold, between naps I needed an activity to keep myself occupied. It was a good exercise to reacquaint myself with Scheme, the scripting language used b...