When I first got into computer programming, I was wanting to write graphics software like Photoshop and 3D Studio Max. At some point, the Interweb became the new hotness and I realized there was good money to be made pretending I knew how the Web worked. Over time, I’ve morphed into a plain old developer writing applications, be they client, web, server, or a mixture of several. My main goals tend to be business apps and nothing that would knock your socks off.
Reading this, I realized I should have changed my focus. A real time Sudoku solver that uses your web-cam and shows you the solution on screen. It’s got all the geeky stuff like angle detection, OCR, and maffs that all must take place within 1/30th of a second. I’ve often looked at writing a Sudoku solver but I really only know how to do brute force although it was interesting reading how the computer solves puzzles much like I do.
Anyway, that’s a rather nifty piece of software, something I’d love to be able to do but have lost a lot of math skills necessary due to the general focus of my career.
At least I can draw pretty pictures.