Battle Rat

How cool is this... Apparently a neural net has been built and trained to fly a fighter jet simulator. Fairly impressive in itself but in this case, the neural net is a living one, grown from rat brain cells. What next? Hamster tanks? The story is on The Register

Pear Shaped

The Lady Gray wine has been a bit crap on the fermentation front for some time, so I finally asserted myself and made a starter with some fruitjuice and fresh yeast, racked off the wine and added the ready-fermenting yeast. It's not exactly bursting out of the jar, but at least now we are starting to see some movement.

Over the weekend I also started a new brew, using tinned prunes and pears, which yields a nice, dark, rich smelling must. It's fermenting away in the bucket for now, so we'll see how that turns out...

For the Love of Quinn

The last few days have seen the explosion of a story about Home Secretary David Blunkett allegedly abusing his position on numerous counts from giving train tickets (at the taxpayers' expense) to his mistress to (and this is the potential showstopper) accelerating an application for a permanent visa. "Independent" investigations are under way.

The whole situation is summed up quite nicely in a Register article from yesterday.

It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.