Geek alert. Flying back from the states, I came across a contest called "Crossing Capitals" in the back of Games Magazine. The object is to take the 50 US state capitals, plus all of the Canadian capitals, and fit as many as possible into a 19 by 19 grid, crossword puzzle style. This is a regular sort of contest they do, called a "stuffer" contest.

This sounded like a fun thing to write a program to solve, so I set to the task, and was soon generating some pretty good results. I started running it overnight at home, and pretty much constantly at work -- I'd estimate a good eight weeks of total computing time. I'm not sure how many million combinations were tried, but it was a lot. I also did a lot of fine tuning of the algorithm.

The deadline is now passed -- here are the results of the effort:

M

O

N

T

P

E

L

I

E

R

C

O

N

C

O

R

D

C

A

E

O

L

Y

M

P

I

A

H

A

L

I

F

A

X

S

L

T

E

B

M

U

T

R

E

N

T

O

N

I

T

O

R

O

N

T

O

M

P

G

I

I

B

P

I

E

R

R

E

C

H

A

R

L

E

S

T

O

N

I

Q

K

H

T

A

E

E

A

L

B

A

N

Y

A

A

L

N

S

L

A

R

A

U

S

T

I

N

C

O

L

U

M

B

U

S

L

N

I

B

H

I

G

B

O

S

T

O

N

I

E

S

T

P

A

U

L

T

A

G

S

S

Y

A

S

T

R

T

M

E

N

S

T

D

E

N

V

E

R

J

A

N

T

A

A

T

G

D

O

V

E

R

N

A

L

P

H

O

E

N

I

X

H

C

E

F

E

W

N

N

K

E

D

M

O

N

T

O

N

M

A

D

I

S

O

N

That's thirty-four capitals. The tie breaker is the total count of letters used; my total is 243.

Unfortunately, I found a forum for people who do this sort of thing all the time, and it looks like at least three people managed to fit in 35 capitals. At least one did it by hand, too, without computer help! I would have thought that everyone in contention to win would have done it by program -- interesting that brains and computers are so evenly matched.

Steve Irwin died today. The news raced around Australia like wildfire -- I heard it almost simultaneously from about four different directions. Quite sad, I think. He may not have been the best role model for kids, but he was the real deal. Did you know that all the profits from his movie went to environmental causes?

No one's too surprised that he went out like this, except maybe those who were expecting it to be a croc. And yet, somehow, it's hard to imagine him dead.

Fun yesterday as I played golf for the first time in four years, at Yarra Bend. I was predictably terrible (shot 108, I think) but it was the soccer team's annual golf outing, and the weather was great, so it was good fun. Tons of wildlife on the course, most notably the colony of giant fruit bats, but also a lot of eastern rosellas, noisy miners, rainbow lorikeets, and a flock of some sort of black cockatoos.

Then last night we caught the Melbourne Victory beating Sydney in front of the biggest crowd in Australian club soccer history -- nearly 40,000. I'm sure it was the biggest crowd that a lot of the players have ever played in front of as well. Great game and a fun atmosphere.