Check out the Microsoft College Puzzle Challenge, an annual 12-hour-long competition (read: "masochistic test of endurance") that Microsoft puts on partly as a recruiting tool and partly to help college kids justify not studying. On the left, there are links to the puzzles from earlier years, and some of them are pretty impressive. One of the puzzles makes use of a new internet service Microsoft is working on. Although I'd normally insert a wisecrack here about how Microsoft manages to plug themselves absolutely every chance they have (even in the puzzles!), I have to say that I'm pretty impressed by this little feat of ajax. Needless to say, getting this to work for every street of even one major city would be a tremendous undertaking...it would probably change mapping software like no other program I can think of. Oh wait, Google Earth!

On an unrelated note: www.vedantmisra.com has a pretentious new look. I could probably get away with putting up a stylized signature if I were, I don't know, Yo-yo Ma, or royalty, perhaps. But in all honesty, I wasn't trying to be pretentious...just trying to avoid doing problem sets as long as possible.