hrafn yesterday, I came up with an idea for doing a computerized version of Zendobun, with the computer as the master. Rules will be in the form of regular expressions. The program will construct a random rule, probably based on some pre-defined patterns. Then it will pick initial koans from a database of sentences. Players will guess in sentences, and make guesses to the rules in regular expressions. The program will use its database for counterexamples as well. I'm hoping that I will be able to have a database that is large enough to handle most situations, but not so large that search time through it becomes too long. It should be an interesting exercise in parsing regular expressions, and playing the game could be a good exercise in writing regular expressions.Speaking of regular expressions, my fucking Perl books still aren't here. UPS lost the first order, apparently, and now there has been some kind of delay in shipping the replacement order. The current delivery estimate is September 6-11, and it hadn't shipped yet as of this morning. Blah.
