I think that summer is the best time to learn something fun and useful. It’s too hot to do anything stupid and repetitive (usually referred to as “job”) and if you are a student, you probably waste your time anyway. I found few interesting readings (mainly from Hacker News) which I wanted to share. These are great examples of spending your free time in funny and productive way.
- “Click every first link on Wikipedia page and you will end up in Philosophy” theory, checked and explored - http://matpalm.com/blog/2011/08/13/wikipedia-philosophy/
- Article about human eye resolution and comparison to camera - http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution.html
- When zombies attack!: mathematical modelling of an outbreak of zombie infection (PDF) - http://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/rsmith43/Zombies.pdf
- Nyan Emacs - http://nyan-mode.buildsomethingamazing.com/
- SHA algorithm explained by stick figures - http://www.moserware.com/2009/09/stick-figure-guide-to-advanced.html
- Jonathan’s Card, free Starbucks coffee social experiment – http://jonathanstark.com/card/
- Infinite Monkey Theorem - http://www.jesse-anderson.com/2011/08/a-few-more-million-amazonian-monkeys/
Note: not all of these projects were created during summer. I guess some people do awesome stuff in winter as well. Or are Australian.