Big problem with my thumbdrive.

A bit of a personal crisis for me. I was walking home from class and about 2 km into my 3 km walk I noticed that my thumb drive had fallen appart some way along the way home. Just the electronics fell out, a bit of an upset considering I got it only a few months ago and now its already worthless. Plus the loss of data, a few assignments I've been doing for class since january, have to redo them now, plus the map program (see 2 articles ago).

I also was going to back it up the next day =/

USB plug should be in the lower left side of the blue part.

Path Finder

I'm working on a program that will find the fastest path from one point to another (think mapquest or a Garmen gps) using a genetic algorithm. Its been a while since I've worked on genetic algorithms, and they were all used in tandem with neural networks, so I'm anxious to see what the results will be like. The program will load a map, ask the user for beginging and end points, calculate the best route, then display the path.

Genetic Algorithms work as such:

1. Generate a random set of commands. This will be one 'organism'.
2. Generate a bunch of other 'organisms' with different commands.
3. Run each set of commands through the map.
4. Record the results and score the 'organism' on its 'fitness level'.
5. Generate a new set of organisms based on how well the previous ones did.
6. Repeat steps 3-5 several times.