Expressing ideas and thoughts — whether by some hurried doodle on a post-it or with a finely crafted sentence in a leather-bound journal — is incredibly important.

Life is in children raised and grandchildren cherished.
A warm smile greeting missed family at the door with
Countless conversations, accidental catchphrases,
And inevitable farewells.

Life can often feel like a journey towards a specific goal, be it happiness, wealth, expertise, or fame. And just like in artificial intelligence, achieving our goals can be seen as an optimization problem. But what if we thought of life itself as an AI search problem? What lessons could we learn from the various search approaches used by computer scientists and mathematicians?

As part of my university dissertation (The Use of Genetic AI in the Balancing of Competitive Multiplayer Games), I'm programming a card game based on Noughts and Crosses.

Proving the efficacy of the proposed balancing process first required the construction of a two-player game to balance, designed specifically for the project so as to be representative of games the technique might be applied to.

It seems that everyone and their Mum now has something to say about the recent tragedies in Durham and student drinking culture. Conversation is divided between attempting to explain why these deaths have happened, and what can be done to ensure no more lives are lost.