Neat informative post on Coding Horror about the super-geek pastime of Core Wars, in which you write little autonomous programs in a modified assembly language to go out and kill other competing programs. Like bare-knuckle boxing or “drinking bingo”, last one standing is declared the winner.

The comments section is really great, as the nerds (full disclosure: I am a nerd) add their own recommendations of robotic mano a mano. Among the things I need to check out when I get a free week are:

AT-Robots
Grobots
RoboCom
RoboCode
DarwinBots

The home page for DarwinBots starts out by saying: “Darwinbots is an Artificial Life simulator that merges the gameplay of C-Robots type arena combat with adaptive asexual population dynamics.” I’ve been married for eight years, have two kids, and am a computer programmer, so I’m already well-versed in adaptive asexual population dynamics, thankyouverymuch. *zing*