Technicalities
The software that manages this weblog is WordPress version 1.5. The server is operated by Bluehost.
The theme that governs the appearance of the site is a modified version of the WordPress default theme, created by Michael Heilemann and based on an earlier theme called Kubrick.
If you have any technical difficulty with the site, please send a note to help@bit-player.org.
The banner image was generated by a computer simulation of the process called diffusion-limited aggregation, in which particles wander at random until they strike either the substrate at the bottom of the image or another particle that is already in contact, directly or indirectly, with the substrate. Once a particle sticks to the frond-like structure, it never moves again. The colors reflect the sequence in which the particles were deposited, from deep purple (earliest) to bright yellow (latest). For more information, see: “Computing Science: Nature’s Algorithms,” by Brian Hayes, American Scientist, Vol. 82, No. 3, May–June 1994, pages 206–210.