At the 1999 JavaOne conference, Sun and 3Com got together to offer Palm Vs at a reduced price.  The incredible thing about the handheld computers they sold wasn't the price, however: it was the Java virtual machine that resided on them.  The KVM, as it's called, is to be the cornerstone of the Java 2 Micro Edition platform ("J2ME"), and the version distributed at JavaOne was a pre-alpha release.  

Despite its pre-alpha status, the KJava development kit has been in circulation among interested parties; I obtained a copy and wrote this spotlet to get some idea of what Java on a handheld could do.  It doesn't exercise each and every nifty feature; rather, it's a small game I've wanted to port for some time, and in this case it happens to run on a Java virtual machine on my Palm V.

Files: Hammurabi
KJava SDK:  KVM archive

One of the many places that Neural Networks are found is in the back of the eye, where visual computation occurs prior to the signals being sent to the brain.  One form of computation that can occur is Lateral Inhibition, the process whereby strong visual signals inhibit themselves and those around them; the effect is to increase contrast in the overall signal.

This applet models the Inhibitory processes found in the Limulus Polyphemus, more commonly known as the horseshoe crab.  It is Java 1.1 compliant, and uses only the Java AWT classes for UI, rather than the newer lightweight Swing package -- this was done so all recent browsers could display it.

The event and UI model is fairly simple, although it's capable of being extended to allow more user interaction, including modification of each pixel, non-square dimensions, and in-applet pattern generation.  The version currently available can only use pre-defined data for the image manipulation; these data being those I used for my senior project at UW-Madison.

The Lateral Inhibition Page - "LimSim"

The "Java Fnorder" is a Java Servlet version of the "Fnorder" program from Steve Jackson Games, Inc. What it does is serve up a nonsensical (?!) statement that is grammatically correct and will entertain and/or educate you. The Servlet is actually just a small wrapper around the Java Fnorder core, so the Fnorder can be run independantly of a servlet environment.

Java Fnorder at Steve Jackson Games. Here's a link to the original. fnord.