A* pathfinding fun

On one of the games programming feed aggregators I monitor (or rather, that I have Bloglines monitor), there was a recent post pointing to an A* pathfinding discussion for beginners.

I haven't finished it yet, but it's sufficiently fun that I'm blogging it already :-). I doubt if I'll actually implement it. But I like knowing about random things not directly related to work. It might come up in an interview. If it doesn't, I *might* bring it up in an interview :-). And, anyway, a problem in the future might come up that looks like a pathfinding problem. It's useful to know things that are close to but not exactly in ones normal problem domain.

At work, my company happens to have How To Solve It: Modern Heuristics and I read that slowly, mostly on breaks. Not because I necessarily understand everything I read, but it's interesting, expands the mind, and even if I don't understand, it's useful to know that this or that technique exists so that, if something comes up in the future whose shape looks like it's solvable by the familiar technique, I know which book to look to. Or at least, which wikipedia article to follow :-).