Interesting things I learnt recently

1. PLU Codes: I never knew those "Price LookUp" (PLU) codes on fruits and vegetables meant anything:

PLU codes: gardenpartynyc

According to the wikipedia entry:

The code is usually a four-digit number, currently in the 3000–4999 range, identifying the type of bulk produce, including the variety. The Produce Marketing Association suggests an optional convention whereby a fifth digit may be prefixed to the number to indicate if the produce is organic (prefixed by a '9') or genetically modified (prefixed by an '8').

However, adherence to PLU standards is voluntary, and you cannot use it to reliably tell whether something is organic.

2. GPU Programming in Matlab: I knew it was possible, but I did not realize how simple it was, until I sat through a MathWorks seminar on campus. While it works only with newer NVIDIA cards (that can handle double precision naturally) and allows only certain kinds of parallelizations, I must admit (with glee) that they've made it much easier to tame problems by throwing additional hardware at it.