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Creator Of Solitaire For Windows Interviewed
Thanks to B3ta for its interview with Wes Cherry, creator of Solitaire for Windows, as installed on "hundreds of millions of machines worldwide." Cherry discusses an 'Easter egg' left out of the final version ("There was a 'boss-key' which when pressed would display some random .C code. Microsoft made me remove that"), the all-important card back designs ("My fave is the dealer with the Ace crawling up and down his sleeve, which is a reference to a Grateful Dead song, 'Doin' that Rag'"), and bizarre benchmarking concepts using Solitaire ("At one point, a computer magazine proposed a SolMark computer speed test: The faster the cascade, the faster your computer.")
X-Ray girl "sees" broken bones
By LUCY HAGAN
THE SUN has brought the incredible X-ray eyes girl to Britain and seen her amazing powers at first hand.
Russian Natasha Demkina, 17, has stunned doctors in her home country with her ability to see medical conditions inside people.
We flew her 1,500 miles to London to demonstrate her extraordinary powers on Sun reporter Briony Warden, who suffered multiple injuries when she was knocked down by a car in October last year.
She is still recovering from the hit-and-run and uses crutches or a wheelchair to get around.
Before Natasha arrived at Briony's North London home, our reporter removed a leg brace and hid all clues to her injuries.
Then the petite blonde teenager, who looks years younger than her age, began her examination.
Briony, 36, said: "I stood up and let her eyes scan over my fully-clothed body.
"Her pupils dilated and she seemed to go into a trance for a couple of minutes.
"Straight away she began identifying a pain site at the base of my spine which she called a 'blockage'.
"In fact I have four healing spinal fractures and some nerve damage.
"She described my pelvic area as being asymmetrical and pointed to the right side -- where I suffered several fractures.
"Pointing to my jaw, she reported seeing a 'hard, alien part' - it was exactly the spot where a titanium plate holds my bones together.
"The most astonishing moment was when she saw the injuries to my left leg.
"Both the tibia and fibula bones -- the two below the knee -- are broken. I was amazed as she identified the two separate breaks and told me I had problems bending my knee joint.
"Then she said she saw 'traces of several metal pins and screws' which had left their mark on the bone.
"She could not possibly know, without seeing the scars, that until two weeks ago my leg was held together by half-a-dozen pins and screws.
"She even said the scars where the screws had been were covered over with new tissue -- which is exactly what my last X-ray showed."
Stunned Briony added: "Natasha is amazing. I was very sceptical at first but after just a few minutes she focused on my major fractures.
"I was very impressed. It was as though she was looking at X-rays of me. Only my orthopaedic consultant could have known more."
After the examination we told Natasha about Briony's accident.
She said: "I can see she is healing very well."
Natasha first demonstrated her extraordinary ability at the age of ten, when she told her stunned mum Tatyana she could see "two beans", "a tomato" and a "vacuum cleaner" inside her.
The child was referring to Tatyana's kidneys, heart and intestines but did not know their names. Doctors at first refused to accept that her astonishingly-accurate descriptions were genuine. But exhaustive tests have failed to discover any trickery at work.
The teenager is famous in her home town of Saransk, the capital of Mordovia -- a Russian republic 400 miles east of Moscow.
People queue down the stairs outside the family's flat, waiting to be assessed by Natasha. She calls her power "medical vision" and believes it is a divine gift.
Speaking through a translator, she said: "The only way I can explain it is that my brain sees before my eyes. I seem to have two visions -- one is normal, the other I call medical vision. I can see inside the human body but not through it. If someone held something behind their back I wouldn't see it."
Natasha summons her "medical vision" by focusing on her subject for around two minutes.
Recalling the first time it happened, she said: "At first I was disgusted, then I became used to it. It seems normal now and if I don't see anyone for a while I miss the experience."
Natasha's family believe her powers were triggered when she suffered complications from a childho