Senior Honours Project

It seems like the Junior Honours Project has only just finished, but the all-new sequel, the Senior Honours Project, is already approaching faster than I had realised. For those who don't know how it works, at the beginning of the year we'll be given a list of options, and have to give our first, second and third choices. However, it's also possible to suggest your own project, either research or software, and as long as you can find yourself a supervisor that agrees, you can do that instead. I've had a few ideas so far, but I'll have to see what the options are before I actually decide. Here they are, in the order I thought of them.

1. The Moron Filter

Whenever I go on any instant messenger now, it seems that half the world messages me with indecipherable compressed text that I can't understand, or simply refuse to. For example, if we look at the dictionary entry for the commonly used "ur", it tells us that it was a city in Mesopotamia (as anyone who has played Civilization or taken history will be able to tell you). If you have an entire keyboard in front of you, I think that it's rather disrespectful to talk to people with half the lett s m si g.

So the idea of this project is to develop a client with something that could parse sentences and detect and filter out any unwanted abbreviations. It could even have a variable severity level - anything from just replacing the offending "words" with their real counterparts to instantly blocking the user.

Advantages
It would do me a great service.
Not really that complex an idea once the actual message transfer has been done.

Disadvantages
Probably rather too frivolous.

2. Entropy

Computers are by their definition entirely deterministic machines - therefore there cannot be any element of randomness in the decision-making process. Random numbers are simulated, normally by using the system clock and performing an unlikely operation on its value to generate a number that seems arbitrarily chosen. One such formula is the Mersenne Twister. I can't explain how it works, but it's apparently pretty good at what it does.

To get any kind of entropy in a system at all, outside data has to be used. Some things that have been tried include the amount of light reflecting from an irregular reflective surface, the amount of radioactive decay present in a given time, network traffic, and so on. A particular favourite is the use of static from a radio tuned at random. This would be a research project that compared the many different methods of generating randomness. Which, for the record, I really think should be called "randomicity".

Advantages
Against all odds, I find it rather interesting.

Disadvantages
Just look at the first sentence of the description.
Involves maths.

3. Better SQL Manager

The SQL database manager that we used during the Database practicals was comparable to a form of psychological torture. We were working on a program that autosaved when it felt like it, had no other save function, and crashed every five minutes. When the inevitable occurred it was a matter of luck whether you had to input all your data again or not. Things that caused it to crash included but were not limited to right-clicking, dragging and dropping, entering data, using the mouse, and breathing on it. I remember commenting at the time that I could do a better job, and this is an opportunity to prove it.

Advantages
The functionality is easy - only the user interface needs any serious work.

Disadvantages
A bit dull to present.
I couldn't really do anything that hasn't been done already.

More ideas as they come to me (if any).