I've seen a number of monks is interested in programming competition like ICPC and in Artificial Intelligence. Maybe not everyone reads Slashdot, so I forward this a piece of this article:

"This link points to a competition being hosted by a company that makes research on artificial intelligence. The task? Build a program that can play a number of games whose rules are totally unknown -- and earn the best score while competing against various opponents. Your program is told the possible choices available, when it should make a move, what did the opponent do; and what was your score for the last turn. There are no entry fees yet there is a cash prize. Submissions can be done in various languages, or in Linux or Windows binaries."