thattommyhall.com

Oxfam Unwrapped, it sounds like a site exposing the real harm done by Oxfam or something. It is actually a great idea, giving people a little card to show you donated an amount of money to Oxfam rather than spend a few quid on something they may not even like. Also there is nothing like a bit of conspicuous giving to alleviate guilt. It hits the emotions too, I bought part of a school in Africa apparently (I suppose because “£5 could buy part of a school” does not sound as good). I wonder if anyone really thinks that the money they spend does end up where it says on the card, half of oxfams money would go in the infrastructure to support the tracking and allocation of it all.

I went 50/50 for my £10 secret santa gift, getting some Fair Trade chocolate to wrap up alongside the card.

Posted by tom under random | 1 Comment »

Finally got this started, not because I think I am particularly interesting but as a place to track ideas and allow folk who want to to find out what I am up to and excited by.

Probably the most useful part of the site for others will be my plan for a self study Computer Science course over the next few years, using MIT OCW and the video lectures at Berkley, alongside other books and course pages from around the world.

I love Free and Open Source software, but am more pragmatic than some (ie I will use proprietary software for work or at home if the need arises. It is a credit to the community that the need has not arisen for me at home, but my girlfriend is too busy to get to grips with a new OS while she is at university and perhaps I should allow her the freedom to choose for herself)

On the tech front I am recently excited by Solaris (particularly ZFS), Virtualisation and Asterisk. I want to put some time into getting to be a better programmer (Python is my language of choice, but again I am far from a zealot) and getting my CCNP under my belt.

Personally I am interested in Linguistics, Philosophy, Archaeology, Psychology, Mathematics, and am recently in the thrall of economists (at the cost of simplistic answers to big problems)

For fun: I read a lot, enjoy theatre (but dont go enough), real ale, hiking, travel, listening to music and I take great pleasure in being a geek (but not a nerd).

That’s all for now, I am going to settle on a theme, install some plugins to recommend books and highlight code etc over the next few days.

Posted by tom under random | 3 Comments »