http://www.thattommyhall.com A Random Walk Through Idea Space Sun, 15 Jun 2008 14:10:15 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I have been working really hard of late and have decided to block book a load of long weekends this summer and get outdoors a bit. I have been thinking about doing a long distance path for ages and have decided to do one in early August, probably the West ... http://www.thattommyhall.com/2008/06/15/summer-fun/ I went a few weeks ago to see BodyWorlds at the Museum of Science and Industry (mosi) in Manchester. I have only just had chance to get the pics off my phone and am amazed at how well they came out.     All one body, look at the shared foot. This was ... http://www.thattommyhall.com/2008/05/10/bodyworlds-in-manchester/ Went here with a friend, pretty yum. 50% off makes it great value too. http://www.felicini.co.uk/voucher/felicini_voucher.pdf Expect an update soon on why my brute-forceing below was plain dumb rather than simply naive. http://www.thattommyhall.com/2008/05/09/felicini-voucher/ If p is the perimeter of a right angle triangle with integral length sides, {a,b,c}, there are exactly three solutions for p = 120. {20,48,52}, {24,45,51}, {30,40,50} For which value of p < 1000, is the number of solutions maximised? WARNING: CONTAINS MATHEMATICS http://www.thattommyhall.com/2008/04/12/project-euler-39/ When I first heard about ZFS and its features, I was intrigued by a comment by Bill More about the possibility of having a database or other app directly consume the DMU that ZFS uses for filesystems or volumes. After I did a spot of research when editing the ... http://www.thattommyhall.com/2008/04/03/databases-and-lustre-on-zfss-dmu-new-cifs-stuff/ After me banging on for a year about how cool ZFS is, my boss is finally convinced and wants to get a Thumper (or 2). Depending on budgetary constraints we may be getting a couple of these to implement a warm backup solution for our current data and about 5 ... http://www.thattommyhall.com/2008/04/03/two-thumpers-for-tommy/ What a load of shit, she clearly cannot make a single correct statement. http://www.thattommyhall.com/2008/03/30/why-are-people-so-credulous/ Go and read Pupils to get 'new world' trips from the beeb. You may think "trips abroad for kids, great" , if you are more cynical you may think "heads choose the kids, not sure I like that". Let us do some arithmetic, 100 kids for 6 weeks each for £1.4M. £1400000/100 = ... http://www.thattommyhall.com/2008/03/29/arithmetic-is-a-great-bollocks-detector/ As some of you may know I am unusually interested in filesystems. After sending John a link about HAMMER, a new FreeBSD clustered FS and joking about starting a tomFS project, his reply offered some help deciding on features it should have and marketing it. tomfs can process a huge number ... http://www.thattommyhall.com/2008/03/26/tomfs/ See the flickr map view or the album. I walked all over New York yesterday, went along the east side all the way to Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum. The place is amazing. Not quite as good as the British Museum in my view but still a great place, perhaps ... http://www.thattommyhall.com/2008/03/23/geotaged-photos-on-flickr-macbeth/ Landed at 2.30pm yesterday, went straight to our Wall St office and got on with helping them move office. Went and got a bit drunk to help with jet-lag (Being bladdered and knackered in 2 time zones is better than one... or something) Got tickets today to go and see Patrick ... http://www.thattommyhall.com/2008/03/20/tommy-in-new-york-spot-of-culture-tomorrow/ You are walking home late at night and two girls run past, one turns to the other and says "this is the millionth time I have ran today" and you cannot help but say "You would have to start and stop running 10 times a second, while you said that ... http://www.thattommyhall.com/2008/02/22/you-know-you-are-a-maths-geek-when/ I have run Linux systems for about a decade, but not always as my main OS though. Whereas I used to enjoy the learning curve linux forced on you, at some point it was both more interesting and easier to use than windows. The selection of packages in Ubuntu is ... http://www.thattommyhall.com/2008/02/19/ubuntu-is-great-ubuntu-is-debian/ I have blogged about this before, go get it here ,it is out of beta now. OpenSolaris kernel, GNU userland (most of Ubuntu's packages). I have mentioned before that Ian Murdock, the chap who started Debian, has joined Sun to work on Project Indiana. This is basically a binary distro using ... http://www.thattommyhall.com/2008/02/18/get-nexenta-now-if-you-want-opensolaris-kernel-and-ubuntu-userland-zfsdtrace-anyone/ Desktop Data Manager is superb tool; providing a clipboard manager, a screenshot taking app that allows you to select regions and a reasonable download manager. I mainly use the screenshot tool at the moment. From their page: Clipboard Manager Clipboard history for a customized number of entries Separate list for CLIPBOARD (Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V) and PRIMARY ... http://www.thattommyhall.com/2008/02/17/screenshot-tool-for-gnome/ Near where I currently live in Otley is very well mapped by OSM, here is a screenshot. Compare this to google maps (Only when I did this comparison did I notice how much screen space is wasted on the left of the google maps). My first experience with the OSM online editor ... http://www.thattommyhall.com/2008/02/16/openstreetmap-vs-google-maps/ I have decided to get involved in OpenStreetMap. When asked a little while ago by someone at WYLUG I poo-pooed it, thinking that it was too big a task and seeing the little progress they had made. I am glad to say I was wrong, it is taking shape nicely now. ... http://www.thattommyhall.com/2008/02/16/openstreetmap-my-cool-new-phone/ As anyone who knows me even moderately well will know, I am an atheist. No, not an atheist. You should not describe yourself in terms of what you don't believe. I do not believe in Father Christmas so I suppose you could call me an asantaist. I am probably a ... http://www.thattommyhall.com/2008/01/06/when-will-the-age-of-reason-begin/ I am just getting a talk ready for WYLUG on python. I sent Dave the following blurb: Why I love Python: A talk on the programming language Python, in 3 parts (feel free to leave in the interludes if you have had enough) Part 1: Past, Present, Future. A bit of history and the design ... http://www.thattommyhall.com/2007/12/27/python-talk-for-wylug-ruby-envy-haskell-joy/ No blog post for a week, perhaps I am not as self important or tenacious as I think I am. I have been meaning to read Muhammad Younus's book "Banker to the Poor" for a while, I had not heard of him till he won the Nobel Peace Prize. He helped ... http://www.thattommyhall.com/2007/12/15/microfinance-and-peer-lending/ I gave a talk at the second python user group in leeds on Wednesday. It was called "Anatomy Of A Python Program - How Much Can You Do In 0.1 KLOC?". It is based on Peter Norvigs Sudoku solver. I had been thinking about doing it for WYLUG, possibly as ... http://www.thattommyhall.com/2007/12/07/second-python-user-group/ I have blogged about Nexenta before, Solaris kernel with Ubuntu userland. It is great if you are familiar with Debian/Ubuntu and want to play with the features in the solaris kernel (DTrace and ZFS got me excited). I was complaining that the www.gnusolaris.org site was quiet and then saw www.nexenta.com ... http://www.thattommyhall.com/2007/12/04/get-nexenta-now/ In the great tradition of minimising the barrior to only using free software the FSF have announced GNU PDF. This is a fully feartured PDF library for apps to view or create PDFs so you should see an Acrobat killer in your favourite distro sometime. We use Acrobat in work and ... http://www.thattommyhall.com/2007/12/03/gnu-pdf/ I have been meaning for some time to tackle the RubyQuiz problems in Python. The one from yesterday (#148) is quite interesting, taking postfix notated expressions and returning an infix version. For example 2 3 5 + * -> 2 * (3 + 5) I spoilt it a bit by reading Reverse Polish Notation ... http://www.thattommyhall.com/2007/12/01/rubyquiz-148-postfix-to-infix/ 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. ... http://www.thattommyhall.com/2007/11/29/oxfam-unwrapped/