Jason's Site

How many different ISP’s are there in the UK? – too many, really. However, There’s some very very bad ones, and there is also some very very good ones. I chose my ISP for many reasons, one of which was not cost. I am happy to pay extra for a better service, and a better service is what I have. There’s many things they do right, they enjoy doing it, and at least most of their customers are incredibly greatful for the quality of service they give.

Anyway, I got home from work today, and hanging in my letterbox was a package from my ISP (AAISP) I open it up, and they have sent me a gift, it is possibly common, or at least, was 10 years ago to send customers tea coasters in the form of a CD for their latest software (AOL). My gift is still a tea coaster, however it is actually a tea coaster, and not a CD. here’s what it looks like.

Well, I’m happy with my gift, partly because now I won’t get mug-rings on my desk anymore, and partly because of the comment written on it, which is very true, and why I don’t use NAT (if you don’t know how a network works, you probably have NAT!).

So this is to say Thanks to Adrian and the team at Andrews & Arnold.

(so you know, it is Laser engraved Welsh Slate)

Ok, I’m a tad angry now. BT announced earlier this year that they would be trialling FTTC in Basingstoke, Myself and a few other people I know have been waiting almost impatiently for this, due to the lack of speed and constant line drops.

The line checker to find out what connection people can get was updated with eMLC on Friday 27th, so that ISP’s could see the FTTC on the list, however, it didn’t show up for us!  Is this a mistake? Did they leave us out?

After much frustration, communicating with my (extremely helpful) ISP and a few other people, we have found out that BT are NOT enabling my Cabinet, or any of the Cabinets connecting people I know in Basingstoke, So, what/Who ARE they connecting? it seems a very small percentage (only 77 cabinets) in Basingstoke are actually going to be connected to FTTC, and most ISPs won’t even be trialling it, well, unless there’s someone on the Board of directors in town, anyway (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/30/rake_broadband/).

“In Basingstoke, for example, 50% of telephone lines are more than 6km from the exchange, and in Hampshire as a whole a quarter of postcodes get less than 1Mbps.” (Source:BBC : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8068676.stm)

Logic and common sense would dictate that one would update the cabinets in the areas already well known for poor broadband, like Hatch Warren, Beggarwood and Chineham, but no!  They are installing cabinets in a lot of areas with already reasonable coverage, What sense does this make?

Myself and a few other people in Basingstoke, some who run businesses or work from home have vented our frustration to the person in Basingstoke & Dean Council, who is liaising with BT/Openreach of the roll-out in Basingstoke. We have also been in contact with the Gazette’s news desk. by this afternoon people were getting the response of “you as well, huh?”

Anyone in Basingstoke wanting to vent about this, in-fact, even if you are not particularly interested in having high speed FTTC, but think others should be entitled to have vaguely decent internet in Basingstoke (where, of course most places get less than 2Mb), Then Please. Contact Andy and the Gazette – I won’t put their numbers on here, but you can ask me for them and I shall reveal all, The more people that complain about this the sooner they come to their senses and actually do a REAL trial.

J

well, There’s been a lot of articles about Windows 7 Vs Ubuntu, but I have found all of them completely uninteresting. For starters, most people don’t particularly care if their system takes 35 seconds (ubuntu) or 48 seconds (windows) to boot. because it takes at least 3 Minutes to boil the kettle. Anyway, those that know me, know that I am rather bias towards Linux. However, in this view I will try and be as un-bias is I can. I did say “Try”. A lot of the articles on the internet about Windows Vs Linux doesn’t step on the most important part for any normal user, not the geeks, I’m talking Joe Bloggs sitting at home. or – My Girlfriend who doesn’t really care what they’re system has, as long as it works.

First of all, Lets look at the Default Desktop of each. The default Windows Desktop does look very nice, from an “eye candy” approach. of course, Linux can be skinned to look just like it, but I’m going to focus on the out-of-the-box experience, look and feel, applications, and usability.

Let’s ignore the Eye-Candy for a moment. Both desktops pretty much have the same features, Both allow you to have a background of your choosing, both display a clock, both have a menu and both have a taskbar. so let’s call them about even there.

On the Application front, Ubuntu does win hands down. with the default install including Office applications, Internet Chat client for almost every known chat service and a web browser, where Windows includes it’s Internet Explorer, MSN Client, and no office Applications. however, if you are writing the odd document, Microsofts Wordpad is sufficiant. If, however, you do want more office applications on your Windows platform you can go out and buy Microsoft Office, alternatively Open Office is available for Windows for free as a download, so you don’t have to spend a lot of money for it. Finding and installing software is very painless on Ubuntu, with it’s new Ubuntu Software Centre, this is laid out very nicely for non-technical users, and is as simple as clicking on the application you want and clicking “Install”. This is something Windows is still lacking, however, at least you can go to the shop and buy software and know that it will work.

Firewalling is quite important these days. despite most people using a NAT network (which I won’t get into how much I hate, right now) . Windows Firewall is quite aggressive, and the difference between “Public”, “Work” and “Home” networks can sometimes be unclear. for instance, if you have a system at home, and want to share files between the computers, you actually want to choose a “Work” setup, otherwise you can’t share those files. Ubuntu however has it’s firewall set to allow everything by default. I still don’t like this fact, and if anything at the least it should only allow Related packets in by default, This is a trivial thing to do in setup. yes, Linux is a lot more secure than Windows, however, Nothing is secure without a firewall. one thing I would like to see installed by default in Ubuntu is a firewall builder that is User Friendly – and they do exist, and they’re in the package manager, so in my opinion from a “default” install Windows is better here, despite it’s options being confusing. but all Ubuntu would need is 2 firewall rules, and changing the Default for INPUT, and they would then be about even.

Lets move to Hardware support. This is something that a lot of older windows users look at with glee. but they shouldn’t. There is still a lot of people that believe “Linux doesn’t support much hardware” – well, actually this isn’t true, it does, right from the oldest SCSI scanner you have up to the latest greatest Graphics and sound cards, and everything in between. However, Windows has very good hardware support for alot of the latest devices, but not so much for older hardware. However, if you are buying a new computer (and if you’re thinking about Windows 7, you probably will be) then actually, it makes little difference between the 2. most devices that people have will work on both latest Operating Systems. Like Camera’s, Card Readers, ETC. Bluetooth Mice and keyboards work without any issues in both Windows and Ubuntu, and are equilly easy to configure. Likewise for connecting to Wireless networks or University 802.1x encrypted networks. these things are easy to do in both.

When deciding which of these Operating systems you should go for. ask yourself these 2 questions: 1) am I buying a new computer anyway, 2) what do I want to do with the computer. These questions play an important part in the choices. Let me explain, If you are not buying a new computer, then make sure Windows 7 will work with all your hardware, if it won’t then you might want to think again. Secondly, what you’re doing with your computer is very important. If you are going to be playing the latest greatest games, then you probably don’t want Ubuntu. although Game support on this is getting better, Unfortunately persuading game manufacturers that they should be writing games for Linux/Ubuntu is a rather difficult argument and is generally stuck in Catch-22 (there’s few games for Linux so people don’t play games / don’t use Linux, people don’t use Linux because of the lack of games) Working for a company that writes software for a multitude of platforms, I really can’t see their argument for not doing it. If you’re just going to be browsing the Internet, then actually it doesn’t matter which one you choose. Facebook works on both.

So, Which one is right for me?

Yes. that’s my answer, “Yes” – they both are. they really are both very close to each other. If you want to install and straight away write documents and use spreadsheets, Use Ubuntu, if you want to install and play games, use Windows. it really doesn’t matter. The only note I will point out, is that if you chose the Ubuntu route, then from the Software Centre, Install “Firewall Configurator” (gufw for the more advanced users) , run it, click “Enabled” and set the default to “Deny” and you’re good to go. this will configure the firewall up so nothing gets in, but anything you do won’t be blocked. advanced users will be configuring their own firewalls, so isn’t a big issue for them.

Whichever one you choose to install, I hope you enjoy your experience.

And, Apologies to those that were looking for more argumentative points in one direction or another, I’m trying to approach this one from a usable state, and not with “this one is better because…” this argument has been going on long enough, and there is room for both of these operating systems in todays world of computers.

Jason

Well, it was going to happen sooner or later, my first crash of a Helicopter, and this weekend, it did.

I had bought myself a small electric Helicopter, these tend to be harder to control than the larger petrol ones, so figured it was a good thing to use to push myself a little more. hovering it was fine, I can do that, it’s not a problem. I had a day of flying on Saturday, having bought an extra battery for the electric, so I had 2 batteries for that, and got through a tank of fuel on the Nexus. having re-charged one of the batteries for the electric, I started to push a little more, I was doing small-low circuits with it before, this time I started going a bit faster, as it came in fast, I pulled back to slow it down, and the rotors hit the tail boom and down to the floor it came… it took me a moment to work out what had just happened, I’m still not sure why exactly it did that, as it shouldn’t. but new parts are ordered, that’s only £20 – and it should be flying again by Tuesday (internet orders, have to wait for delivery – ho humm) – all I can say is, I’m damn glad it wasn’t the Nexus, because then I’d have been seriously gutted. I just have to work out why it hit itself once it’s re-built.

On Sunday, I went back up the airfield, this time only with the Nexus. Neil gave me some spacers, so I could put my nice new Carbon Fibre rotor blades on – and they look really nice! once they were on, I had a quick hover, but there was a couple of issues, the tracking of the blades was out, and the head speed was too high, well first job is to get the tracking roughly right, with a guage, next step is to get the head speed slowed down, and then to finely adjust the tracking. while sorting the head speed (we wanted this at 1750 RPM – as this is “optimum” for these rotors) we got it right, and I made a mental note of the display of my receiver so I knew exactly where to set the “max” power. – if you’re interested that was 55% throttle. job done, so move the collective stick down and…. wait… it’s not doing anything… I have no control at all. The Heli had decided to turn the electrics off! so, my toy that I really enjoy was now a sitting duck, with rotors spinning at 1750 RPM, engine running, and no control! Neil ran round telling everyone that the machine was there and has no control, and all we could do was wait for it to run out of fuel… and 30 minutes later it finally did. fortunately the pitch was still too low for it to get off the ground, but had the wind picked up, it could have gone anywhere.

The good news is that I did get the settings for the head speed – though, this will change slightly once it’s in the air, and there’s some friction on the rotors. but it’s roughly there. I have sorted the switching off problem (seems the switch was faulty – and was hard to turn on, but very easy to turn off again – just a light touch and it went off, so it most likely vibrated to the “off” position.

Next I need to sort the tracking out, and check my Gyro. the Gyro has been a hard thing to setup, but little point in messing with it until everything is set up right, otherwise you only end up changing the gyro again. though, I might replace this with a better one before long.

all in all, a bad flying weekend. however. I learnt more. I stayed calm when there were big problems (and dangerous problems) and I’ve had my first crash. I’m sure there will be many many more, I just hope not with the Nexus!

Thanks to Neil for his help. was much appreciated.

J

Well, a couple of nights ago, I started toying with Brainfuck, for no reason other than I was just bored.

I was talking to a colleague about a Brainfuck interpreter on my Nintendo Wii, this was just a little bit of fun, but yesterday, he couldn’t sleep, as some of you may know, I work for a company that writes an APL Interpreter, so we’re not new to strange languages. What’s more obscure than APL, well, there’s loads of them, and Brainfuck is one of these. But how could we make use of obscure languages together? well, as Nic couldn’t sleep, he decided to write a Brainfuck Interpreter…. in APL…

For those that don’t know Brainfuck, here’s “Hello World!” in Brainfuck.
++++++++++[>+++++++>++++++++++>+++>+<<<<-]>++.>+.+++++++..+++.>++.<<+++++++++++++++.>.+++.------.--------.>+.>.

I’m not going to show all the code in here for the Brainfuck interpreter, as it would make my post huge, but it’s here (note, this doens’t actually show what APL can do, and makes it look like a procedural language.)

because APL Uses it’s own Character set you may need Apl385-Unicode font to actually read some of the code. that can be grabbed from the download area on http://www.dyalog.com

In the mean-time, here’s a quick screenshot of Brainfuck in APL in action:

And in the interest of saving some arguments, some will point out that ⎕←’Hello World!’ is _NOT_ Hello world in APL – I used this to show the same output – as interpreted, this is ok, as a program, I agree. it isn’t. – also note that I shortened the function name to “bf” just because that was easier to type :-)

Who knows. Maybe the “bf” function will be included in Dyalog. just for a little bit of fun. Well, it is, isn’t it! :-)

Jay.

Well, I’ve not posted for a while. and there’s good reason too. I’m always a big fan of Technology, the way it’s moving and what it brings with it. The Internet is one of those things that has been moving relatively rapidly (though maybe not so much for the normal home-user). However with my ISP, I do get to test some nice connections (sometimes) and connect to test networks, with test routers and so on. I even run a router that I have written a bit of code for, so that I can run my IPv6, VPN links, Fail-over connections & some customised routes (including a tunnel system to have IPv6 on my laptop no matter where I am in the world).

Anyway, For those that don’t know, In the UK most of the lines are supplied by BT, This means if you want internet you can choose any supplier you want, but many of them will be using BT lines to your house, and BT equipment to hook it all up. This, however isn’t too bad, or rather, Wasn’t. BT have been rolling out their 21CN network, which I am connected to, this is supposed to be next generation ADSL, when it was first installed, it was OK, and around a month ago it became unusable. My ISP (AAISP) has been attacking BT regarding this problem, and I’m not alone with the problem, there seemed to be a number of people on my exchange that had the same problem. this is what I get on my line:

The Green bars (going up) ar latency on the line, the higher that bar, the slower things are to respond.
The Red bars (going down) are loss on the line – the lower this bar the less things that get to you
The White is a line disconnect
and the green dots are download (from the internet), and reddish-brown is upload (to the internet)

As you can see, if I tried to download anything I got latency (went slow) packet loss (things just didn’t get to me) and line drops. not to mention my download speek was around 50K if I was lucky on a 4mb line. BT have access to these graphs, and persisted for a very long time that there was nothing wrong with the line. Anyway, a couple of nights ago, they admitted there was a problem, and nailed it down to a Cisco IOS bug in some of their routers, and they did some test work on my exchange / BRAS last night, this took them around 45 minutes and all of a sudden my line was alot better. and I could download at my full speed.

This problem with BT (along with a few others) that seem to show just how incompetent BT are at times has pushed my ISP to look into other  wholesale LLU providers, as an extra option on the BT infrustructure. Although I’m not exactly a fan of some LLU providers from what I’ve seen of BT, could they possibly be worse? probably not.

just to note: this isn’t the case that this problem existed, I can deal with that, technology has it’s problems. What I can’t deal with, is companies like BT that have sole control over fixing them, saying there isn’t a problem when they have been given the evidence to show that there is a problem.

I will be looking forward to the FTTC rollout, and will be testing it. Lets hope BT can do a better job with that than they have done with 21CN

———————–
edit:
BT Have finally fixed my line (actually they did this last week) and everything has been working again, and of-course I’m getting my full download-speeds again. still – I’m waiting for FTTC and my ISP have signed up for Be* LLU wholesale – so I may switch to this to get away from BT for a short while. – This turned out to not be a bug in the code, but they had over filled the pipes from Basingstoke…. Thanks BT, Nice going…

I have not really been around much at home the last few weeks, but I have been on test equipment for my Internet at home with Andrews and Arnold. Today while running through some tests with them I noticed a lot of traffic on my Internet line. Instantly flipping into the mode of “I must sort this” I started searching for clues about what’s going on with the traffic.

I closed all the connections I had open between home and work, and opened a fresh connection and started scanning the traffic, this was around 100 different IP’s all trying to talk to a single IP on my network. However, this was around 10AM, and the system in question (a laptop) had not even been at the house since around 8AM. knowing this, I started to scan the office network, and had the same traffic going to the same machine. This told me I had a machine that was part of a bot-net, so started searching for clue’s on the system without it connected to the network.

3 different virus scanners and 4 malware scanners later I was still scratching my head, and these had taken around 5 hours to complete. so I enabled some more network monitoring, and started monitoring traffic on the laptop at the same time, plugged in the network cable. Instantly all the traffic started again, and this time I had flags to tell me what programs were using this traffic on the system, which told me it was Skype. Closing skype, the traffic all went away.

I hunted around the internet for a short while, and there were not many clues as to a rogue skype client and after to a couple of people I found out that this is by design. Skype talks to everyone it possibly can, and peers calls through other people too. Skype then, have created a very large P2P network, saving them money on servers and bandwidth. Good for them…. maybe….

If you try and block Skype from accessing the Internet, it will use port 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS) – you can’t block these, as then you can’t browse the Internet. so there’s no real way of blocking Skype, short of blocking everything, or removing it from the system. So here’s where I’m at; Skype will gain access to the Internet by whatever means necessary (RFC2549?) it communicates with every possible other Skype client it can find, and is controlled at a central location (server). for those that don’t know – This is exactly the behaviour of a Bot-net.

some security implications;- this is where it gets slightly fun. Lets say you have Skype, and you wish to call your mum for a chat. Because of the way the system is designed, if there is a blockage on a direct route, it will peer through someone else (each sending and out-going connection to the Peer) let’s say I’m this Peer (and no, I don’t keep disconnecting your session – that’s another peer). So now you’re talking to your mum, and everything seems fine. But with the right software on my system, I can capture the packets that Skype is sending (which I did earlier today) I can then inject those packets into another application, and make it give me the audio from those packets, so I can listen to your conversation. I also have the IP Address of your system, and I have the IP Address of your mums system. I can now start scanning your system(s) to gain access to them, maybe there is a way to make a Skype client that will give me forced entry into your system if you try and peer through me, injecting your system with more virus’s. (This would require deep packet injection, and Skype should be protected against this – but who knows.)

The other issue, at least for me, is I am on a bandwidth limited network, Mostly through choice, I’m not a heavy bandwidth user, but I want lots of specific features. so people making calls through my network uses my bandwidth, which I’m then charged for.

Skype however has no way of turning this option off, it has a (hidden) way of turning it off being a Super-node, this doesn’t eliminate all the traffic, only some of it. and don’t think you’ll be OK because you have NAT – you’re not, and it might be harder to monitor where it’s going from & to.

At 2PM The traffic was still on-going at home. That’s 6 hours after the machine was removed from the network. so my ISP has now blocked all traffic coming to me on that IP Address (I have 30 Routable IP Address’s, and no NAT) I have bodged my DHCP Server to not give that IP to any systems on my network. and I will release all this in 2 days. I’m not talking a trickle of traffic, there was around 20KB/s, which might not sound a lot, but it soon adds up.

The Conclusion here, is Skype has been written to act in the same way that a virus / bot-net works. Will I ever use it again? no. and I will block all traffic to anyone’s laptop if they try and use it on any of the networks I manage. So if you’re coming over anytime soon, and want to have Internet access for more than a few minutes, I suggest removing Skype before connecting to my network. :-)

I have played Online RolePlay games for many years, from well known games like World of Warcraft and Guildwars to games that are not so well known like PlaneShift and Auteria. All of these games have good points and bad points, however, these points also change often.

This is mostly about the 3 I have played most of all in the last few years. Firstly, I didn’t play World of Warcraft for very long, because I completely disagree with going to the shops to buy a game, and then having to pay to play that game every month aswell, (note, I wouldn’t mind getting the game for nothing, and paying a small fee to play online, I understand there are maintenance costs). Guild Wars you pay once for, and then play online when and if you feel like it, Auteria and PlaneShift are both free (but not the same type of free). Here’s a short run down of things that I did and didn’t like about the games (I’m not including World of Warcraft on here, as I didn’t play it for long enough to have a real opinion)

PlaneShift: http://www.planeshift.it/

Planeshift is Open Source (though you may not use the Art-Work from Planeshift) this is a good point, because it’s already “community” based. some very nice graphics, though the animations could do with some more work. There is always something to do in Yliakum, and many skills to learn. Planeshift is very heavily orientated around the Role Play, including spending hours in the Tavern, though they have recently added a second server that is for the people that don’t really want to do the Role-Playing. You can very easily just run around and kill creatures in Planeshift, but I think most would get bored of that relatively quickly. Training skills, selling items, and Role-Playing brings this game to life. I, Myself am a blacksmith in Planeshift, Mostly because Tailoring wasn’t an option when I started (I’m not sure it’s implemented yet, I would have to check)

If you want to learn to do some very good Role Playing, I would recommend Planeshift, with lots of role-playing going on here, and Jobs for people to do as well as killing the creatures. There are also many quests here, and some of them are quite tough with riddles and longer answers than just a “yes” or “no” which require communicating with other players, finding your way around the maps and learning where different NPC’s are. (Though you must be in-character when asking for help if asking in the Main channel out-of-character conversations don’t go down very well here).

Pros:

Free
Excellent story line with individual (Role-Played) stories from other players / characters
Great Role-playing
Challenging quests (yes, this is a good thing)
Many skills and levels to learn
Ability to purchase guild/safe houses
Grouped Role-Play world events

Cons:

Server can be a little unstable under load
Some area’s of the maps are sluggish due to trying to load too many items (even on fast systems)
Some listed skills are not yet implemented
Sometimes a little overly concerned about the Role-Playing
Some skills take a long time to learn and can get a little boring.
Character movement can feel sluggish

Score 8/10

Auteria: http://www.auteria.com/

So far, this is my favourite to play at the moment, Despite the lack of “Role-Playing” when in the game, the community is very good, and the developers have worked hard on making the game work. The Chat section of this game is a separate server, as is each map area. this mean when one of them goes down for some reason (very rarely happens, but I have seen it once) the rest of the game still works. However, if your character is in the area that has crashed, or you try to travel there, you end up in a timeout loop, and have to wait for the server to come back.

Like Planeshift there are many skills to learn here, and maybe more here than there is in Planeshift. Almost everything you get that is not a form of raw material you are able to make with the appropriate skills, some Items require multiple skills, for instance some armour will require you to do some Blacksmith work, as well as some tailoring. Though the skills are not tailored around the community making and selling to other players, this does happen a lot still. There is also many things to do here, it’s very hard to get bored, a lot of skills to learn, a huge amount of quests, and when all else fails, there’s probably some pig-racing going on somewhere.

At the moment, the game is still very quiet, it doesn’t have many players yet, but it’s also still quite new and not very well advertised. I’m sure this will change over time, and new players are always well greeted with other players offering help and items to get them started.

Pros:

Free
Excellent Community
Great fun to play
Lots of quests (some easy and some hard)
Events happening pretty much weekly (sometimes more)
Lots of skills to learn
Endless levels

Cons:

Not many players yet
not a lot of Role-Playing

score 9/10

Guild Wars: http://www.guildwars.com/

Guild Wars is a good game if what you want to do is run around and kill things, that’s about all there is to do – really, you have missions which can be challenging but the point is really to progress by attack. however, the “community” in Guild Wars was not so great in with my experience of the game, people rarely talked to each other, and there was never more said than “do people want to join my team” (to go out and attack). This said, it is fun to play when you want to ignore the world, and just run around killing things for a bit. It has a very large map, and takes a lot of time to get through the game.

In Guild Wars you only see other players in Towns, when you are running around the maps outside of the towns you don’t see any other players unless you are grouped with them. I think this has a big effect on the lack of communication in the game, and does push people into silently playing the game.

Pros:

Good value for money
fun to play
outstanding graphics

Cons:

Poor story line
very poor community
no interaction with other players outside of towns
only has attack / defense skills

Score: 6/10

Conclusion:

For anyone wanting to try out any of these games I would recommend trying at least PlaneShift and Auteria. and of the 2 it would very much depend on your personal preference of games. If you prefer role-playing, Planeshift would come very highly recommended, if you’re looking for a good community and a good game, I would recommend Auteria. However both are very good games to play. I would only recommend Guild Wars if what your looking for is to ignore the world and just go and kill things.

Bare in mind, the 2 games that I highly recommend are both still under development, so there is quite often updates to the games, and things can change qutie dramatically without much warning. However, they are the most fun games I’ve played and both have kept me occupied for more than a year each. Guild Wars only had me glued to the screen for a couple of months.

If you try these out, I wish you the best of luck, and if you want to speak to me in game (mostly Auteria at the moment) then I am Mohero

— Comments disabled on this post due to too many spam messages in my inbox every morning.

Hi to all that read,

The company I work for along with a few other companies are now running a world-wide programming contest, with a nice prize to win at the end of $2000 plus a trip to our conference in Princeton, New Jersey in September. For those that don’t know, I work for a company called Dyalog LTD, they are a programming company creating an APL Interpriter.

This competition will be very good for anyone with a good mathematical mind, and for all people that would like to know more about the fantastic APL Language, be warned, it’s hard to get into, but very cool once you’ve cracked the code! For more information on the competition, you can look here, and for your copy of Dyalog APL to get started with the competition, you can apply for a student license here, or if you’re not a student and would like a non-commercial license, look here.

The competition requires completing some problems found on the Project Euler website These are very mathmatical problems, and must be completed in APL. Unfortunately I can’t enter it, (or at least not win) which is a shame, as it would be a good learning curve for my APL. I also can’t help any of you with the problems. but if you would like to enter, I can assure you the Conference in Princeton will be very good for anyone getting into APL. (and APL is a good thing to get into ;-) )

Enjoy, and I hope some of you that read this do have a look into the competition, and give it a go.

J

It doesn’t take much to please me, infact, it takes very little. So, I guess I’m a simple person.

There’s various things you can do whilst bored on the Internet, one thing that crops up on occasion is searching for yourself on Google, and then picking one of the first 3 hits as your “double”

looking at the logs on my website, I noticed there was a google search for me, “Jason Rivers” and I thought, wow, how far did they have to search for that! so I had a look and searched me on Google. Turns out I’m 9th on Google so, hopefully not long before I am myself.

Well, nice short one for now, more later… when I can be bothered to sit at the screen for a little longer :)

J