Author Archives: Martin Packer

(Originally posted 2007-12-06.) This is really just a test of some Firefox Extension code of mine… but it’s kind of interesting in its own right… The following is a table containing the country-level summary of Search URLs that somehow get a reader to my blog on any given day. (I have another table ranking searchContinue reading “Where My Searches Come From”

(Originally posted 2007-11-30.) This is a great song for a great cause… I saw Queen + Paul Rodgers play this in 2005 in Hyde Park. Actually Paul did nothing – Roger Taylor sang it. 🙂 But now they’ve worked on it as part of their current studio sessions and have rushed it out – forContinue reading “A Great Song For A Great Cause”

(Originally posted 2007-11-25.) In September 1997 DFSORT Release 13 was shipped (to coincide with the release of OS/390 Release 4). It took a nice idea from Syncsort and extended it. In case you didn’t know OUTFIL allows you to read an input data set (and perhaps sort it) and write to multiple output files fromContinue reading “Memories of DFSORT OUTFIL”

(Originally posted 2007-11-25.) !Somehow I seem to have end up writing a “Memories of…” series of blog posts. That wasn’t the intention but a set of threads on IBM-MAIN Listserver got me to thinking about these nice venerable technologies – VIO, Hiperbatch, Batch LSR and Pipes. By couching these posts in terms of “memories of”Continue reading “Memories of Pipes”

(Originally posted 2007-11-22.) Thanks to Kevin Aires for pointing this out to me… “Boris in Wonderland” is a chat show in Secondlife – hosted by one Boris Frampton of IBM. Go here for the first episode. Andy Stanford-Clark (Ginger Mandelbrot in Secondlife) is interviewed about his applications and creations. The Monty Python quote “look outContinue reading “Not Boris Johnson but a Chat Show In Secondlife?”

(Originally posted 2007-11-20.) If you have any interest in novel, webby or metaverse things you’ll like the Hursley Eightbar blog.

(Originally posted 2007-11-20.) I updated my April 2007 Gameframe post. I’m not sure if the mechanism you’re using to follow my blog will’ve alerted you to this. Nothing desperately fundamental but it has been almost 7 months.

(Originally posted 2007-11-20.) My Favourite Wikipedia Page: List of fractals by Hausdorff dimension

(Originally posted 2007-11-20.) I’m very pleased to note Peggy also has a developerWorks blog. She’s one of the leading lights in DB2 Development. Her blog is here

(Originally posted 2007-11-18.) Another trip down memory lane – prompted by the thread on IBM-MAIN of Batch LSR vs Hiperbatch. Batch LSR started out as a prototype by Paul Dorn of the IBM Washington Systems Center. He was contributing to a book on writing a subsystem but also trying to solve a problem with BatchContinue reading “Memories of Batch LSR”