Category Archives: Uncategorized

(Originally posted 2007-03-20.) My good friend Linda August (of the IBM Washington Systems Center and previously of the global Performance Management team I was a member of) has written a very good paper (and an accompanying presentation she gave at SHARE in February). The theme is highly topical: The management of uniprocessor LPARs. Topical becauseContinue reading “An Excellent Paper on Uniprocessor Performance Management”

(Originally posted 2007-03-20.) I guess I must be part of the “ungrateful peasant” generation of computer geeks… I never really liked FORTRAN. And now John Backus who led the team that developed it is dead. For me the elegance of other languages biased my view – but that’s to miss the point: FORTRAN preceded them.Continue reading “John Backus RIP”

(Originally posted 2007-03-18.) Some time ago a colleague pointed Scratch out to me. It’s a programming environment for children. When I was a kid I kind of learnt programming from the Elsevier Monographs my Dad had on his bookshelf. He (who’s probably going to read this) gave them to me for safekeeping some time ago.Continue reading “Scratch – A Great Way To Teach Children Programming”

(Originally posted 2007-03-18.) Here’s an interesting BBC News Article: Vehicle warning system trialled. So let me see now, when we said the fridge would talk to the microwave – as everything would have an IP address – did we really envisage that they would Twitter? 🙂 Can you imagine “The Bloggings of an uncleaned fridge?”Continue reading “Not Just People Twittering – Vehicles As Well”

(Originally posted 2007-03-17.) Here’s a useful contribution to the debate about Twitter: From a friend’s blog. There’s much mileage in the comments – which is where the action really hots up. 🙂 Actually her blog is in general a good read – but maybe I’m biased as she’s a friend of mine. She’s a WebContinue reading “Twittering and Blogging”

(Originally posted 2007-03-16.) Twice the “128GB” question has come up in newsgroups (the latest in DB2-L). This sort of thing freaks people out – so let me tell you what I know of the matter… I was fortunate to attend the T3 for DB2 9 in February. This question came up in the context ofContinue reading “DB2 9 Memory Requirements”

(Originally posted 2007-03-14.) On Twitter I once followed Steve Wozniak – but it turned out not to be him. 😦 Now I’m following John Edwards (and it really does appear to be him). See his Twitter page. I say “it does appear to be him” because the twitterings seem to support that conclusion, plus thereContinue reading “Famous Names on Twitter – And Is It Going To Change The Face Of Politics?”

(Originally posted 2007-02-24.) I’m writing this in the back of a taxi – on my way to Heathrow. (A 3G card for my Thinkpad was waiting for me when I got home yesterday.) My conclusion is that we live somewhere “sufficiently rural” as I’ve lost signal once. (That was between us and Henley.) Any moreContinue reading “3G Card and Sufficient Rurality”

(Originally posted 2007-02-23.) Whichever it is, here’s my Twitter badge. Feel free to befriend. 🙂 http://twitter.com/flash/twitter_badge.swffollow martinpacker at http://twitter.com

(Originally posted 2007-02-18.) Whatever one’s feelings about the definitiveness of Wikipedia a lot of people find themselves there, looking for information. Having twice anonymously edited articles – in one case to correct an error, in the other to add a minor snippet – I finally succumbed to the urge to get an ID. So myContinue reading “Wikipedia”