Adam's computing page

Amongst many other things, I'm a self-confessed geek and yep, I enjoy it. I've fooled most of my friends into thinking I'm a fairly normal guy ... ha ha, if only they knew.

Software I have written (it's all free!)
My PGP public key.

Art in computing

The best computer-oriented creations out there are sometimes so unbelievably clever as to make them breathtakingly beautiful; in fact when you consider that the only real reasons some of them exist are the enjoyment of creating and appreciating them, perhaps they even become worthy of being called art.

Obfuscated programming and Perl Golf tournaments are both in this vein. They're also good excuses to write cryptic gibberish which noone understands :-)

My obfuscated Perl .sigs.
A song I wrote about Perl.
A haiku I wrote about hex-editing.
Dynamically generated charts for Perl Golf tournaments.
My and Chris Cladingboel's joint entry to the 3rd Annual Obfuscated Perl Competition. Our entry got ignored (rather unfairly, we thought, given the comments in our PROBLEMS file) through abuse of the whitespace rules. Here are the original files.

Computing I like

As a wise person once said (I think it was Beavis, or Butthead), "you gotta have the right tool for the job". Here are some tools I like.

I use two of these Kinesis Contoured Essential keyboards (one at work, one at home). Not only have they saved both my careers from RSI, but they're much more comfortable and convenient to use. 6 keys on each thumb! Workrave (and previously xwrits) helps ensure I take regular breaks from typing.
Here's a Java applet I adapted to compare the typing efficiency of various keyboard layouts.
Bits of my CVS repository available via cvsweb.
My Ruby page.
Wondering how to get more out of your UNIX shell?
My zsh page.
Some of my configuration files:
- for zsh
- for mutt
Why I believe using tabs in source code is often a bad idea.
My Palm page.
My page about sawfish - my favourite window manager.
Some screenshots of my X11 desktops, which are usually out of date.
My Linux on the IBM ThinkPad 390E page.

Computing I do NOT like

The fat cats sitting at the top of some of the world's largest companies are beginning to realise that the growth of the internet brings a power to the people which could topple them or at least substantially shrink their overgrown wallets. So they gang together under organisations such as the RIAA and MPAA and team up with their buddies in high places to create legislation such as the DMCA.
You can help! Please support the EFF!
Some proprietary systems, when they are produced and supported by companies with the principal motivation of sustaining a full or partial monopoly in that solution-space, so that they can dictate what users have available and what they pay. Often they employ fairly foul tactics deliberately in order to drive away any competition, rather than encouraging a meritocracy.

This site powered by cat and ^D. Editors are for wimps.

Actually that's a lie. I used GNU emacs, GNU make, and htmlpp ...