Riemann's Hypothesis

I'm most productive in the morning, so in my calendar I block out all time before midday for me to actual do technical work (as opposed to attending meetings / managing people).

This works generally well, except for people who think they're too important to honour previously made calendar commitments :-( Anyway, back to the story...

The key is to say in your calendar booking that you're doing something important. Something that your manager / other workers won't want to distract you from doing. As many people at work have at least some technical bent, I need task names that sound deeply technical - something that at least sounds worthwhile and something they are unlikely to know very much about. That way I can get back into the zone writing code undisturbed.

So my solution has been to use some theoretical computer terms combined with some mathematical problems. Afterall, who's going to argue with a calendar entry that says, "Verify distributed grid for solving Riemann's Hypothsis". Laugh all you like - that (recurring) calendar entry stood the test of time for the last 6 months.

That was, until today.

My manager googled and found this - http://www.coolissues.com/mathematics/Zeta/zeta.htm - "Now I've saved you 3 hours every week"

Damn you Google! I now need a new fake calendar entry for Tuesday mornings :-)

tech/misc | 16 Dec 2005 | #

19 Inch Dell LCD

Just took delivery at work today of a new Dell 19" LCD display. While I lose resolution (1280x1024 compared to the 1600x1200 of the CRT had beforehand) the clarity difference is amazing.

I'm still running dual head, with a Dell 19" Trinitron CRT next to the LCD. What was very acceptible yesterday is becoming unacceptible today - i.e. moving back and forward between an LCD and CRT makes my eyes hurt.

Fortunately both monitors have dual inputs, meaning that as well as the desktop being dual head, I can go dual head with my laptop too. And that still leaves one more VGA cable to cater for the spare Linux box sitting under the desk.

So I have a 19" LCD and a 19" CRT as the eyes for my main desktop development machine; a spare Linux box to do some auditing; and a laptop. It's getting to be a nice setup.

tech/gadgets | 16 Dec 2005 | #