Category: Misc

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Vespa Search Engine

I just heard that Oath have released the Vespa Search Engine open source. When I was in Yahoo! it was used for everything. I predict that a company will exist in a few months selling it as a service.

I think Vespa was one of the best written pieces of infrastructure at Yahoo! that I worked on. It was well documented for an internal app and it was blazingly fast. The guys working on it were also super smart. It will be interesting to see where it goes but I think it will be a contender in the search space

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Making Oil paint – Demo at Los Altos Art Club

I did a demo at Los Altos Art Club making oil paint. It was good fun and everyone there got to use the mull to see just how hard it can be to push it around on the glass slab. I was originally going to mull some watercolor as well but the cleanup of both would have taken the demo well past the hour so I decided to just do oil. I picked Burnt Umber since it makes lovely paint with linseed oil and nothing else.

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Find powers of 3

I saw this question somewhere and thought I’d jot down an answer. I’m sure there’s a bit twiddling method to do this but I think this is about as fast as you’re going to get…

  int power_of_3(uint32_t n) {
    switch(n) {
      case 1: return 1;break;
      case 3: return 1;break;
      case 9: return 1;break;
      case 27: return 1;break;
      case 81: return 1;break;
      case 243: return 1;break;
      case 729: return 1;break;
      case 2187: return 1;break;
      case 6561: return 1;break;
      case 19683: return 1;break;
      case 59049: return 1;break;
      case 177147: return 1;break;
      case 531441: return 1;break;
      case 1594323: return 1;break;
      case 4782969: return 1;break;
      case 14348907: return 1;break;
      case 43046721: return 1;break;
      case 129140163: return 1;break;
      case 387420489: return 1;break;
      case 1162261467: return 1;break;
      case 3486784401: return 1;break;
    };  
    return 0;
  }
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Self Portrait WIP

This is a self portrait that’s about half way complete. I did two of these side by side one of which I did while using the reference upside down to see what it would look like.

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Started Painting

I painted for the first time tonight. The last time I remember painting I was in primary school in Mrs Orrs class with those cheap childrens paints. Tonight was no different, I bought some paint for the kids to create some paintings for Jenny for her Birthday which was fun and messy for all concerned.

Anyway, I’ve always wanted to try painting so after a few beers I had enough courage to try it, I painted a cartoon like snowman, it looks awful but I loved every minute of it. It was a strange feeling to just go at it. I might eventually post the painting here but it’s truly bad, maybe when I can actually paint I’ll have enough courage not to care.

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Ziff Davis Spam House

For quite some time I have been receiving rubbish emails on various topics and they all originate from Ziff Davis. I have never subscribed to any of these so called magazine or whatever they are, they have obviously bought some email list that I was unlucky enough to have been on and then automatically subscribed me to every email list under the sun. This is extremely irritating. I’ve written an email to the following people to unsubscribe me.

aimee_levine@ziffdavis.com
andrew_garcia@ziffdavis.com
angelo_mandarano@ziffdavis.com
appscout@ziffdavis.com
askloyd@ziffdavis.com
barry_harrigan@ziffdavis.com
baseline@ziffdavis.com
cameron_sturdevant@ziffdavis.com
caton@ziffdavis.com
chris_maginn@ziffdavis.com
chris_primesberger@ziffdavis.com
darryl_taft@ziffdavis.com
Debra_Olchick@ziffdavis.com
Debra_Olchick@ziffdavis.com
dennis_barker@ziffdavis.com
dennis_fisher@ziffdavis.com
elda_vale@ziffdavis.com
eric_lundquist@ziffdavis.com
Evan_Schuman@ziffdavis.com
events@ziffdavis.com
eWEEK@ziffdavis.com
garcia@ziffdavis.com
gearlog@ziffdavis.com
info@ziffdavis.com
jason_freidenfelds@ziffdavis.com
jeffrey_burt@ziffdavis.com
joe_wilcox@ziffdavis.com
john_mccormick@ziffdavis.com
Karl_Elken@ziffdavis.com
kelli_turtz@ziffdavis.com
kristin_holmes@ziffdavis.com
larryseltzer@ziffdavis.com
lfreeman@ziffdavis.com
Martha_Schwartz@ziffdavis.com
Mary_behr@ziffdavis.com
mary_hart@ziffdavis.com
matthew_graven@ziffdavis.com
Matthew_rothenberg@ziffdavis.com
Nicholas_mokhoff@ziffdavis.com
opportunities@ziffdavis.com
peter_coffee@ziffdavis.com
phil_kramer@ziffdavis.com
Phil_Kramer@ziffdavis.com
ppereira@ziffdavis.com
randy_zane@ziffdavis.com
sandra_gibson@ziffdavis.com
Sheena_Mohan@ziffdavis.com
Sloan_Seymour@ziffdavis.com
stan_gibson@ziffdavis.com
Stephen_Veith@ziffdavis.com
Since the bots will eventually pick this up I hope they get the same enjoyment from their own Spamming techniques as I have.