Monthly Archives: March 2011

Samsung Spade

Another good justification for my continued insistence on wiping all my new laptops and installing Linux on them, is that manufacturers can’t be trusted. Apart from all the bloatware and advertising crap they fill them with; apart from the fact that Windows is an appalling beast of an operating system with more security vulnerabilities than… Read More »

Weights and Measures

You have a set of balance scales and some weights. You need to be able to measure every whole number weight from 1 to 40 kilograms of (say) flour. What is the smallest number of weights you need and what are their values? The first trick is of course that you can put weights on… Read More »

UK Passport Photo Tutorial

You want a photograph for an ID. You own a DSLR (or other controllable) camera, and it’s easy to get photographs printed online. Why then should you pay over five pounds for four photographs, when you could pay 5p (at best)? The answer is that it needs a little bit of effort. This tutorial is… Read More »