Damon Hart-Davis: Home Page
Hi There!
This page will remain a work-in-progress...
Here are some things about me or by me or whatever; the informal 5-minute guide
to DHD!
- With a little effort, and no hardship, my family and home/office seems to
have managed to cut down to ~33% of average 2007 UK household
electricity and gas consumption
and indeed as of 2010 we're roughly net "zero carbon" for them.
I've had a lot of fun getting to understand a little better our energy consumption
and how it might evolve in the future, with us even possibly going
'carbon-negative' and becoming net exporters of energy...
- My new big project is OpenTRV
which has the modest aim of cutting the UK's entire carbon footprint by 10%
(and/or the EU's by 8%) at low cost
by halving space heating costs especially for homes
in a simple and obvious way!
- I run ExNet Ltd, a company
focussed on networked, distributed and parallel software based in
the south-west
of London (16 Willingham Way, Kingston-upon-Thames).
- See my contract work
and UK travel info
quick reference sheets.
- As of 20070427 I was an accredited UK election observer,
and used my new (not-quite-super) powers to photograph and video
the Brighton and Hove May 2007 City Council election.
- I am a daddy twice over! See, for example, some dad's notes on my children.
- See my gallery of multimedia
(mainly JPEGs) for Web sites; now one of the most popular photo/art
sites in the UK with several million vistors per year. One interesting
aspect has being developing and tuning Google's AdSense contextual ads.
As of late 2011 I've had some success
tuning the Gallery with webpagetest.org (see also blaze.io/mobile).
- I have a few Java irons in the fire, for example:
- I have written a portable tool (a couple of Java packages) for enhancing security of Java-based systems
(eg by enhancing the security of keys and session IDs for Web sites):
a pool of managed real-world noise (entropy). This EntropyPool can be used instead of or
in conjunction with SecureRandom. Look at the demo site. This tool works for J2SE and J2EE systems.
- See my very old comment to Sun on Java threading,
and my ParTasks implementation based loosely on it.
Much of this has been covered or superceded one way or another in JDK 1.5.
- I maintained one of the early Java KVM (J2ME) FAQs.
- I am a participant in Sun's Java Community Process.
- See my teaching materials.
- I give away some of the code I write in the hope that it will be useful
to others and save a few wasted hours here and there... Remember: a month
hacking code can often save an hour's reading and thinking!
- By the way, I find this public-domain list of the first 100,000 primes
really useful in day-to-day coding so I've finally put up my local copy.
- The much-attacked ``IR35'' UK tax changes have harmed my
IT consultancy business and reduced income available to pay taxes on.
It remains an act of ignorant vandalism of the creative/craftsman mode
by the politicos in the Treasury that do not understand it.
- See my old summary of IR35 material.
- As well as looking after ExNet's
Web site, I look after our family's.
- I am interested in precision network (NTP)
timekeeping.
- I am a member of the
Planetary Society
because I believe we should support interplanetary research and
exploration, including the SETI@home project and manned and unmanned exploration
of space.
- I am one of the founders of Publisher-World: the place to be for Web publishing discussions in a professional and supportive atmosphere, including money making with Google's AdSense and AdWords.
- Some of my favourite sites on the Net:
- I provide a little support to The Canon Collins Trust to help improve education in southern Africa.
- My CV.
- My mail address for work-related mail is
dhd@exnet.com.
- My mail address for personal mail is
d@hd.org.
Damon
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