Andy Balaam

Technical things that interest me, including progress in my various open source projects.

A place for Christians, nearly-Christians, ex-Christians, and anyone else who's interested, to talk about our lives with and without God. Some highlights: What Job said, Horror and the absence of God, On attempting to comb God's hair.

Articles and papers on software engineering and artificial evolution of neural networks, published in Overload and ECAL among others.

A TV guide program that allows you to find programmes you are interested in quickly, and ignore the rest (Java, Swing, XML). See also XMLTV, to which I have contributed code, mainly to improve FreeGuide, which depends on it (Perl, XML).

A music player that remembers where you were and restarts at the same place. It does not store a database of all your music, but is designed to work with music files organised into directories (C, Gtk+, GNOME).

An interactive command-line diff program that allows you to edit files as you compare them (Python, Curses).

NNDB's Not a Database - a C++ library that provides in-memory data storage and retrieval using syntax that is intended to feel natural for C++/STL, but which also might feel slightly like SQL if you squint and pound the top of your head with a seminal programming textbook. To support this I developed the ForEachType class template and contributed it to Loki (C++, STL, BOOST, Loki).

Quick and Dirty Sync - no fuss: just make two directories the same (Python).

A maze game with a duck that can move walls (Python, PyGame).

A classic snake game that doesn't feature any of the extra features, bonuses, wrap-around levels or any such frivolities (Python, PyGame).

Destroy London's most famous andmarks in order to make a flat surface for your rapidly-losing-height spaceship to land. Do all this using a single finger (C, Gtk+, GNOME).

Write programs to play a simple light cycle game and participate in competitions (Python, PyGame).

A picture-zooming game for 2-year-olds (Genie, GNOME).

Interactive GCC - a real-eval-print loop for C/C++ (Python, GCC).

A simple web-based contact manager that lets an individual or a family manage their contacts from anywhere (PHP, SQL).

Explore the mandelbrot set in a snackish way (Processing, Java).

CCGtk - a CruiseControl status applet for Linux. (Python, GNOME/GTK).

A library to parallelise a Genetic Algorithm developed by Ian Macinnes with help from me (C++, SQL).

Copy and transform data from one database to another (e.g. migrating from PostNuke to WordPress) (Python, SQL, XML).

A little script to show a different photo each day on your GNOME desktop background (Python).

Have a blog or planet using only FTP web space (Python).

A fairly complete project (now abandoned) to make simple agent-based genetic algorithm research possible through drag-and-drop without any coding whatsoever. Developed with Mike Ducker (Java, Swing).

[NOW DEFUNCT - try http://www.traintimes.org.uk] A fast, simple version of UK national rail enquiries (Perl, PHP).

A WYSIWYG page editing system I borrowed and integrated into a sort of version control system. Also can be used as a sort-of WYSIWYG wiki (PHP, JavaScript).

Instrumental industrial metal music by Pete Beresford and me.

Energetic folk/rock music by Ed Sherwood and others.

A freelance animator who has done work for TV and advertising (site implemented by me).

Person-centred counselling (site designed by me).

Ben Coventry's gardening business (site designed by me).

Just in case you were interested...

The game I invented and in which I currently hold the world record.

A small branch of maths concerning the number of terms there are in a simplified polynomial.

Some thoughts about things I'd like to do if I get time.

Some comics I drew.

Blogs I read.

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For directions to my house etc. Contact me by email to get the password.