gong xi fa cai!

Happy new year everyone! The Chinese new year started this past sunday, and we are already in the Year of the Dog. A nice short break where I managed to get a little work done and have a lot of rest to get ready for the remainder of the week.

I'm planning a trip to Melaka next weedend with some friends. We'll see how my bike behaves. Hopefully I'll get a couple of nice pics to post. If any of you have any advise about travelling in Malaysia drop me a line.

Cheers,

Mr C.

43rd known Mersenne prime found!

well, it was in december, but I had not been keeping up with the mersenne project (too much stuff going on at work). So this is good news, the new prime has more than 9 million digits, but the $100.000 prize is still up for grabs for all of you that only contribute for the money (just kidding).

Today was a great day. A part of my code that didn't seem to run (an iterative solver for dense non-symmetric matrices) was glitched. As the idiot that I am I had forgotten to change one of the auxiliary functions from a previous version and I had scrambled the data. Oh well... At least everything will be much faster from now on!

By the way, the Bering gloves I got for biking are quite nice. Not too warm (and that's saying something when you live in the tropics) and they can take the rain without complain. I rode with them for 20 minutes under heavy rain a few days ago and my hands were dry when I arrived home. Actually, my hands were the only part of my body that was dry by that time!

Anyway, good night, and visit the mersenne wiki to learn about mersenne primes if you fancy it...

apparently I'm an espresso...

You Are an Espresso

At your best, you are: straight shooting, ambitious, and energetic At your worst, you are: anxious and high strung You drink coffee when: anytime you're not sleeping Your caffeine addiction level: high

What Kind of Coffee Are You?

They got it quite right, I must say...

happy new year!

Happy new year 2006 to all of you that stop by this blog now and then! I just came back from my holidays in Spain and I feel refreshed. Ahh... It's good to leave work behind for a while.

I hadn't been to Spain for a while, and I found that people speak way too loud for my liking. However, people were as friendly as usual and the food is simple but VERY good.

While being there I got a pair of gloves for riding my bike. The brand is Bering, and they are soft leather treated with kevlar and with a carbon/steel knuckle guard. They look good. I'll post here how they perform with time.

Best wishes for the new year!