I am a Professor of Computer Science and systems researcher at St Andrews University.
My research interests include: cloud computing, distributed systems, operating systems, file systems, persistent systems, ubiquitous systems, object-oriented middleware, p2p systems, programming languages, sensornets, component deployment.
I enjoy sailing, diving, keep milawi cichlids and growing hoyas.
One of our old graduates Quintin Cutts has been on the Web talking about the teaching of Computer Science in Schools.
You can view the video here – http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/video/q/video_tcm4557296.asp
A month or so ago David Irvine of Maidsafe gave me a cool new toy – a SheevaPLUG Development Kit from GlobalScale. This is a computer that plugs into the wall (like a plug) like this -
Perhaps the best bit about this device is that is costs about $100. It runs Linux, has a 1.2 GHz single core processor and has 512 Mb of RAM and 512 Mb of Nand Flash. On the outside there are a few interfaces – a single USB port and an RJ45 ethernet port. It also has a min-USB connection for debugging it and an external flash slot for some kind of card – SD maybe? The whole box is pretty small - 110 X 70 X 49mm. It is also remarkable due to the fact that it only draws 3 amps of current.
Anyhow, after this thing sitting in its box for a while I have decided to do something with it. Interestingly I think there are a number of cool things you could do with this – as a base station for motes, as an access point, for distributed p2p storage etc. etc. However, I have decided to use this one as a backup device.
Here is a photo of it sitting in a cupboard at home plugged into the network with the pink cable and connected to a tera byte Hitachi USB disk.
So far it is working pretty well, after a few hiccups (including deleting the whole init.d directory with a bit of gun ho rm commands). However there a a few things I would have liked to have known before I started:
1. It comes with Linux on it (not obvious – no screen:)
2. It responds to dhcp – no where in the documentation does it say this (that I could find). The documentation is on the whole close to non-existent.
3. It runs sshd out of the box.
4. I would have liked to know the default root password – it is “nosoup4u” – no soup for you.
5. It has samba on it but it is turned off by default.
6. I could go on but I won’t – it will just show how long it is since I did any proper sys admin – in fact if there is a downside to devices like this it is this – you have to run everything yourself – fine if you are a 15 year old Linux head but I am too old for that – I did that in my 20s.
Nevertheless, I am very impressed with this little toy – if it all goes wrong I will blog about it but for now it has backed up my daughter’s laptop and is currently backing up my wife’s.
Following an article in Atlantic Monthly there has been a suggestion from Simon Dobson to create a ‘must read’ reading list for Computer Scientists. These are not supposed to be text books but rather goo background reading. Each Professor in the School is going to suggest 5 books. Here are mine:
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.
A fictional epic featuring everything for a Computer Science: Bletchley Park, encryption, Van-Eck freaking, protecting electronic assets, Internet banking (did I mention gold, submarines and the second World War). If you like this you should also read Snow Crash by the Same Author.
by Charles Murray (Author), Catherine Bly Cox (Author) This book is amazing but very hard to find (so I include this link http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0436302241/). This book is all about how the Americans put Man on the moon. The book is really all about projects and how to run them and also how not to. I would really recommend this book to anyone but especially to anyone who thinks they can manage projects (or want to).
Hannam, B. (2010) God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science. Icon Books Ltd
Most people think that science is a relatively modern occurrence, and
that the Dark Ages were an intellectual void. This book discusses some
of the key inventions of our time such as spectacles, the mechanical clock,
the compass and gunpower, and places them into their historical context in
the Middle Ages of Europe.
(Shortlisted for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books 2010)
du Sautoy, M. (2010). The Number Mysteries: A Mathematical Odyssey Through Everyday Life. Fourth Estate
An explanation of how mathematics impacts our everyday lives, from playing
football to shopping on the Internet. The examples from everyday life,
presented in a very accessible manner, are what make this book such a good read.
(Prof Marcus Du Sautoy delivered the 2005 Royal Institute Christmas Lectures)
Stephens, W. R., Rago, S. A. (2005). Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment. Addison Wesley; 2nd Ed.
The title says it all – it’s the Daddy.
Eco, U. (1980) The Name Of The Rose. Vintage Classics; New edition (1 May 2008)
First published in 1980, this is a medieval murder mystery involving coded
manuscripts and a brotherhood of conspiratorial monks. A really good whodunnit.
Ian Sommerville’s are here: http://se9book.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/reading-list-for-techies/
ian Gent’s list:
How to Get a PhD Estelle Phillips, Derek Pugh, (2005, Fourth Edition). Open University Press.
A slight wild card, because not every CS undergraduate should read it. But everybody in any discipline who wants to do a PhD should read it, and they should read it before they even decide to do a PhD – so while they are an undergraduate. The chapter on How Not To Get A PhD is a classic. A book which I have lent to people many more times than I have got it back – but I don’t mind since it’s so important that people read it.
Andrew Hodges, (1992, New edition). Alan Turing: The Enigma. Vintage
Alan Turing must be one of the top three British scientists – with Darwin and Newton. He founded theoretical computer science (the Turing machine). He founded practical computer science (at Bletchley and with the ACE). He founded theoretical AI (the Turing test). He founded practical AI (the first chess playing program.) In his spare time he won the Second World War. And he could run a marathon in 11 minutes outside Olympics winning pace. This is an excellent biography of him.
Brian Kernighan and Dennis M Ritchie, (1988, second edition). The C Programming Language. Prentice-Hall.
This book shows just how short a great programming language book can be. Written by one of designers of C (Ritchie) and one of the great technical computing writers (Kernighan.) And yes, I am saying that reading a great book about a programming language can be a great pleasure even if you don’t use the language.
Fred Brooks (1995, second edition). The Mythical Man Month. Addison-Wesley
If a software project with 100 people will take a year, how long will it take if you add another 100 people half way through? Answer: who knows? Could be it now takes 2 years, or maybe never finishes. If you answered 9 months you’re good at puzzles but you REALLY need to read this book!
I would have had this one too had Ian not suggested it first.
Simon Dobson’s list:
Structure and interpretation of computer programs. Abelson and Sussman.
(OK, bit of a text book…)
The design of everyday things. Donald Norman.
Casting the net. Janet Abate.
The transparent society. David Brin.
Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter.
These will be posted more formally at some point on the School Web pages – possibly as an edited list.
?The school has purchased a defibrillator. It is hanging at the front door of the JCB as shown on the rhs on this photo. A number of people have been trained in it’s use. However, the unit can be used by an untrained operator in an emergency – it tells you what to do and will not shock anyone who doesn’t need shocked.. We will screen a video about it in one if the labs shortly. I hope we never have to use it, but if we do it is there.
There is another unit in Chemistry and also one in College gate – the college gate emergency number is ?01334 463985. IMHO we should have one of these in every University building – they only cost about £1500 and last for 5 years.
For more information see -
Please talk/tweet/blog about this – the more people who know it is there the better.
Today we see a demo of the new Windows 7 based ipads.
The video can be seen here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0IiKaa8v9M&feature=player_embedded
I cannot say I am a huge fan of the ipad, there are quite a few problems with it:
Apart from that it is a pretty cool device – it is cool, fast, quiet, and ergonomic.
Now back to the windows device above. Due to the problems above and the cost which I did not mention I have assumed that Windows pads would wipe the floor with Apple come this Autumn. However viewing this video makes me want to weep. It is the epitome of un-jobsianess. It has buttons everywhere – power, cntrl-alt-delete, home, volume, slots for this that and the other. It is slow to boot – not like the instant on of the ipad (despite the demonstrator saying things like “that was pretty fast”). The browser looks clunky – he tries to scroll down and nothing happens then tries something to open a new tab – “hey clicked on something there”. The on-screen keyboard – should be called the whole screen keyboard.
Of course the ultimate irony is that the movie was filmed on an iphone.
Now all that Apple have to worry about is Android…
We bought some new Cichlids for the School Tank on Wednesday. Following the demise of our local cichlid Supplier (Ultimate Aquatics in Cupar) we have bought these on-line from http://www.tonysafricancichlids.co.uk/. This was highly successful – we purchased 15 fish on Wednesday at 11:50 and they were delivered 24 hours later by a Courier. So far we can highly recommend this service.
The fish we bought were:
(all photos from http://www.tonysafricancichlids.co.uk/page45.html)
Here is a photo of me helping Graham make the fish welcome in their new home.
Photo by Aaron Quigley who no doubt has tweeted about this event if you like that sort of thing 
Peerbook
The lack of any privacy in Facebook has been well documented. To address this issue, Ben Birt has developed PeerBook. It is based on an underlying Chord system and stores multiple replicas of encrypted Facebook style pages on peers within a network. You can only read or edit pages if you have the appropriate cryptographic keys – you cannot necessarily read data that is stored on your own machine. This architecture gives a scalable, decentralised alternative to Facebook.
Ben graduated yesterday from St Andrews. Here is a photo of us in the quad.
Ben Birt and Al Dearle
The full text of the press release about Peerbook may be found here. The Peerbook Web pages are here.
For the last week we have had a group of American visitors to Madras High School St Andrews from Upper Arlington Ohio. On Thursday a ceilidh was held for them in the School. A video of the event can be found on the you tube here.
On the 2nd of March I gave a seminar with Cloudsoft Corp on Distributed Mediation. Alasdair Hodge gave a demo of an exchange running under CDM reacting to various loads. The slides from this talk may be found here in pdf, and here in powerpoint.
The animations of mediation and mediation change events are here and here respectively.
Google App Engine allows a Web based application to be quickly deployed on the Web. This short video demonstrates how an application can be developed & deployed in a few minutes using Python – it is really quite incredible. Of course once the app is deployed, in can be transparently scaled out across multiple servers. An overview of this technology may be found here.