You can look at my main home page for the latest version and more clever bits.
You can learn about various calendars and convert between them using a simple web form.
I know the time and date very accurately, because I am using NTP, the Network Time Protocol to get the time from various atomic clocks. I am the Timelord for Swansea Univerity's NTP service, which offers open access to our Stratum 2 servers ntp[012].swan.ac.uk to other .ac.uk and .org.uk sites. Please send email to Timelord if you plan to link to us as I hope to have a Stratum 0 clock receiving the MSF signal from Rugby by December 1996 and I would like to keep those affected informed about its installation.
I am developing software under Linux to drive a radio modem. I am using such a system at present to deliver PDC packets to this web page.
What is PDC? It stands for Programme Delivery Control and it is the mechanism used by Teletext to tell your suitably-equipped video recorder when to record a programme. On these pages, you can see PDC packets live off-air.
I help to co-ordinate and judge the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, an annual event held every year to find the best College team of programmers in the world, and have a lot of fun in the process. Although the ACM contest has been international for many years, as chair of the European Regional Contest Steering Committee I am very pleased to have overseen the massive increase in finalists from Europe: from two in 1993 to eleven in 1996. There are now five Regional Contests in Europe, so if you study at a European college or university and would like to compete, please do---it's easy to get involved and I'm sure you'll have a great time!
Various robots lurk in the vicinity of Swansea University, some of which I have had a hand in designing and constructing. I am a founder member of the ongoing Internet open project to build Mowbot, a robot lawnmower. The primary means of communication for this project is a mailing list that anyone can join.
When I get the chance, I visit the Contact Cultures of the Imagination conference. This annual interdisciplinary event brings artists, scientist and writers from many fields together to explore some possible futures for our world and other worlds. In 1993, I was historian for the Bateson SimSETI Project---a thought experiment which took as its premise that our current search for extra-terrestrial life through radio telescopes was successful.
From the days when it didn't even have a computer to its name, I have been a member of the Swansea University Computer Society and I still find the odd job to do maintaining the interesting (not to say antique:-) hardware people keep donating to the Society.
PGP is spoken here! My PGP public key is available from:
Key ID:
pub 1024/63850619 1994/06/23 Robin M. O'Leary <robin at acm.org>
Please send comments to Robin O'Leary robin@www.ro.nu