First a shout goes out to Nathan who correctly identified my prime number routine as being a re-hash of wheel factorization. It seems that it's a bigger wheel than most people are using, though. Big enough wheel that perhaps this could become the monster truck of prime number calculation. I don't yet know if it will be slower or faster than other implementations, but nonetheless it has been fun to experiment with. Maybe with some luck it could help someone find a prime with 10 million digits, and...

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We're painfully aware of the environment these days, with melting ice sheets and migrating species. Perhaps we can make enough lifestyle changes before end up with too many dying species. Topping just about everyone's list of changes to make is with transportation. Ten years ago GM was forced to prepare to sell zero emission vehicles in California, so they designed the EV1. Apparently they were surprised to find that people really wanted electric cars. Badly. Those that drove the EV1 were hooked....

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Oh, I guess it was. But along the way you have to deal with a misleading error message: So it ends up it was really installed, and thinks it needs a restart. But it doesn't. It works fine at that point. Just refresh the page where you tried to use Silverlight and up it comes

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I just can't believe this. Desert Code Camp now has presenters lined up to deliver 32 sessions, and it all happened in 10 hours -- between 8pm last night and 6am this morning. This may need to be a two-day event. The tipping point will be when we reach 80 sessions. As with the best things in life, this is 100% free, and 100% geeky. For those of you from out of town who would like to join in on the fun, flights to Phoenix in September can be pretty cheap, and hotel rates aren't bad either. The facility...

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Just an hour ago I sent an email out notifying folks about when the next Desert Code Camp would be -- September 15th. In the last 60 minutes we've already had fifteen committed presenters signing up to give sessions! Looks like this will be one big event. In the past we've had between 60 and 70 sessions. I'd better start preparing for 80 this time 'round...

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People have been thinking about prime numbers for over 1700 years, so most of the neat tricks about them have been discovered. I've pondered on a trick that's probably already been thought of, but just in case it hasn't I thought I would blog about it. I actually got the idea for this a couple years ago, but just haven't taken the time to code a proof of concept for it until now. Lately I've been up against the wall with a crazy project at work, and tonight I just wanted to unwind a little and do...

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A couple of weeks ago I tested fuel economy in my Volvo over a 5 mile stretch of freeway without, then with an ounce of acetone added to 10 gallons of gas. I found an immediate 6.5% drop in mileage between those first two tests. Then after 300 more miles I tested on the same tank of acetone-laden gasoline using the same conditions, and found I got an added 4.2% to mileage. I was intrigued. Now I've been through 15 more gallons, and haven't added any more acetone. I did two runs tonight to check where...

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