Welcome to my home page. Although this is a relatively small website, there are one or
two things on here that should be of interest to many people. You can access them by using
the links on the left...
PC Plus
HelpDesk. First of all, those of you who read PC Plus magazine
will know that I write for the HelpDesk section in the magazine - this I used to do along
with with Wilf Hey until his death in January 2007 (I've actually worked with Wilf,
writing in computer security for over a decade and assisted him with some projects
for his Wilf's Programmer's Workshop in PC Plus as well).
In the HelpDesk section, I cover Windows, Linux, BSDs, UNIX, Internet and hardware.
After six months, the publisher's exclusive right to print the material that I wrote for the PC Plus SuperDVD
expires so that I can do with it what I want (although Future can still publish
it as well). All I do is put the material on this
site so that you can look at it, decide that the magazine suits your needs
perfectly and go and order a subscription or, just have a browse.
The articles published on paper in the magazine are provided on each month's
CoverDisc in pdf format as an archive so you can get old articles from that source. The
SuperDisc contributions are not repeated though, so, you can find the archive of up to
six months ago (that is to say, from issue 204 up to the issue that was published six months ago)
on this site. Of course, looking at this site, you might see an
article that you want to have a hard copy of and if this is the case, you can order
back-issues from Future Publishing's customer services. If you click on the link on the
left, you can access the HelpDesk sections that I have written for the SuperDVD.
Daily Sudoku
Puzzles.
I've added a daily sudoku
puzzle to this site so that you can do a fresh one every day. Every single one of these
has been compiled especially for this web site so you know that you have never seen them
anywhere else before. You can see archives for the puzzles and a list is at the bottom of
the page. Some will seem more difficult than others and I'm sure that if you visit the site
seven days each week, you will have a lot of fun.
One
thing that can make Sudoku easier is familiarity with the symbols used to populate the cells.
So, to make things insteresting, I also put on the website, a version of the puzzle that
uses Gurmukhi numbers like that on the left. This makes it very intersting. You can find
the Gurmukhi Sudoku puzzles by
clicking first on either 'Daily Sudoku' or, on Gurmukhi Fridge Magnets - this takes you
to the same page (you can also see the last
four puzzles on one page as well).
Daily Kakuro Puzzles.
In the Puzzler Kakuro book (Issue 2 UPC 9771749405005 02), there is a statement on
page 3 that '... our Japanese colleagues assure me that it isn't possible to make Kakuro
by computer.' To me, this sounded like a challenge. So, I set about writing a program in Perl
that produces Kakuro puzzles automatically every day.
The week's
puzzles start off with an easy one on Monday and gradually build up until the one on Sunday is
substantialy more difficult. Each one has an estimate of the amount of time it should take to do,
based on the amount of time I took to do a number of puzzles - the results being put against a
number of factors in the program and put through a linear regresssion.
As
the program I have written is powerful enough, I have introduced the 'Big-Un'
- a large Kakuro (24x34 cells) that should keep you occupied for a while. I have also put together
a Kakuro tutorial so that people with no experience of Kakuro or Sudoku
can work through an example puzzle, picking up many of the necessary skills.
Like the Sudokus, every single one of these has been compiled especially for this web site by my
computer program so you know that you have never seen them anywhere else before. You can see
archives for the puzzles and a list is at the bottom of the page. Some will seem more difficult
than others and I'm sure that if you visit the site seven days each week, you will have a lot of
fun.
In the
summer of 2007, Implicit
Software Solutions contacted me about producing Kakuro problems for Windows Mobile. The result
is iSS Kakuro with over a million puzzles to do, different sizes and graded in terms of difficulty.
The problem is NP complete so it produce an interesting problem regarding the user having a new
puzzle within a certain time but this was solved (no, before you start worrying about public key
cryptography, we didn't come up with a solution for NP complete problems). The difficulty is
graded in terms of the strategies you need to solve any particular puzzle, not its size (at all).
So, if you have a machine that runs 'Windows Mobile', can't keep away from my Kakuro puzzles but
don't have an internet connection everywhere you go, you can get them from iSS.
Recipes. I've put
some of my recipes on this site so that once you are here, you don't have to go to my other sites
to see them. This is all good quality, reliable food that caters for the lazy chef as well as those
willing to put a little more effort into cooking.
HamsterCam. Those of you
who read PC Plus issue 213 (March 2004) will know about the security camera or HamsterCam
in HelpDesk Extra. You can see the HamsterCam on this site.
Gurmukhi
Fridge Magnets. You can now download images (for personal, non-commercial use)
of Gurmukhi Fridge Magnets like those on the right. Also here is a page for Gurmukhi
Pangrams and, if that wasn't enough for you, there are also Gurmukhi Sudoku puzzles. So, whether you are learning Punjabi, Gurmukhi or want something
a little more challenging in the logic department, I've got it here for you.
Webalizer stats.
View the Webalizer web statistics for this website. They are compiled automatically every hour,
on the hour by the Webalizer program. If you go back to this site after the hour, you will be able
to see your IP/domain name and see how high up you rank. The more hits you give this site, the
higher up you will rank.
Learning Gurmukhi.
This web site will leach you how to read and write Gurmukhi. There are plenty of resources on the site
including animated graphics showing you how to draw the characters, PDF files for various purposes and
some really good ray-traced wallpapers. If you are learining Punjabi or just want to learn how to read
and write Gurmukhi for some reason, this is the site to go to.
Let
the Devil Wear Black. You
can buy a copy of James F Linden's excellent novel, 'Let the Devil Wear Black' (ISBN: 978-1-4452-8346-3)
click here to buy the paperback edition (341 pages) from Lulu.com (£14.90).
Set in Manchester, in John Major and Tony Blair's 1990s, this roman a clèf is a true story
of how Alan Rush, an ordinary worker for a multi-national chemical company, finds out more than
either he or the company he worked for really wanted.
The following cover-up involves bugged meetings, overt bullying, the deliberate release of
carcinogens and mutagens into the local environment, conspiracy, computer fraud, the darker side
of government, telephone tapping, suspicious deaths and other incidents relating to and in the
aftermath of a disastrous court case that left the credibility of the company's evidence and
perhaps, more imporantly, what was left of its reputation, in tatters.
This true story demonstrates that a company's most important employees are those that no longer
work for them. The deal a company gets depends upon how well they were treated when they left - and since.
This book is a must for anybody doing a law degree or for anybody who is thinking of taking a company to an
industrial tribual themselves. It shows you the sort of thing that you can expect to see (looking at the
other cases that were being tried at the same time, at least some of what happens in the case in the book is
seen in most cases - a company goes there to win, not to accept defeat) and hopefully,
this book will give you enough of an insight to stop this from happening to you.
Revenge is, of course, a dish that is best eaten cold and this book has enough to fatten anybody.
Project
Pitcher Plant. Download software to make spammers life a misery. With this and a
home broadband connection, you can poison spammer's address lists, lock up their botnets and make
them waste their time trying to hack into non-existent mailboxes. See how it is done on this site.
Water
Rocket Index. This site of mine had been around for many years and many sites
linked to it in its old location on the CompuServe server - unfortunately that server is no longer up - and now, it is on this server.
Discover how to make your own water rocket and launcher. Also, download my computer model for free.
There are plenty of other resources on there are well such as how to make a parafoil parachute.
In 2007, I was contacted by the company that produced the special effects for the Sky One program
Crash Test Dummies and I ended up doing the computer modelling for the sequence in the last program
where they are launched over a fence using two fire-extinguisher water rockets (which, as you can see
from the program, was a success).
Contact. Write to me if you
have any comments.
Paul Grosse
       
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