Hi there! I'm Brandon Thomson. I don't update this site too often, but here you'll find some apps, essays, photos, and other useful stuff I've created. Before duplicating any of the content, please read the license terms. You can contact me here.
I used to write programs for the Mac desktop, but these days I use my spare time to develop web apps. Check 'em out:
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Conquer-on-Contact is a simple browser-based multiplayer strategy game. It's hard to describe; you'll just have to give it a try. |
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At Cafe Survey you can easily create surveys and track the results with pretty charts. I don't really offer support for this site, so if something goes wrong you get to keep both pieces. |
Of course you are currently viewing my personal site. I am tired of messing around with hosting providers that overcharge and underdeliver, and so from now on we are hosted by a basic, custom-built CMS running on Google App Engine.
I think essays should be updated as circumstances change. Bad for SEO, but good for readers.
I enjoy solving programming puzzles. My favorite puzzles are those that could be solved with a very simple brute-force algorithm if computers were 10^10 times faster or had 10^10 times more memory, but require clever reductions in the search space to run on our "slow" machines. I'm not a mathematician so I don't enjoy puzzles that _require_ an advanced knowledge of mathematics and I don't care much for the competitions that pit you against other humans in a race against the clock. Cummon, Dorothy, I gots stuff to do.
I find that the puzzles on projecteuler.net usually meet my requirements. Project Euler is a set of 158 problems (at the time of this writing) that are designed to be solvable only using the aid of a computer. In practice many of the easiest problems turned out to be solvable using math shortcuts that the author didn't anticipate, but for non-mathematicians the easiest way to solve the problems is almost always by programming a computer.
Naturally a lot of people write about their solutions, so be careful Googling around if you don't want a solution spoiled for you. Using languages like Python or LISP will tend to get you solutions faster than languages like C or Java. Mathematica will save a lot of time by providing access to lists of primes and other nice features, but it almost seems like cheating.
You can view my profile, but you'll need to register first.

This includes all forms of media: text, photographs, scripts, and so on. You can use whatever content you want in whatever way that you want, including creating derivative works and all commercial uses, as long as you provide a link to http://www.bthomson.com or indicate in some reasonable way that the content was originally produced by me, Brandon Thomson. You can do this in whatever way you deem appropriate, and things like a short note in an HTML comment are suitable if a visible link will disturb what you are trying to create.
You don't need to ask for my permission before copying or using my content.
Some content (especially CSS and Javascript) I have obtained from other places and under different license terms. I do not, and am not authorized to relicense these things. It is your responsibility to determine if any content hosted here has a more restrictive license before you copy or use it.
Please be responsible: It is ok and encouraged, for example, to copy entire articles into your topical blog, but do not robotically copy the entire site to a shadow domain and put AdWords on it.
No one is going to come after you or get angry if you violate this license: I'm not the RIAA or the MPAA. Still, respecting my wishes is the polite thing to do.
You might also want to learn more about the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.