Howdi, I'm Andrew, but most people call me Bolster

Senior R&D Manager (Data Science) at Black Duck Software
Director, Treasurer @ BSides Belfast
among other things

Recent Writings

16 Mar 2025 » On Deepseek
15 Mar 2025 » AIOps Maturity Model
22 Sep 2024 » On OpenAI o1
29 Apr 2024 » "Context all the way down": Primer on methods of Experience injection for LLMs
28 Feb 2024 » Farewell Farset
19 Feb 2024 » Generative AI: Impact on Software Development and Security
17 Jan 2024 » Jupyter Environment Management for Dummies
18 May 2023 » Pulling Election Count data out of Google Sheets for fun and democracy
01 Apr 2023 » StayCation2023
27 Mar 2022 » Wrangling NI House Price Index Data
04 Jan 2022 » Lies, Damned Lies, and Data Science
26 Nov 2021 » Generative Adversarial Procrastination
10 Nov 2021 » UUIDs and You
22 Jul 2021 » Counting Tabs and Background Tasks: Taunting Goodharts Demon
10 Jun 2021 » Response to TOG's Third Eviction
01 Jun 2021 » Apache Arrow in 5-10 Mins
24 Mar 2021 » Dr StrangeBot: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Trust Machine Learning
20 Oct 2020 » A Stranger in a Strange Land: Data Science Onboarding In Practice
19 Oct 2020 » Tell me about your Programmer - Robopsychologist and other careers that don't exist (yet)
08 Sep 2020 » Back to reality
23 Jun 2020 » Merging Git Repos for Archival Purposes
22 May 2020 » Pragmatic Data Science; When Unstoppable Math meets Immovable Ethics
26 Apr 2020 » Is Your AI Ethical?
04 Mar 2020 » The Importance of Active Learning in Data Science and Engineering
18 Feb 2020 » Mosquitto (MQTT) Emon Pi (Open Energy Monitor) Forwarding Bridge
17 Feb 2020 » Headless Pi Configuration with Multi-Wifi Remote Access
21 Nov 2019 » Python Script as a Reliable Service
17 Jun 2019 » Data Art: Creative Collisions and Getting out of your comfort zone
17 May 2019 » And Now I Am 31
23 Oct 2018 » Unfeeling Fire
22 Oct 2018 » Daily Dated Untitled Jupyter Notebooks
09 Apr 2018 » Hackaday Unconf Dublin Talk: Socially Accessible Computing
24 Oct 2017 » My Basic (Python) Data Science Setup
28 Sep 2017 » Legal Considerations for Trusted Defence Autonomy
21 Sep 2017 » Human Factors related to Trusted Operation of Autonomous Systems
17 Oct 2016 » Git Split Repository With Commit History
15 Apr 2016 » FIX:CUDA on Debian Jessie
24 Oct 2015 » One Direction: Why I'm still a director at Farset Labs
07 Sep 2015 » Return of the Beard
23 May 2015 » Data Wrangling for UK Internet Usage
24 Apr 2015 » SNMP Monitoring and Configuration for Networks and Linux Host Monitoring
06 Feb 2015 » Unattended Updates in Linux Mint
29 Jul 2014 » I do not understand credit markets
25 Jul 2014 » IPython Websocket Failure on Chrome
21 May 2014 » Translink, it's things like this that remind me why you suck so hard
13 May 2014 » So, what is it you do again?
07 May 2014 » Multiprocessing Niceness in Python
09 Apr 2014 » Generating a unit 3 vector in Python (Uniform Spherical Projection)
31 Jan 2014 » Review: Learning Cython Programming
22 Jan 2014 » Octave 3.8 on Mint (or Ubuntu)
20 Jan 2014 » Unicode Madness in Jekyll
11 Jan 2014 » The Making of a Timelapse
20 Dec 2013 » Installing Ubuntu Touch on the Nexus 7
19 Dec 2013 » TEDx: How it went and how it could have gone
22 Nov 2013 » Remember Remember ... November 1963?
01 Nov 2013 » Response to the Draft Innovation Strategy for Northern Ireland - Part 2 - Knowledge Generation
23 Oct 2013 » Response to the Draft Innovation Strategy for Northern Ireland - Part 1
06 Jul 2013 » SSH Persistence Redux: Multiple sites and Crontab Laziness
02 Jul 2013 » QUB Email Settings that Actually Work
20 Jun 2013 » So long and thanks for all the fish
28 May 2013 » Those who can...
03 May 2013 » Fix: Dell Laptops and workstations not rebooting ("Restarting System")
26 Apr 2013 » Mercurial to Git transfer; problems, and pitfalls.
10 Apr 2013 » Abracadabra - NI Assembly's Plans to have 60% more PhD Researchers
13 Feb 2013 » Bus Services, a simple change for @Translink_NI, a big help for @NISP_Connect and @ECIT_QUB
11 Feb 2013 » IT @ QUB are moving forward
22 Jan 2013 » "The Pitch"
31 Dec 2012 » Happy New Year
11 Oct 2012 » Idiots Guide to Updating Nexus 7 to Latest ROM
10 Sep 2012 » 4G and 'The Northern Ireland Problem'
05 Sep 2012 » RMS is coming to town
29 Jul 2012 » Deus Ex, or How I learned to stop Torrenting and Love Digital Distribution
20 Jul 2012 » The concept of Quality and my 'mission'
13 Jun 2012 » Unattended upgrades in Ubuntu
12 Jun 2012 » LitReview: Communication in a behaviour-based approach to target detection and tracking with Autonomous Underwater Vehicles
12 Jun 2012 » LitReview: An Overview on Behaviour based methods for AUV Control
11 Jun 2012 » An exercise in academic writing
30 Apr 2012 » Turning Pcap dumps into Message Sequence Charts
30 Apr 2012 » NS-3 Click integration
10 Apr 2012 » K8055 USB + Python + Twitter + IRC: Space Indicator as a OS Service
10 Apr 2012 » Python + irclib for IRC Status Updates
10 Apr 2012 » Python + Oauth2 for Twitter Status Updates
05 Jan 2012 » My Guide To My Own Favourite Ubuntu Setup
31 Dec 2011 » Ringing in the New Year by seeing out the old
08 Dec 2011 » Guide to Persistent Reverse SSH Shells and Port Forwards
08 Dec 2011 » Guide to Expanding Oracle Virtualbox Drives
26 Oct 2011 » Unicode Characters in Mendeley Bibliography Breaking Latex?
23 Oct 2011 » Stuff I've found interesting in the past month - 2011/10/23
19 Oct 2011 » Mendeley Repeated Citations in BibTeX Library
17 Oct 2011 » Today's Accomplishments: The 2.0 Generation
05 Oct 2011 » Vim Latex Suite Install on Ubuntu
29 Sep 2011 » Through The Drinking Glass
29 Sep 2011 » Force 32 bit installs on 64 bit systems (Deb/RPM)
23 Sep 2011 » Stuff I've found interesting in the past month - 23/09/2011
15 Sep 2011 » PhD Diary: An Introduction and A Little Light Reading
23 Aug 2011 » Stuff I've found interesting in the past month - 23/08/2011
04 Aug 2011 » Best Description of Northern Ireland I've heard yet
28 Jul 2011 » The Road to Coreboot, Part the First: Introduction
23 Jul 2011 » Stuff I've found interesting in the past month - 23/07/2011
19 Jul 2011 » GalepX Language settings in Linux
28 Jun 2011 » Replace Unity with AWN and Gnome-Do
25 Jun 2011 » Removing BIOS RAID Metadata
23 Jun 2011 » Stuff I've found interesting in the past month - 23/06/2011
09 Jun 2011 » Change Kindle Network Provider
23 May 2011 » Accidentally Proper Kindle PDF Document Conversion
23 May 2011 » Stuff I've found interesting in the past month - 23/05/2011
23 Apr 2011 » Stuff I've found interesting in the past month - 23/04/2011
18 Apr 2011 » LU Decomposition in C (and under CUDA)
14 Apr 2011 » CUDA Compute 20 Error and other issues
07 Apr 2011 » Why Belfast Needs a Hackerspace
23 Mar 2011 » Stuff I've found interesting in the past month - 23/03/2011
23 Feb 2011 » Stuff I've found interesting in the past month - 23/02/2011
12 Feb 2011 » Bolsters Code-Related Rants (An ongoing collection)
23 Jan 2011 » Stuff I've found interesting in the past month - 23/01/2011
08 Jan 2011 » Rant: Job Applications
23 Dec 2010 » Stuff I've found interesting in the past month - 23/12/2010
23 Oct 2010 » What the Hack?
23 Oct 2010 » Stuff I've found interesting in the past month - 23/10/2010
14 Oct 2010 » Hackathon
23 Sep 2010 » Stuff I've found interesting in the past month - 23/09/2010
21 Sep 2010 » Kindle 3G 3.0.2 Experience
07 Sep 2010 » News from the Belfast Hackerspace
23 Aug 2010 » Stuff I've found interesting in the past month - 23/08/2010
04 Aug 2010 » High-Frequency Trading Revolt, and Why its a good idea!!
24 Jul 2010 » Citrix Web Client with Ubuntu
23 Jul 2010 » Stuff I've found interesting in the past month - 23/07/2010
17 Jul 2010 » Belfast Hackerspace Anyone?
08 Jul 2010 » Intel 4965: Poor wireless performance under Ubuntu
24 Jun 2010 » Great HOPEs
23 Jun 2010 » Shared Items - 23/06/2010
16 Jun 2010 » Shared Items - 16/06/2010
14 Jun 2010 » Ongoing CUDA work, aka, I love this book.
09 Jun 2010 » Shared Items - 09/06/2010
02 Jun 2010 » Shared Items - 02/06/2010
01 Jun 2010 » Customised User Directories in Ubuntu
31 May 2010 » Automagic Kernel Cleaning under Ubuntu
26 May 2010 » Shared Items - 26/05/2010
20 May 2010 » Coming Soon!
19 May 2010 » Shared Items - 19/05/2010
12 May 2010 » Shared Items - 12/05/2010
05 May 2010 » Shared Items - 05/05/2010
04 May 2010 » Ubuntu Boosting Blog Hits
28 Apr 2010 » SEE, Programming Abstractions, Assignment 1
28 Apr 2010 » Shared Items - 28/04/2010
24 Apr 2010 » Ads Outside the Box?
21 Apr 2010 » Shared Items - 21/04/2010
17 Apr 2010 » Add a Twitter @anywhere hovercard to links containing tweeps
16 Apr 2010 » Shaded Headers in Thematic
14 Apr 2010 » Shared Items - 14/04/2010
13 Apr 2010 » Facebook Group Library
12 Apr 2010 » US confirm status as ACTA transparancy stopping block
09 Apr 2010 » Listing just dot-files
09 Apr 2010 » The DE Bill, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Tor
07 Apr 2010 » Shared Items - 07/04/2010
01 Apr 2010 » Mod_Rewrite in Apache2
31 Mar 2010 » 4 Dimensional Game promises to be a mind-frak
31 Mar 2010 » Kids Sing Portal "Still Alive"
31 Mar 2010 » Shared Items - 31/03/2010
31 Mar 2010 » Wordpress category page
26 Mar 2010 » What to do when Ubuntu Device-mapper seems to be invincible!
24 Mar 2010 » My Experience with Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx
24 Mar 2010 » Entry 0
24 Mar 2010 » Shared Items - 24/03/2010
23 Mar 2010 » Chmod on lots of files
17 Mar 2010 » Shared Items - 17/03/2010
14 Mar 2010 » Installing and Configuring NS-3 on a Ubuntu System
13 Mar 2010 » Mercurial Quick Start Cheatsheet
12 Mar 2010 » Line Parsing Reminder (Duplicate removal)
12 Mar 2010 » GSOC or Having a go at Network Simulator
10 Mar 2010 » So what can you do with 32 Million Passwords...
10 Mar 2010 » Shared Items - 10/03/2010
10 Mar 2010 » Shared Items - 10/03/2010
06 Mar 2010 » Any Port in a Storm
03 Mar 2010 » Shared Items - 03/03/2010
26 Feb 2010 » (Would have been) An introduction to Google Adwords
24 Feb 2010 » Shared Items - 24/02/2010
17 Feb 2010 » Shared Items - 17/02/2010
10 Feb 2010 » Shared Items - 10/02/2010
03 Feb 2010 » Shamed
03 Feb 2010 » Shared Items - 03/02/2010
03 Feb 2010 » Shared Items - 03/02/2010
27 Jan 2010 » Shared Items - 27/01/2010
25 Jan 2010 » Online Media Marketing
24 Jan 2010 » Ubuntu / Windows Sharing a Dropbox folder on NTFS
20 Jan 2010 » Shared Items - 20/01/2010
17 Jan 2010 » Are we on the brink of War?
13 Jan 2010 » Shared Items - 13/01/2010
06 Jan 2010 » Shared Items - 06/01/2010
03 Jan 2010 » Application Idea: What do you think?
31 Dec 2009 » New Years Resolutions
25 Nov 2009 » Peter Mandelson... TV Producer, Spin-doctor, Politician, Tosser
09 Nov 2009 » Lenovo, not so rocking anymore
02 Nov 2009 » Save The Internet
13 Jul 2009 » Delayed Post: How I Installed Windows 7 From USB HDD
13 Jul 2009 » Delayed Post: LENOVO ROCKS
12 Jul 2009 » Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men
28 Jun 2009 » Change Of Plans.....
27 May 2009 » Scala-Euler Problem1
22 May 2009 » Lenovo x61 Tablet Hard Drive (Near) Disaster
13 May 2009 » Staggering Unproductivity
14 Apr 2009 » Linux foundation Video
07 Apr 2009 » Work Thought Of The Day
04 Apr 2009 » Set up and running of DNS tunnelling on MBWE
29 Mar 2009 » The Omleritto
03 Mar 2009 » On Education and Employability
01 Mar 2009 » New Productivity Mantra
28 Feb 2009 » Testing The Gnome Blog Panel Thingy
28 Feb 2009 » Convergence
15 Feb 2009 » Hacking Weekend
03 Jan 2009 » Big Move
06 Nov 2008 » MBWE Fuel Gauge -> Speedometer conversion
27 Oct 2008 » My conkyrc
25 Oct 2008 » Getting Skype to work with weird webcams.
06 Oct 2008 » Links
24 Sep 2008 » Primers Coming Up
14 Sep 2008 » Long Extended Break: Hardware Update
24 May 2008 » EEEpc note
13 May 2008 » EEE Update etc
13 May 2008 » Another Uni Project
13 May 2008 » I want
12 May 2008 » Asus EEEpc
12 May 2008 » Folding Code
12 May 2008 » Embedded C GPS Project
11 May 2008 » Update
07 Jan 2008 » CES 2008
16 Dec 2007 » Installation of VMWare Server (Windows)
16 Dec 2007 » Introduction