This code snippet on calculating the first n Primes using the Python programming language fell into my RSS feed this morning. Very nice I thought, but then it occurred to me, what would be really fast would be to ask the internet. Or more specifically WolframAlpha. So I did: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=primes+less+than+1,000,000,000. The first 20 of 50,847,324 prime numbers less that 109 are displayed in the internet equivalent of a blink of an eye.

The O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON 2010) took place last week in Portland Oregon. Videos of the talks are being published on YouTube and Blip.TV. Taken with the convention site, the various related blog postings and twitter feed, there’s lots of useful information. What stood out for me in the video feed was Daniel Recordon’s talk “Today’s Lamp Stack” which describes how Facebook’s has been implemented on the LAMP stack. It’s a talk that will be useful as a learning resource for my course on Web Applications Technology.

I read a lot of blogs and I listen to a lot of podcasts, so I thought I’d use this blog to tell you about some of my favourites. Here’s the first of an occasional series of recommendations: It’s e-Learning Stuff and the associated e-Learning Stuff podcast from James Clay, ILT & Learning Resources Manager at Gloucestershire College, and 2009 winner of the ALT Learning Technologist of the Year. I am an early adopter and self-confessed geek.

I’ve just got back to work after breaking my ankle five weeks ago and I’ve just started catching up with things in e-learning and beyond. I thought I’d enumerate a few things that are on my radar. Just a list with links for now: - Blackboard 9 coming soon to Swansea U. - [Delicious Bookmark Browse feature](http://cogdogblog.com/2010/07/07/delicious-browsing/) (thanks to CogDogBlog). Useful for creating a presentation based on web sites. Try this one for resources I’ve collected on [plagiarism](http://delicious.

The Guardian league table claims to rate Universities by student satisfaction. It gives higher scores to “value added”, overall satisfaction and feedback (the latter two by results from the National Student Survey), money spent per student, entry grades, careers prospects and staff-student ratio, than other ratings such as research quality which other newspapers (and Universities themselves) like to emphasize. It does this because, as it says in yesterday’s article supporting the release of its 2011 league tables “Oxford tops Guardian’s 2011 university league table“

The Guardian league table claims to rate Universities by student satisfaction. It gives higher scores to “value added”, overall satisfaction and feedback (the latter two by results from the National Student Survey), money spent per student, entry grades, careers prospects and staff-student ratio, than other ratings such as research quality which other newspapers (and Universities themselves) like to emphasize. It does this because, as it says in yesterday’s article supporting the release of its 2011 league tables “Oxford tops Guardian’s 2011 university league table“

The second part of the Day 2 Google I/O 2010 keynote introduced Google TV. Google seemed very excited about this and rolled out the CEO and representatives of Sony and Logitech who will be first to market with the technology, BuyMore, who hope to make millions selling it in the run up to Christmas 2010, and a US satellite company (not Sky) that will have some support for it. I have to admit to being somewhat underwhelmed.

If you are like me you like Google chrome because it’s fast, up-to-date, standards compliant and fast. But if you are a web developer, you need to use Firefox because it has Firebug, the best web development browser extension there is. Well, it turns out that Chrome provides some built-in web developer features extensions that I stumbled upon the other day quite by accident. The image shows the developer tools open and at the code view and CSS inspector.

More from Google I/O 2010. **Google Android ** ** ** See keynote video [part 1](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89xc_1Vv69k): - An alternative to iPhone and its single device, single carrier model, single source of applications model. Some stats: 100,000+ new activations per day; 2nd in US smart phone sales but first in US web an app usage; 1 billion miles navigated with turn-by-turn navigation app; 5x increase in google search on smart phones; 50,000 apps available; Did I lock myself into the wrong phone on the wrong network when I bought my iPhone last year?

Watching the first day keynote and blogging the announcements. There’s more on the web of course from better and more experienced journalists, so this is my personal record. **HTML5** - HTML5 reaching critical mass? On Mozilla, Safari and Chrome yes, but not on IE yet. - Open Video. New codec (VP8) announced with open container WebM. Open video included in YouTube for HTML5 browsers. The tag will become a next big thing.

Just remotely attended Jane Hart’s keynote Social Learning = New Toolset + New Skillset + New Mindset at EdTech 2010 which was streamed live from the Athlone Institute of Technology on Thursday 20th May, 2010. It was very interesting because Jane encouraged the audience, both in the room, and logged in from the Internet, to help her to deliver the keynote by tweeting answers to some key questions as she went along.

I worry about the teaching of mathematics. Lack of student confidence in the application of mathematics is one of the biggest problems we have in Engineering: it hampers the development of our courses, limits how far we can go, and is a primary source of lecturer concern when we have to deal with the consequences at examination boards. Yet the attitude is too often “the quality of the students is at fault”.