tom bh
Latest Posts
-
Religious Studies In Software Engineering
13th October 2026I graduated from Lampeter University, Wales in 2006, with a 2:1 in Religious Studies. Whilst I’ve earnt all my money since then from the seemingly unrelated world of software, my degree has been invaluable. Programming isn’t just something we do to computers, it’s something we do to humans and so... -
The Longest Line Of Sight
9th February 2026The place on Earth from which you can, in theory1, see further than any other is between an unnamed Himalayan ridge near the Indian-Chinese border and Pik Dankova in Kyrgyzstan. It is just over 530km. Up until now this view has only been speculated2 to be the longest. But we can now empiricall... -
Packing The World For Longest Lines Of Sight
5th October 2025I have a side project to find the longest line of sight on the planet1 using a novel Total Viewshed algorithm. At a resolution of 3 arc-seconds (~92m x 92m), the planet contains around 4.5 billion elevation samples2. Now obviously we don’t need to calculate the visibility between literally every ...
Archive of all posts →
About Me
Hello, I’m Thomas Buckley-Houston, but you can call me Tom. I am from Wales, but I’ve been
traveling the world full time since 2015.
I earn a living writing software, you can see the code I’ve written on Github. You can sponsor my open source work on Patreon and Github.
I have a love of meditation and a degree in Religious Studies. I wrote a book and used to regularly podcast about spiritual matters.
Email me on tom@tombh.co.uk. Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky. Or watch me on Youtube and livestream on Twitch.
The Longest Line Of Sight
With the help of my good friend Ryan Berger, we calculated around 5 billion lines of sight in order to find the place on Earth from which you can see the furthest. Visit the website, read the launch-day commentary and source on Github.
Tattoy
A text-based terminal compositor that amongst many other things, can render shaders and a second terminal in the background of your actual terminal. Visit the website and source on Github.
Browsh
A text-based browser for the modern web, it can render everything from CSS3 to WebAssembly apps. It's primarily for those that suffer slow and/or expensive Internet. It's been on the front page of Hacker News 4 times: May 2016, Jan 2018, July 2018 and May 2022. The source is on Github.
The Sponge Relay
When I started travelling in 2015, I took a sponge from my apartment. I then exchanged that sponge with the host of my next destination. I've repeated this seemingly odd ritual in almost every country I've since visited. See the latest archive of all the exchanges.
BBC Radio Bristol
From 2013 to 2015 I was a regular contributor to BBC Radio Bristol's Thought For The Day. They wanted me to be their Buddhist voice, but I'm not strictly a Buddhist, so we agreed that I'd be their "Buddhist Meditator and Psychotherapist". I posted the texts of each one, which you can read here.
Walking Wales
In the Autumn of 2014 I walked solo 270km from North Wales to my flat in Bristol. Somewhat of a pilgrimage I managed to document the adventure on video, which you can now watch on Youtube.
Peas: Platform as a Service
Possibly the most complex software I’ve ever written. This is a Heroku-inspired service that allows you to host and scale your own 12 Factor Apps. It got on the front page of Hacker News. And the source is on Github.
TEDx Talk
I gave a short talk at TEDx Bath about vulnerability. It used pictures of cats with their heads sticking through pieces of bread, people laughed.
wNOP — Compiz-enabled Linux
I was, for a while, actively involved in the Puppy Linux community during which time I developed a popular derivative called wNOP that automatically configured the OpenGL Window Manager, Compiz-Fusion, ‘out-of-the-box’. So I am told, tens of thousands of copies have been downloaded.