points on a sphere, even distribution

Before I even ask this question I have to mention again: I'm a "creative" architect type. my grasp of maths is dodgy at best, and spherical geometry is waaay beyond me :)

I'm trying to cut up half a sphere and distribute a number of points across the surface evenly. My best result so far is cutting it into 4 "curved triangle" segments, then sub dividing each triangle simply by getting the mid points on each side and turning each big triangle into 4 little ones.(those of you who understand the geometry are probably laughing right now... my VB code is even funnier) 

Is there an elegant one line piece of logic that would achieve this? would be nice to input the number of points rather than be restricted to my system...