Long ago (back in the 80’s), my school had a couple of Research Machines 380Z computers for us to play around on. These things had about as much processing power as your average modern-day wristwatch, but were great fun nonetheless.…
Author: phil
3D panoramas from Mars
Flickr user Moe_Ali has been using photos taken by the Curiosity Rover to create 3D images that work with red-blue 3D goggles. They’re really quite good, but don’t bother trying to view the example shown below; click through to the…
The mathematical arse
Stack Exchange user mikuszefski has come up with a parametric formula for plotting rather nice arses in three dimensions. Take a look at this: Apparently it doesn’t look so good from the other side, but I don’t have Mathematica so…
Solution to the Turing competition
Last month I mentioned a codebreaking puzzle tied in with the release of the new film about Alan Turing. The competition has just closed, but you might still be able to find it online if you feel like having a…
Breaking a robot out of jail
A company called Double Robotics makes “telepresence robots”, which are basically mobile iPads that remote workers can use to give themselves a “virtual presence” in an office many miles away. Their website includes a “test drive” feature where you can…
Experiment 60713/B
This was the runner-up in the DepicT! short film competition back in 1999. I think it deserves another airing :-) It was made by Tom Baxandall and Alan Gardener. Tom went into advertising, and appears to have made several ads…
Turing competition
The maths department at Manchester University recently launched a new competition tied in with the release of The Imitation Game, the film about Alan Turing that you have no doubt heard of. The competition involves decrypting three codes. I thought…
Circle of Abstract Ritual
According to the blurb, this film by Jeff Frost took 300,000 photos, riots, wildfires, paintings in abandoned houses, two years and zero graphics to make. It was definitely worth it.
A stained glass puzzle
Here’s an interesting puzzle set by user MattClarke at the Stack Exchange puzzling website. The stained glass window you see here is called Chaos and Order. You simply have to figure out why. I found the answer to this yesterday,…
Frack off, it’s none of your business
Earlier this year, the UK government published a report on the effect of shale gas mining (i.e. “fracking”) on rural economies (link to PDF document). One can only assume that their findings were not very positive, because most of this…
Tagged with: fracking
Top