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[From the archives] “A mob for the Earth” – online communities supporting the real world, and businesses
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

[From the archives] “A mob for the Earth” – online communities supporting the real world, and businesses

A mob for the Earth by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London One Saturday afternoon last spring in San Francisco, a queue of people stretched down the pavement...

Happy World Emoji Day –
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Happy World Emoji Day –

“Emoji didn’t become so essential because they stand in for words – but because they finally made writing a lot more like talking.” Gretchen McCulloch (see Further...

Negligent nurses? Or dodgy digital? – device design can unintentionally mask errors
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Negligent nurses? Or dodgy digital? – device design can unintentionally mask errors

Magicians often fool their audience into ‘looking over there’ (literally or metaphorically), getting them to pay attention to the wrong thing so that they’re not...

Free CS4FN magazine issue 29 arriving in schools now, on Diversity in Computing
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Free CS4FN magazine issue 29 arriving in schools now, on Diversity in Computing

Schoolteachers, school librarians and home educators who subscribe* to the FREE Computer Science For Fun magazine will be receiving their free print copies this...

Digital lollipop: no calories, just electronics!
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Digital lollipop: no calories, just electronics!

by Jane Waite, Queen Mary University of London Can a computer create a taste in your mouth? Imagine scrolling down a list of flavours and then savouring your sweet...

Engineering a Cloak of Invisibility: Manipulating Light with Metamaterials
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Engineering a Cloak of Invisibility: Manipulating Light with Metamaterials

by Akram Alomainy and Paul Curzon, QMUL You pull a cloak around you and disappear! Reality or science fiction? Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak is surely Hogwarts’...

Solving problems you care about
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Solving problems you care about

Programmable design challenge: sixth formers on @QMUL's summer internship came up with creative solutions to solve real world problems.

Stretching your keyboard – getting more out of QWERTY
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Stretching your keyboard – getting more out of QWERTY

How the QWERTY keyboard has been adapted for languages with different alphabets, using Input Method Editors.

Spot the difference – modelling how humans see the world
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Spot the difference – modelling how humans see the world

Can you spot the difference?

Inspiring Wendy Hall
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Inspiring Wendy Hall

by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London This article is inspired by a keynote talk Wendy Hall gave at the ITiCSE conference in Madrid, 2008. What inspires...

Marissa Mayer: Lemons Linking 41 Shades of Blue – A/B Testing
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Marissa Mayer: Lemons Linking 41 Shades of Blue – A/B Testing

by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London Google, one of the most powerful companies in the world, is famous for being founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin...

The Life of a Star
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

The Life of a Star

by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London The first computers transformed the way research is done. One of the very first computers, EDSAC*, contributed to...

The Devil is in the Detail: Lessons from Animal Welfare? (Temple Grandin)
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

The Devil is in the Detail: Lessons from Animal Welfare? (Temple Grandin)

What can Computer Scientists learn from Temple Grandin and the improvements she made to animal welfare?

100,000 frames – quick draw: how computers help animators create ^JB
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

100,000 frames – quick draw: how computers help animators create ^JB

Ben Stephenson of the University of Calgary gives us a guide to the basics of animation. Animation isn’t a new field – artists have been creating animations for...

Understanding matters of the heart – creating accurate computer models of human organs
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Understanding matters of the heart – creating accurate computer models of human organs

by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London Ada Lovelace, the ‘first programmer’ thought the possibilities of computer science might cover a far wider breadth...

The Dark History of Algorithms
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

The Dark History of Algorithms

Zin Derfoufi, a Computer Science student at Queen Mary, delves into some of the dark secrets of algorithms past. Algorithms are used throughout modern life forContinue...

Cognitive crash dummies
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Cognitive crash dummies

Mathematical, digital and physical models can help us design things better (and more safely!)

Kimberly Bryant, founder of Black Girls Code, born 14 January 1967
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Kimberly Bryant, founder of Black Girls Code, born 14 January 1967

Black Girls Code aims to teach one million Black girls to code before 2040.

Gary Starkweather (b 9 Jan 1938) invented the laser printer and colour management
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Gary Starkweather (b 9 Jan 1938) invented the laser printer and colour management

Gary Starkweather (9 January 1938 – 26 December 2019) invented and developed the first laser printer. In the late 1960s he was an engineer working in the US for...

Pepper’s Ghost: an 1860s illusion used in ‘head-up displays’ ^JB
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Pepper’s Ghost: an 1860s illusion used in ‘head-up displays’ ^JB

by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London (first published in 2007) When Pepper’s Ghost first appeared on the stage as part of one of Professor Pepper’s shows...
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