Posts archive Instant 3×3 Magic Squares 7 December 2025Synthetic Speech 5 December 2025Film Futures: A Christmas Carol 4 December 2025Hear and … their magic square 1 December 2025Sounding out a Sensory Garden 30 November 2025Film Futures (Christmas Special): Elf 29 November 2025Scéalextric Stories 24 November 2025Tony Stockman: Sonification 22 November 2025Clapping Music 17 November 2025The Machine Stops: a review 16 November 2025 Full archives Instant 3×3 Magic Squares Synthetic Speech Film Futures: A Christmas Carol Hear and … their magic square Sounding out a Sensory Garden Film Futures (Christmas Special): Elf Scéalextric Stories Tony Stockman: Sonification Clapping Music The Machine Stops: a review Going Postal: A review The Alien Cookbook Shh! Can you hear that diagram? Jerry Elliot High Eagle: Saving Apollo 13 Service Model: a review Crystal ball coupons – what your data might be giving away Hacking DNA Password strength and information entropy The robot always wins He attacked me with a dictionary! Ninja White Hat Hacking RADAR winning the Battle of Britain Transitional Automaton: a poem Sea sounds sink ships Shouting at Memory: Where Did My Write Go? AI owes us an explanation Perceptrons and the AI winter Lego Computer Science: Algorithms and computational agents Mary and Eliza Edwards: the mother and daughter human computers The Digital Seabed: Data in Augmented Reality An experiment in buoyancy Ammonite propulsion of underwater robots Film Futures: The Lord of the Rings Why do we still have lighthouses? The first Internet concert Let the brain take the strain Margaret Hamilton: Apollo Emergency! Take a deep breath, hold your nerve and count to 5 Pots fixing problematic acoustics You cannot be serious! …Wimbledon line calls go wrong An AI Oppenheimer Moment? Dr Who? Dr You??? How did the zebra get its stripes? If you go down to the woods today… The Sweet Learning Computer: Learning Ladder Signing Glasses Sign Language for Train Departures Was the first computer a ‘Bombe’? Delia Derbyshire: Say it sounds like singing The virtual Jedi Bits with Soul (via a puzzle) Film Futures: Brassed Off Designing a planet’s road network Film Futures: Tsotsi Annie Easley: putting rockets into space Torchwood: in need of some backup Moon and Mind-Body Dualism Bank holiday bunting! Robot runners Anne-Marie Imafidon’s STEMettes The CS4FN Easter Egg Hunt Bullseye! Mark Rober’s intelligent dart board A Sea Hero Quest to understand our navigation skills Robert Weitbrecht and his telecommunication device for the deaf Debugging your sandwich maker Making mistakes creatively – putting error messages to good use You wouldn’t fall for that, would you? Always check the text before sending to print! Super-plant supercapacitors The wrong trousers? Not any more! Language-mangling rude word filters Google’s “PigeonRank” and arty-pigeon intelligence I’m (not) a little teapot Broadband, by carrier pigeon Music-making mates for Mortimer Philippa Gardner bringing law and order to a wild west Soft squidgy robots An Wang’s magnetic memory Aaron and the art of art Sue Sentance: Teaching the world to program Ancient Egyptian Numerals Hiroshi Kawano and his AI abstract artist Piet Mondrian and Image Representation Maria Cunitz: astronomer and algorithmic thinker Maria Kirch: human computer of the 1600s and 1700s ELIZA: the first chatbot to fool people Dina St Johnston: Kickstarting a software industry The logic behind syntactic sugar Turn Right in Tenejapa Peter Landin: Elegance from Logic A puzzle, spies … and a beheading Designing an interactive prayer mat A sound social venture: recognising birds Oh no! Not again… I wandered lonely as a mass of dejected vapour – try some AI poetry Conjuring with logic: the remote control red-black mind meld Adrian Stokes: Internet pioneer Herman Hollerith: from punch cards to a special company A handshaking puzzle Tanaka Atsuko: an electric dress Electric Dreams and Solid Light at the Tate Modern My first signs Join the crowd with swarm intelligence Nemisindo: breaking the sound barrier The logic piano Mike Lynch: sequencing success Superhero Syllogisms Eating at Quonk: a tough puzzle? From a handful of sand to a fistful of dollars To be (CEO) or not to be (CEO) The Blue Planet? Mixing Research with Entrepreneurship: Find a need and solve it Avoiding loneliness with StudyBuddy Why is your Internet so slow? Global Entrepreneurship Week Wanna Be A Rock Star? The illusion of good software design Marc Hannah and the graphics pipeline Claude Shannon: Inventing for the fun of it The logic of Queens Byte Queens Sonifying zebrafish biology Solving Railway Timetabling Problems with Data Visualisation This quantum message will self-destruct in 10 seconds… The Teleporting Robot Cooking up computer style Ask About Asthma Working in Computer Science: An Autistic Perspective (Part 2) Working in Computer Science: An Autistic Perspective (Part 1) Scilly cable antics Sarah Angliss: Hugo is no song bird Bank holiday fun: website whimsy, and try your hand at making 3D pictures Much ado about nothing Double or nothing: an extra copy of your software, just in case Navajo Code Talkers Involving disabled people in the design of ICT tools and devices Finding work experience, or a job in computer science Photogrammetry for fun, preservation and research – digitally stitching together 2D photographs to visualise the 3D world. Music & Computing: TouchKeys: getting more from your keyboard Joyce Weisbecker: a teenager the first indie games developer? Happy #WorldEmojiDay 2024 – here’s an emoji film quiz & some computer science history Art Touch and Talk Tour Tech Accessible Technology in the Voting Booth The basics of Quantum Computing: Qubits Gutta-Percha: how a tree launched a global telecom revolution Even the dolphins use pocket switched networks! NASA’s interstellar probe Voyager 1 went silent until computer scientists transmitted a fix that had to travel 15 billion miles! Coordinate conundrum puzzles and vector graphics Mary Ann Horton and the invention of email attachments From Egyptian Survey puzzles to computational thinking Pac-Man and Games for Girls The invisible dice mystery – a magic trick underpinned by computing and maths T. V. Raman and his virtual guide dogs Designing for autistic people Can you trust a smile? Testing AIs in Minecraft Computers that read emotions Neurodiversity and what it takes to be a good programmer The top 10 bugs Do something computationally funny for money Calculating Pi for Pi Day Could AI end science? Find your own time zone – #BSW24 The Social Machine of Maths Software for Justice Designing robots that care A visit to the Turing Machine: a short story Lego Computer Science: Turing Machines Part 3: the program AMPER: AI helping future you remember past you Lego Computer Science: Turing Machines Part 2: the controller Lego Computer Science: Turing Machines Part 1: the tape Singing bird – a human choir, singing birdsong Eggheads: helping us to visualise objects and classes Ethics – What would you do? Part 2: answers Ethics – What would you do? Equality, diversity and inclusion in the R Project: collaborative community coding & curating with Dr Heather Turner CS4FN Advent Calendar – Day 25 bonus Christmas crackers: have you ever seen this cracker joke? CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 25: Merry Christmas! Today’s post is about the ‘wood computer’ CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 24: Santa’s Sleigh – track its progress through the skies CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 23: Bonus material – see “Santa’s sleigh” flying overhead CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 23: Father Christmas – checking his list, spotting the errors CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 22: wreaths and rope memory – weave your own space age computer CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 21: stars and celestial navigation CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 20: where’s it @? Gift tags and internet addresses CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 19: jingle bells or warning bells? Avoiding computer scams CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 18: cracker or hacker? Cyber security CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 17: pocket-switching networked reindeer CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 16: candy cane or walking aid: designing for everyone, human computer interaction CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 15: a candle: optical fibre, optical illusions CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 14: Why is your internet so slow + a festive kriss-kross puzzle CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 13: woolly hat: warming versus cooling CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 12: Computer Memory – Molecules and Memristors CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 11: the proof of the pudding… mathematical proof Virtual reality goggles for mice CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 10: #AI – Holly, Ivy and Alexa – chatbots & the useful skill of file management. Plus win at noughts and crosses CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 9: gingerbread man – computing and ‘food’ (cookies, spam!), and a puzzle CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 8: gifts, and wrapping – Tim Berners-Lee, Right to Repair & another computing puzzle CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 7: Computing for the birds: dawn chorus, birds as data carriers and a Google April Fool (plus a puzzle!) CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 6: patterned bauble: tracing patterns in computing – printed circuit boards, spotting links and a puzzle for tourists CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 5: snowman: analog hydraulic computers (aka water computers), digital compression, and a puzzle CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 4: Ice skate: detecting neutrinos at the South Pole, figure-skating motion capture, Frozen and a puzzle CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 3: snowflakes – make your own six-sided HexaHexaFlexagon with our templates CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 2: Pairs: mittens, gloves, pair programming, magic tricks CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 1: Woolly jumpers, knitting and coding Cartoons, comics and computer games – Ada Lovelace’s graphic novel Blade: the emotional computer. Exploring mazes, inventing algorithms (part I) Why the Romans were pants at maths Beheading Hero’s mechanical horse How far can you hear? Modelling distant birdsong. Threads & Yarns – textiles and electronics 3D models in motion Frequency Analysis for Fun Keeping secrets on the Internet – encryption keeps your data safe Composing from Compression Balls, beams and quantum computers – performing calculations with patterns of light Getting off the beach, fast “A mob for the Earth” Competitive Zen Pit-stop heart surgery Cyber Security at the movies: Rogue one (Part II: Authentication) Happy World Emoji Day – 📅 17 July 2023 – how people use emoji to communicate and what it tells us about them 😀 Cyber Security at the movies: Rogue one (Part I: Physical Security) When a chatbot acts as your “trusted” agent … Nurses in the mist Negligent nurses? Or dodgy digital? – device design can unintentionally mask errors Screaming Headline Kills!!! Putting your hand up a cow’s bottom Bitten blue Creating great game worlds Hallucinating chatbots Protecting your fridge The gender shades audit Playing the weighting game Collecting mini-beasts and pocket monsters “Tlahcuilo”, a visual composer Follow those ants The first computer wizard A Godlike Heart Mary Clem: getting it right Black in Data Reclaim your name Al-Jazari: the father of robotics A PC Success In space no one can hear you … The last piece of the continental drift puzzle Digital lollipop: no calories, just electronics! The tale of the mote and the petrel Fran Allen: Smart Translation A gendered timeline of technology Operational Transformation Engineering a cloak of invisibility: manipulating light with metamaterials Alexander Graham Bell: It’s good to talk Manufacturing Magic Solving problems you care about Sameena Shah: News you can trust Object-oriented pizza at the end of the universe Stretching your keyboard – getting more out of QWERTY Is ChatGPT’s “CS4FN” article good enough? Understanding Parties A machine wrote this post – OpenAi’s ChatGPT Mood Gloves What the real Pros say Susan Kare: Icon Draw Celebrating Jean Bartik: 1940s programmer What’s that bird? Ask your phone – birdsong-recognition apps Spot the difference – modelling how humans see the world Inspiring Wendy Hall Barbara Liskov: Byzantine birthdays Marissa Mayer: Lemons Linking 41 Shades of Blue – A/B Testing Opinions, Opinions, Opinions Joyce Wheeler: The Life of a Star The Devil is in the Detail: Lessons from Animal Welfare? (Temple Grandin) Ingrid Daubechies: Wiggly lines help catching crime Mark Dean: An Inspiration 100,000 frames – quick draw: how computers help animators create Edie Schlain Windsor and same sex marriage Understanding matters of the heart – creating accurate computer models of human organs The Dark History of Algorithms Lego Computer Science: Logic with Truth Tables Lego Computer Science: Truth Tables Jacquie Lawson: the multi-million pound greeting Ludwig Wittgenstein: tautology and truth tables Alan Turing’s life Cognitive crash dummies Chatbot or Cheatbot? Daphne Oram: the dawn of music humans can’t play Kimberly Bryant: Black Girls Code Bringing people closer when they’re far away Hedy Lamarr: The movie star, the piano player and the torpedo Gary Starkweather: the laser printer and colour management Lynn Conway: revolutionising chip design Sorry to bug you: Grace Hopper The first computer music Swat a way to drive Future Friendly: Focus on Kerstin Dautenhahn The last speaker The joke Turing test The Chinese room: zombie attack! The paranoid program How does Santa do it? Pepper’s Ghost: an 1860s illusion used in ‘head-up displays’ Making sense of squishiness – 3D modelling the natural world Watching whales well – the travelling salesman problem Recognising (and addressing) bias in facial recognition tech #BlackHistoryMonth Happy Hallowe’en Devices that work for everyone Facing up to ALL faces Hidden Figures: NASA’s brilliant calculators Writing together: Clarence ‘Skip’ Ellis Mark Dean: An Inspiration Freddie Figgers – the abandoned baby who became a runaway telecom tech star Gladys West: Where’s my satellite? Where’s my child? Kakuro, Logic and Computer Science Cold hard complexity: learning to talk in nature’s language Love your data Delicious computing Hiding in Skype Naked Mole-Rats Go Digital – monitoring colonies remotely (while respecting their privacy) The heart of an Arabic programming language Escape from Egypt Chocoholic Subtraction Chocolate Turing Machines (edible computing) Microwave health check Microwave Racing Can a computer tell a good story? Patterns for Sharing Your own electrical sea Playing Bridge, but not as we know it – the sound of the Human Harp Strictly Judging Objects Cryptography: You are what you know Cryptography: Shafi Goldwasser and the Zero Knowledge Proof The First Law of Humans Dressing it up The Mummy in an AI world: Jane Webb’s future The naked robot Lego computer science: What is computation? (simple cellular automata) Shirts that keep score More Encrypted Deckchairs Full metal jacket: the fashion of Iron Man Lego computer science: binary Let buttons be buttons Encrypted Deckchairs Back (page) to the drawing board Tempest Prognosticator: look out, leeches! Quipu: tie a knot in it Bullseye! The intelligent dart board The Ultimate (do nothing) machine Simone Giertz: A pat on the shoulder Christopher Strachey and the secret of being a Wizard Debugger Sophie Wilson: Where would feeding cows take you? The Hive at Kew The beach, the missionary and my origin myth Hoverflies: comin’ to get ya Edge-notched cards and relational databases The Wood Computer Babbage’s barrels Ada and the music machine Ant Art Ant Track Algorithms Diamond Dogs: Bowie’s algorithmic creativity The algorithm that could not speak its name I Ching binary Predicting the future: marble runs, binary and the I Ching Mary Coombs, teashops and Leo the computer A custard computer The taming of the screw Quicksilver memory A storm in a bell jar Pass the screwdriver, Igor Babbage’s triumph over brutal reality Nikola Tesla: the invisible genius Babbage’s Adders Making core rope memory Core rope memory An ode to technology Swallow a slug-bot to catch a … “The thundering engines vibrate throughout your body” If the Beagle had landed… Fencing the moon Ada Lovelace in her own words Dickens knitting in code Understanding Ultron: A Turing test for world domination April Fooling with computing – IP over avian carriers, PigeonRank A Wookie for three minutes please The cure that just folds away Executable Biology Lego computer science: Gray code Lego computer science: representing numbers using position Lego computer science: representing numbers Lego computer science: compression algorithms Lego computer science: pixel pictures CS4FN Advent Calendar – bonus material: HexaFestiveFlexagons to make and colour in Meet the chatbots How to get a head in robotics The machines can translate now Letters from the Victorian Smog: Braille: binary, bits & bytes Only the fittest slogans survive! What are birds actually saying? Stopping sounds getting left behind: the Bela computer Ada Lovelace: Visionary I know where your cat lives The red sock of doom – trying to catch mistakes before they happen Playing Tantrix: P=NP? Emoticons and Emotions Knitters and Coders: separated at birth? Die another Day? Or How Madonna crashed the Internet The Emoji Crystal Ball Back (page) to health Gadgets based on works of fiction How do you solve a problem like arthritis? Are you there yet? So, so tired… Is your healthcare algorithm racist? Solving real problems with Bayesian networks Diagnose? Delay delivery? Decisions, decisions. Decisions about diabetes in pregnancy Bayes’ theorem as an algorithm Cloudy with a chance of pain A simple Bayesian network for having a virus Here A graphical explanation of Bayes theorem What are the chances of that? The church minister’s hobby and clever machines The ping pong vaccination programming challenge Smart health: decisions, decisions, decisions I’m feeling Moo-dy today Standup Robots Sabine Hauert: Swarm Engineer What’s on your mind? In a New York nanosecond Hiding in Elizabethan Binary The optical pony express Smart bags Punk robots learn to pogo The computer vs the casino: Wearable tech cheating Sick tattoos One in the eye for wearable tech Smart tablets (to swallow) i-pickpocket AI Detecting the Scribes of the Dead Sea Scrolls Losing the match? Follow the science. Change the kit! DragonflyAI: I see what you see Studying Comedy with Computers Every Breath You Take: Reclaim the Internet Why would you accept inefficiency? The Cyber-Security Honeypot The very first computers A recipe for programming Florence Nightingale: rebel with a cause The Tactful Watch HMS Belfast: destroying the destroyer Machines Inventing Musical Instruments Return of the killer robot? Evil scientist?! Helpless woman?!? Who invented Morse code? Cyber Security at the Movies: Guardians of the Galaxy (Fail Secure security) Share this: Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Like Loading...
cs4fn 