How others see us

I think it's easy to forget how people outside our own professions and cliques may see us. Earlier this week I had to do some filming for some video promos for my University. I and a student basically just had to talk about and demo our game AI research. What struck me was how the film crew seemed really fascinated and interested in what we were researching. In the downtime between takes, while shots were being set up, they asked really good questions and seemed rather awestruck by what we were doing.
   As an academic I'm so used to viewing what I do through the lens of my peers who are hard to impress and correctly skeptical. Viewing our work through the lens of lay people has let me see again how exciting what we do is.

The Oldest Computer Music

During my research I came across this piece by the BBC on a recording from 1951 of the Ferranti Mark 1 computer, a commercial version of the Manchester Baby, playing some songs.  You can listen to the recording from the link above.

iOS 5.0

I read an article yesterday that predicts from industry insiders that iOS 5 to be released with the iPhone 5 will support wireless sync. I predicted this last year: here and here.

It’s clearly daft that in order to use your IPhone or IPad you must have a PC or Mac as well. However, I think that for iOS 5.0 sync will only operate over wifi, and really that’s not to much of a hassle or restriction. Also I expect iOS 5.0 to make some big changes to ITunes (iTunes-in-the-cloud) and big changes to MobileMe.
   BTW I was spot on with my iPad 2 predictions with the exception of the rear facing camera. I still think it’s a bit unnecessary. However, I think Apple included it because it means that app developers can now develop for a front and rear facing camera on all iOS devices (apple TV excluded of course).
   My new iPad 2 finally arrived today :-)

Amazon author page

I now have my own authors page on Amazon, which includes feeds from this blog. This could all get very circular.
I also have some good news. An Italian publisher of popular science books is interested in translating and publishing my book in Italy when it's completed and [drum roll] a major English language publisher may also be interested in my book for their popular science series!

Enigma

Last night I watched the 2001 movie Enigma. An entertaining WWII spy movie about Bletchley Park and the Enigma code. Unfortunately although a lot of factual details were correct, particularly with regard to the way the Enigma code was cracked using cribs and Bombe machines, the lead character, based on Alan Turing was totally wrong. They cast him as a working class heterosexual Mancunian; whereas of course Turing was a middle class southerner who was very gay. I found the experience of watching the film quite frustrating. Why did they feel the need to rewrite Turing in this way?

BBC doco "The Computer Programme" from 1981

While doing research on computer history I came across this ancient BBC documentary series from 1981 called "The Computer Programme." The video quality is horrible, really jerky (think Max Headroom), but the show is priceless. It catches computers just as the first PCs like the Commodore PET, Sinclair ZX81 and the BBC Micro were entering the  market and home users were starting to write their own BASIC programs. A real piece of history from 30 years ago.


Incidentally the website that is indexing the documentary topdocumentaryfilms.com is very good if you like docos.

Who invented the computer?

Q. Who invented the telephone? A. Alexander Graham Bell.
Q. Who invented the airplane? A. The Wright brothers first flew at Kitty Hawke in December 1903.
Q. Who invented the computer? [hint it’s not Steve Jobs nor Bill Gates]

Be honest, you don’t know do you (unless you're a computer scientist). Don’t you think its strange that you don’t know who invented something as important as the computer.