Dominic Finn

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/technology-16347248 I suppose a potential weak link could always be the issuers and holders of the keys. I would hope that stringent audits would ensure the security though. You would hope...

Mod of the Year 2011 Published on 23rd December 2011 by Antony Leather 67 Comments Feature Mod of the Year 2011 2011 has undoubtedly been one of the best ever years for PC modding. In fact, so many projects have graced our world-famous modding forum that we've had real trouble sifting through all the incredible talent that's been on show this year. As it stands, this is our biggest-ever Mod of the Year competition, with 25 projects taking part. However, the back-to-back winner, Attila Lukacs, who claimed 1st place in 2009 and 2010 is absent, as he's still working on his follow up project. As such, this year's much sought-after Mod of the Year crown is definitely up for grabs, along with some epic prize bundles . That's not to say Attila wouldn't have had some extremely stiff competition. This year we've had some of the most ama

After a really?successful?series of physics and astronomy lectures (which went on for over a year!), there will be a more general science series of lectures starting in the new year with the space shuttle story on the 12th of Jan.? It's well worth coming down to the lectures even if you are not from a strong scientific background. I wouldn't consider myself among the most lowly of scientific minds and I always find them enlightening.? If you know of anyone who might be interested in these lectures please pass the message on. It's in my interest to advertise it because I enjoy going to them, the more popular they are the longer they will go on for!

via theengineer.co.uk These guys are doing amazing work. It looks like there is still a lot of work to be done so I doubt we will see any real help for a good while yet. One major issue is keeping a power supply to an exoskeleton.

via bbc.co.uk This is an excellent idea. I can't imagine it smells particularly nice but everything else about this is cool.

via lunchboxworld.co.uk For some reason I decided to look for lunch boxes. I came across this beauty.

via gizmodo.co.uk This will be on my childrens christmas list. This and lumps of coal of course ;-)

via wired.co.uk I love seeing the amazing applications for the kinect. Also heard about this on the Wired UK Podcast. A great thing about this is that you could even start considering consultations from the home instead. The healthcare professional video calls the patient, asks them to walk in front of the kinect and then is able to analyse and conduct an interview remotely.

The Amazings is a new social enterprise launching in East London We help people who are about to retire or have retired create amazing experiences with the skills, knowledge and passion they?ve picked up throughout their life. We handle the advertising and payments ? all the Amazing has to do is decide when they want to run their experience, turn up, be amazing, and then collect the cash. via theamazings.org I heard about this on the Wired UK podcast this morning. I was hoping it was a national incentive but at the moment it's only in East London. What an excellent idea though.

via blog.makezine.com This reminds me of my GCSE Systems and Control. I opted to make an electric violin! Essentially it consisted of me foolishly sanding a piece of wood for 2 years until right near the end my uncle swooped in and helped me make a fully working electric violin out of an old park bench. It turned out to be an excellent project. I think I still have the basic shape of the violin somewhere. I'll have to get it out and post it at sometime. I am sure there could be money made in custom making them to order...

I listened to the first part of .net rocks show 722  whilst out for my lunch. Dan North mentioned the excellent output of developers sitting with traders coding and pushing. To me this is one of the ultimate ways to achieve excellent software. I am a big fan of the idea of method acting as a software developer. I am pretty sure someone else has already coined the idea.  Essentially I like the idea of sitting and working with the people I am going to write the software for. Working with them in their daily tasks as if I were a normal employee. It's how I started out coding. I worked in various jobs as an administrator, a construction estimator and many other roles. Initially with Excel and Access and then with VB.net and other tools I just wrote software that made my particular tasks and those of other people in the office easier. The code was outrageous but generally worked. When it didn't I could fix it easy enough, the person who had the problem told me there and then what wa

via blog.makezine.com A circuit bent NES! Pretty cool. I need to do a little bit o circuit bending me thinks. I feel embarrassed that my NES hasn't been warmed up for some time in fact.

via kinecteducation.com Teaching maths with Kinect certainly makes maths more interesting. I think it helps answer the question asked by teens... "when are we ever going to need this?".

Android apps reduced to 10p to celebrate 10million downloads. There are some cool apps here. I have Paper Camera, Minecraft and Asphalt 6 already and can especially recommend Minecraft. It's quite basic at the moment but there are more updates coming for it soon. This is the perfect time to get it. Paper camera is also a nice little app for that price! GET ALL OF THEM! GO GO GO

You must know this pain.    hg commit -Am "Massive commit of whole days work" hg push TIME FOR MERGING HELL! PREPARE YOUR ANUS!   As a comparison, merging tool we use Beyond Compare. Indeed it's not a bad tool. But it's not clairvoyant. No tool can completely remove headaches that are generated from both the above message and also rolling back from changes that have been commited.  As mentioned, one of the boons of source control is the rolling back of changes if needed. I think this can be made difficult when you are checking in a ton of work at once from all sorts of little fixes, changes, tweaks and implemented functionality.  My dream is to commit work discretely by feature. For example in CRUD land. You would discretely check in the create mechanism, view mechanism and so on. If you see small bugs elsewhere, write them down. Fix them in their own seperate commit afterwards (or before depending on the situation).  I like breaking work down into features (what some

via engadget.com Scary. I have a suspicion that many systems like this have little or not thought put into security. I may have to play Fallout soon as well after seeing this screenshot. I suppose when you think about it. Many control systems are only attached to a potential outside source when a computer is attached to them, ie a laptop being plugged in. The laptop could then have internet access and instantly start sending tasty information out. A determined party would only need to find out (through linkedin even maybe?) who works at a plant and then the fun could begin.     

via yankodesign.com Interesting idea!

via heikniemi.net I saw someone had posted this on Twitter a couple of days ago but I didn't favourite it. Here it is again if you haven't seen it! There's some pretty cool features!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5QDRoxuHtk#!?wmode=transparent] via youtube.com I am defintiely checking this out later. Is it a gimmick? YES! Is it still cool. YES!

via engadget.com This looks lovely. I can't wait for the price of surfaces like this to come down. The day we can have collaborative meetings with one of these will be amazing. Imagine you needed an image to fit for a site you were creating, several of you could grab a browser, search and bring up suggestions and then push the images about to try out. So many possibilities!

They have recently fitted this at Attenborough station. It's a pretty cool idea!!

via msdn.microsoft.com I am particularly fond of RavenDb. It's definitely worth a look, as is this tutorial if you aren't sure where to start with it. There is some fair (not great but ok) documentation on the RavenDb website as well last time I checked. I have just recently downloaded a later version and small things that immediately pleased me was a bit of an upgrade to the RavenDb documents interface itself. It's definitely maturing.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SegLUbBJDhA#!?wmode=transparent] via youtube.com Another interesting phone concept from Nokia! It's been ages since I have seen them come up these crazy thought provoking designs. I haven't seen one since the crazy green bracelet thing a couple of years ago.

via conversations.nokia.com This is a very interesting concept phone. I suppose it will definitely appeal to the more vain among us.

Following a recommendation I have been to Weavers in Nottingham today to acquire a bottle of mead. I require two further ingredients to a perfect weekend.? Skyrim Peace and quiet

via eandt.theiet.org Wicked.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxGw3zr5u3M?wmode=transparent] via youtube.com This looks like an excellent rugged Android tablet. I tremble at the potential cost of it however (not that it is supposed to be a consumer product anyway).

More brilliant headlines from the Nottingham Evening Post. Once again these photos are borrowed from my friend Tom. The newsagent near me never seems to have these, but the Co op nearby does seem to. Anyway, thanks to Tom and the Evening Post for some ludicrous headlines. :-)