Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ category

North Wales Tech

February 2nd, 2016

Carwyn Edwards and friends organised a very thought-provoking set of talks around the inaugural lecture at Pontio by Prof Sir John O’Reilly last Thursday (28 January).

The group is North Wales Tech, and the ambitious aim is to build a tech hub in this part of Wales, with makers, tinkerers, prototype-builders, etc all coming together to swap ideas and generally provide encouragement. This is going to be supported by a subscription to the FabLab and coLab in Pontio, which will hire time on a variety of prototyping machines like laser cutters that it would be difficult to justify buying just to make one prototype.

After an intro about local IT opportunities by Sian Williams of Supertemps, the three lightning talks were:

(1) Simulating Emotions in Games, where Chris Headleand showed how he was using 2D spaces mapping 2 emotions to allow game characters to look as though they are experiencing emotions like fear, reluctance, etc.

(2) Tablets on the Beach, where Graham Worley took us though developing a mobile app to allow the Environment Department of the Government of the Cayman Islands to log incidents more easily. It must have been absolutely awful having to work in the Caymans!

(3) DIY Space, where Jo Hinchliffe (concretedog) talked about launching DIY satellites based on the ProtoQube system.

Very thought-provoking indeed, and here’s looking forward to in the next one!