Items of Interest

Oumuamua

#142
The first object in history to pass through the solar system and to be identified as originating outside the solar system was discovered in October 2017 by Canadian astronomer Robert Weryk in Hawaii. The object was named Oumuamua, which in Hawaiian means first distant messenger.
Space

Kirkos Speaking of Music

#141
Last week I had the pleasure of photographing another amazing Kirkos event, Speaking of Music. The night of contemporary music and art involved a paint filled piano, newspaper stories played through instruments, whistling, space, a fish tank and a microphone massaged with Nivea, to mention but a few of the fantastic pieces performed in Riam Dublin on the night. You can check out the photos I took of the event here.
Music
Photo

Book Review: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century - Yuval Noah Harari

#141
Yuval Noah Harari's third book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is an interesting look at 21 topics where we humans can improve. The lessons are grouped into 5 categories; The Technology Challenge, The Political Challenge, Despair and Hope, Truth, and Resilience. The subject matter for the first part of the book is tough reading. Harari takes a cold and calculating look at the societal organisations and structures that humans have created, from religion all the way up to modern day terrorism, before looking at how the species can be resilient in the face of these challenges.
Life
Review

On-Call War Games

#141
The New York Times has an interesting piece on how they developed war game scenarios to train on-call engineers on their web platforms. The procedures have the dual result of preparing documentation and toolkits for recovery scenarios while also making engineers more confident about being on-call.
Web Dev

24.9 Billion Pixel Shanghai

#141
The government of Shanghai commissioned a 24.9 Billion Pixel photograph of the city by BigPixel. The fidelity and scale of the image is incredible, from the top of a skyscraper you can zoom into leaves on a tree! I dare you not to spend time zooming in and exploring, and just when I thought I had had enough, I realised that the image is 360 degrees, you can turn around and see the rest of the city!
Innovation
Photo

Ireland Underwater in 80 years

#141
Environmental write John Gibbons was interviewed by Mario Rosenstock on TodayFM this week about climate change. The 11 minute interview is worth listening to and includes some hard hitting scenarios about how bad the effects of climate change could be, depending on whether we act now or not. The above illustration shows the devastating effect a 3m+ rise in sea levels would have on Ireland.
Environment
Life

Livable Cities

#141
Jason Kottke posted an interesting piece on Kottke.org about Donald Appleyard's book Livable Cities. Research conducted by Appleyard in the book shows the impact of cars and traffic on neighbourhood connects through 3 streets of varying traffic levels.
Data Vis

IBM Q System One

#141
At CES this week IBM launched the first ever commercial quantum computer, the IBM Q System One. The 20 qubit complete system is housed in an air-tight 9 foot glass cube. IBM has also launched an open-source quantum computing framework called Qiskit, for use within IBM Q.
Quantum Computing

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