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Halt and Catch Fire Syllabus

For fans of the great TV show Halt and Catch Fire, technologist Ashley Blewer created a great course syllabus for the show. The site is split into 15 classes that link to important RFCs, articles, books, and other resources in the history of computer science and the IT industry that inspire the events of the show.

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17th Century Letter X-Ray

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Researchers from MIT, King’s College London, Queen Mary University London, Utrecht and Leiden used X-ray microtomography scans of a 17th century folder letter locked letter to unfold and read the letter virtually without ever opening it. As amazing as this is, it is even better that the letter contained a complaint! :-)

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Cistercian Number Cyphers

#249

Highlighted by MathematicsUCL on Twitter, Cistercian monks in the 13th century developed a cypher system to prepresent numbers from 1 to 9999 in one symbol.

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GameBoy WorkBoy

#246

YouTuber DidYouKnowGaming tracked down a fascinating unreleased GameBoy accessory from 1992 that turned the GameBoy into a desktop computer! WorkBoy used a connected keyboard and game cartridge to bring PDA functionality to the GameBoy with apps like calculator, alarm, phone book and appointment book, in 1992!

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Podcast of the Week: Tell Me A Story with Eddie Lenihan on Christmas

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Tell Me A Story with Eddie Lenihan is a podcast of stories collected and retold by Seanchaí (Irish traditional storyteller/historian) Eddie Lenihan. In his latest episode about Christmas, Eddie describes some of the older Irish Christmas traditions, along with some folktales about the magical time of midnight on Christmas Eve.

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10 Remarkable Discoveries of 2020

#243

Nature published a list of 10 remarkable discoveries of 2020 which include the violation of matter-antimatter symmetry, the connection between the shifting jetstream and the ozone layer, and the DNA based discovery of incest between the people buried in Newgrange.

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Ireland's Only Dinosaur Fossils

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The only dinosaur fossils ever found on the island of Ireland have now been confirmed as coming from two seperate dinosaurs. The fossils, confirmed by a team from National Museums NI, University of Portsmouth, and Queens University Belfast, come from a Scelidosaurus and a Sarcosaurus.

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Podcast of the Week: The Almanac of Ireland

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I recently interviewed Manchán Magan over on Smart Thinking Books and as a result this week I sought out his podcast The Almanac of Ireland and I was not disappointed! In the episode Hellmouth, Manchán goes in search of the ancient mystical cave enterance to the Cetlic underworld, in a field in Roscommon. He ventures 7 meters underground into the cave with no light and just a microphone and a book for company.

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Podcast of the Week: Motherfoclóir on Peig

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In this episode of Motherfoclóir about Peig, the team finally let loose with both barrels on the Peig myth. Peig Sayers lived on the Blasket Islands off the coast of Kerry at the turn of the 20th century. Her auto-biography in Irish about her hard life on the islands was on the Leaving Certificate Irish exam curriculum until 1995.

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The History Of Mashed Potatoes

#232

Did you know that spuds were banned in France in 1748, until a French pharmacist prisoner of war popularised them again, including mash, after living on them while imprisoned? Well I didn't, and I'm Irish! This article on Mental Floss is full of fun potatoe facts!

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