History

The History Of Mashed Potatoes

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!

History

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Stanford Data Visualisation Exhibition

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The Stanford University Libraries have a fantastic data visualisation exhibition available online showing great examples of data visualisation, many historic in nature, including this fabulous paleontological map of Ireland & the UK from 1850.

Data Vis

History

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First Thought Talks

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The First Thought Talks are an excellent set of talks in the Galway International Arts Festival that this year are streamed online and available to view on the festival's YouTube channel. There was an excellent talk on practical options for Ireland in addressing the climate crisis. The last day of talks will be streamed tomorrow, Saturday Sep 12.

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The First Webpage

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Russ over on Twitter highlighted that 29 years ago, the first webpage was published by Tim Berners-Lee. Here it is. 29 years ago today, Tim Berners-Lee posted the first ever web page.This is ithttps://t.co/MSxAZ2cMZK

History

Web Dev

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Podcast of the Week: Blindboy Interviews Brenda & John Romero

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In his podcast this week, Blindboy played an excellent live interview with Brenda & John Romero, who are video game royalty. Brenda is a fullbright scholar and has been working in the games industry since 1981, and John was a game designer on Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein 3D. The interview is an enjoyable listen into the world of video game history, including the large role that women have played in computer programming history.

History

Podcast

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Information Theory Introduction

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Information theory and entropy are theory topics that can quickly become very abstrast and difficult to get a handle on. Federico Carrone does a great job in this medium post at delivering an introduction to Information Theory that is based around real world scenarios to provide grounding context.

History

Innovation

Tech

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Podcast of the Week: David McWilliams & The Wizard of Oz

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You may be aware that the game Monopoly was actually invented by Lizzy Magie to highlight the inequalities of landlordism. This week in his podcast David McWilliams shares a similar bizzare historical origins story, this time about The Wizard of Oz which was actually a satircal commentary on the gold standard.

Business

History

Podcast

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Pandemic History

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Visual Capitalist published an informative infograph showing the different pandemics throughout history with the size scaled to the number of deaths.

Data Vis

History

Life

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Cummins Sports Cork Photography Archive

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Cummins Sports, a Cork sportswear and equipment retailer, have published their photo archive online. The photos, taken by Kevin Cummins, capture a range of aspects of Cork life from the 1960s onwards, including when JFK visited Cork! (H/T to Vicky Langan for sharing).

History

Photo

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Old Book Illustrations

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Old Book Illustrations is a searchable database of scanned old book illustrations. Included on the site are a number of illustrations from Irish artist Harry Clarke.

Design

History

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