This weekend I’ve been building a health data visualisation webapp at the Cardiff NHS hackathon! It was put together with Will Webberley, Martin Chorley, Glyn Mottershead, and a bunch of talented Cardiff Computational Journalism students!
I compiled and designed an academic genealogy graphic and had it printed and framed as a gift. Here's how I did it. Materials for you to do your own, including scripts and an example design, are available in this repository on GitHub. You'll likely need some familiarity with Python syntax.
One of the toys that the Computing Club has to play with is an AR.Drone 1.0. This is a pre-built WiFi-enabled quadrocopter manufactured by Parrot. There are official iOS and Android applications for remotely controlling the quadrocopter.
Last weekend’s “Open Sauce” Hackathon was a big success. In addition to the funding I mentioned in my previous post, GitHub also got in touch a day before the event to bolster each prize category with one-year bronze and silver accounts.
Last year I attended the inaugural School of Computer Science & Informatics “Open Sauce” Hackathon as a participant. It was a hugely successful event, and good fun to work with Mark and Chris in building Motion Kitty Pi, a prototype Spotify home music streaming service for Raspberry Pi (with motion-triggered playback!
I’m co-organising the “DigiSocial” hackathon – an exciting attempt to adapt the hackathon format to scientific research and bring together a number of Cardiff University schools, including Social Sciences and Computer Science & Informatics, to stimulate interdisciplinary research.
I spent last Sunday at Box UK’s “For the Social Good” hackathon. It was a very successful event and big thanks to Box UK for putting it on and providing a venue, food, and prizes.
Having attended and organised a few hackathons recently, I’ve been impressed by their ability to glue together the local tech community, university students, and local companies. Hackathons work best when they have some sponsorship behind them; this lends some status to the event and, of course, cash to incentivise participants with food and prizes.