Belfast

I was fortunate enough to be invited to participate in a debate raising money for Farset Labs, a cause obviously close to my cold cynical heart. Will GenAI Revolutionise Our Lives For The Good In The Next 5 Years is top tier troll-bait from Garth and Art, and I’m very grateful to have shared the stage with the 5 other speakers. Even the lanky english one. I was particularly impressed by my teammates in their very human-led approach to this question (although everyone was great!) ...

Today, I’m no longer the Treasurer of Farset Labs, and in the next few days, I’ll officially have left the board of trustees of the charity that I helped form over 13 years ago. Farset Labs started as a Google Group that I started in 2010. It took until 2012 to get our act together, along with some entertaining hackathons riding on the backs of our friends at Dragonslayers. Over the past decade-and-a-bit, I’d easily say that Farset Labs has been the keystone of my life and my career, and I’m pretty sure that (before the renovations in 2019) you’d find my blood, sweat, and definitely tears staining various parts of the building. ...

2011 has been a great year for me; Graduated with a 1st MEng in Electronics & Software Engineering @QUB, Got Job offer to a major financial house, which I turned down, Got Job offer to a C|EH company in England, which I turned down, Got DELNI Funded PhD offer (x4) from CSIT/ECIT, which I turned down, Got selected to be one of the two UK projects within a Joint UK/FR Defence PhD Programme, which I accepted, ...

So we’re only a few weeks into developing this idea, and first I’m going to give some credit where credit’s due; the people that I’m working with this have been brilliant, I want to give special thanks (in no particular order) to Ryan Grieve (@thegrieve), David Kane, Ben Harrison, Martin Gilchrist (@Gilchrist_LLP), Jonny Milliken, Dan Reid, and Chris Murray (@kris18890). Anywhere, where are we now? ...

Contrary to popular belief, the concept of a ‘hacker’ (or at least self described ones) has very little to do with coding and networking wizards pounding through systems and stealing valuable information or just destroying everything they touch. In fact, Google (and Princeton University’s) first definition of the word has more to do with Golf than security (try it by googling “define:hacker”). The so called ‘hacker subculture’ is usually taken as a group of not necessarily like minded, but creative individuals with or without technical or theoretical skill, including artists, musicians, carpenters, machinists, or extreme knitters, and can generally be shortened down to ’tinker-ers’ or ‘messers’.Belfast is a growing hub of technology, software, and art of all forms within Europe; and with Londonderry being named the ‘City of Culture’ for 2013, it is clear the Northern Ireland is no longer (or never was?) the poor child of British (and Irish) creativity and excellence. ...

This is it; my first convention! Yes folks, I’m going to be attending (and volunteering) at TheNextHOPE (@thenexthope), 16-18 July. I’m really looking forward to my first real foray into a tech/hacker community, but don’t really know what to expect. But I’m going to jump in anyway. The tickets are only $85, or $100 at the door, but if you register on-line, you get an awesome hackable RFID tracking badge. Unfortunatly my partner (non-techie) has very little interest in going but I’m sure she’ll enjoy the fashion district on her own (or with the girls). ...

<rant> There was a post on r/Belfast today from someone moving to Belfast looking to make a decision on where they wanted to live. As any sane person would (who doesn’t drive), they wanted to find somewhere close to public transport routes, or to decide to go further out of the city for cheaper but still be able to get into work/school/uni/college/etc. I’m moving to Belfast and trying to find somewhere to live. I don’t drive so I’m looking for places close to public transport, but I can’t seem to find any proper maps with the routes laid out. Translink’s site has some route maps which look similar to a tube map (http://www.translink.co.uk/Documents/Services/metro/Metro_schematic2.pdf[1] ), but without knowing the streets or surrounding ares I’m struggling to piece the routes together from names alone. For Dublin I can use something like http://hittheroad.ie/[2] to see the routes mapped out properly, but i can’t seem to find anything similar for Belfast. Does such a thing exist? ...