There was an old kids' game in the 1980s called Operation in which players used tweezers to attempt to extract bones and other bits and pieces from a hapless patient called Cavity Sam. If their hand wasn't steady enough, the patient's nose lit up red and a buzzer sounded. Oh no! Ha ha, start again.
The game drew on the drama and tension of real-life surgery, and it would be interesting to find out how many kids who later became surgeons remember playing this game. Maybe it was what first inspired some to become doctors.
Moodle: the LMS for everyone
Courseindex.com provide a suite of services around Moodle. Here we explain what we do and how it is of value to people and organisations who are entering the eLearning space.
Do you get the picture? – Computer Vision
Why is machine vision a hard problem? As humans, we look at a dog and we see the dog. That's all there is to it. Surely making machines that do the same isn't that hard, right?
It actually turns out to be one of the toughest problems around, because that 'simple' seeing we do is in fact managed by our brains more than our eyes – and the brain is, well, the most complex object in the universe.
Hitting the fun switch: theme park engineering
A lot of what engineers do is hidden away. Few members of the public give much thought to sewer systems, road bridges, power grids and flood barriers, impressive feats though they are. As Councillor Hamann says to Neo in The Matrix Reloaded, "See that machine? It has something to do with recycling our water supply. I have absolutely no idea how it works. But I do understand the reason for it to work."
Training the next generation of cybersecurity experts
England's Bletchley Park, famous for its World War II codebreaking success, is about to put on display some of the actual Nazi messages it decrypted. Bletchley's National Museum of Computing houses a working replica of the five-tonne 'Colussus' decryption engine, of which 10 were in use at the peak of the wartime codebreaking effort. The 'original and freshly discovered' messages will be available for visitors to marvel at.
Starving IT researcher? Sniff out bugs for cash
The first ever bug bounty program was launched in 1983. The prize for finding a bug in the software? A Volkswagen Beetle (a bug – geddit?). Such is the pressure on software firms to produce vulnerability-free code that they will offer cash rewards to white hat security researchers who can find and report flaws. Bug-hunting has become an industry, and anyone with the right smarts can try for a slice of the bug bounty pie.
Learn to create electronic soundscapes
Creative / 07 Jul 16
Synthesizers have come a long way since the Moog and the Fairlight in the 1960s and 1970s. It's no longer new to hear samples of raindrops falling into water in music tracks, as it was when Jean-Michel Jarre gave us his groundbreaking soundscapes on the pioneering albums Oxygène and Équinoxe. Synth sounds are so commonplace now that to create new sounds, you need to know a few things about how they work, and learn a bunch of software, to see how you can push the envelope.
Get high for free drinking only water
Living Well / 01 Jun 16
Maybe there's a slight pang of guilt at the clickbaity title, but it got your attention and there are excellent reasons to read on. We're talking about the links between exercise and feeling good in yourself, otherwise known as mental health. Here's a course that delves into the exact mechanisms that link exercising to that inner glow.
The Nobel Prize for Food: winner announced July 11
The Basque country between France and Spain has a proud culinary tradition that has led to the creation in 2011 of the Basque Culinary Center, a university dedicated entirely to food. The Faculty of Gastronomic Sciences at Mondragon University joined with a group of prominent chefs to found the first official university-level training courses in Spain (the Degree in Gastronomy and Culinary Arts), combined with a Research and Innovation Center in the field of food and gastronomy.
How to get paid to travel the world
There's a course on Udemy that might be worth looking into if you're tired of the 9 to 5 routine and want to see more of the world. It describes how to get paid to travel. They don't give away the exact details of their method because that would be stupid – they are selling an 'information product' in the style of get rich quick schemes, and the only way to get at their secret sauce is to pay for it.
Business / 10 Nov 16