Hungry Bear in Leeds

If you find yourself hungry in Leeds and fancy some fine food I can strongly recommend the Hungry Bear in Meanwood. We had lunch there today and the food was excellent. The burgers are very good value and for afters they serve a platter with a whole bunch of Yorkshire cheeses. They also have an interesting selection of locally brewed beer. You can’t get better than that.

PlayStation 4 vs. Xbox One - Fight

I’ve actually had a chance to play with both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 now. As for which is better, they both are. I reckon the Xbox One has the better launch games and more potential, what with the ever-present Kinect and the HDMI pass through (which is not particularly useful outside the US at the moment). But the PlayStation 4 has slightly better hardware (although this is a bit up for discussion) , with a smaller, more stylish, box and no need for an external power supply.

Performance wise they are very, very, similar. Although we’ve not really seen software that will do them justice just yet. Forza on the Xbox One looks great, with car models looking lovely. Knack on the PlayStation 4 is good looking too, although this doesn’t jump out at you quite so much. The controllers are both excellent and the prices just about line up once you factor in the price of the camera for the PlayStation 4.

The magazine GamesMaster has a very good comparison of the two consoles. I felt kind of sorry for the folks who had to write this piece, if they either of them is the best they run the risk of annoying half of their audience.  I was reminded very strongly of camera magazines when they try to compare Nikon and Canon cameras. Both take excellent pictures and would make any photographer really happy. My take is that Canon are slightly more “consumer” whereas Nikon have a few more rough edges but probably have the edge in performance, but you really couldn’t go wrong choosing either one.

And so it is with the consoles. In a year or two there might be a stronger divergence but I reckon any good ideas had by one camp will be quickly taken up by the other one. The most important thing for gamers is that this on-going competition is going to drive standards even higher.

Oh, and Super Mario 3D on the Nintendo Wii U looks pretty good too…..

Evening Skies on a Lumia 1020

We do get some rather good night skies this time of year. I took a picture of this one using the Lumia 1020. It’s another HDR rendering of five different pictures, and I think it looks rather splendid.

How Woody Allen can improve your 3D printing

It’s actually quite easy. I’ve noticed that there are some irregularities in the output from the 3D printer. The output is actually pretty good now, but I’m getting some horizontal banding along the sides of objects.

Someone on the interwebs suggested that the banding is due to vibration of the base panel of the printer. This supports the print platform and if it is wobbling up and down this could cause some of the problems. So I put my copy of the Woody Allen book “Dread and Superficiality” on the base, along with a retro camera book I got last Christmas, and the vibrating seems to have been damped down a bit. I think I’ll make a proper damper out of some old floor tiles, and take a look at the fan that is causing most of the vibration.

I did some printing and things seem to have improved a bit, which is nice. I’ll know more when I’ve printed some straight sided objects. At the moment I’m mostly printing Tiny Owls for some reason….

Tom Talks Rather Useful Security

 
Tom keeps his nerve….

We had a student powered Rather Useful Seminar today. Tom Forbes is one of our third year students and he has a side-line in computer security. So a while back he offered to give a Rather Useful Seminar about his experiences making the web a more secure place. In fact he wanted to go beyond just talking, and actually set up a web site, just for the hacking of. So he did.

Tempting products, but woefully insecure.

We were actually able to connect to the site and do some injection and scripting attacks there and then. Great fun. You can find out more about the presentation on Tom’s blog, here.

I made the point that if any other students think they might have a seminar in them, we are always looking for volunteers. It is great practice. If you reckon you have a story to tell, get in touch and we can set something up.