Technology

Image via Wikipedia.

With complex simulations delivered by the GlassBox engine SimCIty 2013 goes deeper than ever before but Maxis senior producer Kip Katsarelis demonstrates that the core experience - and passion it inspires - remains the same.

It’s hard to believe that 11 years have passed since SimCity 4 was released. Fans have been waiting for SimCity 2013 (or SimCity 5, or just SimCity because it’s a reboot rather than a new version) for the past year but Katsarelis and co. have been working hard on its development for the last three and a half years.

“We were working on other games like Spore but SimCity is in our DNA; there was always ‘the next SimCity idea’ floating around the office but this particular one took hold,” he explains.

How does a university promote collaborations between students and staff to stimulate innovation? In a joint effort between the Vice President for Innovation and Performance at NUI Galway and the NUI Galway Students' Union, the EXPLORE Innovation Initiative at NUI Galway has funded 38 student-staff projects since it began in January 2012. The projects each receive €1000 of funding from the initiative to deliver innovation that will benefit the university or the wider community in the area. Some of these projects include creating a locator app for cardiac defibrillators (AEDs) in the west of Ireland, building bilingual video-based teaching aids for school students, running a regular student-entrepreneur technology meetup in Galway City, and many more.

In their book "Rapture of the Nerds", award-winning science fiction writers Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross have imagined a future whereby anyone can be uploaded to the cloud if they tire of their "meat body" existence. It ties in to the notion of the "singularity", and the eventual advancement and convergence of technology to the point that we can simply upload a complete copy of our consciousness to a computer if we so desire. The technological singularity has been gaining mainstream attention for more than a decade, but the idea of humans moving into virtual realms has its conceptual roots in culture and literature spanning back centuries.

Statistical forecasting is a familiar technique where lots of data points are gathered and assessed. An aggregation is formed and the analysis of that aggregated information is used to predict everything from elections to global warming.

This method, as pioneered by W. Edwards Deming, was used as an industrial tool while working to help create a viable manufacturing industry, virtually from scratch, from amidst the burnt out wreckage of post-war Japan. Now, nearly all modern industry uses statistical probability in their manufacturing and engineering processes to great effect as long as precision is not confused with accuracy.

Grand and less grand assemblies of the good and not so good have gathered over the last few years united by a stated desire to resurrect Ireland from the builder’s rubble of the recent financial calamity. Many of the voiced aspirations are lofty and aspirational and Technology Voice offers what support it can to any activity which shows promise of getting Ireland on its feet and fighting fit again.

That is all very nice, but no amount of ‘help’ in the form of ambitious sentiment and rhetorical incitements to action can take the place of people being rewarded for their efforts through working in wealth creating jobs.

Canadian Coast Guard search and rescue training

There is no such thing as a risk free life. There is no perfectly safe place. Making personal security your only focus can only lead to physical atrophy and certain madness. Conversely, at the other extreme, where the reckless and irresponsible hang out, you have the inescapable law of messy actions leading to messy results. However, keeping to the safer middle ground is no guarantee of staying free of mishap. Even with the best planning and preparation things can go wrong and help in a hurry from others may be needed.

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid"-Frank Zappa

If the world hasn’t ended and you still find yourself still alive on this particular evening then you might want to celebrate your good fortune in the company of the people responsible for some of the most innovative music apps in Ireland or, indeed, anywhere else.

Exponential aims to connect Galway's brightest students with entrepreneurs to stimulate innovation and creativity and to spark ideas

Electronic Arts (EA), the world's third-largest gaming company, currently employs 400 people at its European Customer Experience Centre of Excellence in Galway, Ireland to deal with about 3 million support requests each year. It recently announced a further 300 jobs at this facility. We met with Peter Moore, Chief Operating Officer of EA yesterday in Galway, where he spoke about the reasons for this expansion and why the future is bright for EA in Galway.

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Ozymandias - Percy Byshe Shelley