Computer Science for Fun (CS4FN)

Film Futures: The Lord of the Rings Image by Ondřej Neduchal from Pixabay What if there was Computer Science in Middle Earth?…Computer Scientists and digital artists are behind the fabulous special effects and computer generate…

Film Futures: how might movie plots change with Computer Science...
Just for fun, The Lord of the Rings if there was Computer Science in Middle Earth (and then the serious reality on our Earth)
cs4fn.blog/2025/08/04/f...

Why do we still have lighthouses? Image by Tom from Pixabay In an age of satellite navigation when all ships have high-tech navigation systems that can tell them exactly where they are to the metre, on accurate charts that show exa…

In an age of satellite navigation when ships have high-tech navigation systems that tell them exactly where they are, on accurate charts that show exactly where dangers lurk, why do we still keep working lighthouses? Because it makes for a more dependable system...
cs4fn.blog/2025/08/02/w...

Screenshot showing 3 computing puzzle books and 5 mini computing magazines, part of the primary resources that are free to download.

Free computing mini magazines to read and puzzles to solve for primary-aged children (roughtly 8-12 yo) from @cs4fn.bsky.social - get your PDFs here :)
cs4fndownloads.wordpress.com/primary/
- there are also printable certificates for puzzle book attempters and completers.

Didn't know this! Love a bit of internet history :)

The first Internet concert Severe Tire Damage. Image by Strubin, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons Which band was the first to stream a concert live over the Internet? The Rolling Stones decided, in 1994, it should be them.…

#ComputingByAllForAll - TODAY
July 23 1952
Mark Weiser was born
visionary proponent of calm and ubiquitous computing
(and drummer for the first band to livestream over the Internet)
cs4fn.blog/2025/07/23/t...

Let the brain take the strain Image by Michi S from Pixabay Whenever humans have complicated, repetitive jobs to do, designers set to work making computer systems that do those jobs automatically. Autopilot systems in airplanes…

Let the brain take the strain
Is it always better to hand complicated jobs over completely to computers or can it make things more dangerous? How should you divide up work between human and computer is not always an easy question to answer.
cs4fn.blog/2025/07/22/l...

Calculating Pi for Pi Day Today is Pi Day (14 March: 3.14) so we should look at how on earth you compute a number like Pi (3.1.4159….). It has an infinite number of digits containing no repeating pattern so you can ne…

#ComputingByAllForAll - TODAY
22 July is a UK Pi Day
Mādhava of Sangamagrāma calculated Pi to 10 dp
(Showing 22/7 does not accurately compute Pi!)
cs4fn.blog/2024/03/14/c...

Margaret Hamilton: Apollo Emergency! Take a deep breath, hold your nerve and count to 5 You have no doubt heard of Neil Armstrong, first human on the moon. But have you heard of Margaret Hamilton? She was the lead engineer, responsible for the Apollo mission software that got him ther…

#ComputingByAllForAll TODAY
20 July 1969 - Moon Landing
You have heard of Neil Armstrong, first human on the moon. But have you heard of Margaret Hamilton? She was the lead engineer, responsible for the Apollo mission software that got him there, avoiding catastophe.
cs4fn.blog/2025/07/20/m...

A screenshot of the Emoji Film Quiz with 12 strings of emoji each representing a different film.

Happy #WorldEmojiDay from @cs4fn.bsky.social cs4fn.blog/emoji/
Our emoji-themed film quiz features one of my favourites :)
🚽🦖

Oh no! Not again… What a mess. There’s flour all over the kitchen floor. A fortnight ago I opened the cupboard to get sugar for my hot chocolate. As I pulled out the sugar, it knocked against the bag of flour …

#ComputingByAllForAll
July 15 2017
Chrystie Myketiak publishes work on clinical incident reports also how the media affect investigations.
Disasters best prevented with no blame culture & if media don't speculate until investigations completed.
cs4fn.blog/2025/01/26/o...
cs4fn.blog/2023/07/09/s...

Activities for public engagement in Quantum Computing Brush up your own quantum knowledge / CPD Public talks and events Activities for schools / public Published reports Articles UK Funding Careers and internships This blog post also exists as a stati…

New: Quantum Computing resources for people interested in classroom, public engagement / science festivals & events (plus CPD & careers). This blog post also links to a permanent page (which I shall update* periodically) peeecs.wordpress.com/2025/07/15/a... #scicomm
cc @cs4fn.bsky.social

BREAKING NEWS: AI coding may not be helping as much as you think Coding has been the strongest use case. But a new study from METR just dropped.

"AI" slows down experienced developers. #TeamCompSci
garymarcus.substack.com/p/breaking-n...

The Mummy in an AI world: Jane Webb’s future Image by albertr from Pixabay Inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, 17-year old Victorian orphan, Jane Webb secured her future by writing the first ever Mummy story. The 22nd century world…

Computing By All For All - TODAY
13 July 1858
Jane Webb died
She wrote the first ever story about Mummies (in the 1800s) but more interestingly she foresaw an AI and robot future
cs4fn.blog/2022/07/23/t...
#ComputingByAllForAll

Nikola Tesla: the invisible genius Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Nikola Tesla is an enigma wrapped in a mystery. Not bad going for an electronic engineer. Born, so the stories go, in the middle of a thunderstorm in Serbia, Te…

Computing by all, for all - TODAY
July 10 1856
Nikola Tesla born
The electronic engineer who was an enigma wrapped in a mystery...inventor extraordinaire. Read about him at...
cs4fn.blog/2022/06/08/n...
#ComputingByAllForAll

The Sweet Learning Computer: Learning Ladder The Ladder board. Image by Paul Curzon Can a machine learn from its mistakes, until it plays a game perfectly, just by following rules? Donald Michie worked out a way in the 1960s. He made a machin…

Computing By All For All - TODAY
July 7 2007
Donald Michie died
He helped crack German ciphers at Bletchley Park, was one fo the first to work on learning machines inventing MENACE. Also invented memoisation and worked on natural language processing.
cs4fn.blog/2025/05/19/t...
#ComputingByAllForAll

You cannot be serious! …Wimbledon line calls go wrong Image by Felix Heidelberger from Pixabay (cropped) The 2025 tennis championships are the first time Wimbledon has completely replaced their human line judges with an AI vision and decision system, …

You cannot be serious! ...Wimbledon line calls go wrong
Human error is blamed again. What can we learn about designing dependable systems and whether we should believe computers do not make mistakes?
cs4fn.blog/2025/07/07/y...

The five posters drawn in a cartoon style, depicting Al-Khwarizmi, Gladys West, Skip Ellis, Hedy Lamarr and Louis Braille.

Free A3 posters for UK primary computing educators (primary schoolteachers, librarians and home educators). If you're outside the UK please download them as digital files to print yourself or display on-screen cs4fn.blog/heroes/

Ideal for classroom or corridor walls :)
From @cs4fn.bsky.social

FREE set of Computer Science Heroes posters for UK-based primary teachers, librarians, home educators Free primary computing diversity posters for schools, libraries or home educators based in the UK.

UK computer science teachers (primary), librarians and home educators - would you like a FREE set of A3 sized Computer Science posters?
teachinglondoncomputing.org/2025/07/04/f...
Posters made for @cs4fn.bsky.social at @qmuleecs.bsky.social by Richard Butterworth, funded by EPSRC, posted by QMUL :)

Poster of Louis Braille: he devised the first practically used use of binary to represent letters.

Computing by all, for all - THIS MONTH
July is Disability Pride Month
Read about Disability stars in the history of computing at
cs4fn.blog/disability-i...
#ComputingByAllForAll

Dina St Johnston: Kickstarting a software industry Back in its early days, after the war, women played a pivotal role in the computing industry, originally as skilled computer operators. Soon they started to be taken on as skilled computer programm…

Computing by all, for all - TODAY
June 30/July 1 2007
Dina St Johnston died
She founded Vaughan Programming Services
the UKs first independent software house and was responsible for early railway timetable boards for example. Read about her at
cs4fn.blog/2025/02/19/d...
#ComputingByAllForAll

An AI Oppenheimer Moment? Image by Harsh Ghanshyam from Pixabay All computer scientists should watch the staggeringly good film, Oppenheimer, by Christopher Nolan. It charts the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, “father of the…

All computer scientists should watch Christopher Nolan's film, Oppenheimer. Despite the film being about science, politics and war, not computer science Christopher Nolan believes the film has lessons for those in Silicon Valley...
cs4fn.blog/2025/06/27/a...

Edie Schlain Windsor and same sex marriage Edie Schlain Windsor was a senior systems programmer at IBM. There is more to life than computing though. She led the landmark US Supreme Court Case that was a milestone for the rights of same-sex …

June is Pride Month
June 26, 2013 The US Supreme Court handed down a landmark judgement
Edith Windsor was a senior systems engineer at IBM
She led the case that made gay marriage legal in US
cs4fn.blog/2023/02/19/e...
She was also born this month (June 20 1929)

Adrian Stokes: Internet pioneer Image by Paul Curzon We take the Internet for granted now, but it is not that long ago that it did not exist at all. Disabled from birth with spina bifida, Adrian Stokes, OBE was one of the people …

Computing by all, for all - TODAY
June 25 1945
Adrian Stokes was born. He was one of the founders
of the Internet. He had spina bifida from birth. Read more about him in our CS4FN article here:
cs4fn.blog/2025/01/11/a...

After reading an intro like this it's also worth reading the original paper by Karl Maton that introduces Semantic Waves
legitimationcodetheory.com/wordpress/wp...
which is where I first found out about it and realised how well it helped me teach computing especially unplugged and using metaphors.

Issue the-big-book-of-computing-pedagogy | Hello World | Raspberry Pi Foundation The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy

Big Book of Computing Pedagogy: lots of good pedagogy includes @lctcentre.bsky.social semantic waves (one thing I talked about at the #PlayfulComputingConference) Also talks about unplugged computing, and Playful computing and more
www.raspberrypi.org/hello-world/... @raspberrypiorg.bsky.social

Three pictures from the session of making a robotic face from volunteers programmed to react to sounds and doing magic.

Yesterday I was having fun working with #DigitalSchoolhouse Lead Teachers demonstrating unplugged computing and talking about principles of doing it well based on research on @lctcentre.bsky.social Legitimation Code Theory Semantics and Autonomy... (teaching with Magic, Making Faces and Mayhem)

CS4FN at the beach

Dr Who? Dr You??? A flatworm

Alan Turing's late work was on morphogenesis (the science of how animals gain their shapes) One part of it is regeneration (flatworm style if not Time Lord style). If we understand it, perhaps one day we could regenerate more than just our toe nails too. cs4fn.blog/2025/06/15/d... #PrideMonth

Ada Lovelace in her own words Image by Paul Curzon Charles Babbage invented wonderful computing machines. But he was not very good at explaining things. That’s where Ada Lovelace came in. She is famous for writing a paper…

Ada Lovelace understood the geeky details of how computers would work and what they might do. Professor Dame Ursula Martin was the first computer scientist to properly investigate the Ada Lovelace papers archived in the Bodleian. Here is a sample of what she found
cs4fn.blog/2022/06/04/a...

The Social Machine of Maths Thinking maths image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay In school we learn about the maths that others have invented: results that great mathematicians like Euclid, Pythagoras, Newton or Leibniz worked o…

Find out about Professor Dame Ursula Martin's work on the social machine of mathematics - how Computer science is changing the way maths is done, turning it into much more of a social enterprise rather than a discipline for lone geniuses... cs4fn.blog/2024/03/04/t...