About the author
I’ve had two distinct careers, but I’m retired now. The first was as co-founder and technical director of Cyberdrome Enterprises, the company that built the first generation of commercial Crystal Mazes.
The second was in space operations in Munich, where I was responsible for the simulator used for training astronauts and flight controllers working in/with the Columbus module of the International Space Station.
See also my LinkedIn profile.
For more even information about me and my life, click on the picture of me above.
Publications
HackSpace magazine (#65 pp 32-37, “How I made Greening the Spark”) April 2023
MagPi magazine (#129 pp 22-23, “Greening the Spark”) May 2023
Free copies of these can be downloaded as pdfs from their websites.
Talks
8th February 2024
This was a presentation I gave to the BrightonPy Meetup group, part of the Silicon Brighton Initiative, at the Barclays Eagle Labs in Brighton, UK. It was broadcast live and recorded; it can be seen by following this link. The Powerpoint presentation can be downloaded using the button below:
A short video of GTS in action is available here where you can see a game being played and returning to exhibition mode.
Acknowledgements
Initial inspiration for this project came from an exhibit I saw at Amberley Museum near Arundel, which made me think I could do something better.
The project would not have come to anything if it hadn’t been for the constructive criticism and support of Natasha Thoday who made me realise I could combine all my interests with doing something for climate change and aiming it at the museum / education sector, and much discussion with David Owers, my old Cyberdrome partner in crime, now working part-time for the Brighton Energy Cooperative.
Feedback, encouragement and patience have all been supplied in abundance by friends and relatives too numerous to mention.
However, special mention is due here to Ben Winter-Leinweber who, despite reading my endless emails about every little issue, still wanted to be involved with the project and is the architect and programmer of the online results database and API.
Ben is a website developer from Brighton. His solution for the GTS “scoreboard” includes a MYSQL + Django Rest Framework API backend, and a React.js frontend. This design was chosen as it facilitates a simple data pipeline solution and user experience. His website can be found at benwl.com.
Contact
You can email me at: info@greening-the-spark.com
And now the inevitable QR code, just to make it all nice and easy:
