Season 5 term 2 comes to an end. The annual tick tock of teaching seems to go so quickly. Our 5th cohort have come to the end of their main teaching contact time for the year (still a couple of dissertation sessions in T3). This means some crits this week and a fun last lecture lock picking session.
We started the week with GPP crits. Some lovely project work, the brief was “communicating across the miles”. I liked the idea of fluttering as an indicator of presence, some really good prototyping skills coming together and quite creative uses of technology! Projects included pianos that played each other, bikes that could ask others bikes for help, tea cups that encouraged you to stop and share a brew, punch boards that encourage you to spar together and customisable creatures that send emotional states across the world.
Valerio has also posted an update on the CE blog which includes some nice scans of the projects.
We ended the week with a lecture on IoT security and a lock picking workshop. Turns out our students are quite quick at learning! The basic locks started to ping open after 5 minutes, but more impressive was their ability to pick the more complex double-pin locks by the end of the session.
I called by at the MEng first year project showcase - some cool installations!
Also a proud Dad moment - daughters A level DT project arrived home for photographing in situ. Has been great to see this evolve over the past year.
Looking at links.duncanwilson.com, these parts of the internet crossed my path this week:
- Fred again.. & Thomas Bangalter (USB002, Alexandra Palace, London 27 February 2026) - missed out on tickets for this so nice to see the full set on YouTube - so wish I could have experienced this - gives me goosebumps to watch.
- The Deep Sea - doom scrolling but in a good informative way. I went all the way to the sea bed, will you?
- The Heart Cut #16 Fielden - went for an English whisky for the first time - met Fabrizio at Amathus where he was doing a tasting. Really nice guy and this will be great for an Old Fashioned!