Paul Briƫrley

Articles

The plague of outdated indoor maps

Indoor maps are great... until someone forgets to keep them updated.

Self Solving Timetables

AI has potential for helping us construct timetables, but I was wondering if the simpler AI found in computer games might actually be sufficient to do the job.

Pathfinding with GameplayKit

Apple's GameplayKit framework is a useful toolkit for developing games in Swift, but getting pathfinding working as expected can be tricky. This article outlines how I managed to get it working.

Calculating Pathways in Excel

Timetablers often need to work out which combinations of courses were taken by students and how many students took each pathway. This is often a slow and fiddly process, but the latest versions of Microsoft Excel include some features which make it much easier.

Timetable Contact Tracing for COVID-19

During the pandemic it was critical to identify students who had been in contact with those who had tested positive for COVID-19. This article provides some resources for performing contact tracing on timetable data from Syllabus+.

Programme Pathway Combinations

A conversation about how to illustrate the impact simple changes to a curriculum offering can have on the number of possible pathways through a degree programme resulted in me writing the Combo Counter app for iOS.