Robot Rugby - now with added ball

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We need to slow the ball down, it kept rolling into the same corner.

Just a quiet Hardware Meetup this evening. Probably because I forgot to send out the email telling people about it….

Oh well, sorry folks. The next one will be in two weeks on the 23rd July. I’ll make sure to give you plenty of notice. Simon came along with kit of parts to make a remote controlled ice-cream jingle machine, along with a beautifully made clock driver box. I’d brought 4 robots and a couple of golden balls that we are going to use for robot rugby. I got all the robots working and programmable from the internet. It turns out that my phone makes a very workable WiFi connection.

Next time we’ll hopefully have some tracking action too.

Go See Pride and Prejudice in Scarborough

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As everybode kno I consider myself a very cultured person. I’ve watched most of the Marvel movies and I know the numbers and pilots of all the Thunderbird craft. Last night I went to the theatre to further burnish my cultural credentials. We saw Pride and Prejudice at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough.

I did a bit of due diligence before we set out and, after discovering that the story does not include any aliens, car chases, superheroes or “14 minutes to save the earth” moments, I took the precaution of ordering beer and ice-cream for the interval. At least that way I would have something to look forward to during the evening.

As it turned out I needn’t have bothered (although the beer and ice-cream was very nice). The play was awesome. The production was enthusiastically acted and imaginatively staged. The best thing about the way it was done is that it was definitely not the “Lizzy and Darcy Show”.(showing knowledge of the actual plot - go me).

All of the accompanying characters were very well rounded out and you got an understanding of how difficult it was to make your way through those times if you had made the mistake of being born without any money to your name. Lots of great lines from the book made it onto the stage, and the casting was inspired, including a few of the actors “doubling up” on characters which worked incredibly well.

If you think that classic literature, or plays aren’t your thing you really should go along to see the play and have your mind changed. It won’t cost you much more than going to see the latest superhero reboot (which will be on telly soon anyway) and you can order beer and ice-cream for half time. Win win.

More Naval Battles at Scarborough

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Coming under heavy bombardment..

A while back I wrote about the Naval Battles that they stage at Peasholm Park in Scarborough. We went back there today and I took some more pictures. Fun fact, the camera I used this time was actually older than the one I used in 2009…

The bad guys get their cumuppance

Aircraft carrier

Sending in air support

The boats have people in them steering.

If you get the chance you should go along. The battles take place every Monday, Thursday and Saturday at 3:00pm and are preceded by a musical performance. It’s great fun and you can buy ice creams. And wine. Find out more here.

Play Star Wars Unlock

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You should play Star Wars Unlock. There are three games in the package and all are different and fun. The games last around an hour or so. It works best if you get a bunch of friends round and have a go together. You’ll need the game plus a phone or tablet for the program element which adds a lot to the atmosphere (authentic Star Wars music, plus appropriate classical pieces). Unlock do lots of other games, but the Star Wars themed ones are especially impressive and fit well into the Star Wars universe.

You can only play the games once, but then you pass the box on for someone else to have a go. That’s how we got to play with this one….

More Photowalk pictures

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Analogue Wonderland must have been very busy over the last few days, processing the films from the 40 photowalks that took place last Saturday. We got the rest of our pictures back today, which is much more quickly than I expected. Pretty much all of them have come out, which is very pleasing

I’d not used Kodak Pro Image 100 before, but I’m a convert now. Very nice grain and lovely colours. And on offer at the moment..

Traction Engine Fun

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The weather wasn’t great when I arrived

Last week at the Hardware Meetup Simon mentioned that he had a friend who had a traction engine. Would I be interested in coming along next time they fire it up. I would. So today I went along to meet up with Rob, who had his machine ready to go when I arrived. I took along a couple of cameras (as you do) and tried to take some pictures. Some of them you will never see, because I left in the dark slide (the bit of the camera that protects the film from pesky outside light). However, the digital shots that I took came out OK. I

I also had a go at steering, then driving, then both at the same time. It was awesome. Thanks very much for inviting me folks.

There are some more pictures on Flickr.

Loading film with my eyes shut

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I spent a chunk of today loading film into holders, ready for some photographic fun tomorrow. This involves putting all the elements into a bag and then shoving my hands through a pair of elasticated cuffs to keep the light out. Then, with my hands in the dark, I open a box of film, take out a sheet, put it into the holder and then close the dark slide. Then I take my hand out of the bag and let light in. Which is stupid. Fortunately I noticed in time and, since the film stays in a light tight bag most of the time, I think/hope I got away with it.

One of the problems that you have when doing all this is that you are working by touch. What you are looking at is irrelevant. I end up staring stupidly into space. Something which I’ve been told I do a lot of without my hands in a bag.

Anyhoo, today I tried something I should have tried a long time back. I closed my eyes. Suddenly everything made a lot more sense, and it was actually easier to load the sheets. I’m going to do this more in the future. There is no picture of of me doing any of this because it would, of course, turn out to be black.

Thunderbirds are Go - ish

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Over the weekend I thought I’d show a young guest the joys of the Thunderbirds TV show. They were suitably impressed (or very polite). However, I wasn’t able to show the higher quality version with the better sound and pictures, even though I remember watching this just after I bought the TV series from Apple TV a few years ago. All that Apple TV serves up now is the original 4:3 version with the mono soundtrack.

I’ve had this before with digital media. An album that I bought will lose tracks, or they will change into different versions. Or a service will vanish leaving me with nothing for the money I spent with them. Such is modern life I suppose. In the meantime I’ve spent thirty quid on a Blu-Ray version of the show. Come the digital apocalypse at least I’ll still be able to watch the adventures of Scott and Virgil and the rest of International Rescue.

Big Malarkey Big Fun

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Hull Makerspace Marble run was a big win

The Big Marlarkey is a Hull special. It’s a literary event for kids aged 0 -16 . Having acquired the entry requirements (three tickets and an 8 year old) we went along today. They had children’s authors, poo presentations, lots and lots of making, book hook a duck, music, VR, museum stuff and a chap selling crepes. Which were wonderful.

They also had Makerspace Hull there to who brought golf tee art, fun with circuits, MicroBit coding and a marble run whiteboard which was splendid. Much fun ensued, although things were slightly derailed when one of the party lost their Lilo and Stitch keyring. But, on enquiring at the organizer’s tent, we discovered that someone had found the item and handed it in. We’ve no idea who did this kind act, but we are eternally grateful to them. They transformed the event from “The one where I lost my keychain” to “The one where I had a great time and saw an amazing presentation from the author of “The Houdini Inheritance” (which I also got a signed copy of)”.

The event was super busy, the weather was great and I think there is a very good chance we will be along again next year.

Analogue Wonderland Big Film Photowalk

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Victoria Dock in Hull

Went on a photowalk today. Never done one before. Tremendous fun. The idea is simple enough. A bunch of folks get together and walk around taking photographs and talking photography (and life in general). To make matters more interesting (and organised) this one was set up by Analogue Wonderland who appointed walk leaders for the various walks around the country and then did a special deal for film and processing. We were walking in Hull with Rob Wharton who gave out maps, film and chat as we wandered around.

Down near the deep. If you are wondering where the water has gone, the tide is out…

The weather was kind, the sky was interesting and the photo opportunities abundant. Including, in The Land of Green Ginger, the “Smallest Window in the World”. Probably. We each had two rolls of Kodak Pro Image 100, giving 72 shots in all. My first film went back to Analogue Wonderland for developing. The second stayed in the camera for finishing off later. If you are wondering how I’ve managed to include some of the walk pictures in this post, I’m using a piece of magic called “posting from the future”.

Hull Marina looking good

Humber Street Street Art

Anyhoo, It was great. We finished off at the Minerva Pub at the water’s edge for a well deserved (we thought) drink. You can see more of my photographs here.

Of Muck Spreaders and Music Boxes

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One of the best parts of the Hardware Meetup is the conversations we have at dinner afterwards. Take last night for example. For some reason the conversation turned to muck spreaders, tractor powered devices which spread, er, fertilizer over fields that it may enrich the land and lead to larger crops. I wondered whether, after you’d finished muck spreading, you actually cleaned your muck spreader, and if so what with?

Anyhoo, an owner of a muck spreader is keen to have a musical chime attached to his tractor that could play a jaunty, ice cream van themed, tune while going about his business spreading other peoples, er, business. He felt that this would add a lot to the occasion and we were inclined to agree. While not actually being that keen to go along and audition the device when in use.

It turns out that musical chime systems that were used on ice cream vans in the last century are quite collectable and fetch good prices on eBay. We took a look at one lot which was selling for a tidy sum for what was just a music box mechanism attached to an amplifier. So we are going to look out for a music box mechanism and some suitable hardware.

So, if you are ever passing by a field and hear distant musical chimes that make you fancy buying a “ninety nine”, accompanied by a truly horrendous whiff, you’ll know that we got it to work…

Nearly Robot Tracking at the Hardware Meetup

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Turns out we don’t need a gantry. Which is nice. Brian brought his tripod, mounted a Pi camera on it and within minutes he was tracking robots in the entire arena. Well, not actually robots. More like bits of paper with Aruco codes on them. At the next meetup we’ll have the codes attached to robots moving around, and hopefully receiving position information.

We had other stuff too including DSP (Digital Signal Processing - I knew that one) hardware, a very impressive retro touch sensitive keyboard from Ross and lots of excellent chat.

The next meetup is in two weeks on the 9th of July. I’m rather looking forward to it.

When in doubt, write a description

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One of the most common causes of programming problems is not knowing exactly what the program needs to do before you start writing the code. You have a vague idea of how it is supposed to work and so you start knocking out statements, thinking you can fill in the detail later.

This is a really bad idea. It doubles the length of time it takes you do do anything, because half way through writing the code you’ll discover that your understanding of the problem is faulty, and you have to either fiddle with what you’ve built, or start again from scratch.

A much better idea is to try to write down a chunk of text which describes what you think the program or module should do. You don’t need to go down to the level of individual statements, just a general idea of what the ins and outs are supposed to be. The act of doing this will force you to think a lot harder about what you are trying to do, and hopefully mean that you will make fewer mistakes when you go to code. I find this useful even (or perhaps especially) because I’ve done a fair amount of coding. The stuff that I write ends up in my diary so that I can refer back to how my code works (which is also super useful).

Tiny Red Telephone

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Derek put me on to this. It’s a tiny red telephone you can build that looks very like the real thing.

This is not Lego, but my goodness it looks like it

It’s a Zuru Max Retro kit. There are a bunch of them for sale in our local Aldi for knock down prices. They also have a tiny computer, ghetto blaster, instant camera, TV and games machine. They also have some rather fetching food and flower models too. They are very close to Lego in every way. The bricks even fit together with Lego bricks (although they lack their heft). The instructions have the same step by step sequence and sometimes hard to see colours. If you want some cheap construction fun they worth a look.

South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum is awesome

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We didn’t really set out to visit South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum, we were really on the way to Doncaster Gaming Market. But we had tickets for the 1:00pm entry and some time to spare so we went along to look at aircraft and helicopters for a while.

They’ve got a lot of stuff under cover, plus a whole bunch of aircraft and helicopters outside.

There are also loads of exhibitions and displays, including an aircraft control room. There’s also lots of material about the blitz and what it was like to go through. Thought provoking stuff and well worth a look.