Fun with Fonts in FreeCAD

/

I hate it when reality breaks. I hate it when I have two facts, both incontrovertible and mutually exclusive. It happened today in FreeCAD. I’ve got a program that makes 3D wordsearches. At one point the program goes off and finds a font file it then uses for character designs. I wanted to make a version that runs on the Raspberry Pi, so I did some due diligence (had a look in the fonts folder on the Pi) and found a path to the font file I wanted to use. I then put that path into my program and expected it to just work. It just didn't. The font file was not found. Which was annoying. After I’d convinced myself that the filename was correct (which took a while) I  asked FreeCAD to show me the files it could see in each environment:

Shurely Shome Mishtake..

The screenshot above shows what I got. In the console at the top you can see the files that the Raspberry Pi has in its font folder. Underneath you can find the files that a Python program running in FreeCAD can see. I’ve got two different views of what should be the same part of the file system. Wah!

After a few minutes I figured it out. The easiest way to get FreeCAD to run on a Raspberry PI is to install it as a Flatpak application. I even explain how to do it here. It works a treat. Unfortunately, Flatpak exposes a different reality to programs that run within it it. This is all to do with making them portable across different platforms. So my fonts weren’t where I was expecting them to be. All I had to do was use a font path which made sense in the Flatpak universe and all was well.

There’s useful lesson here. If things don’t seem real, it might be because your program might be running in a different reality.

Lego's new Smart Brick looks fun

/

Lego have just launched a new Smart Play system. It’s based around a Smart Brick that contains an embedded processor which enables the brick to make sounds, flash lights and react to movement. They’ve created a custom ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) to control everything and added wireless charging for the tiny internal battery. The charging coil used to get power into the brick is also used for brick-to-brick communication and to talk to the other two components in the system, plates and minifigures which contain NFC (Near Field Communication) chips. Plus, and this is the really interesting part for me, the charging coils can also be used to allow one smart brick to tell the location of another.

The less interesting part for me is that none of this is programmable, at least at the moment. The bricks run custom firmware which executes built-in routines triggered by external events. This means that you are limited to what behaviours have been hard wired into the devices and so that the kit has much more in common with the Lego Mario smart devices than with Lego Mindstorms. However, there is also a Bluetooth interface in each brick which can talk to an app, so maybe in the future your might be able to string together behaviours to bring your ideas to life.

The first Lego Smart Play sets come out in March and you’ll be able to reserve them in a couple of days. But you’ll need deep pockets. The sets are all Star Wars branded, which means that as well as a smart premium you’re also paying extra for licencing. I’m still tempted though…

Developing Nicely

/

Always fancied one of these cars, but I don’t think I’d fit into it

We spent some time yesterday developing colour film. This went surprisingly well and I really like the results. We used these chemicals which make colour development as easy as black and white. We did the first batch of prints at the end of November. It’s nice to know that the chemicals keep for a reasonable time.

Given the pip

/

When is a dishwasher not a dishwasher? In our house it’s around half past three in the afternoon when you open the thing and find lots of plates still with food still attached. Very much a first world problem, but still a bit irritating.

Today I thought I’d have a go at fixing it, just in time for Christmas next year. Or something. I took off the “spinny things that spray water” - I’m sure that’s their proper name - and had a look a them. Turned out that one had filled itself up with lemon pips. These had escaped from gin and tonic glasses and found their way into the pipework, ending up in a position to block the water flow into the jets which clean the plates.

There’s a pro-tip here. If your dishwasher isn’t a dishwasher, make sure that nothing is blocking the flow. In theory there are filters to stop this kind of thing happening but as we all know, theory and reality are not always the same thing.

Slow Flash Sync on Christmas Eve

/

I’ve spotted at least two chocolate decorations..

Apparently “slow flash sync” is all the rage this year. You take a long exposure giving time for the lights in your picture to show up in the image and maybe wave the camera around a bit. Then, at the end of that you take a flash photograph, which lights up everything else in the picture and freezes it. Qute fun.

Things in Rings

/

I forgot to take a picture of the board when we played this on Monday night

Venn Diagrams were invented in Hull. Sort of. If you don’t know what a Venn diagram is, then this game will teach you. If you don’t care what a Venn diagram is, then perhaps this is not for you. Things in Rings gives one person (the “knower”) knowledge of a particular word structure (perhaps “contains the letter R”), attribute (perhaps “heavier than a cat”) and context (perhaps “things you can find in my house”). The rest of the players have to discover by experimentation what the three things are. They do this by placing things (nicely illustrated cards that they draw from their hands) into a Venn diagram made with three string loops on the table. The “armchair” went in the middle (because it contains an r, is heavier than a cat, and you can find them at home). There’s also a category for “Nothing” which is where you’d put something like a museum - which doesn’t match any category.

If you place a thing right it stays there. If you place a thing wrong the “knower” puts it in the right place and you get another card. The knower takes a turn along with everyone else, and tries to pick things which will help the group work out what is going on. If everyone gets rid of all their cards everyone wins. If the knower runs out of cards before this happens, everyone loses.

Gameplay is not competitive - which some players might miss. However it is great fun and can lead to some very interesting discussions about the nature of stuff. You don’t have to guess exactly what the rules are. You just have to have a working knowledge that lets you get rid of your cards. It’s a great icebreaker and we rather enjoyed it.

Tacta is a fun tactical card game

/

Currently working on a dot counter for the scores….

Tacta is a nice little tactical card game for up to six players. We played it this evening. You place your cards so that they fit into matching areas on cards that have already been placed. The aim is to have as many of “your” spots showing as possible. The game is supposed to take 20 minutes (according to the box) but we managed to make it last a lot longer than that, which a plenty of tactical scheming and debate over whether or not a card was over the edge of the table….

Mining for Games

/

Next thing to do is make a box.

Number One Son is visiting us for Christmas and, as usual, he has brought a few toys for us to play with, starting with a PlayStation 5 APU-based BC-250 crypto mining board. He picked this up for a very good price from AliExpress (although they seem to be getting a bit more expensive now). The board was built for a life in a rack of servers mining crypto coins, but now they are appearing on the second hand market. They need a bit of work to get going, you’ll need to find a power supply, an SSD and a suitable fan, but once you’ve done that you end up with a machine that will run Steam games at a fair old speed. It’s not quite PlayStation 5, more like PlayStation 4.5, but it is very useable and a great way to get into higher performance games or as something powerful to pop under the telly. You can find out more here.