I’ve started work on an update/upgrade to the C# Yellow Book. The language (and the world of programming) has moved on a bit. I’m hoping to have it available for September this year, so it can be given to newly arrived students at Hull Computer Science Department.
You can even program the LLM using FlowCode - and you can work with the Python behind it too
One of the toys that I used at DDD North on Saturday was the M5Stack Large Language Model (LLM) unit. This is a complete embedded large language implementation that fits into an M5Stack Core device. I got it a while ago, and today I thought I’d bring it up to date. I upgraded it to the latest model and got it going and it is a big step up from the original. The spoken output sounds better and the model is more advanced. The UiFLow environment now works fine now on my Core 2 device. Last time I had to load an older version of the firmware to be able to deploy programs.
It has a complete Voice Assistant application you can just fire up and get going and it also has Text to Speech, Speech to Text and Keyword identification behaviours you can string together to make your own assistant, or use for other purposes. The documentation also mentions using a camera for image recognition, but I’ve not figured out how to do it yet.
I think that, bearing in mind that it is running everything locally, it works very well. It is certainly be a useful platform for self contained LLM fun. The latest version comes with a debug/comms adapter which provides a console and network ports for the LLM module. I’m very tempted to buy another one of these just to get that extra connection.
One tip: when the LLM fires up it can make sudden demands on power. If your power supply isn’t up to it you might find that the Core2 tips over at that point. I solved the problem by getting a battery base which clips on the bottom and provides enough power to handle sudden surges.
Went to Leeds today. Took a camera with me and also ended up buying one. It has been a good day.
I did say I’d put you in the blog….
Well, that was fun. Developer Developer Developer (DDD) North just keeps getting better. The session selection was great, the venue was wonderful, the food was wonderful and plentiful - and free. The weather, well, lets not talk about that too much - but all the action was indoors.
I did my session, “Fifty Years of For Loops” and was great fun, made all the better by having a splendid audience. The sessions I went to see were superb, from Message Management, to AI Model Selection, Vibe Coding and finally AI threat detection and mitigation. Every one was thought provoking and every one left me planning something new to have a go at. And there was always at least one on at the same time that looked really interesting.
This is my “thank you” slide from the presentation. These are the folks who made it possible, along with an army of volunteers who made everything work so smoothy. Huge appreciation to you all, and I’m really looking forward to the next event.
“It turns out that even if you have many weeks to prepare, the final version of a presentation will be written the night before”.
If you want to come along and find out whether it was worth it, you there is still time to sign up here.
Whisper it but maybe, just maybe, spring might be coming.
Now that I’ve got my tickets I can tell you all/both about the Sci-Comedy night on March 12th in Hull. I’m intrigued by the idea of science stand-up and Hull Comedy Lounge looks like a fun place to visit.
The event is part of Hull ColliderFest which has a whole bunch of stuff going on over the March 14th - 15th weekend.
This was a bit tricky to photograph
If you are nine years old (or have the buying habits of a nine year-old) you might rather like the Bitzee Hamster ball. Bitzee major in persistence of vision toys. They’ve produced a range of interactive pets which use rapidly vibrating paddles to conjure up coloured animations. Now they’ve moved into spinning POV displays with a hamster in a ball. It works rather well. You can feed your hamster, help it run inside the ball, go to visit friends, get it dressed up for photographs, feed it and even clean up afterwards. Think Tamagotchi in a ball. But it doesn’t need constant maintenance like earlier digital pets.
It’s all rather jolly. And somewhat reduced in price. Worth a look if you like silly toys.
The schedule for DDD North 2026 has been published. It’s on Saturday 28th February at Hull University. I’m on at 12:00 in LTB. If you want details of my (or any other) sessions just click the picture above and then click on any of the talks. There are some really interesting sessions. Registration is free (and there’s free food too). You can sign up here.
I think I might have got carried away with my tag printing…
When I was making the tags yesterday I hit an interesting quirk of font rendering. My plan was to make my text exactly fit a tag by setting the size of the text to the height of the tag. This didn’t work because for obscure typographic reasons involving “making text look right” a capital O is rendered slightly larger than the surrounding text. As you can see above.
There were two ways I could solve this problem. I could check the height of each rendered character and scale it to fit exactly in the available height. Or I could just add a margin to the text.
I think I’ll just leave this here..
Look what I made today.
I spent a very happy few hours on Sunday making the Lego Gameboy. It is a really great kit. It comes with two “game cartridges” and some very nice lenticular screen inserts. Strongly recommended.
We had more Furbies at the hardware meet-up tonight. Brian had some software that got them all kind of singing together, which was fun. The next thing to do is try to turn them into a choir. We’ll be getting them together again at the next hardware meetup in two weeks, on the 4th of March.
It turns out that ChatGPT is pretty good at making custom greetings cards. Although this is one that you really wouldn’t want to receive.
Went to see the GOAT movie today. The story doesn’t do much in the way of surprising twists, but it is nicely told with terrific art direction (although I reckon the creators must have watched Zootopia a few times). Well worth the trip.
I took this picture yesterday, when we had a brief burst of sunshine. I had a look the flowers today, after the weather returned to grey wet misery and they have closed up again.
We played Divide & Conker at Tabletop Gaming Live today. It’s a lovely little four player game that hangs on the English tradition of getting a conker, putting a shoelace through it and then bashing it against other conkers In a bid to be last one unbroken.
Just like in real-life, you can use all kinds of strategies to improve your chances. You can bake your conker, use a stronger lace and whatnot. Once you’ve picked your contender you take it down to the park to do battle. Then, in the course of series of dice-powered rounds you discover what you are really made of. In my case it wasn’t much. Oh well.
A lot of the fun comes from the beautifully illustrated cards, the wacky weapons and the different conker personalities on show, but the underlying gameplay is nicely structured too. If you fancy a game where you can really take it out on your opponents and where a lucky streak can suddenly turn the tables, then you will love it.
Oh, and the gaming show was wonderful. It was at Doncaster Racecourse, which turned out to be a splendid venue. Just the right balance of interesting stalls and space to play with your newly acquired games. I hope they run it again next year. If they do, we’ll be there with our conkers at the ready…
The unit on the right will never light up green
I’ve spent the last couple of days working on some Bluetooth code to remotely control a Polaroid camera. I’ve got the code working and now I’m looking for suitably small units to host it. I’ve always been a fan of the M5Stack Atom device, particularly the one with the 25 led dot matrix display. I’ve now got the software working a treat, and so I thought I’d add battery power for a properly mobile experience. I got a couple of M5 external batteries, the Tailbat on the left and the Atomic Battery Base on the right. Both work fine, but unfortunately the Atomic base seems to block the Bluetooth signal. Wah.
Rob Miles is technology author and educator who spent many years as a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hull. He is also a Microsoft Developer Technologies MVP. He is into technology, teaching and photography. He is the author of the World Famous C# Yellow Book and almost as handsome as he thinks he is.
