AI for things you don't want

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I already know what the bedroom looks like

We’ve upgraded to the latest AI version of Alexa (Don’t judge me. It was free and I like new toys).

Now screens about the house offer to “Write a Haiku about how your day is going” or “Describe your surroundings”.

Is there anyone in the world who has ever needed a Haiku writing about their day? And if I’m standing in the kitchen holding a mug of tea, I don’t really need a device to say “I can see an old man in a kitchen holding a mug of tea”.

Perfect Father's Day

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I’m planning on getting all three

Had a really good day today. The weather was just the right temperature for a barbeque. I got a book I’ve been after for ages. I got to do some Lego, got a super-interesting book about the 6502 microprocessor (among other things). I also got to play with a camera, go for a walk and run a film off and then come home and develop it. Good times.

Naked Selphy Fun

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I’ve mentioned the Canon Selphy CP400 before. Although that time I got the name wrong. Its a really nice little dye sublimation printer which works a treat. And the paper and the ink are nice and cheap too. As part of my portable Pi Camera project I thought I’d get one to make a portable printer that works with the camera. I had a bit of fun getting the Selphy to work with the Pi but eventually I figured it out. You have to re-compile the Gutenberg suite to knock it back one version because the latest one breaks the paper size recognition. But I expect you already know that.

Anyhoo, I found a printer being sold for a fiver. In the original box. So I made the purchase, paid 6 pounds for postage (mutter mutter) and the printer arrived today. Turns out that “in original box” is not the same as “working”. Who knew? I got out my original one to make sure that all the drivers were in place and, sure enough, the five pound printer was getting stuck half way through a print.

I wandered downstairs for a disconsolate coffee and then, since I had not much to lose, I went back up to the office and took the lid off the printer to see if there were any wires dangling loose or bits of paper in the way. It looked OK so I tried to print again. And it worked. Yay! I popped the lid back on and it kept working.

So I went downstairs for a celebratory coffee and then returned to the office to tidy up. And I discovered that I’d taken the lid off the wrong printer, and I’d been testing the one that wasn’t broken. Can you see a pattern forming here from film fun on Monday? I’d be a bit concerned about incipient mental decay if I didn’t know that I’ve been doing this kind of stupid thing for the last sixty years.

Anyhoo, I took the lid off the broken printer and it worked fine. But only with the lid off. At this point I was too annoyed with the universe to do much more. So I put the new printer back in its box (it seems to like it there). The good news is that the plan is to move the printer into a custom case with a battery pack and whether it has a lid on it doesn’t make any difference to that application.

In all seriousness, these are cracking little printers and beautifully made (as you can see above). The only thing missing really is Wi-Fi. But you could add that by just attaching a Pi.

Home Made Camera

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A while back I started working on a home made camera powered by a Raspberry Pi. Today I went back to discover just how much of a mess I’d made of it. I’ve done some tidying up (i.e. made it work), added a user interface and got it mostly working. I want the camera to have a voice interface and let you edit the images by telling the camera what to do. It’s kind of a homage to this one, but portable and with less Lego.

I’m using an LCD touch screen which I’m driving “by hand” (i.e. not through a graphical desktop). This means you should be able to use it on low-powered headless devices which don’t have a GUI installed. The camera itself won’t do much thinking, it will pass the images and the instructions off to a server which will do the heavy lifting. The next thing I need is a box.

Disclosure Day - well, the ice cream was nice

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Folks had been saying how good the Disclosure Day movie was. Tonight we went to see it. Oh well. I can imagine the scene during the movie’s creation.

“Take a pinch of ET, throw in some Close Encounters and a bit of War of the Worlds flavoured with Indiana Jones”.

“How about adding a bit of Star Wars too?”

“Wrong franchise.”

… and so on. The acting was terrific. The set pieces mightily impressive. The baddy was English (so no surprises there) but even he had the possibility of redemption (so no surprises there either).

Anyhoo, I don’t regret going but an event movie it wasn’t. Worth a trip if you liked any of the above films and are good at expectation management.

Microscopic Fun

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Looking at a PICO with a Pi

I’ve been playing with digital microscopes. These are kids toys which are surprisingly advanced for cheap, disposable devices. You can get handheld ones or ones with stands. They have lcd screens, can take pictures onto a MicroSD card and you can even plug them into a computer and display their output on the big screen. If you want something that gives you a close-up view for a surprisingly small outlay search your favourite sellers for “coin microscope”.

Developing Idiocy

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You would think by now I would have run out of stupid things to do. But no, I continue to advance the field of incompetence in new and interesting ways. Yesterday, after the Camera Faire we went to a car show in Leeds. I’d taken along a very old camera and I used it to take shots of very old cars. Today I had the pictures developed. They were all blank, which was upsetting, but part of the analogue photographer’s lot. Every now and then you (or at least I) load the film incorrectly, get the camera settings wrong or just leave the lens cap on.

I was sitting at my computer musing on this when I noticed a film cassette on the desk which looked remarkably like the one I had used yesterday. Which I had just had processed. After a bit of thought (always a good idea for me) I realised that in the morning I put one cassette on the desk and then picked up another. For a while I’ve had a cassette on my desk that had got wound all the way back in, and I was planning to find a suitable tool to recover the end of the film so I could use it in a camera. So the reason that the film was blank was because the film was blank.

I shot back had the correct film processed. This went a lot better. And I’m really pleased with the results (although I need to work on holding the camera straight).

The camera I used was made nearly 100 years ago. I think it does a pretty good job. When I get the right film processed. Kudos to the folks at Max Speilmann in Beverley who got the second film processed in record time.

Bags of Fun

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Went to a Camera Faire today. Nearly bought 3 cameras but I ended up buying none of them. But I did get a “new to me” camera bag which is probably around fifty years old. It’s an original Billingham bag from the 1970’s (I think). Billingham kind of invented the soft camera bag when they noticed that their fishing bags were being used by photographers in New York. They are still around today and making bags in the UK, which is nice. One day I might be able to afford a new one…

Not using AI is fun too

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this picture was also not made with AI

Today I wanted to finish off the menu system for my tiny navigating program for the PICO. I could have spent some time writing a prompt for Claude AI to use to create the code. But today I thought I’d spend around the same amount of time actually writing the code. It was awesome.

I didn’t have to spend any time figuring out what the code did since I already kind of knew. And bug fixes stuck because nothing else in the code changed when a fix was applied.

And I really felt that I owned what I had built, which was nice too. AI is great and can do amazing things, but I’m trying hard not to forget how to do it myself.

Newton Power at the Hardware Meetup

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We had a splendid hardware meetup this evening. I found out three more things that my robot software doesn’t do but should, and a great time was had by all. I really must take more (or at least some) pictures of these events.

Walter brought along an Apple Newton 2000 which is one of the last (and most powerful) handheld versions. I’d not seen one before and it took me a while to actually open the front of the device. But once it was open we popped out the battery and rather than finding a proprietary and no doubt broken rechargeable unit we instead saw a holder for AA batteries. So, thank to the generosity of the folks at Hull Makerspace we got hold of a set and fired it up. It worked fine. Even the backlight.

I don’t know what components they were using 30 years ago when the Newton was made, but they must have been pretty good ones. I’m going to bring along some of my Newton devices to the next meetup, which will be on the 24th of June. If you’ve got a “blast from the past” device that you want to bring along and show us we’d love to see it.

Chats and Games at Hull Tech Sessions

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Hull Tech Sessions are wonderful. They come round four times a year or so, and tonight (thanks to Ross reminding me) I went along. Anthony Main started things off by talking about “Chat - the New Product Channel”. They say that “In the future we we won’t need roads”. Anthony explained why in the future we might not need apps either. Apps are hard to write, expensive to keep going and users don’t like having to install them. If you need to communicate with users, why not just chat to them? Anthony showed off some neat technology that lets you build interactive systems, you can find out more about what his company does here.

Then it was the turn of Simon Grey to talk about “Reflections on 30 Years of Games and Technology”. This was a potted history of game development, a peek at where it might be going and a whole bunch of game titles that had input from graduates of Hull University. We even had “game title bingo”. Simon finished with some thoughts on why you should even think about going into the game development industry at a time when artificial intelligence is supposed to taking over.

Simon made the point that while things are pretty tough in the industry at the moment there are lots of opportunities for building expertise which you can make available as a service to game makers. Lots of small firms earn a good living making niche game elements. Look closely at the credits for any triple A game and you will find a whole bunch of components for things like combat mechanics which are bought in from specialist suppliers. You can be part of a game without having to become a game publisher. AI will find a place in the business, but it will always need people who know what they are doing as well.

It was a great evening. I was so busy taking notes and chatting (actually mainly chatting) that I didn’t get around to taking any pictures. I should take the photos first, and then start talking. Keep an eye on Tech Sessions. They are well worth the trip and they have free food.