Minox Cartridges - take 2

/

Last time I tried to print some cassettes for the Minox camera it didn’t end well. Never one to give up (see Canon Dial 35) I’ve today returned to the fray. I’m using my secret weapon; this time I’ve made my own design for the lids. The one I was using turned out to have a hole too small for the winder so I’ve made a new lid and spool which fits. I’m printing at a much slower speed too. And this time the cartridges seem to have worked - at least I can get them off the build plate without them disintegrating. Next thing is to pop some film in one and see how it works in a camera.

I seem to have bought 19 cameras...

/

For reasons that I can’t fully explain I’ve become mildly obsessed with owning a Canon Dial 35 camera. This is a clockwork half-frame camera which dates from the 1960’s. Above you can see my first attempt at purchasing such a camera. It doesn’t look too bad does it? This is how it looked on the ebay listing that I eagerly perused.

..and this is the picture of the back. Needless to say, this picture was not on ebay. It turns out that it is best if your purchasers don’t know that the camera they are thinking of buying has been used to knock in tent pegs.

The camera doesn’t work. In fact it is actually one solid block of stuff. Nothing inside it moves. All the gears have rusted solid. It turns out that knocking in tent pegs might actually be a good use for it. So today, rather than question why I want one of these cameras, I’ve upped the anti a bit by ordering a lot of 19 broken cameras which include a Canon Dial 25 among their number. Most of them are plastic point and shoot devices of little interest but one or two of them might be gems. We shall see.

Yet More Hull Pixelbot Fun at our Hardware Meetup

/

Sorry about the blur. It’s what I get when I try to be artistic

We had our hardware meetup tonight at Hull MakerSpace. Plenty of folks turning up and building/programming robots. We are still working on the rules for Robot Rugby, but in the meantime folks spent today attaching battery packs so their robots could wander around with no wires. I’ve started writing a book which describes the process we are going through. You can find the first part here. I’m going to be adding sections as we build each part of the robot.

This online Arduino Programming Tool is great

/

Now you can program your Arduino Uno straight from the hullpixelbot.com site

This is an awesome and very useful tool:

https://github.com/dbuezas/arduino-web-uploader

it allows you to deploy Arduino Uno applications directly into a device from a web browser. Just what you want to do if you happen to have an Arduino Uno controlled robot that needs software. Like I do.

It means that you can now create and program your Hull Pixelbot without needing to download any code. You can load the HullOS operating system into your robot and then use the Hull Pixelbot Python-ish editor to deploy the code.

A chum for the Chaika

/

Differently broken

What do you do when you’ve just bought a broken Russian camera? You buy another one of course. While I love the artistic potential of having one picture taken on top of another, it makes the camera much less useful for reportage (i.e. taking pictures of things that look like the things). So last week I waded back into the auction fray and managed to pick up another identical camera (for less than the original and with a case and wrist strap thrown in). From the images of the camera, this one has a complete takeup gear, so it bound to be OK. Right?

Wrong. The takeup gear is fine, the camera loads and takes pictures, the shutter works. But the film counter stays stuck at zero. Bearing in mind you can fit 72 pictures on a single roll of film, a way of knowing how many you’ve taken is kind of important. Wah. So I take the camera to pieces for a look-see.

I love the way that the clear plastic that covers the displays on the camera is actually made from old film.

Turns out there is a tiny cork clutch between the indicator dial and the gear that moves with the shutter advance. I stuck a couple of pieces of insulating tape on top of the cork to make it thicker and more grippy and we are in business. So now I have an “art Chaika” and a “business Chaika”.

Prey Another Day

/

The artwork adds a lot to the game

Prey Another Day (which makes me think of James Bond film) lets up to five players try to eat each other over a series of hunts. For each hunt you pick an animal to send into the fray. You’re torn between power (the bear can hunt anything) and uniqueness (more than one of any animal in a hunt and all those animals are out of the round). So perhaps you might go for a “mid-table” lynx and hope that nobody else has made the same choice. Which is what four players did in our first game (it was hilarious).

As the game proceeds it gets more and more strategic and bluffy. Players start slapping down cards and making bear noises (at least some of us did). And maybe, just maybe you can take a lowly mouse to victory. Great fun and strongly reccommended.

Sore Thumb Video Games in York

/

This is not a video game shop

Went to York today. Of course we took a picture of York Minster (see above). Of course we had a great meal at Zaap Thai. And of course we went to the Sore Thumb retro video game shop. This is an amazing place. Consoles and games jostle together on crammed shelves and they have at least one of everything. The even had a couple of GameBoy micros but not at prices I could ever afford. I made one small, silly purchase (of which more later) and they let me take some pictures of the place.

If you’re in York you really should go. If you’re near York you should go to York and then go there. A great place.

Racing Cubes with a PlayStation 2

/

All I need now is 15,000 credits…

Today we got our PlayStation 2 down from the loft to see if it still works. We’ve not had much luck with the PlayStation 1 - that had succumbed to a malaise that seems to have broken the CD player - but the PS2 works fine. We popped in a copy of Gran Turismo 3 and discovered that not only does the game work fine (and is still great fun to play) but you can also buy a Nissan Cube to “race”. As Cube driver (although not the model above unfortunately) this was all rather exciting. We were using a really fancy device that takes low resolution video signals and turns them into clean looking HDMI video. We are getting our retro games consoles together for the Hull CS50 celebrations and we should now have Gran Turismo 3 - with force feedback steering wheel…

Dragon's Dogma 2 - a spectator's review

/

I don’t play that many video games. But I do enjoy watching other people play them. Number one son is in town and playing Dragon’s Dogma 2. Which is a great watch. The environments are huge and detailed, the level of interaction with them is impressive and the characterisations are brilliant, particularly the voice acting.

You play “The Arisen”. You’ve been killed and marked by a dragon with which you share a sacred bond, which results in the dragon popping up and giving you a kicking whenever one of your companions says something stupid like “Together we are unstoppable”.

As the genuine Arisen you are heir to the kingdom and all kinds of good stuff, but it turns out that another arisen has got there first, and so you need to start by untangling the mystery of your imposter. Add a bunch of side quests and the action soon becomes very engaging. At some point I suppose there will be a fight with the dragon, but I think we’ll have to build up to that bit.

You are aided in your quest by a bunch of “pawns” who are characters you can recruit to help you in your mission. Your “chief pawn” (we called ours ‘Gary’) is a permanent fixture but the others can be swapped in and out as you find better fighters, mages and whatnot around the place. They all consider working for “The Arisen” a great honour and so hiring and firing is all very amicable.

It’s great fun and done with a lot of panache. Occasionally you notice that the ambition of the game slightly outpaces your console, with our PS5 chugging a bit when things on screen get complicated. But I would strongly recommend it if you’re looking for somewhere to spend the next six months or so….

Tower Block Development

/

Hornsea Mere

Another purchase that I made last Thursday was of a rather special film developing tank which can develop three films at once.

It contains three spirals into which you wind the films before putting the whole thing in the light tight tank and pouring in the chemicals.

This is a good idea because if you use large format film with only a few shots per roll you find yourself coming home with multiple films to be developed. Also, you can save up a bunch of films and then do them all at once. I was going to put three films in the tank but it occurred to me that this would be a bad idea if the tank was faulty. So I found an old film which had some pictures on it but had been slightly spoiled when I opened the camera back by mistake. I wasn’t expecting there to be much on this film, so if it didn’t work I’d be quite relaxed about it. However, it worked just fine and I even had some pictures turn out OK, which was nice.

Accidental Art

/

I was at Hull University again today so I snapped a bunch of pictures with my new (to me) half frame Russian camera. It is now one of my favourite devices. But not because it works. The drive mechanism for the film is faulty. Some of the pins on the film advance sprockets are worn down a bit, probably by a previous owner rewinding the film without disengaging the drive. A lot can happen to a camera over fifty years. This means that the film doesn’t always wind on properly. So you get one frame overlaid on top of another. And you get pictures like these:

the lens is very sharp and the exposure seems to work fine

No two pictures the same…

Close to working properly…

I had a lot of good times here..

The things you get right are interesting. But sometimes the things that you get wrong are even more interesting. I liked the idea of making images that had two pictures in the frame, but what I’ve ended up with is even more than this. I’ve kind of figured out how to make the film move properly most of the time, but I think every now and then I’ll get this camera out just to see what kind of pictures it creates for me.

Bought a Chaika II

/

Chaika means “seagul” It was the callsign of the first woman in space

I’m still buying cameras. Fortunately they are not very expensive. The latest purchase is a Chaika 2. This was produced in Russia and is interesting because it is a “half-frame” device. This means that it takes pictures half the size of the usual 35mm negative. You get twice as many shots on a roll of film, although the pictures will be smaller and therefore slightly lower quality.

The camera is entirely manual and the lens is removable so that it can be used in an enlarger to make prints (although the enlarger was never made). I’m looking forward to popping a film in and seeing what the results look like.

Most Excellent Hardware Meetup

/

say hello to our new rugby team…

We had a splendid Hardware Meetup tonight. We had a bunch of folks who fancied building a robot. Which was nice because we had a bunch of robot parts and even some ready made robots (and some in between) for folks to work with. Much fun was had. Software was loaded, steppers were driven and code created. Next time we are going to add the battery boxes and get our robots moving around on their own. Then we can start playing games with them. Great fun.

If you fancy getting involved it would be lovely to see you at the next meetup on the 3rd of April at Hull MakerSpace starting at 5:30 pm.