My dentist is leaving Hull. Very sad. I hope it’s nothing I did. Looking into my mouth for seven years must take some kind of toll I suppose. Anyhoo, I wish her all the best for the future. And now somebody else will have to say things like “You’ve got good teeth - for your age” to me.
At least I hope that’s what they are going to say.
The kit was beautiflly presented in every other respect…
Spent some of today trying to build a “birthday present robot” for an important guest. Fell massively at the first fence when it turned out that our kit was lacking the P8 axle you can see above. We had two P6’s, but that doesn’t really help. The good news is that there are lots of these kinds of kits and they are quite cheap. The replacement should arrive tomorrow.
I just hope it works…
I’ve got backups of all my pictures. Obviously. But it would be a pain to have to go and find them. And when the power supply for the drive that holds 3 terrabytes of images suddenly goes pop you can forgive me a certain amount of nervousness.
I’ve ordered a replacement.
I put my OP-1 up for sale earlier in the week. I’ve now sold it, which is good news because I’ve already bought the camera it is helping to pay for…..
It doesn’t look a bit like a murder weapon…
I bought a rubber hammer today. I used to have one, but it must have bounced away somewhere. I’ve got some shelves coming today that you just put together with a rubber hammer and so I thought I’d get one. Perhaps the best 3.50 I’ve spent in a while.
When the shelves arrive I plan to answer the door with the hammer in my hand and say “Aha! At last you’re here. Now I can begin…”
Then again, perhaps not.
You know you want it
I bought my Teenage Engineering OP-1 few years back when I thought I might be a musician. This has turned out not to be the case (through no fault of the device itself). I now think I might be a photographer (so stay tuned for a few years hence when I think I might be something else and start selling all my cameras).
Anyhoo, in a bid to fund my photographic excess I’ve popped my OP-1 on eBay. I’ve hardly used it much (it is like new) and I think the price is reasonable. If I decide I want to get back into music I can always sell a couple of cameras and buy another one. You can find it here.
Vive la France
Went out for a French themed meal this evening. It was really, really, nice. If it was me running the gig I’d have had pictures of the Eiffel Tower everywhere, loud accordion music playing and the servers smoking Gauloises cigarettes and being surly. But they didn’t. Just great food and drink. Which was probably for the best.
Thanks again Dal-e
On Radio Humberside talking about cold batteries. Apparently Tick Tockers (whatever they are) have been noticing that they can’t make as many videos on their phone in the cold weather. This is what I said:
Low temperature increases the “internal resistance” of the battery. This limits the amount of power you can get from it. It also means that to get a certain level of performance it takes more power out of the battery.
Electric cars are affected too. They heat up the battery in cold weather. If you have the car plugged in at home you can “pre-condition” the battery to warm it up. This can improve the range, which is a good idea in winter because cold substantially reduces range (at least by a third).
Always Be Charging. There’s no advantage in running your lithium battery right down before charging it (in fact flattening a lithium battery can destroy it). Keep your battery charged every chance you get. The only reason to let the battery run down is so that the phone can work out the battery life.
Keep your phone in an inside pocket so that you keep it warm.
If you give your phone something hard to do this will warm it up (although of course it will also flatten the battery). There are even “hand-warmer” apps that do this – but they are not a particularly good idea.
Charge the battery when it is warmer.
Warm your phone up before you do something that consumes a lot of power.
Nice work Dal-E. Not sure about the number of door handles though….
Our Nissan Cube is getting on a bit. As are we all. He’s not perfect, but he is good enough to pass the MOT test for another year. I’m going to get his underside comprehensively clarted with wax and whatnot to try and stave of the inevitable onset of rust (poetic prose) but it is nice to have him around for at least one more year.
Looks like rain dear
Today I’ve filed my tax return and merged two branches in GitHub.
What a man…
The computer is eight years old though….
What do you think I was doing to raise the CPU loading to the dizzy heights you can see above?
Well, I was moving some files from one folder to another. There were quite a few files, but even so.
I think I need a new computer.
Every time they failed to deliver the chair they added a new one to the order…
We needed a chair bed to put up a family member at Christmas. So we ordered one. The delivery came and went, and came and went again. Chairs were not delivered owing to “un-foreseen circumstances”.
There are worse things in life than missing out on chair deliveries. Although after four attempts where we had changed our arrangements to fit around their schedule we were getting a bit fed up.
The chair arrived today. Just three weeks or so late. It is very nice. They’ve sent me an email asking for my opinion of the service they provided. Every single person I dealt with, from the folks on the first call to the delivery team, has been lovely to deal with. But I’m forced to conclude that they are trapped in a system which is not working very well.
Built some shelves today. There were no nuts or bolts, the parts just needed to be slotted together and tapped into place. It’s the first time in a while that I’ve made something using a hammer.
Guess which camera?
A happy new year to all (both) my readers. Here’s to many more test photographs of my favourite trees with an ever increasing range of interesting cameras……
I need to work on my exposure
Although I have a policy of not sharing family pictures, I thought I’d break that rule and post a picture I took of everyone round the table. This was taken with one of my large cameras and the best thing I can say about it is that the bits you can see are quite sharp….
Merry Christmas everybody.
Well, that was fun. Tonight we had a murder mystery event; “Death by Chocolate”. We all gathered together and tried to work out who dunnit. Nobody guessed the guilty party. But it was hilarious. I thought I’d managed to map the folks attending onto roles that I thought suited them well. Me, I was a ventriloquist’s dummy….
We had a splendid time at the Hull University Computer Science departmental Christmas party yesterday. David handed out a quiz from Instant Quizzes which was excellent fun, including a round where we had to identify chocolate bars from pictures of their interiors. And I was part of the winning time - whose chocolate bar knowledge eclipsed even mine.
Today, amongst other great achievements, I fitted a toilet seat and bought some pies. And I did thoroughly wash my hands in between.
So many buttons, so little time
Just bought a super-cheap camcorder. The low price is reflected by the lack of battery and the fact that when you press the transport buttons the wrong thing happens. But it works. Now I can go back and explore old videos made over thirty years ago.
If they still work.
Tomorrow is Comicon at the NEC in Birmingham. In the olden days we used to drive there and back in one day. But nowadays we tend to arrive a day early and spend a night in a hotel. With that in mind I can strongly recommend the Premier Inn Solihull (Hockley Heath M42). The staff are lovely, the rooms are big and clean the meal out was great. Show day tomorrow.
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.
Begin to Code with JavaScript is now available for purchase and download. You can find it here
