Cosmic Catch and Coup at Simon's

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If I'd kept it in the package it might be worth a fortune. But then I wouldn't have had a chance to play with it.....

Simon was kind enough to invite us round to a BBQ at his house today. We played Cosmic Catch and Coup. I bought a Cosmic Catch ball quite a while back. It's a bit hard to get hold of now. The ball comes with six coloured tags that players wear on their hands. Then you can play games which involve the ball telling you which way to throw it next. Great fun. After a few go's at that, and some great BBQ food for me the action switched to indoors and some very intense games of Coup.

Coup is awesome. The great thing about Coup is that it doesn't matter what cards you have. The only thing that really matters is what you say they are. Although actually for me it did matter a few times, so I ended up beaten in every game. But number one wife, who started the game with the happy advantage that nobody thought she would claim to have cards she didn't, manage to win twice. 

Many thanks to Simon and his family for organising such a lovely event. 

Pocket C.H.I.P.

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I bought another computer today. Big News. But it is really, really, nice. And cheap. Pocket C.H.I.P.

It's based on a nine dollar device that is quite astonishing in terms of what you get for the money, which is a 1G processor, 512K of RAM, 4G of built in storage. Plus WiFi, Bluetooth and the ability to add video displays and any USB device that your particular flavour of Linux will support.

It looks like a worthy Raspberry Pi competitor. I've gone for the Pocket variant, which comes with a case, a nice looking (resistive) touch display and cute looking pink labelled buttons which might match your nail varnish. Or not. 

I've got Peter to thank for this purchase. You can find his review (he's actually played with one) here. 

Big Fun Hardware Meetup

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Firstly, if you were planning on coming to the Hardware Meetup tonight I'm sorry about the traffic problems. These were caused by road closures for the Hull Freedom Festival which is this weekend. And during our meetup we had an awesome choir practising on the stage near c4di.

It was great to see some new faces in amongst the regulars. I gave out four or so Hull Pixelbot chassis and I'm looking forward to seeing some working robots next time we meet up. It was a great atmosphere and there seem to be lots of things going on at the moment, which is lovely. If you want to come along too you can sign up here. 

And you can find our more about the Hull Pixelbot, including new revised assembly instructions, here.

Hull Pixelbot goes public at the Amy Johnson Makerfaire

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Today was the first public outing of the Hull Pixelbot at the Amy Johnson Makerfaire in Hull. I was interested to see what folks made of our little plastic robot with a pixel on top. Turns out that people seemed to like it, which was nice. We had lots of hardware group members who turned up to tell the Hull Pixelbot story (thanks folks) and how to get involved and it all went really well. 

We're going to develop this robot of the next few months and with a bit of luck I'll realise my dream of 100 Hull Pixelbots all wandering around together making art. Or something. 

If you want to get involved you can find out more at hullpixelbot.com. Next meetup is on Thursday 1st of September. I can't wait to see who comes along. 

We've even got a spiffy new logo now. 

 

Bendy Lenses at Folly Lake

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More programming today. But we took a break by heading to the Folly Lake Cafe for lunch. I think they do the best chips in Hull. But I'm biased. They taste like the ones my mum used to make.

Anyhoo, the food was lovely and the day was very pleasant. And I'd taken  my Lensbaby, a simple lens which you can tilt to play with depth of field and whatnot. To adjust the lens aperture (the size of the hole that lets the light in) you drop in metal discs with different sized holes. And it has the ability to make very interesting images with selectively blurred bits. Great fun to play with. 

Hololens and Occulus Rift at c4di

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I got to the c4di Hololens and Occulus Rift demos slightly later than planned thanks to a succession of red lights on the way. By the time I arrived the room was pretty much full and there were queues to try out the latest in virtual and augmented reality.

The interesting thing for me was the contrast in the devices. The Occulus  Rift is a fairly bulky device attached to a large, powerful PC. The Hololens just sits on your head with no cables, no external computers, just the device itself. It ran happily on batteries for the time I was there. I had a brief go with it and the experience was just as impressive as it was when I played with it last year. The thing about these devices for me is that, unlike things like stereo TV or multi-channel sound, people try them and just decide that they want more of this.

The Rift (and my weapon of choice - the HTC Vive) take you somewhere else. The Hololens takes where you are and adds value to the surroundings. They are both awesome technologies and I'm racking my brains to think of an area where they couldn't have an impact. Interesting stuff. Thanks to Trident for arranging the session. 

Sometimes it's a good idea to pause when things are going well

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Today I've been writing code. I love writing code. Perhaps too much. If a program is going well I have to reminded to do things like eat and drink etc etc. 

This was one of those occasions. But as I was munching my sandwich I came up with a way to make the program even neater. If I'd carried on at full speed I'd not have spotted this for a while and then either missed out on a trick, or had to do some rework later on. 

Having thought about this a bit more I think that it is actually quite a good idea to walk away from a programming task for a little while and go back to it, even if you are coding up a storm at the time. On any programming project (particularly programming coursework) I strongly advise people to start early so that they have time to fail. But it also means that you can stop and smell the roses every now and then, and this can make the result even better. 

Caution Horses

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So, we're driving back down the motorway on Sunday and we pass a huge van with the above message on the back. 

For a moment I had this vision of a the van containing a pair of specially trained equines who turn up when you do something stupid and say things like "Just this once, we'll let you off. But if you'd better not do it again". 

After some discussion we decided that it could also be an instruction to pull into the next field and tell the occupants not to eat grass like that, or whatever. 

HoloLens and Occulus Rift at c4di

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I've not got a HoloLens. Or an Occulus Rift. Yet. But I've had a go with both of them and they are really, really interesting. The way I see it, there are two game changers coming round the corner as far as computers are concerned. One is the Internet of Things, the other is virtual/augmented reality.  You need to know about both of them.

You can get to play with the new versions of reality  at a c4di event on Thursday morning this week, which is open to all. Sign up here. It's free. I'm going.

New to Newcastle

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I've not been to Newcastle for a holiday before. I've been for external examiner duties and up until now it's primary claim to fame as far as I'm concerned is that there once I found two "extra tall" shops next to each other on the road up from the station. I hope they're still there. 

Anyhoo, we came up to Newcastle for the weekend and it is a lovely place. We found a hotel close to the Millennium Bridge and, although the weather hasn't been the best, we've had a bit of a chance to make the most of the splendid architecture around here. 

As we walked around the riverside I found myself thinking about what's happening in the Fruit Market in Hull. We have a similar waterfront setting and even a fancy bridge or two of our own. I'd love to see the same kind of thing happen where I come from. 

Beamish is Wonderful

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We'd never been to Beamish before. People had told us that it's great. Turns out they were wrong. 

It's awesome. 

It's history meets Disney in a wonderful way. Think of something on the scale of a theme park, but with a strong historical strand running all the way through. It has themed areas, rapid transit all around and helpful and enthusiastic staff everywhere. Plus you learn stuff. 

We didn't quite see it at its best, what with the weather and all, but we saw enough to make us want to go back there. 

Very Busy Hardware Group at c4di

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We had a really busy Hardware Meetup last night at c4di. Plenty of new faces, and quite a few folks who'd taken HullPixelBot kits and brought them back made up. I showed off the latest software and the HullPixelBot improvements and it was lovely to see so many people on the night. 

I'm going to be releasing some new software for HullPixelBot in the next week or so, to coincide with the first public appearance of HullPixelBot at the Amy Johnson Maker Fest on August the 27th next week. If you want to come along and see what we are doing we'll be in Zebedee’s Yard, Whitefriargate, Hull HU1 2EX along with lots of other folks between 10:00am and 16:00 pm. 

If anyone fancies helping me "man the stand" over the day then I'd love to hear from you. Ping me a message via twitter (@robmiles) or email (rob@robmiles.com) and we can get some kind of timetable together. 

If you want to come along and take part in the hardware group (you don't have to build a robot, but we'd love it if you built something) then you can keep track of the meetups and sign up here.