The Living Computers Museum has closed

I’d planned a trip to the Living Computers Museum as part of my attendance at the MVP Summit earlier this year. I’ve been there a few times and loved it. But, thanks to a nasty little bug I couldn’t get there. And I’ve just found out that the museum itself has closed. Which is a terrible shame.

In the great scheme of things, and considering all the other awful events of the last few months, the loss of a computer museum might not be seen as a biggie, but it is a fantastic place that keeps history properly alive. If we don’t watch out, we’ll be surrounded by technology but no idea of where it came from. The museum does a great job of telling this story and I hope that something can be done to keep it going.

New Begin to Code with JavaScript podcast available

This is a demo game from chapter 4. How strong are your nerves?

I’m writing a book at the moment (I love saying that). I’m also reading out each chapter as I write it, and putting the recordings up as podcasts. Today I discovered that I have a listener, hi Mark, who got in touch to ask when the next chapter is coming out.

Well, the answer is today. I’ve just popped a new episode up. You can find all the episodes on Apple podcasts by searching for “Begin to Code with JavaScript”. Alternatively you can use the link on the right, to find my podcast page. I’m also putting the book text up in draft form, along with all the sample programs. You can find them at www.begintocodewithjavascript.com

I’ve just finished the example programs, including a could of silly games. You can find one of them above. Just click the picture to play.

Managing Audio in Windows 10

I’ve been recording sound effects for the new book I’m writing (I love saying that). Today I discovered that just because everything in your signal chain is supposed to be stereo, it is not guaranteed that it actually is. I was recording sounds from my my Kaossilator and it didn’t sound right. Turns out that this was because I was only hearing the left hand channel, but played on both left and right. Much confusion. Turns out that for some reason the audio on that device had become mono. I had to use the old school Control Panel fix it. First I found the sound settings, then I chose my microphone input.

Then I went to the “Advanced” tab and made sure that the default format was stereo. And then it all worked.

Adobe are still at it

I fired up Adobe LIghtroom today and got another of these survey thingies that I really don’t like. At least now there is an option to never see them again……

Screen Saver in Windows 10 is still a thing

I did a search for “Screen Saver” in Windows 10 today because I wanted to fiddle with/adjust the timeout settings. And I found this. It’s still here. I remember when it was a thing. And I love that old-school monitor. Still works too.

Sunday Quiz Questions: Fish

The quiz questions this week are all about Fish. Next week it’s chips:

1. Fish and a movie award:

2. Fish and a hairstyle:

3. Fish and a big round lump:

4. Fish and a black and white horse

5. Fish and a radio receiver:

Useful Scrap

I may have mentioned this before, but it is still true. When you start a new project, plan on how you are going to throw things away. As I write I generate stuff that is too good to throw away, but not right for where it is. I call this my “scrap”. I’ve now got a fairly structured storage for it, so that I can search for bits I wrote for chapter 2 that didn’t go anywhere, but might be perfect for chapter 4. Rule one is Never Throw Anything Away. Use GitHub to make sure that you don’t lose anything by mistake and find somewhere to put stuff that you’ve written but don’t know what to do with.

I see the first part of writing as a bit like mining. You come up with all this raw material that you then need to refine into something useful. A scrapheap to me is part of that process. So, if you start making something, build in a way of dealing with your scrap.

Big programs in an ESP32

As part of the Furby connect development my plan was to be able to control the Furby from the internet using MQTT. This means that the ESP32 device I’m using will need both Bluetooth and WiFi. WiFi to talk to the MQTT server and Bluetooth to talk to the Furby. Both of these protocols are implemented by large lumps of code in the ESP32 libraries and when I turned them both on I promptly ran out of memory on my device. Wah.

A bit of searching revealed that there should be some menus in the Arduino IDE (see above) that you can use to specify how much of the program storage you want to use. By default a device is set up for Over The Air (OTA) updates, which means that only half of the available memory is available. Turn off OTA and you can install bigger programs. However, when I tried to do this on the devices that I was using there was no such menu. Double Wah.

It turns out that some of my devices (the DOIT and the FireBeetle) contain a version of the ESP32 chip (the ESP-VROOM-S2) that has built-in EEPROM program storage (which makes the device simpler and cheaper) but it also limits the maximum program size so the size cannot be extended. But on larger devices you can extend the application. This means that from a software point of view I can have a device that talks both WiFi and Bluetooth at the same time. However, since both technologies use the same frequency band (and on the ESP32 the same radio) it might not work. My fallback solution is to just use two ESP32 devices, one for WiFi and one for BLE. I can link them with a serial connection and then all my problems should go away.

It’s important to remember that throwing hardware at a tricky problem is not such a daft idea. In this case it eases the development and completely removes a whole set of possible failure areas. At the cost of around another fiver or so in hardware.

Controlling a Furby Connect using an ESP32

I’ve got very fond memories of the original Furby toy. I used to have one that I used to illustrate talks about computing. I’m not sure how many of those present actually went on to become computer scientists, but I’m pretty sure that quite a few of them went out and bought Furby toys as a result.

A while back I saw an awesome presentation at emf about Furby hacking I got myself one and it turns out that you can control a Furby Connect toy using an ESP32 over Bluetooth. There’s a fantastic GitHub repository all about the command structure and I’ve now got some BLE code working on an ESP32 that I’m using to tell the Furby what to do. I can also read back sensor state values too. It’s great fun. It turned the antenna red in the above picture, so it definitely works. I’ll put it on GitHub when it definitely definitely works.

It turns out that my Furby is an excellent companion. He has a huge repertoire of fart sounds which can be easily triggered by pulling on his tail. There’s also a neat little app you can get for your phone or tablet that integrates very well with the toy and would be great fun for me if I was eight years old. Or even now actually.

The Imagine Cup is Still Awesome

I’ve been watching some sessions from Microsoft Build. In a way, the current virus crisis is a good thing, because it has made it possible for anyone to take part in the proceedings, rather than only the lucky few who could get to the campus. One thing I watched was the Imagine Cup World Final. It had all of the Imagine Cup stuff I remember. Bright students speaking fluently about what they had done, neat ideas over a range of areas and judges asking proper questions. It really took me back to my days with the competition. They were great times.

Every year I used to tell everyone that there has never been a better time to take part in the Imagine Cup. This is still true today. Perhaps even more so. There are so many powerful technologies, so many pressing problems and so many ways to deploy your ideas to make the world a better place. I’ve seen the competition change lives. This week I saw it change a few more. Why should it not change yours?

Scythe Board Game

There are lots of things in this world that I wish I was clever enough to do. One of them might be “Play Scythe”. It is a board game all about world (or at least board) domination. You can fight battles, make pacts, build stuff and deploy fighting machines. We watched a half hour video about it which was notable for the way that the presenter failed to take a single breath during the whole presentation. And that seemed to cover board setup and the first moves.

It was fun to play, even though we spent a lot of time wondering what the various buttons did. We were playing the online version which is very well realised. The network play was quite easy to get going and worked reliably right up to the end of the game, when for some reason we were unceremoniously dumped and the AI took over for our final two turns. Perhaps the game had lost patience with us. One thing that Scythe brings home in spades is the cost of doing battle, and the even greater cost of standing up to an incoming aggressor. We won one battle, but in doing so used up all our fighting powers, leaving us as easy pickings at what turned out to be a crucial point in the game.

We’ll be having another go, and probably watching a few more breathless videos to get more of a feel for the game.

M5Stack RoverC with mecanum wheels

Mecanum wheels are deeply strange. Each wheel contains rollers canted at 45 degrees so that when you drive them they apply a force at an angle to a normal wheel. In other words, if you drive something forward with a “normal” wheel you will get a force that pulls you forward. Drive something forward with a mecanum wheel and you get a force that will push you at an angle. By balancing the forces generated by each of four wheels you can drive forwards, backwards, sideways, around on the spot or at any other odd angle.

M5stack make a tiny robot with these wheels and it is great fun. I want to put one of their cameras onto it, so that I can get a robot that can see things and steer round them.

Sunday Quiz Questions

We’ve started having a silly Sunday quiz every week. On Sunday. These are my questions for this week. Which of these is not:

1. A Teletubby: Dispy, Tipsy, Laa-Laa, Tinky Winky

2. A Knitting instruction: knit, purl, waft, right twist

3. A unit of distance: furlong, light year, hectare, angstrom

4. A baking term: dust, drizzle, glaze, unfold

5. A Ben and Jerry’s Ice cream flavour: Moo-phoria, Chubby Hubby, Raspberry rampage, Netflix and Chill’d

6. A blend of coffee: Jamaican Blue Mountain, Equal Exchange Women Farmer Roast, Taylor’s of York Java Blend, Percol Black and Beyond Espresso

Answers eventually.

Amazing AI Enabled Camera

This is an amazing device. A while back I had some fun with a very impressive AI enabled camera which is very neat, and around 60 quid. I’ve just got one another AI enabled camera which is a mere 17 dollars. You can program in in Python straight from your PC over a USB port. It exposes a GPIO port that you can use to send commands to another device.

The SDK is a free download and M5stack (who make the device) even seem to have some help for you creating your models and training them. And it has holes in the back that let you fit the camera on Lego models. This is completely awesome.

Elven Assassin is great fun

How we tend to look after a session

I know a few folks with Quests, which is nice. We’ve been playing Elven Assassin which is great fun. We position ourselves on platforms around the landscape and try and stop nasty things from wandering into our village/temple or whatever by shooting them with arrows. There were a few glitches getting started, but once we got going the game worked very well.

The graphics on the Quest don’t look as impressive as the screenshots on the game website. But they are perfectly adequate for the job and the important bit (taking aim and shooting with your bow and arrow) works really well. If you and your friends have Quests it is a fun way to get together and do stuff.

I’m fairly rubbish at most video games, but in the coop version of the game it doesn’t matter quite so much. Those with sharper shooting skills than mine can take up a bit of the slack and, most importantly, they aren’t shooting at me.

Prescription lenses for Oculus Quest change everything

I’ve had my Oculus Quest for quite a while. I’m always impressed by the quality of the experience that it delivers, but I’m less impressed by the way it makes my glasses dig into my face in a rather painful manner. So, last week I ordered some prescription lenses from VROptition.com. It would have been a simple process, except that I’d lost my prescription and when those nice people at EyeSite responded with the information I had to contact them again to ask what it meant…..

Anyhoo, the lenses arrived today. Amazing. I’ll write that again. Amazing. This must be what life is like for people with normal eyes. Lucky for them. I don’t need the glasses spacer any more so my field of view is much wider and the lenses themselves (which are beautifully presented as you can see above) are multi-coated so I get virtually no reflections from the optics. And, with no glasses I have no frame digging into my face any more.

The Quest has suddenly become properly viable for long term use. If you wear glasses you should investigate getting some of these. I’d even be inclined to suggest you get some “blank” ones if you don’t wear glasses because of the way they reduce reflections. I’m looking forward to spending a lot more time in VR now.

Back printing

Well, that was quick. Thanks to 3DGBIRE for super fast service. I’ve replaced the Bowden tube and the knurled bolt too, so now my filament feed is super smooth. And I can print at a much lower temperature now that the print path isn’t quite so bunged up.

Still supported after all these years....

I’m not sure many companies are still providing support for eight year old products. Apple make a big song and dance about how they provide updates for their phones for “at least five years” after manufacture (which I think is a bit rubbish bearing in mind how much they cost). I find it amazing that tech companies are allowed to get away with this. Nobody else (for example car makers) is allowed to call time on their products in this way.

Anyhoo, rant over. Today I contacted Ultimaker about replacement bits for Una, my printer. I’ve found some things on Ali-Express which look like they might fit, but they have a twenty day delivery (if I’m lucky) and so I thought I’d go back to the source. They put me onto their UK dealer who had the parts I need in stock and they are in the post. Should arrive tomorrow. Awesome.

Animal Crossing is keeping me sane

Well, probably not. But it is keeping me occupied. As distractions go it is hard to beat. And I’ve even tracked down an electronics kit to play with. If this doesn’t convince people of the social worth of video games, then I don’t know what will.

The Button Hole Man

Number one wife is busy sewing “scrubs”. I have no sewing skills at all, but I am quite good with gadgets. So it turns out that I’m the one who can understand how to use the button hole attachment on the sewing machine. I’m quite proud of the above.