I’ve got an article in Hackspace magazine this month. This is good news for readers, but also good news for me as I need to buy some new shoes…..
Anyhoo, this article is all about making a 3D printed game. It tells you how to run Python code inside the FreeCAD modelling tool and create game pieces programmatically. You find the magazine in shops and there is also a free pdf download here.
I’m quite enjoying making silly sounds and tunes with the Chocolate Synthbox. It’s still a bit unreliable. I’m having problems getting some of the components to wake up in a correctly configured state, but when it is working it is great fun.
You’ll be able to find out all about the device and what it does in an upcoming Hackspace article.
We’ve set the dates for the next Connected Humber Hardware Meetups. We meet at Hull Makerspace in person on the first Wednesday of the month. Then, 15 days later on Thursday evening we meet online - link here. I look forward to seeing you if you fancy dropping in.
July Meetups:
Wednesday 6th July from 5:30 pm in Hull Makerspace
Thursday 21st July from 6:00 pm online
August Meetups:
Wednesday 3rd August from 5:30 pm in Hull Makerspace
Thursday 18th August from 6:00 pm online
September Meetups:
Wednesday 7th September from 5:30 pm in Hull Makerspace
Thursday 22nd August from 6:00 pm online
October Meetups:
Wednesday 5th October from 5:30 pm in Hull Makerspace
Thursday 20th of October from 6:00 pm online
November Meetups:
Wednesday 2nd November from 5:30 pm in Hull Makerspace
Thursday 17th of November from 6:00 pm online
December Meetups:
Wednesday 7th December from 5:30 pm in Hull Makerspace
Thursday 22nd of December from 6:00 pm online
Which one is running Windows 11?
When I bought my super-cheap laptop I noticed that xsonly had an even cheaper one that had a processor flagged as Windows 11 compatible. What the heck, it was only sixty quid. So I bought one. True to their word, Microsoft have now released an upgrade for the device and I installed it.
It works. Windows 11 runs perfectly. I’m not sure that I’d recommend the cheaper notebook though. I think it is cheaper for a reason - which is that it only has a dual core processor. The GeoBook 140 has a quad core device. The difference is noticeable when using the laptop, things are a bit more slow to arrive.
I rather like the Windows 11 experience though. Putting the task bar in the middle of the screen makes perfect sense after a while - you don’t have to move the mouse to the corner to do everything. Everything looks like it has had a spring clean and tidied up. Very nice.
If you want to run Windows 11 on a machine that is cheaper than a video game it is still available at the moment.
I don’t have a very good record buying train tickets. The Trainline app that I use looks very easy to work with until you try and use it. And then the fun starts. It didn’t help that I was getting repeated “Only four tickets left at this price” messages all the way through the process. There was definitely pressure to complete the transaction as quickly and smoothly as possible. And the app did nothing to help this.
It turns out that if you forget to do something, back out of the action and then go back in the context is subtly changed. The first time this happened I nearly ended up buying tickets from the wrong place. The stupid application changed back to the previous transaction details when I popped back out of a new transaction to change the number of passengers. Then, having fixed that, I went back in to complete the purchase only to discover I’d only bought one seat rather than two. At no point did the application say “Hey! You’ve selected the couples discount but only bought one ticket”. So I had to frantically jump back into the app “Only three tickets left at this price” and buy everything again. And I missed out on my couples discount.
Number one son says I should just buy my tickets from somewhere else. I’m thinking he might be onto something. I just hope there will be trains on the day we want to travel.
Going to the dentist is starting to remind me of piano lessons from years ago. Then I used to turn up nervously hoping that the teacher wouldn’t notice that I’d done no practice. With the dentist I turn up hoping she won’t notice I’ve done no flossing. As if.
I’m not sure why I worry about this so much. After all, the dentist gets paid whether I floss or not. In fact you could argue that me letting my teeth get into a mess just means more paid work for her. In which context the filling I need could be counted as a win.
I’m really going to start flossing more…
Look what they got me for Father’s Day. Thanks so much folks.
Not sure this will work every time, but I pass it on as a tip that has worked for me. If you are stuck trying to solve a problem it is sometimes a good idea to go off and try solving a totally different one for a while. I have a number of “background niggles” which are things that I would like to fix when I get round to it. I keep a list of these in my diary.
When I get stuck on a “foreground” problem in something I’m working on I will go off and have a look at one of my “niggles” for a while. If I’m lucky (and I have to be lucky) I’ll fix the niggle, come back to my original problem, take another look at it and then solve that too.
Forcing the brain to switch from one issue to another and back again sometimes allows it to pick up on something you didn’t spot first time around.
If you haven’t got any “background niggles” (lucky you) then you can do something different for a while and then come back.
I’m writing another book. You might wonder why I’ve just signed up to spend 6 months of my life thinking about nothing but JavaScript and deadlines, but I happen to like writing. So there.
The new book has the title “Begin to Code – Building Apps and Games in the Cloud”. It’s a follow up for “Begin to Code with JavaScript” with the aim of turning the reader from a programmer to a programmer who knows how to use the cloud.
I’ve already had a lot of fun putting together the overview and roughing out the sample projects. And I’m really going to enjoy turning out the text. Really
This is the latest “thing” I’m building. It is intended to serve as a “party printer”. It detects when people stand in front of it and offers to take their picture. After a countdown the picture is taken and then sent via Bluetooth to a printer that makes a hard copy of the image. You can see the tripod socket on the bottom of the device.
I’ve just about got the code working. The biggest problem has been getting the lens to focus. You have to do this by turning the lens in the camera. I was having a lot of bother screwing the lens in tight enough to get a sharp image. “No problem” I thought to myself, “I’ll use those really expensive angled pliers that I bought a while back to grip the lens and turn it”.
That didn’t end particularly well. As you can see by the massive scratch across the lens. The good news is that the scratch itself gave me something to grip on as I tried to rotate it. And it doesn’t look as if the image quality has been affected too much.
Now I just have to finish off the software and write up the device for a Hackspace article.
A while back I bought a Ricoh Theta S camera. I’ve used it on and off since. More off than on recently though. I thought it might be fun to take it to emf, but when I got it out I discovered that it was dead. The battery would not hold a charge.
It turns out that this is a common problem and there is even a guide to replacing the battery with an Olympus one which is a perfect match. The instructions refer to special tools that you need to get the back off, but I made do with a penknife and a thumbnail. My pro tip, the cover on the bottom is actually a very thin sticker so you don’t have to get far behind it to get it off. Once you’ve done that, remove the four screws and then pull open the cover at the bottom right hand corner, stick something (your thumbnail or the corner of a credit card) into the gap and then run it round the edge to pop open all the clips holding the cover on. You only have to take the cover off one side, the one facing you when the three buttons are on the left hand side.
The old battery was a bit tricky to get out as it is stuck to the case, but if you give it a gentle prise with a wide blade it will pop out. There is no need for any soldering, the new battery just drops in. My replacement battery is now in and seems to be accepting charge and the camera is working well. It can transfer pictures to my phone over WiFi or over usb to my computer. To say that it is six or so years old the quality of the images holds up quite well.
It works!
Update: It turns out that the latest Ricoh Theta cameras use the same battery - the DB-110. You can buy a DB-110 here - although I reckon the Olympus one I got is the same thing with a different label.
An important feature of the thing I’m building now is a tripod fitting on the base. I’ve decided that the best way to implement this is to get an adapter that converts a 3/8ths inch hole into a 1/4 one. If I make the right sized hole in the case I can just screw the adapter into the hole and it will provide the socket that I want.
I carefully converted 3/8ths of an inch into millimetres, added the hole to the design and printed it. However, as you can see above the hole is much too big. Twice as much too big. I’d used the value as a radius, not a diameter. The thing that amazes me is that I managed to check the diagram, look at the enormous hole and then say to myself “Yep, that looks like 3/8ths of an inch”.
Oh well.
Earlier this year I had a little surgical procedure which meant that I had to stop driving. When I got back from hospital I gathered up all the information, filled in a form and sent everything off to tell the authorities I was broken but had been mended. Then began the long wait for the Driver and Vehicle Licencing Agency to contact my surgeon, convince themselves that I was fixed and then decide to let me drive again.
They’ve just done this. I’m very pleased. I’ve spent the thick end of three months walking past my lovely little car but not being able to drive it anywhere. I’m not sure where I’m going to go just at the moment but I’m really looking forward to going there.
I’m working on a design for a new device and I’ve just decided to put a big green button on the top of it. I see this as definite progress….
After the glorious triumph that was my emf presentation I met up with a bunch of the audience in the bar. We were talking about different music devices and one chap mentioned the Yamaha Tenori-ON. I’d just got paid for some work and so……
It’s a very interesting device. The top surface is made up of 256 illuminated buttons in a 16x16 grid. On the back there is a duplicate of the front, except that these are just lights that mirror the playing grid. The idea is that you can stand in front of an audience and play it and they can watch what you are doing.
You play notes by tapping a button or holding the button for slightly longer to create a note in a sequence which will be played repeatedly as the play position (indicated by three vertical lights) sweeps over the grid. There are sixteen different grids and you can flip between sixteen different versions of each grid. You can vary the length of the sequence on a grid and change its speed. It is quite fun to come up with interesting sounding stuff by combining panels of different lengths. You can record a complete performance onto an SD card and then play it back. The note playback is animated, making a performance look like a tiny firework display.
There are 256 different voices built in and you can load samples off an SD card if you want to make songs out of your own sounds. It can be battery powered (6 aa batteries) or mains via a 12v adapter. It also has a MIDI connection and a pair of weedy speakers built in.
The device dates from 2007 so there are no fancy Bluetooth or usb connections available but it does have a headphone output for personal playback or connection to an amplifier. The LCD panel is a tad hard to read (mostly because it is behind an artistically curved window in the case) but it works well enough.
I’m choosing to regard it as an investment (pause for laughter) but I’m also having a lot of fun playing with it too.
We’ve started having in-person game nights again. With real people. At the last one we played The Estates. This is a fantastic game. The gameplay has you playing as a construction company vying with others to put buildings on tracts of land. If you manage to fill your tract, you get points for the bits of the buildings you made in it. If the tract is not filled, all of those in it get negative points.
It is great. Highly strategic, with with plenty of bluff, counter bluff and whatnot. One wonderful thing about the game is that every turn involves an auction, which means that even when it is not your turn you can either buy something you’d rather like or try to scupper another player by forcing the price up.
The gameplay forces a kind of cooperation. It would be impossible to fill a tract with just your own buildings. However, since there can be only one winner, it also forces chicanery and double crossing. It is the kind of game that you really appreciate playing in the same room as everyone else.
I’ve put in an order for a copy for Father’s Day……..
Time to get back to nature again. But this time the nature is the carefully managed variety you can find at Harlow Carr. One of my favourite places in all the world.
I’m making a box for one of these. Handy to have all the measurements.
Now with added sticker
For the last few days, I’ve been living in a tent and doing all my work on a laptop that I bought for 80 pounds (that’s around 100 dollars). I’ve developed code, written documents, captured video, opened lots of browser tabs and given the odd presentation. The machine I’ve been using is a GeoBook 140. It is not what you would call highly specified. It has an Intel Celeron N3350 processor, 4Gb of RAM and 64Gb of mass storage. It chugs a bit. And yet it gets there in the end. It has run everything I want faultlessly.
It has a couple of USB A sockets and a single USB C. It also has HDMI and audio outputs along with a micro-SD slot. The keyboard is clunky and not back lit, but I can type quickly on it and it is a good size with all the keys I need. The screen is low resolution (but very bright) and the track pad is not great (although I much prefer an external Bluetooth mouse anyway). It runs Windows 10 very well indeed though (although it may never run Windows 11).
I can even run KiCad
I can open Visual Studio Code, Word, PowerPoint, OBS, Thonny, GitHub desktop, PureData and all the other bits and bobs I need to get things done. The paltry storage space doesn’t bother me because I use OneDrive to give me the illusion of all my files at my fingertips. I’m getting at least five hours of battery life. I don’t know how long the battery really lasts because I’ve not managed to run it flat yet. I wouldn’t be thrilled if someone said that it was now my primary device, but I’d still be able to do stuff.
I’ve got a MacBook Air which I think is lovely. And I use it every now and then. But I’d never take it away to use in a tent. I’d be scared that it might get dropped, scratched, or wet. And it wouldn’t be as useful to me as the GeoBook. I’m afraid that MacBook to me is a bit like a Ferrari. I take it out for a spin every now and then to do fancy things. The GeoBook is more of a Ford Focus. I use it to get things done. I like it a lot, especially in the Minecraft Blue colour. I’d be a bit upset if it got broken. But I’d also only be 80 quid out of pocket. For the price of my MacBook I could buy more than ten “blue wonders”.
The amount of productivity you get for your money is amazing. If you’ve not got a laptop it represents amazing value. You can pick one up from xsonly. They have a bunch of different ones. I recommend the N3350 based ones as they have four core processors. Well worth a look.
Today it was time to go home. Rather sad. It has been an awesome festival. We’ve gone to loads of session, met a bunch of people and seen some amazing tech. Thanks so much to the organisers and the huge team of volunteers who made everything work. Apparently it isn’t possible to organise and manage an event like this with such a small number of people. Except that it is. Wonderful stuff. Counting down now to EMF 2024.
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
