Windows 11 video output is magic

I’m getting ready for a talk I’m giving tomorrow. In person. Rather exciting. I’m using my super cheap Windows 11 laptop. Just to see if I can. Today I was checking out the video output. I plugged the laptop into my screen and looked for the setting that would enable output. Then I glanced at the external monitor. It was already mirroring the laptop screen. Exactly what I wanted as default behaviour.

I guess there are settings for having multiple screens and whatnot, but I love the way that it did exactly what I wanted without me having to do anything. This is how things should be.

Dolls House

I never thought I’d one day spend a happy half hour helping someone play with a doll’s house. But there you go.

Kitsy Bitsy's Noisy Neighbours

This is a great kid’s book. Lots of detail. Neat rhymes and a cake recipe at the end.

Plus, it contains this picture. Which I’m thinking of having made into a poster (not really, but it is tempting).

Castle Howard Trip

Took a day off writing to go and look at old buildings. No prizes for guessing where this is (particularly in mind of the post title…..)

Writing and will power

Spent today writing pages and not buying cameras. Go me.

Mine Finder is now Cheese Finder

One of the example applications for the book is a game I invented that I had called “Mine Finder”. I’ve just decided that this a silly name. Mines aren’t the kind of thing you really want to find. So, it is now called “Cheese Finder”. Much nicer. And it has multiple cheeses too…

Mostly writing

Chapter 5 of the new book is coming along swimmingly. It’s great when you start to work out what it is that you are trying to write.

Fun with SoundTrackers

Spent a tiny bit of time today playing with soundtrackers. Great fun and bringing back all kinds of memories.

Deluge OLED Upgrade

My Deluge is one of my favourite musical instruments. The only thing wrong with it is the display, It’s hard to navigate the huge range of features using just a four digit display.

But that is about to change. They’ve just announced a new version of the device with an OLED display. You might think I’m unhappy about that, what with me having the old version and all. But the amazing news is that they are also offering the OLED upgrade for existing devices too, at a not extortionate price.

This is totally atypical behaviour for people who make devices like this. An upgrade to the product usually results in a need to buy a new one. Kudos to Synthstrom for doing this.

There is going to be a lot of interest in this, I’m looking forward to getting mine done.

Begin to Code Cloud Chapter 4 now available

I’ve just finished writing Chapter 4 of Begin to code: Building apps and games in the cloud. You can find the new chapter, along with all the example programs including your very own web server, here.

Dog and Duck

There’s a pub in Beverley called the “Dog and Duck”. When I first heard the name I built up this nice little narrative about a dog and a duck who go around having adventures and maybe even solving mysteries. I’ve just taken a proper look at the pub sign.

Oh well.

Ha. Turns out that Dog and Duck is already a thing.

Sad news

Sad to hear the news of the queen passing away today. A good, sensible person with a sense of humour doing an impossible job for a very long time. Well done your majesty. You will be missed.

Puncture and Meetup

I think I’ve found the problem…

I was all set for the Connected Humber Meetup this evening. However, as I was headed down the road I got a warning about low pressure in one of the tyres. It wasn’t hard to see why. Fortunately, I was very close to Endyke Tyres so I popped in to be told that it was time for a new tyre. The good news is that they can get one in tomorrow. So I put some more air in the tyre, drove home very carefully, swapped cars and managed to make it to the Meetup just about on time.

The meetup was excellent. I showed off my oven and bits and bogs. Brian had brought along a really pretty display, powered by a really beefy power supply. He also had his PICO audio device playing Gerry Rafferty.

Ion had brought along a very accurate sine waves for amplifier testing. Ben turned up and finally got his lights with names in. John came along and we talked about bits and bobs. My laptop decided to update everything during a demonstration audio which didn’t go too well but there was lots of other good discussion too.

Great fun. The next meetup is on the 5th of October. If the parts arrive from China I want to do some live surface mount soldering.

John Miles memories

When I was younger one of my favourite musicians was John Miles. I bought quite a few of his records. I was just getting one of them out of its sleeve (Zaragon - not his best) when this ticket fell out. I must have tucked it away many years ago. Who knew you could get a live band (and support) for the sum of 1.75? In Hull.

Amazing times.

Back to vinyl

Got my dusty old record deck down from the loft. Along with a bunch of dusty old records. One of the few nice things about being old is that when stuff comes around again you can just go and get your originals.

I’ve got around four other decks up there. I suppose all the rubber parts have failed - I had to get a new belt for this deck - but I’m tempted to get them down and just see if they still work.

When VHS comes back, I’m ready for that too.

3D printing lots of colours

Following my success making a version of the MIDI CheeseBox on a surface mount PCB I now have to make a case with coloured buttons. I’m going to need red, blue, green and yellow. Some of which I don’t have. The good news is that there are folks who will sell you a pack of short lengths (10 metres) of a range of colours at a reasonable price. I think these are intended for use in 3D printing pens, but they should work OK in Edna the Ender 3.

Using the Lomo Instax Square Camera Viewfinder

I love my Lomography Instax Square camera. But it does have its foibles. One of them is that the viewfinder is really hard to use. I totally understand why. The way that the picture has to come up through the top of the camera makes it impossible to put the viewfinder in the traditional place. But it does mean that when you’re taking close-ups it’s hard to work out what will be in the picture. However, it turns out that Lomo have done something to try and make it easier. But they don’t really tell you about it anywhere.

Above you can see the view through the viewfinder. You can see that there is a brighter part at the bottom right of the window. I think this is the region you should use when photographing things using the close up focus. Below is the result that I got taking a close-up picture with the viewfinder showing the view that you can see in the viewfinder above and I think the truncation just about lines up.

CheeseBox with added OLED

I thought it might be fun to add an OLED screen to the CheeseBox when we made the printed circuit board. I’ve just soldered one into place and written a little driver for it. I rather like the look. Now I have to design a box and some buttons.

The wire is there to bypass a component that it turns out we don’t need. I’d added a level converter to take the 3.3 volt led signal up to 5 volts, because sometimes the Neopixels that we are using prefer this level. However, they seem to work just fine without it.

If you’re wondering what the back of the board looks like, and just how badly it is possible to solder a PICO to some pads on a PCB, then you can see the answer above…..

Immortality Game

Immortality from Half Mermaid games is a game like nothing I’ve ever seen before. You’re curating clips of movies about a missing film star from the past. The clips include out-takes, interviews and chunks of three different movies. You can pick the clips from a menu, or you can click on items in them to transition to a linked artefact in a different clip. The content is pretty grown up and the atmosphere of movie production is very well created, as are the kinds of dodgy movies that got made before everyone could get all the dodgy stuff they wanted via the internet.

So far, so murder mystery. Then things take a serious left turn that I don’t want to tell you about because you really should play the game for yourself. It must have taken a huge amount of effort to get the look and the performances that make the whole thing work. It’s both a tour-de-force and a really engrossing experience. The game is out on Xbox game pass. You really should take a look at it, but it is not one for the kids.

Working Surface Mount PCB

Thanks to some sterling rework by number one son I now have a fully working PICO MIDI CheeseBox on a PCB. It isn’t as tidy as it could be, but it works. I wasn’t expecting this for my first attempt. Kudos to Brian for a fine design.

We tested the board by soldering wires onto connections and using an external PICO device to drive it. If I was re-designing the board (and I will) I’d add some test points so that we can inject signals to test the board without having to solder the PICO on the back.