Steam Deck

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It turns out that I don’t just buy cameras when I’m writing. I’ve managed to scrape together enough cash to get myself a Steam Deck. I didn’t really think I wanted one until I saw number one son’s. The idea of playing proper games on a handheld console was rather intoxicating. I hardly ever play games on my PC. They feel too much like work. The only exception to this rule is Microsoft Flight Sim. And that’s not a game. It’s a simulation.

Anyhoo, back to the Steam Deck. I joined the queue for the device a while back and I was very surprised to get to the front so quickly. Number one son had to wait a long time for his and I was digging in for the long haul when I got an email earlier in the week saying mine was ready for shipping.

Up until now my go-to handheld has been the Nintento Switch. The Steam Deck is bigger, but not in a bad way. It doesn’t seem that much heavier than the Switch, but it is definitely more bulky . The screen is very good, with great colours and contrast and the controls are good too. I think the best way to look at it is as a nice game controller with a screen stuck in the middle. There are ventilation holes in the back and the top and a fan which seems inclined to panic. It will be very quiet and then suddenly kick in with a roar for a few seconds and then go back to quiet again. I mainly use it with Bluetooth headphones, so I don’t see this as a problem, although I worry what would happen if I blocked the holes on the back of the device.

The integration with Steam is very impressive, although I prefer the store browsing experience on the desktop. Quite a few of my games are Steam Deck certified and just work. I’ve done no special setting up or anything and I’m getting a great experience right out of the box. The arrival of the deck corresponds with a nice Sega sale, so I’ve picked up a bunch of Yakuza games along with some other classics at very low prices. One of the great things about Steam is that their sales include things you can get at prices that you would never see on a console.

I’ve got the middle configuration of the device which has 256GB of internal storage, although so far I’m putting everything on a 256GB external SD card. More storage would be nice so I’ll be looking at oncoming sales to see what turns up.

There is a really active emulation community around the device which I’d like to get into later, but for now I’m quite happy on the sofa playing Yakuza.

Sometimes the wrong bear comes out of the cave

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A while back I was talking about creativity and Abba. The composers in the group said that song writing was like a hunter waiting outside a cave for a bear to come out. You just had to hang around until an idea appeared and then make sure that you grab it.

I agree with this way of looking at it. For the last few days I’ve been working Chapter 6 of my book. Then today I discovered that what I’ve actually been working on is Chapter 7. All the content works well, but I’ve got a chapter ahead of myself.

Sometimes it seems that the wrong bear comes out of the cave. Now I’m waiting for the “Chapter 6 bear” to arrive……

Dall-E is now free to use

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The Dall-E program is both amazing and scary in equal measure. You give it a text description of a scene “an oil painting of a man using a phone made of cheese” and it makes four versions of a picture like that. See above for one of them.

I have an idea of how it works. Dall-E takes images from the internet along with their text descriptions and puts them into some kind of structure. It then learns enough about the English language to figure out how things can be combined and is then able to parse an English description of a scene in order to….Actually, I’ve not much of an idea how it works. But it does work. And it poses lots of ethical dilemmas.

Who owns the artwork it makes? Does Dall-E respect the copyright of the images that it uses to make the artwork? Does Dall-E reflect the bias in the descriptions of the artwork it imports? What does this say about the role of artists in the creation of artwork? Tricky stuff indeed.

But, from the point of view of a toy to play with, Dall-E is great fun. And you can now use it for free. If you sign up you are able to make a limited number of images, with a few more each month - or you can buy credit for the platform. Just don’t use it to do your art homework.

Disney Dreamlight Valley

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If you like Disney and Animal Crossing and you’ve got an Xbox Game Pass, I might just have something interesting for you. Disney Dreamlight Valley turns you loose in a place that is rather like a Disney Themepark on steroids with you the only guest. There are all you favourite characters (although I’ve not found many of them yet) and a rich environment to interact with. Crafting, cooking and collecting are all there. And that’s just the stuff that starts with c….

I’ve not played it for long, but it does look very promising. I really like Animal Crossing but doing errands for Disney characters is rather cool. You can buy the game for lots of platforms and you can sync your achievements in the cloud. You can’t go and meet your friends in their Disney worlds just yet, but that is promised for later on. And if you have Xbox Game Pass you can play it now for free. Well worth a look.

Teenage Engineering Record Factory

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This looks fun. It’s a combination vinyl record player (that’s the arm on the right) and record cutter (that’s the arm on the left). It can cut five-inch disks that last three minutes at high speed (45rpm) and four minutes at low speed (33rpm). You feed it audio input via a line-in connection and it cuts a groove in a blank disk that you can then play back on any record player. It’s not a Teenage Engineering design. Search ebay for “record cutting toy” and you’ll find the same thing in a different box.

The sound quality will be horrible, but every recording will be unique and perhaps great fun. I suppose you can think of it as the audio equivalent of the instant pictures that I like playing with, but I’m not going to be getting one unless I become silly rich. And anyway, they seem to have sold out…

Ethics, Privacy and Security

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I’m working on Chapter 6 of Begin to Code Cloud at the moment. I’ve spent a page discussing Ethics (will what we are going to do make people unhappy), privacy (will what we are going to do breach privacy) and security (what might the program be exposed to that could cause it to be compromised).

People might find it strange that these things are going into programming text, but I think they are really important. The section will be in the draft version fairly soon, so keep a look out for it.

Trombone Controller Sensors

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I’m supposed to be writing Chapter 6 of Begin to Code Cloud. But I keep been drawn towards designs for a trombone based game controller. Because of this game. I’ve bought a copy and it is hilarious. But I want to play it with something approaching a real trombone. To do that I’ll need a sensor to read the position of the trombone slide. First instinct was to use an ultrasonic distance sensor, so I wired one up and dropped out a bit of code. That’s the device on the top. The problem with this is that as the distances being measured increase the whole thing slows down, what with the time taken for the ultrasonic pulse to go out and bounce back. So I’ve switched to using lasers. The device on the bottom uses a laser-based sensor (which I love) which works very quickly at any distance.

I’m using the sensors from Circuit Python at the moment. I’m going to have to decide whether or not it can go fast enough to get smooth readings. Early tests indicate that it might be OK but the distance readings are a bit noisy. But I think it should work. And now back to chapter 6….

Chapter 5 now available

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I’ve just updated the draft version of Begin to Code with the Cloud. You can find it here along with all the code examples. Please remember that this is a work in progress. Things have moved around and changed names in the ongoing draft, but there should be enough content to give you an idea of where I’m going with this. I’m especially pleased with Chapter 5.

Ugly camera

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This is the biggest, ugliest camera I’ve ever bought. I got it for a very good price second hand because the battery compartment has suffered a bit of corrosion. But it works fine. Once I’d figured out the right way to put the batteries in. Most devices put the springs against the negative terminal of the batteries. This doesn’t, leading to a bit of worrying while I worked that out. It’s an instant camera which takes quite large pictures. Hence the size and the ugliness. It comes with a funky close-up lens you can clip on the front so that you can get close to roses. I’m looking forward to taking it out and playing with it. It’s not got as many fun features as the Instant Square I got for Christmas. It doesn’t even have a self timer. But it does make nice large pictures. t

DirtyWave M8 Keyboard

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The DirtyWave M8 is an awesome device. It’s a tiny handheld soundtracker. I’ve not got one, but I think I’ve made the next best thing for now. It’s a keyboard that matches the keys on the top of the DIrtyWave. It also contains space for a Teensy 4.1 to power everything. This runs a headless version of the DirtyWave software that talks over USB to a host running the display.

The box contains a PICO that provides a keyboard which matches the one on the DirtyWave.

The construction isn’t the best, I’m not sure you are really supposed to solder connections onto the back of key switches, but it does work. The PICO pretends to be a USB keyboard supporting just the keys that the DirtyWave needs. If you want to make one you can find all the details here.

Fun at Dot Net North

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Just the setup for your average talk….

Well, that was fun. Dot Net North invited me to do a session for them. First “in-person” talk for ages. No pressure then…

I got a bunch of kit together and headed over to Manchester. I gave the talk at the Auto Trader offices. Wonderful place. Got a great audience and I really enjoyed myself. Thanks so much to Claire for making us all welcome. The food was lovely and the room we had was great. Thanks to Pete for inviting me. You can find the slides and sample code here.

Me in action. Photo Credit: Pete Vickers MVP, International Man of Mystery and Corns Cut While You Wait

I’ve really missed doing live presentations. Yesterday reminded me of how much fun they can be. Especially if we end them by raffling some socks.