I’m not sure how it happened. I left the computer logged in to GitHub and when I came back Chapter 10 had added itself to the draft document, updated the exercises and put itself on the net. I think this is down to the quality of the content.
You can find Chapter 10, with its friends, here
I’m doing a session at DDD North this Saturday, 3rd of December. I thought it might be fun (and charitable) to reprise the Red Nose Day talk I did this year and try to raise a bit of cash for the cause. The lovely folks at DDD North agreed, and so I’ve switched my session to “How the Web Works”. It’s at 2:30 pm on Saturday 3rd December on the University of Hull Campus. You can find out more about DDD North and register here. You can donate here.
I’ve really missed going to Red Nose Day sessions. Let’s hope the audience feel the same way on Saturday.
The man from Toronto is on the right
Tonight we watched “The Man from Toronto”. It’s a caper movie about a failing fitness instructor who gets mistaken for a ruthless hitman with hilarious and action-packed consequences.
In the old days they used to have “B” movies. These were made because for some reason a trip to the movies used to involve seeing two films. The main feature and the “B” feature. I guess this gave them more time to sell popcorn. Anyhoo, B movies had a slightly sub-par cast and budget and got released once before appearing decades later on Sunday afternoons on ITV. Some of them turned into classics. Some of them gave directors and stars their first taste of success before they made it to the big time.
Now that streaming companies are putting money into movie making I think we are seeing the return of the “B movie”. Much better than a “Made for TV” movie but not quite at the level of a cinematic release and probably destined to be watched on a Sunday afternoon. I’m perhaps being a bit harsh on “The Man from Toronto” by saying it is a bit of a modern “B” movie. It is nicely done and everyone plays their part well. But it is no Fast and Furious film. Worth a watch though.
Took the Mint RF70 camera to Burnby Hall for lunch today. And by that I don’t mean that we ate it when we got there. We had a nice meal at the cafe and then a wander round the garden taking a few pictures before coming home where I got on with Chapter 10. Too much detail? Two words: My Blog.
Anyhoo, I think I think I’m getting more of a handle on instant photography. Rob’s tips from this trip.
Over exposure (too bright) is better than under exposure (too dark).
The camera meter takes a reading based on the overall brightness of the scene in front. You can half-press the shutter to set the metering and then frame your subject. If you want to increase the exposure (brighten things), point the camera more at the ground and half press the button. If you want to decrease the exposure (darken things), point the camera at the sky and half press it. Then frame your shot and press the button all the way down to take the picture.
Instant photography seems to work well with a big, strong subject rather than lots of little things.
Camera shake is a thing. Use a light meter to make sure that the camera is not going to pick a shutter speed less that 125th of a second which will lead to shaky shots.
It’s been about a year since number one son and I started playing Lost Judgement. (that is he plays and I watch). We had a go this evening and we are very close to the end now. This is not a game with a story. This is a game with a soap opera. Amazing value and we still haven’t done all the different elements.
If you are thinking about doing something, ask yourself whether it will move you forwards, backwards or sideways. If the answer isn’t forwards, don’t do it.
Spent the entire evening making Trombone Controller stuff rather than watching Strictly Come Dancing. Such a win.
Apparently standing on one leg is healthy. And so is eating an apple. So I’m trying to do both at the same time as part of my lunchtime fitness regime.
Talking of things to watch while the football is on (and there really is a thing in it too) you might like to take a look at Wednesday. It’s an offspring of the Adams Family franchise which you can find on Netflix. Some of the episodes are directed by Tim Burton and they seem to have spent a lot of money on this. The early episodes are really good with some great sardonic humour and lovely set pieces. The later ones turn a bit “Harry Potterish” but the whole thing is carried along by the acting and production. Well worth a look.
The World Cup is coming. We’ve just signed up for Paramount+ at half price in the Black Friday sale. They’ll be winning ball games. We’ll be on a star ship saving the universe.
David asked me if I fancied giving a talk to some sixth formers at Driffield. A chance to perform in front of an interested audience? Count me in. I took along a few toys, the trombone controller and my cut-price laptop. Much fun was had. The students were great. Lots of lovely questions (although one person did ask how tall I am - and after I had specifically told them not to do that). Kids eh?
I love telling the tale of embedded development. This is the best time ever to be doing it. Making stuff has never been so easy, so cheap, and so useful for building up your personal brand. I’m looking forward to going back some time in the future to see what they have been making.
David had brought in some trombones for me to look at, including the super shiny one above. It was nice to be able to compare the action of my sensor with something real.
Turns you can do it. I’ve been wondering how I can detect people blowing into a trombone. As you do. A microphone is one possibility, but that involves analogue to digital conversion and sound processing and stuff. And owning a suitable microphone. I do however have a bunch of BMP20 environmental sensors. These contain an air pressure detector. They are supposed to be used for weather data and determining your height above sea level. Would it work for breath?
The answer is yes. If you put a sensor in a closed box (see above) and then blow into the box you can make a detectable difference to the pressure inside. All you have to do is sample the air pressure at the start and then look for a change of around 5 or so during gameplay.
It worked really well for a while. Then the BMP280 stopped working. I had a look in the box and discovered why. It was rather disgusting. Breathing into a box produces not just air, but a lot of water vapour too. The inside of the box and the sensor itself was covered in what you could politely call “dew” but was actually something slightly different. Trombones have a “spit valve” on one end to release all the stuff that accumulates. I’m happy to have proved the principle. I guess I could engineer some baffles or a waterproof membrane over the sensor to keep it dry, but the thought has occurred that in these virus laden times, passing around some thing that you take in turns to breath into might not be a great idea.
So I’m building a version of the controller that uses buttons rather than breathing.
Yesterday we went to Harrogate for the Knitting and Stitching Show. That is, some people in my party did that part. I’m not into knitting or stitching just yet. I went round Harrogate looking for things to photograph using the Mint RF70 that I’d taken with me. Harrogate was doing its best to be interesting, what with Transformers wandering around and inflatable Thunderbirds vehicles. The weather really wasn’t helping much though. The rain was pretty much constant. I wasn’t the only person there wearing waterproof trousers.
However, we all had a great time. Wool was bought, embroidery was done and we had a really nice lunch at the Fat Badger (strongly recommended). Then I went round one of the many lovely parks near the town centre and managed to grab a few more shots before the heavens opened again. Great day.
I’m building a trombone controller. And why not? I’m using a distance sensor to track the position of the trombone slide. The output is a bit noisy. But how noisy? A graph would help, but how do I get that? Very easily as it turns out. I just added a print statement to my Circuit Python application:
print(raw,",",average)
This prints out my raw and averaged values with a comma between them. Then I used Thonny to run the program in the trombone for a while and moved the slider. Then I stopped the program, copied the output of the terminal window into notepad and saved it with the file extension “.csv”. (Comma separated values).
Then I opened the file with Excel (other spreadsheets are available) and made the above graph. It shows how my rolling average (the red trace) cleans up a lot of noise but makes the values lag slightly (look at the how the red trace rises slightly after the blue one).
If you aren’t sure what your signals look like this is a very easy way to do it. The Arduino IDE has a graphing feature built in that I’ve used once or twice, but there’s nothing like dropping your values into a proper spreadsheet for analysis. And it is very easy to do using the magic of cut and paste.
A while back I took some instant pictures that were a bit compromised by colour balance of artificial light. I decided that one way to fix this was to bring along a light of my own. A quick search of ebay found me a Hannimex PRO550 along with mounting plate for around 10 quids. I’m going to have to modify the flash cable or find an adapter (the RF70 has a funky 2.5mm socket) but if I use this flash I don’t think I’ll need to worry about artificial light. Plus, as an outfit it looks awesome.
I just hope I don’t blind any of the subjects or give them a suntan they don’t want…..
We watched See How They Run last night. This is a lovely little movie. Lots of laugh out loud moments - at least for me. I think it leans rather too heavily on real life with its use of a real play and a real author to hang the plot on. I reckon it would have worked better if it was all made up. But that doesn’t take anything away from some lovely stuff. I hope they make some more of these.
We watched Fast and Furious 9 last night. It was OK. Although you really had to strain to suspend your disbelief a lot more than usual.
Well, that could have gone better.
I’ve had a few good games of Marvel Snap today. You can play it for free and have fun, although to progress you’re probably going to end up parting with cash.
When I was a lecturer one of the questions I was asked quite often was “What turns a developer into a ‘professional’ developer?”. I’ve just written a chapter in the new book that tries to answer this. Great fun.
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
