Little Red Geo

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The Little Red Geo that I ordered over the weekend arrived today. It’s lovely. It is just like a Surface Go, but a ton cheaper. It has the same processor as the ultra cheap laptop I got last year, but this time it is paired with a 128G proper hard disk. Yes it is a bit slow sometimes. But the internal disk is now faster, which improves things quite a bit. It has a really nice little screen (although the bezels are a bit big) and the keyboard and pen complete the package nicely.

The only real pain I had was with the Windows 11 installation. When I reached the point where I set the access PIN the dialog was hidden behind another part of the screen and I couldn’t get to it. I could see it using ALT-TAB but not actually get to enter anything. Super frustrating. I rebooted a few times, got stuck at the same point and eventually it let me past that bit. The tablet does have a fingerprint sensor too which I laboriously set up the first time the process got stuck, but skipped past during the retries.

I’ve loaded it up with all the software I’ll need and there seems to be plenty of disk space left over at the moment. Battery life seems to be showing four or five hours, which for a small tablet is not too bad. At the price it represents incredible value. If you want a bit more power they do a Pentium Silver (whatever that means) powered version for another fifty quid. But I’d save my cash and make do with this. I can use it for all my travelling duties. It has a micro HDMI video out plus USB C. I’ve popped a 512G micro SD card in the slot for any large scale storage duties. The kickstand works very well, as does the pen. The keyboard is tiny, but all the keys are there and they are OK to type on. The trackpad is a bit small, but then so is the computer itself. I’ve just paired a Bluetooth mouse which works fine. If you are looking for a super cheap portable solution you should take a look at this.

A digital Leica of my own

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I’ve always fancied owning a digital Leica camera. Like I fancy owning a Porsche. But different. Anyhoo, a while back I discovered the Leica Diglux 1, which was produced in conjunction with Panasonic in the early days of digital photography. It looked really cool, but I couldn’t really afford one of those either. Then I discovered that as part of the joint development Panasonic actually made their own version. So I managed to find one at a price I could afford. When it arrived I took a brief look at it, discovered that the battery was broken and popped it in the loft.

Today I found it again and took a proper look. It has a very rare feature for a camera like this. You can plug in a mains adapter and power it directly. I did this and it worked fine. So I’ve ordered a battery. I’m not going to get super high resolution pictures from it, but I’d love to have a proper go.

Cheap Surface Clone

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I’ve bought another computer. I’ve rationalised this because even after all this time I don’t have a machine running Windows 11. And today someone asked me if some of my code would run that platform. And I rather wanted to give them an answer.

I don’t want to upgrade my present machine from Windows 10 for several reasons. The primary one is that I have no need to. The second is that it would cost a lot of money. The third is that I’d have to replace pretty much everything which would mean a complete reinstall of all the software, some of which I don’t think I have licence keys for any more.

I’d much rather spend my cash on something with just enough power and disk space to do what I want with Windows 11. Which is where I introduce the Geotab 110. For less than the price of a Surface Go type cover I can get a complete tablet with keyboard and pen. I’m not expecting the earth when it arrives, but I am looking forward to discovering what kind of tablet PC you can get for 120 quids.

Double Z axis trouble

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I’ve been working on breaking my 3D printer. It’s going quite well. I’ve fitted a new direct drive printhead (which was really easy) and added a second lead screw for the z axis (which was really stupid). The principle is simple enough. Initially the printer had a single motorized screw on the left hand pillar which lifted the print gantry up and down. Thing is, when the print head moves all the way over to the right it is less well supported, so the gantry sags a bit. I thought it was a good idea to put a motorized screw on the other gantry so I bought the kit and fitted it. Which was a stupid idea. The problem is not so much with the drive system. That works fine. The problem is that if the two lead screws get out of sync (which they do) then the gantry tilts. When the printer is powered up the two screws are locked together by the stepper motors but when the power is switched off the weight of the gantry turns the two lead screws different amounts, putting the alignment out of whack.

The solution is to add a synchronisation belt at the top of the lead screws. This is what the latest printers have. So I’ve ordered one.

MOT time

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The cube in shinier times

Here in the UK we have this thing called the MOT (Ministry of Transport) test which we do to cars every year. Back in the day I used to take my old Mini for an MOT every Christmas and then spend a chunk of the festive season putting right all the things that had been found to be wrong with it. Particular highlights include replacing a leaking petrol tank with another leaking petrol tank, swapping a brake master cylinder with a clutch master cylinder and making a car with around a half an inch of brake pedal travel, taking the entire rear suspension to pieces and hefting it from dealer to dealer in two carrier bags until I found someone who could drill out the radius arms and fun with petrol blowlamps when we set fire to the grease in a kingpin and then broke the “special tool” that was supposed to take it apart. Then there was the time I painted the car, a good portion of the garage and probably my lungs a racy shade of “Daytona Yellow”. Happy days.

Anyhoo, the Cube passed with only a few advisories, which means that we are good for another year of square motoring.

Dentist fun

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Well, the boiler man couldn’t make it today, but the dentist yesterday was broadly OK, except for the filling I now have in my future. I’ve gone from “You’ve got good teeth” to “You’ve got good teeth for your age” to “You’ve got teeth?” in what seems to be a few short years. I was even complemented on my brushing technique. I was hoping for a lollipop or at least a sticker but I don’t think they do them for my age.

Direct drive 3D printing

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My 3D printer has been working reliably for ages. I can go from an idea to a printed artefact with a minimal amount of messing about. So I’ve decided to upgrade it. It turns out that I can get a complete direct drive print head for a very tempting price. I was thinking of changing the nozzle, so I might as well change everything. The replacement head arrived today. You really do get everything, rollers, heater, thermocouple and wires.

The idea behind direct drive is that the filament feed mechanism (the bit which pushes the filament into the heater) is right next to the head itself. In the current configuration the feed motor is mounted away from the head and the filament goes through a tube (called a bowden tube) to the head. This adds friction and elasticity to the filament feed. Doing away with the bowden tube should improve print quality and let me print more exotic filaments.

It looks like an easy fix so I’m going to make it more difficult. The one thing I’m not happy about is the way that the print head now weighs a lot more than it did because it now has the drive motor on it. So I’ve ordered an extra Z axis drive screw so that the bar the print head moves along can be supported on both sides, rather than just one. It should arrive later in the week.

To the tip

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Went to the tip today. This is probably not an activity worthy of a blog post (although it is my blog) but the tip I go to is rather nice and getting there involves driving over a lovely “rickety bridge” which I’m sure has a troll living underneath it.

Each time I go I’m impressed by the increasing focus on recycling. They now help you go through the stuff you are bringing and direct you to the correct place to put it. Rather than pointing at a skip and saying “In there”.

Anhoo, it was as good a tip trip as I’ve had in a while. And it is now possible to walk to the bottom of the garage. Which is nice.

Begin to Code Cloud now with added video

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I’m currently doing the author review pass for the Begin to Code Cloud book. This is the part where I incorporate the comments from the editor and reviewer to produce what should be the final version of the text. As part of it I’ve decided to record a video for each of the “Make Something Happen” elements in the text. These are the practical exercises that help you understand the content. The book contains complete walkthroughs in the text, but I thought it might be useful to also provide video walkthroughs too. How hard can it be? Actually, it’s turning out to be quite fun.

I’m using the wonderful Camtasia program which provides fantastic screen and video capture along with a very powerful editor. It can also publish videos straight to YouTube. I’ve made a template and now it is just a case of running through the exercise, adding the start and end sequences and then sending out the video. The book will contain links and also QR codes that the reader can use to find the videos directly from the page.

I’ve created a playlist for all the content. It is all directly in the context of the book. You can find a book draft here. I’m doing the videos in one take, it is rather like giving a live lecture as I talk about and demonstrate the code. It is adding a bit more time to the editing process, but I think it is well worth it.

Cable Release

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This is called a cable release. You use it to trigger a camera. The right hand end screws into the shutter button and you press the plunger on the left hand end to fire the shutter without shaking the camera.

I’ve had to buy this one because my cable release has disappeared. I know that as soon as it arrives I will instantly find the original. I think it is one of the laws of the universe that this is how it works.

New Year - New Me

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Well, perhaps not a completely new me. But I have made a new resolution not to worry about making a blog post every day. Although I suspect that I’ll go back on this and end up writing a month’s worth of posts in one day. I’ve done it before…

Anyhoo, I hope that you all (or both) had a great New Year’s Eve and that any resolutions you make will stick better than mine. I am trying one other thing. I’ve switched my daily diary from a Word document to Notion. This means I can tag posts with topics, create tasks and projects and also make data resources for gadgets and cameras. I’ve been trying it for a while and it’s working OK so far. The one thing I’m missing is some way of viewing the whole diary in one page. At the moment I can only view one day at a time. But they have an API so I can probably make one for myself if there isn’t already a plug-in for it.

Early Hornsea Pictures

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We usually go to Hornsea on New Year’s day and have a bacon butty at the Floral Hall. But this year we are a day early. Still had the butty though. And it was awesome. I’d taken along the Mint RF70, a camera I’m trying to tame. It’s going fairly well, as you can see above. One of the issues with the camera is that if you want to take pictures in daylight you have to put a filter on the front to block out some of the light. This works well enough, but I managed to get my sums wrong when working out the filter compensation and the pictures were a bit under exposed.

When I was much younger and developing my own prints I would watch them develop in the darkroom. Sometimes a perfectly exposed image would appear and then further develop into a totally black print. This meant I had over-exposed it with the enlarger. My parents would hear me shouting “Stop developing” at the top of my voice to try and slow down the process. It never worked. Sometimes you could pull the picture out of the developer tray and put it into the fixer early, but this was a game of skill I never really mastered.

I was reminded of all this when I got the above pictures out of the camera and watched them develop. At one point the foreground was perfectly exposed, then it just got darker and darker.

I don’t think I can really blame the camera for this. The film only has a limited range of light to dark. If the foreground had been brighter the sky would have gone completely white, and we were lucky in having a really nice sky. Phone photographers just take the picture and the camera sorts it out. This leads to good, if perhaps a bit unreal looking, results. Film photographers use a “graduated tint” filter which has a dark bit at the top and a light bit at the bottom. I’m going to have to get one of those for the next try. That, and practice with my sums.

Playing Yakuza Zero

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Imagine if you took all the human effort involved in making a large bridge, or building a tower block and put it into making a video game. It feels like that is what Sega have done with Yakuza Zero. The game is enormous. There’s the main story of course, a tale of corruption, revenge and an awful lot of fist fights. But there are also side quests, racing games and all kinds of daftness just shoved in with all the rest. I’ve been playing it for a while and I just keep finding more and more stuff. It runs a treat on the Steam deck and being able to pick it up for a while, play it and then put it down again is really compelling. You find yourself indulging in the occasional street brawl in the commercial breaks between TV programs, or all the way through “Call the Midwife”. Strongly recommended, but definitely for grown-ups only.

Apollo Remastered

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One of the Christmas presents that I bought myself (you can’t be too careful) was the Apollo Remastered book. The author took all the high quality images taken during the Apollo moon missions and scanned them. Then he made a beautiful book of them which tells the story of the great adventure. It is a huge book. It’s a coffee table book that you could put legs on and actually use as a coffee table. But you won’t do that because the pictures are so stunning. The printing and presentation does them justice too. I’d strongly advise you to get a copy. I got vivid memories of the actual missions being covered at the time, but if you’ve never seen just what we managed to achieve fifty years ago you’ll find it even more impressive.