Never been to Staithes before. Which is as good a reason as any to go. So we did. It’s lovely.
A view of the village
Adventures in wide angles
Incoming tide
The Cod and Lobster is a great place to eat
Lots of lovely details
Pity about the yellow lines…
If you get the chance, you should go. There’s a lovely little museum that gives you a great background to the area and lots of places for good food and drink.
I’ve inverted the image because it is a negative
I took another look at the failed film that I developed yesterday. It turns out that if you shine a really bright light through the film you can see a kind of image. What you can see above is a car on the bottom right of each frame parked in street that is going away from the camera, some trees along the top of the frame and some buildings down the left hand side. Admittedly it is hard to spot these details but I have managed to convince myself that the pictures are there and that the camera is working as it should. I’ve also convinced myself that developing your own cine film at home is a stupid idea.
So the next step is to save up some pennies (or sell a camera) to afford a proper cartridge of film and developing.
The best design is timeless
This is a fantastic book. If you are a student of design, interested in technology, or just old. It takes you through different different devices, cameras, televisions, record players, cameras and whatnot, and explores how they look and why. The word analogue in the title is a tad misleading, in that many of the items present have some kind of computer in them, but the computer is usually there to manage analogue behaviour, rather than do everything.
The pictures are great, the explanations interesting and there are callouts to particular designers and companies along the way. There are quite a few things I used to own, and quite a few that I still do. The phrase “they don’t make ‘em like that any more” springs to mind a lot, but if folks read things like this and enjoy what is presented it would be nice to think that some modern devices would have this kind of flair in how they look and are used.
Strongly recommended.
Hull Tidal Barrier
Humber Street
Spent a very happy Father’s Day morning developing some pictures we took up town yesterday using the very heavy Pentax 67. I’m not too unhappy with the results.
I think the date on the film is 1980
The plan was simple. Take some footage with the Bolex 150 Super 8 camera and then develop it to see if we can see anything. Above you can see the Super 8 cartridge that came with the camera. It would normally be sent back to Kodak for processing (which was included in the price) but I don’t think they are still providing the service. So put the film in a dark bag, pulled out the length we had exposed and then popped it into a developing tank.
Getting into movies is turning out harder than I expected
Turns out that 40 year old colour film developed in black and white chemistry doesn’t do anything useful. I was hoping for at least some evidence of an image that I could use to check if the Bolex 150 was working correctly. I think we are going to have to bite the bullet and order a cassette of film.
The camera I bought on Monday arrived today. It’s beautifully made of very solid metal and is around fifty years old. I optimistically popped some batteries in it and pressed the trigger to start making movies. Nothing happened. Not terribly surprising. We did some tests and managed to prove that the batteries were connected and supplying power. The drive motor in the camera (the thing that pushes the film through it) is mounted in the camera handle and quite easy to get to. So we took the handle off and had a look.
It turns out that all we had to do was slightly turn the motor shaft and the camera sprang to life. However it failed again later. It turns out that there is a “dead spot” on the motor shaft. If it stops in that position the motor gets stuck. This might be due to a faulty coil in the motor, or a bit of dirt on the commutator (the shiny ring around the motor shaft which transmits power into the motor). We’ve cleaned things up a bit and the camera mostly works a treat, but it still gets stuck every now and then, which is a bit sad. However, we’ve found a solution. All you have to do is hold the camera in your hand and give it a “flick” on the motor axis. This jogs the motor shaft slightly, getting it into a working position.
With that that proviso, we now have a working camera. Even the light meter is responding correctly. The camera came with some very old film which we are going to try putting through it.
WE got this mostly working
First nothing would work. Then everything worked. The Hardware Meetup last night turned out to be all about RFID tags. I’d brought along some tags I was thinking of putting onto the Hull Pixelbot robots. And Ross had brought a reader and some very fancy tags that were sticky labels that can be used to measure the temperature of whatever they’re stuck on.
RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags are great for identifying things - the clues in the name. They contain a chip and a tiny antenna which gets power from the the tag reader. The chip can send and store data so that you can literally keep tags on things. I’ve used them a lot in the past. And the new tags are much more powerful - but only if you can get them to work.
At the start of the evening I couldn’t get read any of my tags. And nothing Ross had brought was working. But then things started to change. A network cable was obtained to connect the sensor reader to a network gateway that Brian had brought. Then software was loaded and fired up and, despite not really knowing what we were doing, we managed to connect to the tags. And I even got my tags working too. The next step is to build a tag reader holder into the front of the robot and scatter some tags around the robot arena.
The next meetup is in two weeks. I wonder what we will get working then?
Had a great game night yesterday. Played Heat and Hidden Leaders.
Heat is a racing game with a very nice card based moving system which forces you to take more risks as the game progresses. We only did a two lap race as we were learning how the game works. I’m sure I would have won if we had a longer race.
In Hidden Leaders you have hide whose side you are on while trying to tilt the game outcome in your favour. I very nearly won this one, but I was thwarted by some of Simon’s hidden players. A good game is one you want to play again so that you can try something different. This is a good game.
Available for free - you just have to come and pick it up…
As a result of yesterdays efforts we now have a new sculpture in our garden. I call it “Gone off the Railings”.
I’ve no idea if it works or not. But with these looks it doesn’t nave to…..
They say that the perfect is the enemy of the good. This causes me no end of problems. As an example, consider this blog. A perfect blog would have an entry every day with interweaving narratives which are sprinkled with humorous bon-mots and apposite pictures. But over the last few weeks I’ve not had the time to make a perfect blog. And every time I’ve considered writing a post I’ve thought about the effort needed to make my blog perfect, groaned inwardly (and sometimes outwardly) and gone off and done something else instead.
So I’m going to settle for good enough. When I get a bit of spare time I’ll go back and fill in the gaps and make everything my idea of perfect, but I’ll also stop stressing about having everything present and correct before adding the next post. Over the next week or so I’ll be filling in gaps and making things as perfect as I think I need. And I’ll be blogging when I get time.
As for today: I spent a bit of the morning helping to get rid of some iron railings and to celebrate the success I bought a movie camera for less than the price of a video game….
We went along to the Humber Marathon today. The middle of Hull was awesome busy and the weather was properly splendid. I think it was perfect running weather, bright and crisp. But then again, I’m not a runner so what do I know.
Anyhoo, we watched them all start off, had a coffee and a wander round and then watched everyone finished. I did take a bunch of pictures, but I wasn’t using my own camera, so I don’t have any to post I’m afraid.
Ligretto is a fast moving card game. It is a bit like multi-player simultaneous patience. The aim is to get rid of your cards by placing them in matching stacks of the same colour. Thing is, everyone else is doing exactly the same thing at the same time. Quite often you are waiting for another player to put a number down so that you can unload a bunch of your cards. As is eeryone else. It can get rather frantic. But it is great fun.
Headed home today. But first we had some pancakes….
See if you can figure out how I won…
Won at bowling today. That is all I want to say.
They had some very busy ants
The place we are staying has a zoo attached. It has a great selection of animals, including a really cool sloth.
Modern arcade games need a lot of setup….
After living in a tent for a few days I’m now in nice little place near Blackpool. Indoor plumbing. Yay! The weather is not presently optimal (horizontal rain does not make for great walks on the seafront) but we are finding places to have fun.
Image credit: David Miles
And that’s it. Time to go. I hate this bit. The tents around ours have thinned out. Quite a few folks went home last night. And now we have to go too. It’s been really great. We’re already counting down the days to the next one. And making plans…..
What a lovely day
It’s the final day of the festival today. And the weather is perfect. Started the day with one of the best talks so far, all about the fun and games that were had when open-sourcing the Covid app. The good news is that Open Source is now firmly part of government policy when embarking on large projects. But it took a fair bit of pushing to get there. Then onto a talk about train timetabling. Then Jenny List did a great talk on her fun and games converting a Super 8 movie camera into a digital one.
Old cameras by an old camera
After the session, in the speaker questions tent, there was a lot of discussion about analogue photography and how much fun it is. I left with two thoughts in mind. Firstly that the next EMF will have more analogue film content. And secondly that I’m going to try to track down a Super 8 camera to play with.
Badge hacking
After a bit to eat it was a talk from the EMF badge team. The badge is a really nice piece of engineering, a lot of which is going to get carried forward into the next EMF event. This is a great idea. It means that we can work on apps knowing that they can be used at the next event. One problem with the badge is that there is so much going on at EMF - and you don’t want to miss any of it by spending too much time coding. Next time we should be able to turn up with a bunch of things that we will have tested on the real hardware before the event, which is lovely.
After the badge talk we went to one about 3D printing rocket engines and finally one about sending anything to anywhere. Then it was time for the closing ceremony (very sad) and another trip to the bar and Null Sector (slightly less sad).
EMF in good weather shock
Hacky Racers
Old telephones!
The food was all great
Just when you thought it was safe….
One of the highlights of EMF is their “bring and buy” tent. You get all kinds of “tech junk” coming up and there are always folks at the tent picking things up and putting them down again. As we were walking towards it I joked that it would be rather amusing to discover one of my books on sale there.
Turns out that fate has a sense of humour too. There on the table was a copy of the first book I ever had published. Way back in 2007 myself and Donald Thompson from Microsoft wrote a little book about C# development with the .NET Micro Framework. It wasn’t a best seller, but they did ask me back to write some other books, which was nice. I decided to get it because I didn’t like the thought of it languishing there for the entire festival, waiting for a buyer….
After that it was time for some sessions. Started with a very good talk about why gas boilers suck. I’ve resolved to do something involving measuring the flow temperatures of the boiler. And possibly something involving peltier devices and radiators. Then on to a talk about how awesome the BBC Micro Elite game code is. Then a scary session about the way influencer-based techniques are being used by being used by governments. Then a session about fiddling with tech and finally something about making my projects more professional. All very good stuff.
Then, after tea, we took a wander around Null-Sector trying to take pictures with an old Polaroid camera. Such fun. Today I switched to a digital camera and grabbed a few shots..
I did a lot of coding on one of these.
Bubbles
Clocks at the bar
Apparently these are the most eco friendly propane gas jets youi can buy
Quite an impressive lighting rig for a tent
I’ve written before about EMF shower etiquette. And this morning, as I stood in the shower soaking wet, with the my towel at the bottom of my bag and my jeans in a puddle on the floor, I wished I’d read my notes before I set out. But once I was clean and presentable (ish) it was time to head out for breakfast (crepes) and the opening ceremony.
You can tell it’s Jonty if you know what he looks like..
Then on to some great sessions. Saw a childhood hero (Tim Hunkin) do a talk, along with sessions about coffee machine hacking, living off the grid and small production run artworks. Then tea (a burger) followed by a screening of the Hackers movie. This film is an EMF tradition, I remember seeing it at EMF 2018. This time they actually had the director present for a discussion afterwards, which made it even more special. I’m looking forward to watching it again in 2026.
The sign for this year is also a water feature
Some of the letters on the sign are made of circuit boards. I think I recognised my current PC there…
Fantastic
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.
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