Enter the Omnibook...

I’ve not bought a proper laptop for myself for ages. A few years ago I bought an M1 powered MacBook Air to see what the fuss was all about. It’s a lovely machine and it works a treat, but I’ve never really got on with it for doing proper work, what with it not running Windows and all. So last week, having got some unexpected royalties (which are always nice) I got myself a Windows Copilot notebook in the form of the HP Omnibook X 14. There are some very good deals on this at the moment.

I like it a lot. It’s around half the price of the equivalent Microsoft Surface. The hard drive is slightly small, but I can take the back off the laptop and replace the drive with a larger one if I need to. The battery life is supposed to be awesome and so far I’m agreeing with that.

The Omnibook is based on the Snapdragon ARM chip, which means that it needs to use an emulation layer to run “standard” Windows applications. I had a very similar experience with the MacBook, where a process called Rosetta ran Intel based Mac applications. The Windows version of this is called “Prism” and it works pretty well. The applications that I need seem to run pretty well. Applications like Word and the Edge browser have already been converted to Snapdragon hardware and they run very well indeed. I’m looking forward to finding out how good it is for getting things done.

Hull CS50 movie is back from the film lab

A few weeks ago we had our event celebrating 50 years of Computer Science at Hull. During the event we took some 16mm movie film on a 70 year old camera. We weren’t sure whether it would come out or not, but we sent the film off for processing anyway.

It came back today and it seems to have worked. The old clockwork Bolex camera that we used has done us proud. Above you can see particularly terrifying still from the film. We are going to improve the contrast and generally spruce things up.

Halloween

If you want an insight into how nice people are, just go “Trick or Treating” near way we live (it probably helps to go on the 31st October). We had a fantastic walk around the neighbourhood. The weather was lovely, lots of folks had really gone to town on their houses and there were families wandering around dressed as skeletons and all sorts. And we got home with a bucket full of goodies. Great fun. And just a bit scary. Especially one particular doorbell……

Splendid Meetup

Yes. The Mac is running Linux

We have a super-splendid Hardware Meetup in MakerSpace in Hull Central Library this evening. Loads of folks turned up to show things off and see what others were up to. Ross brought along his prototype piano keyboard reader which uses distance sensors to read key movements. It’s analogue and it works. Two things you can’t say about the things I make…

Betrayal at House on the Hill

There have been several editions. I think we played the first one.

Of all the stupid things people can say, I reckon one of the most stupid is “Let’s split up and search the place”. Especially if you are in a decidedly dodgy location where even the rooms themselves have it in for you. But that’s exactly how “Betrayal at House on the Hill” starts off. You all get your personas and then head off into the hallways, rooms and basements, uncovering all kinds of stuff - must of it unpleasant. Then, suddenly one of your party is at the centre of an evil plot and all the other players must team up and do some thwarting. We just had to beat the devil at chess, but other tasks involve monster slaying and whatnot. There are around fifty of them to work through.

We had a go at the game tonight and much fun was had. We managed to win thanks to some inspired dice wielding right at the very last minute. It’s a great game and we are definitely going to play it again.

That didn't last long....

This was supposed to be my first camera review. Instead you are going to have to make do with a post saying sorry for not writing one yet. I blame the time it takes to get my film back from processing…..

Lego Radio

It makes some great sounds too

The Lego Radio is a lovely build. It comes with a little sound brick that plays different sound effects as you scan through the radio channels. Great fun. You can put your Smartphone inside it if you want to turn it into a bluetooth speaker.

Discarded wit

I’m writing some stuff about creating your own programming language at the moment. As I write I find things that I quite like, but aren’t really suitable for publication. Good thing I’ve got the blog then….

• Bottom-up design: Start with the low level functions and build on them.

• Bottoms-up design: Start by getting very drunk and writing some random code

• Bottom-down design: Just get more and more depressed about what you are trying to do

• Bottom-out design: Hope that things won’t get any worse.

• Top-down design: start with the big picture and then break it down into chunks to build a map of your solution. Then create each chunk.

• Top-up design: find a coffee place that does free refills and then keep drinking caffeine until inspiration strikes or you have a seizure.

• Top-trumps design: forget about writing software and spend your time playing card games from your childhood.

Delayed DIY

It took me around 20 seconds to add an extra screw to fix the wobbly shelf in the kitchen cabinet that’s been annoying us for years.

I’m sure there’s a lesson in this somewhere, but I’m darned if I can find it - which is probably the problem….

MagPi Paparazzi Camera Edition

The very latest MagPi magazine is out now. It’s a good read, made even better by the inclusion of lots of maker content now that it incorporates HackSpace. In amongst all the stuff is an article from me about making a Paparazzi Camera. This is one which follows you around the room. I had a lot of run playing with servos and person detectors.

These boots are made for walking. Hopefully.

Went up town today and bought myself a pair of “Doc Marten” boots. They are verry nice. People in the know about these boots tell me that you have to go through a process of “breaking them in” before they are properly comfortable. I’m not sure if I like the sound of having to impose my will on footwear. We’ll just have to see how this goes.

Junked Joystsicks in MagPi magazine

Number one son even made the cover…

In a shocking development I don’t have an article out this month. But number one son does. So at least the family is out there. If you get this month’s MagPi magazine you will discover an article from him describing how to bring junked joysticks back to life.

Camera Reviews Coming

A good piece of advice to writers is “Write what you know”. This poses a problem for me because I ran out of things that I know to put in the blog around 10 years ago. So another piece of advice could be “Write what you like”. I like cameras, and I probably like writing about them. I plan to find out just how much by posting a regular camera review every Monday, starting next week. I’m going to work my way through my collection of classic old cameras with comments and sample photos. Should be fun. If it isn’t, I’ll stop doing it.

Blog up to date

Writing a blog post about having got my blog up to date does sound a bit meta. And is probably only of interest to me and ChatGPT, but here we are.

I’m now properly determined to keep the blog up to date and am trying to make adding content part of my daily routine.

We’ll see how that works out.

Incidentally, I used ChatGPT to make the picture at the top of this post. It is interesting how the image creation process now uses ChatGPT to generate a text description of the required image and then makes a picture from that. I asked for something depcting an artist putting the finishing touches to a great work of art, and ChatGPT lobbed in a lot of extra words before going off and making the picture.

Caffinated Coffee in Trinity Market

The centre of Hull is a really nice place to be. Even when the weather is wet there are great places to go. Starting with Caffeinated Coffee in Trinity Market.

Whitby Steam Rally Movie

We’ve got our 8mm film back from processing and for a first attempt it doesn’t look too bad. What it lacks in definition I reckon it makes up in atmosphere.

Prettiest Recycling Centre in Britain

Took my old chair to the tip recycling centre today. Good riddance.

The recycling centre in Beverley is in the prettiest place, next to the river Hull with a terrific view of green fields. I took the Minox camera and grabbed some shots. We’ll see if they come out.

DJI Neo is a super little drone

As part of my demob happy persona (back to work tomorrow) I also got hold of a DJI Neo quadcopter. It’s tiny and it works. Very well. A lot better than the Parrot drone I was playing with back in 2011. That was properly scary. This one just gets on with its job of flying round and taking good looking movies. It even has built in behaviours you can access from the button on the top. You can use a phone, and a proper joystick thingy,

it was great fun to fly, the pictures look good and it will land in your hand. Should be a lot of fun.

Ho for Ikea

Mildly demob happy today. A few things I’ve been working on for a while have completed and so it was off to Ikea to get some sawdust and formaldehyde to celebrate. Got a new office chair as part of the fun. I bought one a while back that was not a good buy. I had to mend it with a spanner. This one has the racy name of JÄRVFJÄLLET and incorporates a lumbar support. And it doesn’t sink down to the floor when I sit on it, which is nice.

I did not buy this camera

This camera was a gift from the the chap at Beverley Camera Centre. He’s not sure it works, and one of the little covers has come unstuck and fallen inside. I’ve kind of stuck it back into place, dropped in some batteries and all the knobs and dials seem to work . So I’ll be popping a film in to see if it can take pictures.

I can’t seem to find out much about the Fujical GER other than it came out in 1972. I think it might be Fujifilm’s answer to the very successful Yashica Electro 35. I like the idea of a tiny rangefinder camera with a built-in light meter and so I’m hopeful that it will work.

I’ve been after a nice one of these for ages

Now I did buy this one. I’ve been after a clean Olympus Trip 35 for ages and one just happened to be on sale. This is a classic camera with an amazing battery free metering system and zone focusing. My Auntie Anne had one and took it all over the world recording her exploits. Her pictures were always sharp and well exposed. I hope the one it produces are too.