York on an Instant Camera

Went to York today. Did part of the trip on the bus. Above is what the Rabbit thought of the scene.

I’d also taken the Instax Evo, which is a hybrid instant camera which takes digital pictures which it can then print. The camera has film filters you can apply to make things interesting. Today I’m using “Light leak” and “vivid”.

It’s not a great camera, but it does make great pictures. Particularly if someone is kind enough to scare the pigeons just before you take your shot.

Worth a visit.

Using Node.js on a Snapdragon device

I’m liking my new Windows Co-pilot machine. One further tip. If you want to use Node.js on your machine, make sure you install the X86 version not the ARM64 version when downloading from Node. The ARM64 version installs OK, but then explodes into a million pieces when you try and do anything with it.

Rob on Blue Sky

This is probably not the most aPposite picture

I’m trying a new media platform with a view to becoming an ex-X user. You can find me here.

Hardware Meetup and Meal Out: Wed 13th November

We’re trying something new with the Hardware Meetup next week. Afterwards you are welcome to join us at “The Omelette”, a Hull institution which just happens to be opposite the central library in Hull, where we have our meetups. If you want to join us for a nice meal and talk some tech (or whatever) it would be lovely to see you.

We’ll be meeting in Hull MakerSpace in the library from around 5:30 pm and then heading over to The Omlette at around 7:00 pm

Bridge Biker

I took this with the Fujica Half I bought a while back. I’m really quite pleased with it. We’d were walking down by the bridge foreshore and I thought the rider and the bike made for a good shot.

Kindle History

I was tidying up my Kindle subscriptions and I came across these two. Sad face.

Using PlatformIO on a Copilot device

Guess where I took this

I’m liking my Copilot laptop. Today I loaded it with Visual Studio Code and then tried to do some embedded stuff with PlatformIO. And I hit a snag. The problem is that PlatformIO notices that the computer is powered by an ARM processor and then tries to use ARM versions of all the software it brings in. This does not end well. The compilers I want to use for the ESP processors are only available for Intel X86 processors. The solution to this is to tell PlatformIO to use Intel/AMD for everything by creating the following environment variable.

PLATFORMIO_SYSTEM_TYPE=windows_amd64

Search for “Edit Environment variables” and then open the Systems Properties dialogue to do this. Then add the environment variable above, reboot your machine just to be sure everything can see it and then everything works. This means that PlatformIO will run slightly more slowly because it is now running on an emulated processor, but it still seems pretty sprightly to me.

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.