Developing Nicely

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Always fancied one of these cars, but I don’t think I’d fit into it

We spent some time yesterday developing colour film. This went surprisingly well and I really like the results. We used these chemicals which make colour development as easy as black and white. We did the first batch of prints at the end of November. It’s nice to know that the chemicals keep for a reasonable time.

Given the pip

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When is a dishwasher not a dishwasher? In our house it’s around half past three in the afternoon when you open the thing and find lots of plates still with food still attached. Very much a first world problem, but still a bit irritating.

Today I thought I’d have a go at fixing it, just in time for Christmas next year. Or something. I took off the “spinny things that spray water” - I’m sure that’s their proper name - and had a look a them. Turned out that one had filled itself up with lemon pips. These had escaped from gin and tonic glasses and found their way into the pipework, ending up in a position to block the water flow into the jets which clean the plates.

There’s a pro-tip here. If your dishwasher isn’t a dishwasher, make sure that nothing is blocking the flow. In theory there are filters to stop this kind of thing happening but as we all know, theory and reality are not always the same thing.

Slow Flash Sync on Christmas Eve

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I’ve spotted at least two chocolate decorations..

Apparently “slow flash sync” is all the rage this year. You take a long exposure giving time for the lights in your picture to show up in the image and maybe wave the camera around a bit. Then, at the end of that you take a flash photograph, which lights up everything else in the picture and freezes it. Qute fun.

Things in Rings

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I forgot to take a picture of the board when we played this on Monday night

Venn Diagrams were invented in Hull. Sort of. If you don’t know what a Venn diagram is, then this game will teach you. If you don’t care what a Venn diagram is, then perhaps this is not for you. Things in Rings gives one person (the “knower”) knowledge of a particular word structure (perhaps “contains the letter R”), attribute (perhaps “heavier than a cat”) and context (perhaps “things you can find in my house”). The rest of the players have to discover by experimentation what the three things are. They do this by placing things from their hands (nicely drawn cards that they draw from their hands) into a Venn diagram made with three string loops. The “armchair” went in the middle (because it contains an r, is heavier than a cat, and you can find them at home). There’s also a category for “Nothing” which is where you’d put something like a museum - which doesn’t match any category.

If you place a thing right it stays there. If you place a thing wrong the “knower” puts it in the right place and you get another card. The knower takes a turn along with everyone else, and tries to pick things which will help the group work out what is going on. If everyone gets rid of all their cards everyone wins. If the knower runs out of cards before this happens, everyone loses.

Gameplay is not competitive - which some players might miss. However it is great fun and can lead to some very interesting discussions about the nature of stuff. You don’t have to guess exactly what the rules are. You just have to have a working knowledge that lets you get rid of your cards. It’s a great icebreaker and we rather enjoyed it.

Tacta is a fun tactical card game

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Currently working on a dot counter for the scores….

Tacta is a nice little tactical card game for up to six players. We played it this evening. You place your cards so that they fit into matching areas on cards that have already been placed. The aim is to have as many of “your” spots showing as possible. The game is supposed to take 20 minutes (according to the box) but we managed to make it last a lot longer than that, which a plenty of tactical scheming and debate over whether or not a card was over the edge of the table….

Mining for Games

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Next thing to do is make a box.

Number One Son is visiting us for Christmas and, as usual, he has brought a few toys for us to play with, starting with a PlayStation 5 APU-based BC-250 crypto mining board. He picked this up for a very good price from AliExpress (although they seem to be getting a bit more expensive now). The board was built for a life in a rack of servers mining crypto coins, but now they are appearing on the second hand market. They need a bit of work to get going, you’ll need to find a power supply, an SSD and a suitable fan, but once you’ve done that you end up with a machine that will run Steam games at a fair old speed. It’s not quite PlayStation 5, more like PlayStation 4.5, but it is very useable and a great way to get into higher performance games or as something powerful to pop under the telly. You can find out more here.

Bug in the C# Yellow Book

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Phiko even sent a diagram explaining the mistake

My C# Yellow Book has been out for a while. I still get emails every now and then with corrections to the text. Phiko got in touch last week about an error that nobody else has spotted. At the start of the book we write a program which works out the amount of wood and glass required to create a window. It contains the statements:

glass area = width of window * height of window
wood length = (width of window + height of window) * 2

Phiko explained that this is wrong, because the length of the wood required must include enough to make the corners of the frame. So, to work out the correct length you also need to factor in the width of the wood too. This all goes to show the importance of testing. If I’d actually tried to make a window using the amount of wood calculated by the code, I’d have found the problem immediately. I think Phiko has a great future as a developer. Well done. I’m going to update the example in the next version of the book.

Fun with Banana Camera Images

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You’d think I’d look more pleased

Well, I’ve got my camera capture working for the Nano Banana camera. I’m not using the same display as the original, so I’ve had to write the display driver from scratch which has been great fun.

At the moment the captured images look fine (see above) but the lcd viewfinder display is a bit of a mess. But I think I’ve done enough for this evening.

Sticky Keys

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Here’s a lifestyle tip for all (both) my readers. Don’t use a key to slice through the tape on a package and then immediately try to use the same key to open the door. Slicing through tape can deposit a bunch of sticky stuff onto the key which then ends up in the lock.

I spotted the gluey residue just in time. No damage was done. Second lifestyle tip is to rub a lead pencil up and down the business end of a key a few times. This deposits a layer of graphite on the key which will find its way into the lock mechanism and make it work much more smoothly. Make sure your pencil is a lead one though, this doesn’t work with crayons.