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
This is the view from our front door. Note the friendly fluffy clouds. At least, i hope they are.
Heading to Electromagnetic Fields 2024. I’ve been looking forward to it for ages. I managed to get packed and on the road by 9:30am. Go me. Nothing quite like blasting through the countryside with Supertramp on full volume. I’ve taken a bunch of cameras, including my current snapshot favourite, the Canon Dial 35. When I arrived I found that number one son had already put the tent up. Which is either good luck or good planning. You choose.
Grabbed a pizza for tea and then watched the David Lynch version of Dune – which was as good as I remember. Nothing like watching a movie with a bunch of like minded folks. The next few days are going to be awesome.
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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