Robot Building at C4DI this Thursday

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We will be holding a special Robt Building meetup this Thursday (16th of June) at C4DI. I'll be bringing along a bunch of printed components (see above) for people to use to build their own robots. If you've been collecting the hardware to build your own robot, come along and we'll help you put it together and get it moving. 

I'll also be showing off the latest "two brained" version of the PixelBot and we'll be discussing the way forward. Everything will start around 6:00 at C4DI in Hull on Thursday. 

Got Lightstream

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Another achievement unlocked. That's two in less than a week. Got LightStream fibre optic broadband. at home. My data doesn't come down a wire any more. It comes as light. Right into the living room. I could even undo the cable and take a look at it. Although this would do horrible things to my data rate (and probably my eyes too).

To be honest I was a bit meh about it. I've never had that much of a problem with the old wired connection, although it was annoying if Windows 10 tried to download an update when we were watching iPlayer. But having had it for all of four hours or so, I'm hooked. Stuff just happens faster. Or instantly. It even seems faster than the network connection in my office at work.

According to the speed test web site I'm getting around 10 times my previous speed. And that is over WiFi or USB network dongle. I've not tried a proper wired connection yet. I wonder what going back to work will feel like. 

Draughts Board Game Cafe in London

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I think you should know that this game is way complicated

We've been meaning to go to Draughts for a while. the first Board Game Cafe in London. In case you're not sure what a "board game cafe" is. It's a cafe. With board games. And it's awesome.

You pay a fiver each for a session and then have literally hundreds of games, all neatly categorised, for you to grab off the shelf and have a go with. I wonder if they'd charge 'game corkage' if you brought your own games? Anyhoo,  they also have great coffee and amazing brownies (and I'm a connoisseur) 

I've always fancied having a go at the Thunderbirds board game, and they had a copy there. The box says the game takes around 40 minutes to play. That might be true. But it also took us around 40 minutes just to set the game up.

Each player takes on the role of a character from the show and pilots Thunderbird craft around the globe performing rescues and defeating the Hood's evil schemes. Or in our case losing. In around 40 minutes. The loyalty to the show is pretty slavish. The nicely printed cards are all dotted with stills from the episodes. There are FAB cards you can play, pods you can load with equipment and even the automatic camera detector gets a look in.

And yet, I'm not completely sure it's fun just yet. I think a lot of the problem was lack of familiarity, and numbers - there were only two of us playing - but I'd love to have another go. 

As for the venue, as we left around Sunday lunchtime it was filling up nicely. If I lived in London I don't think I'd want to go anywhere else on Sunday morning. 

Hull has a boardroom cafe too, the Boardroom. I really must check it out. 

Whose Line is it Anyway. Live.

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Achievement unlocked. Seen Whose Line Is It Anyway? live in London. Not quite the whole crew, but enough to be properly awesome. I remember the TV show many years ago. And now I've got fond memories of seeing them perform on the London Stage.

If you've not seen the show before I'm sure you can find it on YouTube. If you have, you'll know all about the improvisation, the lightning quick wit and the musical cleverness that goes on. It was one of those shows that makes your face ache from laughing. If you are in London and have a chance to catch one of the shows, you really, really should. 

German Floppy Discs

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It's interesting how some things can acquire a life of their own. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a little item for The Conversation about the way that floppy disks are still in use in nuclear missile silos, among other places. One thing led to another, and since then I've been on BBC 5 Live taling about the issue, had the item printed in The i paper and there's now a German translation out there too. Great stuff. 

3D Printing at Cottingham WI

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I've done talks at Cottingham WI before. Great fun. I was invited back again this year and, rather than talk computes I thought I'd take along the 3D printer and print some cheese.

The printer behaved herself impeccably. I love the way that I can throw my Ultimaker into a blue IKEA bag, take her somewhere and have her just work. Anyhoo, everyone was fascinated. Best question of the evening: "Why is it called a 3D printer?"I really don't know. You can't really call it a printer as it does't print as such. It makes things. I quite like the name "fabricator", but the world seems to have decided its a printer. So that's that. 

Thanks for inviting me and being a great audience folks. And I got to judge the chocolate brownie competition, which entailed sampling every one. Which was lovely.

Tapped out

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Fired up with the success of my work with the kitchen door, today I transferred my attention to the tap in the garden. This has been dripping for a while. I'm not saying that the garden now looks like the picture above, but I think it is only really a matter of time.

Anyhoo, determined not to get caught out by fate, I equipped myself with a selection of different sized tap washers, turned the water off at the mains and set to. And of course got caught out by fate. The top of the tap would not unscrew. I was just about to give it what might be called a "proper" go, when I paused to consider a possible downside; namely that if I broke the thing I would be unable to turn the water back on. And I quite fancy having a shower tonight. Not to mention a cup of tea. So I paused for a re-think. The only part that did move was the entire tap itself. So it was on to Amazon and the pleasing discovery that a replacement tap could be mine for just five pounds (does every job I do have a component that costs five pounds?).

The order has gone in, the tap is still dripping and I'm calling the day a partial win.

There's always a catch in it...

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One of the reasons why I like writing software is that I always find doing things in the "real world" much harder. Simple tasks can take on a life of their own. Take our kitchen door lock for example. We're doing some painting, which involved removing the handle. When I tried to put it back together I discovered that the catch mechanism had completely collapsed. Of course, I only found this out once I'd closed the door and then couldn't open it, which required some fancy shenanigans just to get the door back open. 

Once I'd isolated the broken part I was very pleased to find that I can get a new lock mechanism from ScrewFix for just 79 pence. I was somewhat less pleased to find that this replacement was a tiny bit too big for the hole in the door, so I had to spend a fiver on a smaller one. Which it turned out didn't fit either. I think our house was built in a time when the inch was slightly smaller than it is now. 

Anyhoo, the proper way to make the lock fit would have been to reach into my toolkit and produce a shiny, sharp chisel of exactly the right size and cut out the excess wood. Of course, that's not going to happen in my house, so I ended up using an electric drill to just enlarge the edges of the hole until it was big enough. We now have a door with a handle that works, having done only around three times as much work as I thought I'd have to....

HullPixelBot planning at C4DI

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We had another of our hardware hacking group meetings last night. Plenty of great discussion, a lot of it focused on the HullPixelBot. Robin had assembled one and added some sensors that allowed it to chase light. Which mostly worked. We're planning a "bot assembly" evening on the 16th of June. I'm going to print out a bunch of chassis and anyone who fancies a bot of their own can come along and build it with us. Then we'll try to get them all going. You can find the build instructions on the Hull PixelBot microsite here. They include how to get all the part's you'll need. It shouldn't cost you more than ten pounds or so. 

We also have a Google group about matters Hull PixelBot. If you want the details ping me a message (or add a comment) and I'll get you registered. 

Hello Dundee

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It's kind of annoying when, having spent a huge amount of time and cash trying to get the best camera you can you press your phone up against the train window and get this...

I'm in Dundee for a couple of days, doing external examining things for Abertay. The weather here is wonderful. I'm assured that it is like this all year round. 

Had tea at this lovely place which had a Fiat in the window. 

Betajester get a place in the Tranfuzer programme

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I've known BetaJester since before they were BetaJester. They've been Three Thing Game stalwarts since forever. And, like quite a few TTG alumni, they've become quite successful. Latest success is winning a place in the Tranzfuser talent development programme. As the press release says:

"Successful applicants have been awarded a £5,000 budget paid in stages to replicate the real world for them to allocate to allowable costs throughout the 10-week long competition. At the showcase event later this year, selected teams will be invited to pitch for follow-on funding of up to £25k from the UK Games Fund (also operated by UKGTF) to commercialise their game and launch a company."

Well done. Onward to victory.

Rob on BBC Radio 5 Live

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Well, that was exciting. I got a call on Friday to ask if I'd like to talk about floppy disks and nuclear weapons on Radio 5 Live's Hit List program which lists the top 40 internet stories of the week. I said yes.

Floppy disks came in at number 31 or so. You can find the program by clicking the image above. Then move forwards to 24 minutes 50 or so and you get five minutes of me, in which I manage to invent a new word and make my own sound effects. Awesome fun.

Moving On

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The University of Hull has been part of my life for over forty years. I arrived at the place in 1975 in tastefully flared trousers and I've been here ever since as student, duty programmer, computer manager and lecturer. And today I've begun the process of moving on from the university.

I guess it stated nearly a year ago, with congratulations from LinkedIn about my 37 years in employment at Hull. I'd never done the maths before and the number shocked me a bit. It was like a bit of grit that you get in your shoe, It irked,

As the year went by and I did my various jobs I began to reflect that I've been doing the same kind of thing for a long time and, fun though it is, maybe there are other things I might like to do which would be fun too. And maybe it would be interesting to find out. The little bit of grit in my shoe got too big to ignore. 

So, today I formally informed the university that I'd like to move on from the institution on the 30th of September this year. I'll be around for the next four months, setting up courses and getting things as sorted as I can for the next session, so I'm not going just yet. But moving on I am.

It's going to be a wrench, but it had to happen sooner or later, and I really hope I'll be able to retain some links with this fabulous institution, maybe they'll let me come back and run the odd competition and deliver the occasional Rather Useful Seminar.

I've not made any firm plans going forward. With a bit of luck I'll be able to speak at a conference every now and then, and of course robmiles.com will rumble on. My book will be out later this year and I might think about "C# Yellow Book - the Movie", but we'll have to see. 

I've got tons of toys that I've not had time to play with, I plan to spend some time fiddling with them and writing about what happens. I've decided to re brand myself "Technical Author" just for now... Definitely not retired.

I've had a wonderful time at Hull University and I want to thank my colleagues in Computer Science and of course all the wonderful students that we've had over the years. I'm actually quite nervous about the future, but I'm also rather excited. 

Floppy Disks and Nuclear Missiles

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I like writing stuff for The Conversation. They take my mangled prose and turn it into really nice articles. I've just written another one for them. You can find it here. It's all about legacy systems. 

Above you can see a legacy system I helped to make. We installed it quite a while back and saw it go from "Advanced Touchscreen Magic" to "hard to find the hardware drivers" to "replaced" over twenty years or so. I'm quite proud of the fact that I don't recall it ever crashing. Except that one time that when a chap blew up all the power supplies in the building when he was testing the UPS. And that wasn't really our fault.