Saved by the stud finder

Put a new mirror up in the hall. Now I can check that I look my absolute handsomeist best before leaving the house. It's a very optimistic mirror. 

We carefully decided where it needed to be hung and, just before I fired up the drill, I ran my trusty stud-finder over the wall. I bought this a while back. It's a metal detector for wall use. It tells you if you are about to drill into a pipe (messy and expensive) or a live wire (messy, expensive and fatal). 

Anyhoo, it bleeped in a fairly conclusive manner right over the spot I'd marked. Turns out that the wires from my mains sockets go up to the ceiling rather than down to the floor. So the mirror is four inches to the left of the optimal positon. And I'm not dead.

Robot Rumble Action

I think we had around sixteen robots at the hardware meetup tonight. Some new members, and the possibility of getting some cut from plastic. At which point we can have even more....

Great fun. 

Update: Please note that it's the robots I'm having cut from plastic. Not the new members. Apologies for any confusion.

Red Nose Day Award

Well, that was nice. This afternoon a chap delivered a rather nice frame with an award in it from the Red Nose Day folks. I'll be doing more lectures in rhyme in the future. Try and stop me. 

Robot Rumble at c4di Hardware Meetup

Ross is bringing his Hull Pixelbots in to c4di on Thursday for our Hardware Meetup. I'm going to bring mine too, to create The Largest Gathering of Hull Pixelbots ever seen on the planet.

If you want to come along too (and maybe bring your own Pixelbot) we start at 6:00 on Thursday in c4di. You can sign up here. 

One Day, Maybe

Many years ago I got to go to "It Felt Like a Kiss" in Manchester. It was one of the weirdest things that I've ever done. Especially the bit at the end where you're chased by a man with a chainsaw. 

Since then I've been on the lookout for similar, immersive theatre events. There's one on in Hull later this year. One Day, Maybe is based at the offices of Kasang, who are apparently a South Korean company newly based in Hull. I think you should all go. It looks like it's going to be awesome. 

Of course I'm only letting everyone know about this now that I've got my tickets... 

Updated

Oh. Good. 

Apres La Deluge

You can keep all your scary movies. To me one of the most frightening things I can hear is someone ask very quietly "Is this stuff under the sink supposed to be wet?".

We'd just about convinced ourselves that the out of place water was caused by a leak from a pack of wet wipes, when I discovered that a plastic box that was supposed to be full of cleaning materials was also full of water.

Oh dear. 

To cut a short story shorter, it turned out that the washer above wasn't doing what it should. No matter how tight I made the connection (within common sense "Don't tighten it until it breaks" limits) it still dripped. About a drop every minute. More than enough to fill a big plastic box over a period of a few months. 

I'm quite proud of what I did next. One approach would have been to remove the hose from the back of the washing machine and fit a the spare one I keep for such occasions. A fun packed exercise which would have involved dismantling chunks of the kitchen. And puddles. Another approach is to take the washer off the spare hose and fit it to the existing one. End of leak. 

Happy Election Day

Well, that was fun. I've started finding the news interesting again. 

Joe Stead talks .NET Blub

c4di is having some great evening events at the moment. On Monday we had CodePen, and today we had Joe Stead talking about future platforms for .NET development. Well presented and thought provoking.

Some interesting musings on how programmers are defined by the languages and tools that they use and how important it is to be looking at what's out there and developing professionally. Plus a look at some shiny new stuff.

I've come away with a list of things to investigate, and I'm pretty sure that most of the people there (and it was a good sized audience) were the same. 

Design Iteration

One of the nice things about having a 3D printer is that it makes it really easy to iterate designs. I'm working on a new design for the configurable game controller. This version will have a socket for an input device and a bar-graph above each socket. I think I've found a design that sort of works, now to make up a panel. 

Oh, and one 3D printing top tip from Rob. Don't use oil on the sliding components. I thought this was a good plan, adding some "3 in 1" until the print head was moving really freely. What I'd forgotten though is that oil is sticky, and attracts dust. So when I fired up Una to print these prototypes she became very upset and pretty much locked up as all the sticky dust gummed everything up. Fortunately, after a good clean-up she's now working just fine. 

Great Gardening Gloves

These are the exclusive "Goldfinger" edition

I never thought I'd be blogging on matters relating to gardening. Perhaps I'm growing up.

Shudder.

However, if you are in the market for some proper tough gardening gloves, ones that actually protect your fingers from all kinds of pointy nasties that you find when taking out a holly bush, then I strongly recommend these, which I got from the local PoundLand. And they cost only a pound.

They're made of leather off-cuts, with the pleasing result that no two are exactly the same. 

Pixelbots at CodePen

Thanks to CodePen Hull for the picture of me holding up a phone to prove something worked.

Codepen is a great idea. Get together a bunch of people interested in code and have them tell each other what they are up to. There were six talks over the evening, ranging from a lovely looking Scrum development management tool, a splendid hosting framework, video game development, first steps in programming and the new application development pattern from Facebook.

I should have taken proper notes, but I was too busy thinking about my talk, which was right at the end. I think it went OK, even though at one point I was reduced to holding my phone up with a web page on it shouting "Look. It worked." As if anyone could tell.

I met up with some folks I've not seen for a while and it was lovely to have a catch up. We had pizzas and drinks and it was a great evening. It was great to see it so busy, but there's always room for a few more if you want to come along to the next one.

Anyhoo, I said I'd put the slide deck up and here it is. Including the answer to the competition question (which I'll probably have to change for next time).

I'm really looking forward to the next event. 

Zelda Guide

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild The Complete Official Guide, Standard Edition

By Piggyback

I suppose it's an admission of defeat to buy a game guide. But actually I like them for the pictures as much as anything. And sometimes they are useful because they let you know that something is possible, rather than telling you how to do it. 

My official guide for the Zelda: Breath of the Wild arrived today and I really like it. Lots of detail and lavishly illustrated. If you've got the game I reckon you'll get a lot out of this guide, whether you need it or not.

Solar Cell Silver Lining

I think another reason I was grumpy yesterday was that, while mowing the lawns, I managed to take out some of our solar powered lights. I'm not always a huge fan of lights in the garden to be honest. Last year we got some blue lights that must have previously been used on an aircraft carrier to guide planes down to land. To say they lit up the neighbourhood was something of an understatement.

But the ones we got this year are much nicer, giving out a very pleasant glow. At least they did until I wrapped their cable around the strimmer and tore it out of the power box. Oh well. Only ten quid to replace. And I now have a battery box and solar cell to play with. And enough space in there for an esp8266 and a power inverter. And fifty leds in a chain to make a "pimped up" Pixelbot.

Appalling UI Design

Can you use your skill and judgement to tell which of these options is selected on the "upgraded" YouView user interface? I can't.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of stupid design: Why enable spell checking on the body text of the blog post editor but not on the title? This means that the interface detects and highlights errors that might not be spotted, while failing to notice mistakes that everyone will see.

I think I'm in a grumpy mode today. 

External Examining Fun

We had the exam board this morning and then I wandered off for a walk around the city before I went to get my train home. I really like Dundee. I'm going to have to make some time for a proper visit. 

I also like the fact that I wrote a chunk of chapter six of "Begin to Code with Python" sitting at platform 1 waiting for my train. I'll be able to read my description of the while construction and how to use it properly and think "I wrote that in Dundee".

Travel to Dundee

Took a few trains to Dundee today to help with External Examining of the course at Abertay University. Just like last year, the weather was awesome. 

The people who designed the hotel I'm staying at really know their stuff. I've counted eight mains sockets in the room, four of them with USB power outputs. I wish I'd brought more things with me to charge up.

Hull Pixelbot (and me) at c4di CodePen Meetup next Monday evening

I love things like CodePen. Anything that gets developers talking about what they are doing is absolutely brilliant in my book. These kind of events are great for students too. They learn that developers are just like them, just a few years further down the tracks. 

c4di are hosting another CodePen event next Monday evening, 5th of June. There are three speakers, and I'm one of them. I'm going to introduce folks to the Internet of Things by way of the Hull Pixelbot. I'm looking forward to seeing what the other speakers are up to as well. 

The event is free to attend and anyone can come along, it all starts at 6:00 in the evening at c4di. You can sign up here. 

Minecraft for the Nintendo Switch

I've bought Minecraft on lots of different platforms but never really played it enough to do it justice. Perhaps the version on the Nintendo Switch will be the one that changes this. It's not particularly expensive and from my fairly limited perspective, does a very good job of implementing the game. The controls are a bit fiddly. I keep throwing things when I mean to select them. But then again I've found the controls fiddly on other platforms. 

There are two things that I do really like about this version though. The first is that you can carry it anywhere and play it easily. The second is that wireless play is really well implemented. Within just a few minutes I was inside a world made by Number One Son and exploring it. 

If you have a Switch, I'd strongly suggest you get a copy. If you've got a friend who also owns a Switch, you should persuade them to get a copy too. 

Evil Croquet

The Incredible Hulk used to say "You wouldn't like me when I'm angry." For me it's "You wouldn't like me when I'm playing croquet". We got the croquet set out today for the first time in many years and had a go. I seem to have lost a bit of my accuracy. But none of my nastiness. 

Sorry folks. 

You would think that by now I'd have learned the dangers inherent in giving other people large, heavy, mallets and then doing things that would seriously annoy them. But no....

Actually, croquet is a really great game. We used to have a lot of fun with the students when we had things like staff-student cricket matches. After they'd given us a serious drubbing on the cricket pitch we could always say "Well done. Now, how about a nice relaxing game of croquet?". The students, thinking that their superior motor skills and reflexes would serve them well in just another ball game would readily sign up. And we would win every time. 

Croquet is intensely strategic. A bit of skill helps, but at the end of the day it is all about striking a balance between your urge to complete the course and win the game, and your urge to send your opponent's balls into the flower beds. I think it's a good game for programmers, because it is all about sequence and planning. And I rather enjoy it. Frequently a lot more than the people I'm playing against......