Project Blogging for Fun

It’s been a bit quiet on the blog for the last few weeks. I always said that I blog because I want to force myself to do interesting things so I can write about them. Recently there have been so many interesting things going on that I’ve not had time to write the blog, which is an interesting problem. Or perhaps I’ve persuaded myself that I’m too busy to blog…

That is going to change a bit now though. I’ve decided to experiment with “project blogging”. I’m going to take the thing I’ve just done, which is create some JavaScript code that runs in a web page and can load code into ESP devices, and write it up. I’m doing this retrospectively from diaries that I kept during the development process. If you’re a programmer it might be an interesting read. The posts will appear around the time I did each task. I’ve tidied things up a bit to reduce the number of dead ends and whatnot.

They start around here. If you then click the left hand link at the bottom of the text on each post you can move through them in order. There will be other topics here and there too, and some pictures. You can just see the project posts by using this link.

I’d love to know what you think of it and how I can improve the presentation content. Feel free to comment (he said dangerously).

Travelling shirt

One of my shifts has managed to make its own way to Leeds all by itself by stowing away in a bag. I hope I get it back. It has sentimental value, if no style at all.

Burnby Hall

A casual reader of this blog might form the conclusion that all I do is buy Lego and go to Burnby Hall. Having said that, for the last couple of days they would be completely correct.

The Price of Greed

This post doesn’t reflect well on me. I present it as a salutary tale about greed.

When I started working on the “Connected Little Boxes” I invested in the domain name “cleverlittleboxes.com” as I thought that might work for the name of the product. Then I found out that there actually is a company called Clever Little Boxes which rather scuppered my plans. So I switched to the name “Connected Little Boxes” which is just as meaningful and ties in rather well with our “Connected Humber” project. I spent another six pounds or so on “connectedlittleboxes.com” and went on my merry way.

Last week, via a domain sharing thingy, I got word of an offer for the “cleverlittleboxes.com” domain. The mysterious purchaser was offering 199 dollars for the domain name. Visions of riches swam in front of my eyes. Or at least, enough riches to get a new iPad. So, having done some research on the domain selling site I sent back a counter proposal of around half the price of what I saw as comparable names. This is a long-winded way of saying that I got greedy.

Anyhoo, today I got a rather sniffy response from my mysterious buyer, complaining about my profiteering actions and dropping the offer to a very iPad unfriendly 50 dollars or so. Oh well. I’m going to hang on for the domain for now and see what happens.

McCoys in Hull is great

We went shopping up town in Hull today for the first time in a very long while. It was sad to see that some places haven’t made it through the pandemic, but it was great to see that McCoys is doing well. They are something of a Hull legend and benefit from a chunk of outdoor space on the side of Victoria Dock which is a great place to sit and watch the world go by as you chow down on their huge portions.

Great stuff.

Andertons Music are good in failure mode...

I bought my Lumi keys from Anderton Music. The only device they had available was an “opened box” unit which was a bit cheaper. However, when the keyboard arrived it turned out that someone had done a bit more than just open the box and look at it. They’d also used all the download voucher codes that came with the device. It is at this point my heart began to sink a bit, what with having to go back to Andertons and ask them to sort it out. However, the good news is that they owned the problem and kept me informed as they fixed it. I think the true measure of a company is how well they work in “failure mode” when things go wrong. In this test Andertons passed with flying colours.

Another Harlow Carr picture

Here’s another Harlow Carr picture. Because I like you.

Royal Horticulture Gardens - Harlow Carr

Today finds us at Harlow - Carr gardens in Harrogate. These are awesome. If you live near enough, get down there and have a walk around. If you don’t live near enough, make a special trip. They even have a “Betty’s” tea room on site. Wonderful.

From test to application.

It turns out that there is a gap between “making it go” and “making it useful”. Today I’ve been filling this gap for the ESP uploader software I got to work yesterday.

So much for the piano moving party....

Today was supposed to be the day that I lured a bunch of hapless family members to the house with the promise of free food and then got them to move a piano into the garage. Thanks to a nasty little virus that’s not how it turned out. Fortunately nobody is actually ill, which is the only part of good news in the whole thing.

Black Tulip

I didn’t even know that black tulips were a thing until number one wife planted some….

Writer Rob

I think I might actually be a writer now. I’ve spent the day working on another Hackspace article, along with a bit of editing.

Sofa So Good

We’re getting some new furniture. To go with our new curtains. This means that we have to get rid of our old sofas. Today some lovely people from the British Heart Foundation came and took them away. Of course, it wasn’t without incident. When it was delivered they had to dismantle the big sofa to get through our “quirky” (read that as small) front door and into the house. When the collectors arrived I thought I’d taken everything into the right number of pieces but then we found that one chair would not pass through the opening without further surgery.

And one of the four bolts (have you noticed that it is always the last one) holding the base on just would not come out. It was quite fun, two folks holding the chair up in the doorway while I grappled with a mole wrench and a spanner, all the time trying to observe appropriate social distancing.

In the end I prevailed and hopefully someone else will be able to make use of what are really comfy chairs.

Jab 2 - the sequel

I had my first Covid vaccination a while back. And today I had my second. I see myself as a squeamish and self-centred person (I only faint at the sight of my own blood) but I got by just fine.

Moving Music

Some things are hard to do just because you don’t know how to do it. Today I wanted to move some music off my PC onto my iPhone. I’ve got Apple Music but some of the stuff I like doesn’t exist there. Or it exists for a while and then vanishes. Anyhoo, it turns out to be very easy, at least for me. I just had to open iTunes on my PC, import the folder containing the music files onto the PC and then wait a while. Eventually they appear on the phone. Now I can play the copy of my “OK Chicago” single. Or I could just watch the YouTube video:

Curtains for Rob

We bought some curtains today. I’m quite happy to buy curtains as long as I only have to do it every ten years or so. And of course it lets me trot out one of my favourite jokes:

“Doctor, I keep thinking I’m a pair of curtains”

“Pull yourself together man…”

Thank you.

New Camera

I’ve just ordered a new (to me) camera. Rather excited about this. It should arrive at the end of the week.

Burnby Hall Gardens

Burnby Hall is a great place to visit. Particularly if you have a boisterous four year old in tow who wants to feed the fishes…

Plumber Rob

“Last week there was a tap on the front door”

“Our plumber has a strange sense of humour”

Actually our plumber is me. And last week I got to show my lack of plumbing skills when the hot tap in the kitchen suddenly stopped delivering water.

After spending a night worrying about blockages in the pipework and failing hot water cylinders I decided to start by buying a new tap. If that didn’t solve the problem the next step would be to call in a proper plumber.

The tap arrived on Friday and I started fitting it that morning. I instantly rediscovered why I hate plumbing so much. When it leaks you never can tell quite where the water is coming from. You can only really tell that it is coming.

The most important thing I remembered though was that you only tighten things as much as you think you need to. Then you leave it for a while to see how much it leaks and tighten a bit more until it stops. By the end of yesterday I reckoned that things were staying dry and now it’s officially fitted. And we have hot water in the kitchen again.

In search of stripy lawns

I’ve had my mower a long time. It broke around 10 years ago when some little pins that linked the drive to the motor hub sheared off. My first repair, using the metal bits of treasury tags I had lying around was not successful, but my second attempt using steel nails worked a treat.

I got the lawn mower out last week, what with the grass starting to wave in the breeze. I had a look underneath to see how my repair was holding up. The repair was fine, but the bearing that holds the metal blades (lumps of sharpened steel that whizz around at amazing speed and cut the grass) seems to have collapsed. I can move the end of the blade up and down a worryingly long way. And since these parts are very close to my ankles when I’m mowing the lawn, I thought a new mower might be in order.

The mower has arrived. It turns out that mower technology has not moved on a great deal, but the new one does have a roller at the back. This means that I can get the same “striped” effect that you see on posh lawns and tennis courts. I hope it lasts as long as the old one did.