Home Made Minishift Spacers

I spent a very happy afternoon making up an ArachnidLabs MiniShift that I got a while back. At least I was very happy until I got to the point in the instructions where it said "Now, take one of the spacers and fit it to the circuit board..."

Of course I'd lost mine.

However, the good news is that I happen to have a 3D printer. And so I was able to design and print a set in a rather attractive blue colour and then continue the build. I've not tried firing them up yet. That's for next week.

Photographing Custard for C#

You probably ought to know that the custard colour has been slightly enhanced here....

I'm presently updating the C# Yellow Book for next year. The next version will be the custard edition. Last year it was the "Rubber Duck", and before that we had the "Daffodils" one.

I've no idea what we will use next year. 

Anyhoo, this meant that we needed a picture of some "stunt custard" in a specially purchased jug.......

Where Would You Think

If you've never been to WhereWouldYouThink then you are missing out. We use it to provide information about life as a student and studying at Hull. If you want to know more around university life it is well worth a look. It also contains a bunch of jokes and puzzles. I'm very proud of the fact that I solved the "coloured coins in the dark" puzzle all by myself...

Raspberry Pi B+ Tabletop Upgrade

Still a work in progress...

It's been nearly two years since I started on my Raspberry Pi powered arcade tabletop. I got it to the point where it was just about working and promptly lost interest. For a considerable while the poor thing has been languishing in my office. I even took the drastic step of removing the monitor in the hope that the sight of the empty hole might motivate me to actually finish it off. 

Anyhoo, this week I've decided to actually get the project finished. I've made an arrangement with Robert that if I've not got the table finished by the time he comes back from his travels I'll give him fifty quid. I figured that this would force the issue nicely. So far it is working....

Another reason for finishing it off is that I needed a solid reason to play with the new Raspberry Pi B+ device. This has lots of advantages for this project. It has four USB ports so I don't need a USB hub or separate power supply. I now just need two power cables to the device. One for the monitor and the other for the Pi. 

My B+ arrived today and I spent a little while getting it going. There is actually an operating system image specially for emulating games machines now, it is called PiPlay and it is rather nice. You just download the image and it has emulators for lots of devices. It hooks into Mame4All, which is the latest incarnation of Mame for the Raspberry Pi. 

However, I found that Mame4All is not quite what I want for all the games I want to play. It is based on a slightly older version of Mame which is good because it performs better, but bad because it is missing one or two crucial features. The biggest omission is the lack of the "cocktail table" button.

One of the things I want to be able to do is have a player at each end of the table so that they can get proper Player 1 vs Player 2 action. This means that I need to be able to invert the screen when each player takes their turn. Mame4All doesn't do this, but AdvMame does.  But then Mame4All works with some games that AdvMame doesn't like...

So it looks like I'm going to have to have several different Mame installations installed and then write a script that fires up the appropriate version depending on which game we want to play. Which shouldn't be too much of a stretch.

As for the Pi B+, it works very well. The only problem that I've found is that if you connect a USB device that wants a fair amount of current, for example a USB hub or speaker, it causes the Pi to reset. I think there are some settings that you can adjust to allow more current from these ports. I'll have find out more about this. 

I've also ordered some glass from Jack's Glass for the top. I just hope that Robert will be impressed when he gets back....

Haynes Motor Museum

Maybe one day....

One of the places that we visited on our holiday travels was the Haynes Motor Museum in Yeovil. If you like cars you'll love it there. They had some wonderful vehicles and a Mini that had been cut in half (as opposed to the one I used own, which fell in half all by itself). 

You could see all the inner workings of the Mini and I think I rather bored number one son as I went around the exhibit identifying each of the components that I'd had to replace on mine. 

If you are in the area you really should go and look around. They do go-karting too.

Guinea Pigs On the Run

Wanted in most states....

We've had guinea pigs as pets for ages now. I quite like them, in that I strongly believe in having pets that are more stupid than you are. And with guinea pigs I've felt quite safe in this respect. Until now.

We fetched the two newest members of the family on Sunday. As soon as I found out that one of them was all black I wanted to call him "Darth". This didn't go down too well, the name "Licorice" being preferred. However, having seen him in action, we are starting to think that Darth might be more appropriate. 

They escaped last night. I'm convinced that Darth was the ringleader in the break for freedom. What should have been a quiet evening was instantly turned into a festival of fear and panic as they ran every which way and loose. I managed to catch Darth after a while and the other one (provisionally named "Henchman") was apprehended by the simple expedient of dropping a tea towel on him as he ran across next door's garden. 

At present their cage is surrounded by second level perimeter system and we are making plans to move them into more high security quarters which should keep them where we want them.

For now...

Lights and Taps

No more drips...

The lawn needs mowing. The upstairs is covered in discarded music CDs. And the kitchen tap has been dripping for ages. A perfect time to start building a computer controlled led display for downstairs. Or perhaps not.

At least I've fixed the tap now. Modern taps are strange. When it started to drip I went up town and bought every sized tap washer that I could find and then set to.

As soon as I took a proper look at the tap I discovered that it doesn't use a standard washer, it uses some strange right angled tap device. A quick search on the internets revealed that a lot of people solve this problem by purchasing new taps. Which wasn't entirely helpful.

So I did a more careful search and came up with these beauties. They dropped in as a direct replacement and work a treat. A little tip though. Make sure that you put them on the correct sides otherwise you'll end up on Amazon complaining that the replacement taps work fine but their action has reversed and the up position is now on rather than off....

I'm going to tidy upstairs and mow the lawn later. And the lights and controller boards are in stock. I love having a project on the go...

Lego on Sunday

Who are you gonna call indeed...

Spent some time today watching the Lego Movie and building a Lego model. Not the one above, number one son has that, but it was still great fun.

Work in progress....

Buy The Disc

Sometimes the packaging is rather nice too.

I may have mentioned earlier that I'm embarking on a love affair with higher quality audio. One symptom of this is the huge pile of music CDs that I've brought down from the loft to re-rip in a loss-less format. Another is that I'm trying to buy my new music in higher quality than the average digital download fare. 

I wanted a proper copy of Oooh La La by the Crash Test Dummies.  Turned out that there was pretty much no way to buy an uncompressed file. But I can get the actual physical disk, including rather nice packaging and a booklet from Amazon for just over a fiver. What's more, Amazon have this "auto-rip" feature where you automatically get a digital copy of any physical media that you purchase from them. So I get an mp3 file and a proper copy for less than the price of a digital download from iTunes. Delivered for free the next day. Which struck me as a really good deal. So I bought a copy.

And then I found out that Amazon have applied the auto-rip thing to all of my past purchases as well. I seem to have digital copies of disks that I've bought and given away as presents, which puts me in a rather strange place, copyright wise. 

Anyhoo, if you are buying music I can recommend taking a look at physical purchase of media. It is often cheaper and you have a route to higher quality sounds. Even if you end up ripping the disk and then putting it with the others in the loft....

Last Holiday Day

We didn't build this tiny Stonehenge, but we rather wish we had

This is the last day of this part of our holiday. Tomorrow we head back to Hull and real life. We stayed in Swansea at an amazing guest house and had a really good time. We were revisiting places that we last went to over 20 years ago and seeing what, if anything, had changed.

Quite a few things were different, but the lovely scenery is still there and the weather was very kind to us. 

Dr. Who in Cardiff

Peter Capaldi doing the signing thing...

..we interrupt this holiday sequence with a Dr. Who report. You may not have noticed this, but there is a new Dr. Who coming. He is being played by the actor Peter Capaldi who is just about a contemporary of mine. I made the mistake of mentioning to number one son that I was only slightly older than Dr. Who. He replied with "What, 300 years?" which didn't put him in my good books.

Anyhoo. Today we stopped off in Cardiff on our holiday travels. On the way through the town to the castle we noticed a bunch of folks waiting by barriers. Some of them were wearing rather familiar clothes. Turned out that the world premier of the first new Dr Who episode was taking place later in the morning and the stars of the show were going to be walking through the town.

So we thought we'd stick around and see what we could see.  Number one son stationed himself close to the barrier, whereas I wandered around seeing what photographs I could get. 

Jenna Coleman explaining stuff

I got some quite good pictures, number one son ended up with better ones, plus he managed to snag Jenna Coleman's autograph, which was nice. 

Turns out daleks don't do autographs

Neither do Cybermen..

All the other stars of the show were there too and the weather was lovely.  Sometimes you just can't beat being in the right place at the right time..

Holiday Wednesday

Quipomatic 5000 narrative: "He was thinly disguised as a toothpick."

Holiday Starts

On holiday this week. Which means that there will be nothing but pictures and some humour from the "Quipotronic 5000" which will be generating the written content for the rest of the week. Just as a taster (*click*)

"The dish was getting very concerned about the way her father kept introducing her to spoons."

Galileo Book

If you have just got an Intel Galileo you might find this book interesting. It tells you how to get started with the device and gives a good overview of the Arduino technology on which the Galileo is based.

To be honest, if you are experienced with the Arduino you will probably already know the majority of the content, but I reckon that there is  enough Galileo specific content to make it worth the relatively modest asking price.  It's also kind of useful to have all the content in one place. Each feature of the Galileo is well explained and there is also some useful background on the Intel aspects of the device.

Note that this book is written for a Galileo configured as an Arduino based platform and does not cover the use of the device as part of the Microsoft Internet of Things initiative. 

Case for Galileo

I was going to design a little case for my Galileo. But it seems someone has beaten me to it. I'm fairly happy with how it turned out, although the lettering could be a bit clearer. 

Built My Lego Mini

So I've built my Lego Mini. Took a lot less time than I expected, and it doesn't look quite like the one on the box.

Building Unified Apps for Phone and Tablet

A while back I was offered a chance to write a guest blog post for the 'Building Apps for Windows' blog. After a bit of thought I decided to write about the business of taking a Windows Phone application and converting it into a Universal app. I used my Wedding Light application as the example and it was great fun to write. I even managed to lever some cheese into the text...

Thanks to Larry and Kraig for turning it into something that makes a lot more sense. You can find it here. 

Dancing Robots

A quick test of some autonomous robots that we are going to be using next semester for teaching. All the robots have different faces, courtesy of Peter.

Just posted a tiny video I made of Dancing Robots for Darryl. Enjoy.

Moving to Windows Phone 8.1

The word on the street is that phones that are running the Windows Phone 8.1 Developer Preview will get an upgrade to Windows Phone 8.1 later next week. But I'm an impatient sort and I don't always believe the word on the street anyway. Except perhaps when it says "Give Way". 

So I downloaded the Nokia Software Recovery tool and indulged in a little time travel, taking my Lovely Lumia 1520 back to an age when Windows Phone 8 roamed the earth. This process was actually rather painless. It was a lot quicker than I thought it would be and apart from one scary moment when I thought it was asking for a pin code (it isn't) the whole thing went swimmingly. A tip: it downloads a file that is around 1.5G, so it is best to do this when you are connected to a nice fast network.

At this point I had a brand new, shiny, Windows 8 phone. I told it all about me, but because I'd taken a backup (System>backup>apps+settings>back up now) just before I ran the recovery tool I was able to get all my apps restored OK along with my text messages and whatnot. 

I got all excited when I went to the update menu and saw that there was one waiting for me, but it was just the Hors d'oeuvre for the main course, which downloaded next. But eventually I got to the happy ending you can see on the right. 

If you are a Lumia owner you can find out if the update is available for your device by going here. 

The "proper" 8.1 has a few neat advances on the Developer Preview. For starters there are little arrows that show you when your network connections are active. 

Then there is the thing that mutters to you if you use a weaker power supply to charge the phone. 

I've just about got my start screen back to how I like it (another tip, take a bunch of screenshots so that you can remember exactly what it looks like) and next week I'll sign up to get onto the next Developer Preview.  The story continues.....

Sony Web Enabled High Definition Walkman

This is not exactly why I got it, but it is nice to know that it works...

I have a bit of a thing about sound quality. When I was younger (and had much better ears) I was very into High Fidelity sound and would spend many happy hours fiddling with big vinyl disks, turntables, cartridges, amplifiers and speakers to get the best possible sound.

I've continued being a bit snobbish about recorded sound. Most audio devices around today actually sound extremely respectable, including of course my Lovely Lumia 1520. But I can always convince myself that there are better things out there.

Which brings us to the Sony Web Enabled Multimedia Walkman, or if you prefer, the NWZ-F886. This is best regarded as an Android phone without the phone bit, but with really good quality audio hardware and the ability to play uncompressed audio file at lots of bit rates.

I've been after an Android device for a while. I want to use it to remote control my camera (see above) and also as the target for Xamarin apps that I fancy having a go with. So I've invested in one. 

The sound quality is really, really good. The Sony comes with a pair of noise cancelling earbuds that work really well. I dragged some of my MP3 files onto it and they sound great. Then I used dbPowerAmp to rip some of my CDs into lossless FLAC files. These are audio files that are a lot bigger than compressed ones, but have all the data still present. The difference is definitely there. They sounded truly amazing. The next step is to download some high definition master tracks from somewhere like HDtracks and I'll have something that is far, far, better than my ability to hear it. 

The only pitfalls in my quests for the ultimate in audio are the cost of the files themselves, the fact that hardly any are available in the UK due to licencing issues and the limitation that the Sony device only has a comparatively paltry 32G of internal storage. Having said that, I once made the awful mistake of putting all my purchased audio onto one of my devices. This made random play a minefield containing some horrible stuff that I should have been ashamed of owning. By carefully curating the limited space I should be able to guarantee a great experience every time I press play.

The device itself is small and sleek. It runs Android apps well enough and has the usual Sony high standard of construction. Unfortunately it also has the usual Sony insanity of a completely bespoke USB cable that I am bound to lose sooner or later. At the moment I'm solving that problem by leaving the cable in the player at all times, but this makes it a bit less portable.

The trajectory that is making your phone the centre of everything means that things like portable music players are going to end up as fringe devices I guess, but this is a really, really good one. If you are serious about carrying high quality sound around with you it is well worth a look.