Space Apps Challenge Judging

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A tense moment in the judging.....

That was such fun. At the end we had four teams that produced projects that gave Derek, our judge, some meaty developments to get his teeth into. In the end the overall winner was the Fire Finder app, although everyone who took part produced some lovely results. 

I was part of Team "What'sUp", trying to build a HoloLens application that let you look into the "sky" (or the ground) and see what satellite are around relative to your position. It was my first foray into Unity and HoloLens development and it's worthy of a blog post all it's own. Which it will get....

You can find details of what the teams got up to here. Many thanks to c4di for the use of their lovely work area and to Dileepa for hosting the event. And getting us pizza.

Everyone who took part had a whale of a time. All of the starters finished with a working solution. Here's to next year.

NASA Space Apps Challenge

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We started our NASA Space Apps Challenge at c4di first thing this morning. We've got teams looking at the NASA challenges and getting to grips with them. We've got satellite trackers, fire reporting systems, solar power simulations and orbiting robots. And another 24 hours or so to finish.....

..although of course it's really all about the stickers...and the pizza....

Mario Kart 8 on Switch

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So today, in the middle of getting ready for the Space Apps Challenge, I nipped out to Toys'r'us to get a copy of Mario Kart 8 for my Switch. I've found that the toy retailer is a good place to buy games. The prices rival Amazon's, and this weekend they were giving 10 pounds off any sale of fifty pounds if you have a Toys'r'us membership card.

I do now.

I was intrigued to see how the Amibos work with Mario Kart and so I bought some (which actually came close to free once I've factored in the discount).  The Amibos I've got unlock extra outfits. Fun, but not a must-have I suppose. 

The game is Mario Kart. No surprises there. Although you get lots and lots of tracks, including ones that were previously extra purchases. You also get the ability to hold two weapons rather than one, and there are some new battle tracks. I loved playing previous versions and I love playing this one. Particularly as I'm getting a high quality game experience on a hand held device. 

The more time I spend with the Switch the more I like it. I've put in hours on games simply because I can. Rather than traipsing upstairs and firing up the console, I can put in a few laps in front of MasterChef. I've been told that half the population of Switch owners went out today and bought Mario Kart. I guess the other half will be buying their copytomorrow.

Hull Pixelbots at the MVP Community Connection

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Today it was just a simple matter of driving to London, running a few robot races and then back again. And it all went beautifully. The event was held at the RAF Museum in Hendon. So I put the postcode into the satnav and headed out. The journey down was smooth enough, and after a while I was all set up, with just a bit of nervousness about the network connectivity. 

As it turned out, we had a few races and at least one winner. 

This is one of our happy winners, with his winning robot. After the racing it was back into the car, enter another postcode (the one for home) and head back. I got into Hull just after midnight. It was great to meet up with a bunch of folks that I'd not seem for a while and talk "proper shop".

Thanks to Claire for inviting me. 

Amazon Look

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So. Amazon have launched the "Echo Look", which is a basically a webcam linked to Amazon which has AI powered fashion sense. Apparently you can use it to tell you if your outfit "works" and take photos that look a bit like fashion shots if you squint your eyes.

I'm not a fan. Are people so desperate for validation that they will now take the opinion of a deep learning AI machine in preference to their own?  And moreover, a machine that has an agenda strongly aligned with selling stuff. If so, I'm afraid the human race may be doomed.

In an attempt to save humanity I therefor present the Rob Miles Deep Learning AI Powered Fashion Guru. Simply run this program each time you want to try out a new look (you may want to change the name).

Windows 10 Creators Edition Clean Install

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So yesterday I did a clean install of Windows 10 from a memory key. It was for my HP Sprout, which had got itself into a big of a pickle after I upgraded the hard drive. 

I booted from the memory key and up came the setup program. It had a slight whinge about all the partitions on the disk and so I thought I'd get rid of everything. If you press Shift+F10 at the disk management menu in the Windows 10 installer you get yourself a command prompt. Which you can use to load the Windows Disk Partition Tool, diskpart. So I did.

The Windows disk partition tool is strong magic. Like, make your system not work any more and all your files vanish magic. It lets you specify the fundamental arrangement of the storage areas on your hard disk. The Sprout had all these recovery partitions and weird bits and pieces lying around which I really didn't want. (and of course I'd made a backup). So I used the "clean" command. 

I've not used it before, previously I've removed and merged partitions by hand. But clean makes it much easier. Scarily so. I was expecting some form of confirmation dialog when I issued the command but no, it just went ahead and cleared the drive. Windows 10 then had a shiny empty disk to go to town on, and it did. 

The Windows 10 installation process is now very slick. It's fast too. I had a working operating system around 10 minutes after cleaning the disk. And it rounds off the installation with a chat from Cortana to set the final options for your machine. 

I like the Creators Edition very much. The only downside I've found so far is the fact that the old style command prompt has been replaced with the new fangled PowerShell. The command prompt harks all the way back to MS-DOS, and I really like that. PowerShell is way, way, better, in many ways, but I must admit that for me the command prompt is nicer. However, if you get the PowerShell prompt you just have to type CMD and press return, and your command prompt is back in all it's glory....

Feed the birds

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I think the name was carefully chosen to inspire confidence

We're embarking on a bit of garden renovation. I'm not a fan of gardening. It seems to me that you do it and then, after a year or so, you have to do it all over again.

Anyhoo, one thing that we seem to need is a bit of grass where there is presently just tundra. We've put down a bunch of seeds with a really impressive box (see above). I don't think SMART actually means that the seed has a Bluetooth interface, but it wouldn't it be awesome if it did.

Hull Raspberry Pi Jam

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Today I was in Hull doing a bit of shopping. As you do. I also dropped into Hull Central Library to give Matt a pixel for his Hull Pixelbot. He's written a lovely blog post about building a robot last Thursday, and I thought I'd give him something extra to work with.  Matt was helping at a Hull Rasp Jam event.

Libraries have changed a bit since we used to take the kids every week to swap their books for different ones. There are still books there, but you can also find crafting sessions, people playing chess and  Raspberry Pi events too. Great stuff. 

I wasn't able to stay long at the jam, but it was great to see lots of people engaging with technology and having fun doing it. I'll try and make a bit more time for the next one. 

Hull Pixelbot Code Version 3.0

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The latest version of the Hull Pixebot Code engine is now available on Github. You can use this to download little programs into your robot where they are stored and interpreted. It makes controlling your robot a snap (said the man who wrote it). 

You can get the latest version of the code here

You can get the latest documentation here.

This is a stepping stone on the way to a full scripting language which will run inside the Hull Pixelbot. This version provides support for variables, simple expressions and conditional execution. It is designed to provide the execution engine for the script that I'm working on.

I'm quite proud of it. 

Build a Robot in One Day

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The team at the start of the day. Click through for a 360 degree view

Well, that was fun. By the end everybody had a robot moving around and using a distance sensor to notice things. Thanks to c4di for hosting, Robin for providing invaluable support and everyone for getting so absorbed in their building that they forgot two coffee breaks and I had to order them out of the room for lunch.......

Intense concentration....

Washed Up Car-go

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One wonderful thing about Hull being City of Culture this year is that lovely little artworks are springing up around the city. You have to look quite carefully in the car park of The Deep to find these ones. Based on perfectly ordinary cars (which will be driven away and sold at the end of the exhibit) the Washed Up Car-go is a musing on just what you find if you go down to the beach today.

I don't think these are factory fitted options

The installations contain projected video and sound effects which come from sea-shell speakers. Well worth seeking out.

Sea shell speakers by the sea shore...

Hull Architecture

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I must admit that I've never really thought of a place like Hull as having architecture. It's just got lots of nice buildings.

However, I've found out a lot more about the area from this book, which even told me who designed the place I'd spent nearly 40 years of my life working in at the university.

This version was published in 2010, which means that it was just in time to be able to give the low down on places like The Deep.

It's a great reference and even has guided walks around the city. If you're coming to Hull for something City of Culture related, and you want a well written, well researched and good to read guide to where we live then it is well worth a look. 

Fast and Furious 8

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I've no idea how we ended up in the audience at one of the first showings of Fast and Furious 8 tonight. I think a Meer cat with some half price cinema tickets had something to do with it, but even so....

Anyhoo, it is a fun film. With some jaw dropping car sequences and a fantastic sequence involving a child in a baby seat plus a bunch of gunmen. And the usual mix of former enemies joining together to face a larger foe. Etc etc. It seems to me that this time the franchise has turned its attention to the GI Joe style of movie, with cyber crime and super soldier antics on top of the car mayhem. 

If you're a fan of daft films made in a universe where the laws of physics don't actually apply properly, and you like a big helping of cheese with your dialogue then you'll love it.