I was really pleased when they made Hull Trinity Church into a minster last year. It hasn't made the building any more beautiful, but it does give it the status it richly deserves.
They've done a lot of work on the building inside too, removing pews and really opening up the space. That, plus the renaissance of Hull Trinity Market (definitely worth a look) makes this part of the town a must-see.
I've never been that keen on the outdoors. What, with it not having a roof or air conditioning.
However, on the basis of this trip I'm having to modify this opinion a bit. I think you have to choose your outdoors carefully, and be lucky with the weather, but we've done a couple of walks that I've really enjoyed. I'm not quite at the point of buying an Ordnance Survey map and a pair of waterproof trousers yet, but I'm thinking about it.
Turns out that the Lakeland Motor Museum is a great place to go if you're in the Lake District and the weather looks a bit dodgy.
We went for a walk in the forest and found that someone had hammered a bunch of coins into a fence post. Not sure why, although it did make a rather good picture. I guess you can have the cash - if you can get it out.
Never been to the Lake District before. But I can strongly recommend it. Especially in the weather we're having at the moment. We're in Ambleside, which is a lovely place. It turns out to be remarkably like the riviera, even down to the waiters speaking with Italian accents.
Suitably redacted....
I've probably missed a trick here. I got a message a while back offering a smart meter for my electricity and I said yes. I didn't know that the energy companies were still installing the "old new technology" smart meters. According to what I'd read a while back, by this time everyone would be getting the new type, but for some reason (perhaps because it makes it harder to change energy suppliers without losing meter "smartness") the old-new meters are still being rolled out. And I've ended up with one.
It seems typical of the way that things are presently working in this country that an initiative that is supposed to bring us to the forefront of energy management has been sabotaged right from the start by short sighted decision making driven by commercial interests. Not that I'm particularly worried. The way I see it, if I'm in the 9 million who've got the old meters there's a lot of incentive for companies to make us happy in the future.
I reckon it's quite possible that the potential of the second generation of meters will never be realised because nobody will bother implementing the back end services to make them work. They'll just claim that there aren't enough of them out there to make it worthwhile. Yes, that is very cynical. And probably right. And anyway, the firmware in my meter is upgradeable......
Anyhoo, the meter is now in place and beaming my electricity usage to a remarkably cheap looking device that lets me see what happens when I use the kettle. It is supposed to motivate me to save power, but the first thing I wanted to find out was how far into the red I could send the readout by turning things on.....
I love it when I go through pictures I've taken and every now and then find one that really tells a story. I took this one at the Steam Rally recently, hoping to get a good shot of the car instruments and totally failed to notice the figures in the background.
But, having revisited the pictures I really like the way that this one seems to be all about a couple and their dog, and their shiny MG.
We've just had a bunch of folks around to build some LoRa nodes. Robin had put together some kits and we came up with a set of instructions. By the end of the day we expected our attendees to have their LoRa nodes sampling temperature, air pressure and humidity and maybe even be viewing the values on The Things Network website.
Well, we got that and more. One person had the information going into Microsoft Power BI and was using Machine Learning to predict future room temperatures. Another used If This Then That to tweet temperature readings to his phone. Others left with plans to install LoRa gateways and sprinkle LoRa powered sensors all over their properties.
Very successful, in spite of the fact that we were soldering surface mount components and some folks hadn't soldered since they were 14, or even at all. Thanks for coming folks and being so determined. At some points during workshop you could have heard a pin (or other tiny component) drop.
We're doing another one in September, ping me an email if you want to get your name on the list. You can find our notes and sample programs here.
If you want to play with LoRa (and anything else that takes your fancy) take a look at the Humber Health Care Challenge. We'll make sure we've got some LoRa kits available there for people to have a go with this technology.
Mightier Than sword or pen?
Today finds us at Humber Street Gallery. We're looking for locations for a LoRa gateway for the area. They've got a lovely rooftop bar which looks perfect, and has some amazing views. Of course, I happened to have my camera with me.
We were telling the folks at the gallery about LoRa and we're going to go back and find out a bit more about the possibility of LoRa enabled artworks. Could lead to some interesting discussions.
Scene 1: A meeting room, a bunch of TV transmitter engineers are sitting round a table. With an accountant.
Engineer 1: 'If we use this form of broadcast antenna we'll have good strong signals all year round.'
Engineer 2: 'Which is what we want. Right?'
Accountant: 'Hmmm. Looks a bit pricey to me. How about this design, which is cheaper.'
Engineer 1: 'Yes, but with that one the signal will drop in the summer.'
Accountant: 'People should be outside rather than watching telly in the summer. Use the cheaper one'
Scene 2: Another meeting room, another bunch of engineers, this time they are the designers of TV input circuits. And of course there is an accountant there too.
Engineer 1: 'If we use this circuit the TV will work, even with low level signals.'
Engineer 2: 'Which is what we want. Right?'
Accountant: 'Yes, but if we take out that amplifier the TV will work for most people, save us some cash in components and we can also make a fortune selling aerial amplifiers.'
And this folks is why every summer televisions in our area stop working....
Today finds us at the Little Weighton Steam Rally. Wonderful weather and lots of steam. We've not been in a while, but we'll be there next year for sure because it was wonderful. Of course I took some pictures.
Not just steam engines....
The little engines are really cute...
We went down to the waterfront today. Wonderful weather, cool breeze from the water. A scene that could be made completely perfect by the addition of an ice cream.
We went into the local ice cream parlour. They were just getting going, what with us being there quite early. Anyhoo, the machine wasn't ready for use, and I had this lovely idea that we were waiting for the ice cream machine to warm up.
I've made some silly videos. They're for those sensible people who've bought copies of Begin to Code with Python (subtle plug on the left).
They cover how to install Python, how to install PyGame and finally, how to obtain the demo programs and install the tiny Snaps framework.
They were a giggle to make, with a bit of luck they will be a giggle to view. And maybe even useful.
The Humber Care Tech Challenge is a tech challenge about care that is based in the Humber region. Although I guess the title already tells you all that. It's in Bridlington in the lovely Spa Hall, and it is on the 5th and the 6th of September.
Think of it as a hackathon with the focus on care. Teams will be able to work with healthcare professionals to create something life changing. With technologies such as LoRa coming over the horizon there's the potential for properly disruptive developments. You can find out about the problems, the tech, and how to change the world, all in two days. .
We're having an "Visioning Day" at the University of Hull on the 31st of July where we want to put teams and problems together and start finding solutions.
If you're good with software and/or hardware and want to spend some time making something interesting you should take part. If you do this as a hobby, we'd love to see you. It is also a wonderful way that teams of developers from a company can get together away from the office, learn some new tricks, prototype some products and get feedback from practitioners.
Quite a few companies regard things like hackathons as great for team building and "blue sky" innovation. Think of it as an all expenses paid two days where you can focus on having fun and making stuff. Actually, it's not completely expenses paid - it costs five pounds per person to register - but after that your food and drink for the two days is free. And you can come to the Visioning Day day for free.
There are some lovely prizes, including help to take ideas and make them into shipping products, but for me the journey itself is the biggest prize. I've been involved with development challenges and hackathons of one sort or another for the last 15 years and I've seen them add value to everyone who takes part.
You can find our more, and sign up, here. You can find the challenge on Facebook here, and Twitter here.
Gotta love the post title. But I do quite like LoRa. We're doing some exciting things with LoRa nodes over the next few weeks and so I thought I'd build a node of my own. I used a kit that Robin put together and had a node on the air within a couple of hours. The node just sends temperature, atmospheric pressure and humidity up to a Things Network server, but it does do that. And I can get the data into a Python program (other programming languages are available) amongst other places. And it was genuinely fun and easy to do.
To celebrate I've designed and printed a box to hold the node. It's far too big at the moment. I used to have a thing where I'd make the boxes exactly the same size as the components and then find I had no way to actually get the components in, and put them together. This box won't win any prizes for compactness, but it will let me carry the node around and see just how many places pick up the signal. When I've got a bit more experience with the technology I'll post some How-Tos and other stuff. This really is great fun.
Click through for the full-sized version
Went for a walk today down to Hull Marina. It was looking lovely. I was surprised how quiet it was, they were selling ice-creams and there was a whole bunch of yellow knitting on display.
It's all part of #yellowdayhull. I wasn't wearing or carrying anything yellow (which I feel bad about) but I'm going to eat some custard the first chance I get.
A Theremin is a musical instrument that you control by waving your hands. It's used a lot to provide spooky sounds for science fiction and horror movies. A "proper" theremin uses a tuned circuit that is which is controlled by the player waving their hands near a couple of antennas.
I thought we could have a go at making something similar using just a light sensor and an Arduino, so I've come up with the circuit above to get started. You can find the detailed instructions here. We've been using these little exercises at the c4di Hardware Group, which met again today and will meet again on Thursday 5th July. Sign up here if you want to come along and make some annoying noises....
If you were there, click through to the large version on Flickr and find yourself...
Today I had to get up early to catch a non-existent train. Of course, I didn't know it was non-existent as I got showered and hurried down my breakfast before dashing out of the house. I found out at the station. Apparently my train to Manchester was cancelled because it was "late leaving the depot". Which makes it sounded like they were trying to blame the engine itself. Anyhoo, after a brief panic I caught an earlier train that arrived later and made it to Manchester in time for my session. Which was great fun.
I was talking about "Machine Learning", which is the tool that you use when you don't know how to solve the problem. As I said during the talk, there was a time when the thinking was that when we can get computers to play chess, we'll have cracked artificial intelligence. This turned out to be wrong. In fact, things that are hard for people (play chess, do sums very quickly etc etc) are comparatively easy for a computer but things that are easy for a human (get meaning out of conversation, walk down a busy street etc etc) are very hard for the machine.
However, this is changing. Computers can do difficult things now. And you can build these behaviours into your applications. I showed off some software that recognised emotion, and another system that could tell stick figures from fish, and all using C# and running in my lowly Surface Pro 3.
If you want to have a go at this, and find out more about Machine Learning (and you should) take a look at the labs pages for the tour which are here.
Thanks so much to Microsoft for putting the tour together and Pete for making it work in Manchester. It was great fun and the audience were lovely. And, to make the day even better, my train back actually existed.
Well, that's it. I've finished writing all the text for the C# book. I think they call this "all in". It's certainly how I feel just at the moment. It seems to me that writing (and programming) always takes longer that I think it will. Even (or perhaps especially) if I allow for this.
Anyhoo, the good news is that now I'll have more time for Hull Pixelbot, Lora and, of course, the blog.
Jesús Ruiz García has released another version of his Spanish translation of the C# Yellow Book. Awesome stuff. Thanks so much. You can find it here.
Rob Miles is technology author and educator who spent many years as a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hull. He is also a Microsoft Developer Technologies MVP. He is into technology, teaching and photography. He is the author of the World Famous C# Yellow Book and almost as handsome as he thinks he is.
Begin to Code with JavaScript is now available for purchase and download. You can find it here
