I’m writing about this in JavaScript. This is quite hard. Especially because to describe this you end up using the word this to mean this not this. And I can’t find another word that means this that I can use to replace the this that doesn’t mean this.
Oh well.
I’ve just uploaded Chapter 10 of Begin to Code with JavaScript. It tells you all about building a cool class hierarchy in JavaScript. You can find it, along with all the other chapters, here. You won’t be able to hear it for a while though I’m afraid. It turns out that writing deadlines are more important than reading deadlines.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. This is a nice keyboard with a good long key travel. Need to work on the wrist support perhaps, but it is a step forwards from the previous one if it remembers what it is doing and stays powered up all the time. The stand isn’t much of a help for my wrists but the angle is very good. The keyboard layout is a dead ringer for the Microsoft one that it replaces apart from the function keys and arrows which tend to be all over the place anyway.
I’ve pulled off the Apple keycaps it had on when it arrived and replaced them with Windows ones that are supplied with the keyboard (along with a key puller). I had a nasty moment when one of my favourite keyboard shortcuts (WIN+SHIFT+S) failed to start up the screen capture but I fixed this by flicking the keyboard configuration switch underneath the keyboard to the Windows position.
I’m surprised that I’m deserting Microsoft comfort keyboards in this way, but this is a very good price and I’ve decided that Bluetooth is just not a good technology for a keyboard that you want to leave switched on all day. Plus the Bluetooth interface on my desktop is flakey. I can make this keyboard into a Bluetooth one if I fancy, but at the moment I’m using the supplied dongle and it works very well. I’ve always been a big fan of split keyboards and this is a nice option. It doesn’t have the premium feel of the Microsoft keyboards but it seems sturdy enough. Let’s hope it keeps going.
I’ve mentioned netgames.io before. Its a tiny web site that lets you play multiplayer games. They’ve added another game to the site, Enigma. Opposing teams have to give clues to code words and pass messages without them being intercepted. You need at least four or five players and a means of having private chats (we used Discord) but the gameplay is brain bending fun. I was quite pleased to be on the winning team.
If you look very carefully at this picture you can see the two other planes I’m, ahem, flying in formation with….. It was a lovely evening. The plan was to take off from Elvington airfield and then land at Humberside airport. And we did. Mostly. My goodness, flying properly is hard. Something simple like keeping a constant speed and height seems to involve constant control fiddling.
After our Yorkshire flight we went down to London City Airport and then flew over to Filton near Bristol. London looked magnificent in the evening sunshine. I managed a very bouncy touchdown and then crashed into a tree taxiing for a group picture. But it was all great fun and something we will definitely do again.
One of the great things about living where we do is that five minute walk can get you this view.
We didn’t need a new toaster when I woke up this morning. But, after I’d reset the earth trip for the second time we decided that it probably was time to get one.
I’ve a suspicion that all the toasters in the world are made in a single large factory somewhere and then have different shaped and coloured skins added in the factory next door. Although having said that there seems to be a huge range of opinions about the various different types when you start reading Amazon reviews. And it turns out that you have to work quite hard to find a toaster that will toast a large piece of bread all the way to the top. The contender above was a good price and doesn’t seem to have too many one star opinions attached to it. It should arrive fairly soon. Then I can stop eating bread and jam.
This looks like a very interesting device. It’s called the IoT Cricket from Things on Edge. It looks like it brings Lora levels of battery performance to a WiFi connected device. It apparently has the ability to wake up, connect to a WiFi network and push out a packet of MQTT data in around 8 seconds. Which is pretty darned fast. There is only very simple PIO available for data inputs but there is onboard temperature and a clock that turns everything off between readings. You can power the device from one or two AA batteries or a LiPo and they are talking about battery lifetimes in the months and years.
It’s only 16 quid to get one, which will be a good price if it does what they claim. I’ve ordered one, looking forward to having a play.
I was working on the book (did you know I was writing a book? - you can hear it here) when my fingers caught a key combination that I’d not used before. And Microsoft Word started reading the text aloud. It was kind of scary until I figured out what was going on. The reading is actually pretty good, and it is a fantastic way to proof your writing.
When I read stuff that I’ve written I find that my brain automatically edits it, adding words that I’ve missed and correcting the spelling. But if I hear it read out to me I can hear all the mistakes. You might find it useful too. You can find the Read Aloud command on the Review tool ribbon You can change the reading speed and the voice and the inflection is quite natural. It even has a good go at reading program text with variable names in it. Although it can’t say the word JSON.
Very exciting day yesterday. Installed Microsoft Flight Sim. It only cost me one pound to get it. I’ve signed up for Xbox Game Pass for PC which will end up costing me four quid a month. Total bargain. Although I guess I should also factor in the cost of a larger SSD drive to hold all the games I’m now going to download….
The game itself took a while to download, what with it taking up over 120 Gbytes. Apparently you can buy it on 20 disks if you want a physical copy. It. Is. Awesome. The install process took ages and the game itself takes a while to get going. But once it is running it is fabulous. The views inside and outside the cockpit are very impressive. You can fly anywhere in the world, although it might not look quite as you remember. The Humber Bridge you can see above looks like it needs a bit of work. You can just see the shadows of the towers that should be there at the bottom of the screenshot above.
I’m not very good at flying the plane (the wings came off shortly after I took the picture) but I’m having great fun. I’m using a wired XBOX controller which gives me all the control I can handle just at the moment. We’re planning our first group flight soon, which should be fun.
If you are interested in flying, or just seeing the world, you should have a go.
Many years ago I took my kids to the university to “show them what daddy does for a living”. This turned out to be sit in front of screen pressing keys with the odd bit of shouting at people, which is pretty much all I did at home, so I’m not sure they learnt much. But I learnt a few things from them. Number one daughter picked up a mouse and pressed a button on it. The screen in front of her immediately sprang into action. Brian, who was watching, was very impressed. It seemed that nobody had ever thought to press that button before.
I was reminded of this when showing number one granddaughter my venerable Twilight Zone pinball machine. She leaned one of the buttons and promptly dropped the machine into “In the Zone” mode which triggers all the options and releases all six balls onto the playfield at once. This is something I’ve not been able to do in the many years I’ve owned the machine.
I’m not sure what to show her next time she visits.
This nasty little virus has a lot to answer for. Including the death of a British tradition, the “polite cough”. In times gone by if a British person wanted to attract someone’s attention - perhaps it might be a waiter, or a a person who has cut in front of you in a queue, or someone who has parked their car on your foot - you would issue a polite cough to open up the sequence of apologies that would inevitably follow: “I’m so sorry that I left my foot lying around on the ground where you could drive over it” - etc etc.
Nowadays a polite cough has every chance of having you wrestled to the ground by a couple of burly folks in hazmat suits. Oh well. At least we’ve still got the “disapproving look” left.
One of my Lego models got dropped today. I watched with a mix of horror and fascination as it shattered into a large number of pieces. As I was searching for the bits under the furniture I wondered whether taking videos of falling Lego was a thing. It turns out that it is, as you can see above.
This is a very nice little Raspberry PI case that makes it look like a Nintendo NES. It has a fan inside too. Not bad value from Pi Hut.
Very pleased with myself. I’ve taken on City Hall and won in a tumultuous 50 minute battle. Admittedly it was East Riding Council, and I was just trying to order something via their web site. But it felt like a battle.
And I did have to give them 10 pounds to sign up to get the service (and I’m not really sure why). So perhaps we’ll call it a draw.
Hull University was very good to me. It paid off my mortgage and helped me get my kids through college. Admittedly I was there a bit longer than I planned. Went for a three year degree course and ended up staying for another 35 years, finishing up as a lecturer in their wonderful Computer Science department.
I left a few years ago but I’m proud to be a fellow of the university and I’ve been able to watch them try to respond to this awful pandemic thingy. One thing I’m sure of is that all the staff will be moving mountains to make things work going forward and they’ll do it with the best interests of the students. Because they always did.
This is a Hull Computer Science speciality. Three Thing Game. If you fancy having fun writing games you form a team and you get given three things to base it on and a weekend to write it. I took this picture in 2013. Quite a few of the people in the shot are now out there making games of their own. You can find out more about it here. It’s hilarious whether or not you want to end up a game developer.
If are looking for place to study, don’t for get Hull. Lovely place. Lovely people. Find out more here.
I took this picture this afternoon. Who knew that butterflies were so hairy? If you want more detail you can click through the picture to the full sized image on Flickr.
We spent the evening playing Scythe. It’s a bit complicated for me. Every time I play it I learn one thing I should do and four things I shouldn’t . Anyhoo, I’ll settle for third place. Especially if I’m playing as Nordic.
Won a game of Disc Golf on the Oculus Quest this evening in Rec Room. Imagine my surprise when I search for details online and I find that frisbee golf is actually a thing. Anyhoo, I’ve found that the best way to throw it is to stand sideways and actually aim. Just like real life in fact. If you have a Quest it is great fun and very sociable.
What a man I am. I spent the morning writing and the afternoon demolishing a summerhouse. Who knows what I’ll do this evening…
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.
