I’ve just received this from Ivan. It is a lens and shutter assembly for a 4x5 camera. I’ve always fancied getting into large format photography. There are some interesting designs online for 3D printable camera bodies. This is going to be fun..
I’ve spent today doing my tax. All day. Working out how much I’ve spent and how much I’ve earned. I’ve been very careful to get the numbers right. Unlike senior members of government.
I decided today that the blog needs to be updated. I keep a diary of what I’ve been up to and the every now and then I sit down and write all the posts. I’ve no idea why I do this, it is just that I feel happier doing it than not.
Anyhoo, today I was creating the posts and I thought it might be fun to add a picture of the bottom of the boat that I tried to print earlier. It came off the print bed as it was printing so that all I had was a small chunk of the bottom of the keel and what looked like a ball of wool. Beautifully printed though. I’d dropped it in the waste paper bin so I had a little look to see if I could find it. I didn’t find it, but I did find an Aibo memory stick for the robot dogs that must have fallen off my crowded desk into the bin at some point over the last week. I’m really pleased I found this, they are quite hard to get hold of and very expensive. Plus it contains a tiny bit of “dog personality” that I really don’t want to lose.
So at least my blog is useful for something.
I’ve taken to letting Bluey the robot dog wander round while I have my break. I’m sure he’s not a patch on a real one, but it is rather nice to watch him go through his paces while I drink my tea. The only problem is that if I put him on this mat he goes kind of nuts, because for him the colours of the squares match the ball. So he thinks there are balls all around him. This makes him very happy, but also somewhat confused.
My trombone controller article is now out in the latest edition of Hackspace Magazine. It was great fun to write, even though I made a disastrous design decision half way through. If you want to control your mouse using a trombone action, you should grab a copy.
Update: If you can’t be bothered to download the magazine (although you should - it’s a great read) you can find the article on Raspberry Pi news here.
Tonight we went to see “Space, the universe and everything” at Hull Minster. It was great. A set of huge sound and light installations placed around the minster space. I didn’t take a camera, but it turns out that the iPhone is actually pretty good at capturing low light pictures. The pictures and the sounds were glorious and the venue just can’t be beat. If you can get to see this in Hull you should go. I think they are doing shows in other places too, if you get the chance you should definitely try to get there. Wonderful stuff.
The battery arrived for my Panasonic Leica camera and so we took it out for a walk yesterday. The pictures turned out rather well. The resolution is not great, but colours look pretty good. I was looking back through some of the pictures I took a few years ago and they are around the same resolution (4 megapixels or so) so it turns out that size isn’t everything. The camera is great to use. It has an optical viewfinder that zooms in along when the main lens, which is rather impressive. Performance in low light is pretty appalling but it does have a flash.
There are lots of buttons and dials on the back
The only thing I really don’t like is the way they’ve used “soft touch” plastic around the viewfinder. Over the years this has turned into “sticky touch” plastic that is rather horrible. But I think I can live with that. I’m going to see what other kinds of pictures it can take.
The Little Red Geo that I ordered over the weekend arrived today. It’s lovely. It is just like a Surface Go, but a ton cheaper. It has the same processor as the ultra cheap laptop I got last year, but this time it is paired with a 128G proper hard disk. Yes it is a bit slow sometimes. But the internal disk is now faster, which improves things quite a bit. It has a really nice little screen (although the bezels are a bit big) and the keyboard and pen complete the package nicely.
The only real pain I had was with the Windows 11 installation. When I reached the point where I set the access PIN the dialog was hidden behind another part of the screen and I couldn’t get to it. I could see it using ALT-TAB but not actually get to enter anything. Super frustrating. I rebooted a few times, got stuck at the same point and eventually it let me past that bit. The tablet does have a fingerprint sensor too which I laboriously set up the first time the process got stuck, but skipped past during the retries.
I’ve loaded it up with all the software I’ll need and there seems to be plenty of disk space left over at the moment. Battery life seems to be showing four or five hours, which for a small tablet is not too bad. At the price it represents incredible value. If you want a bit more power they do a Pentium Silver (whatever that means) powered version for another fifty quid. But I’d save my cash and make do with this. I can use it for all my travelling duties. It has a micro HDMI video out plus USB C. I’ve popped a 512G micro SD card in the slot for any large scale storage duties. The kickstand works very well, as does the pen. The keyboard is tiny, but all the keys are there and they are OK to type on. The trackpad is a bit small, but then so is the computer itself. I’ve just paired a Bluetooth mouse which works fine. If you are looking for a super cheap portable solution you should take a look at this.
I’ve got most of the printer working now. So I printed a boat. I’m quite pleased with how it turned out. I used to have an issue with under-extruding, whereas now I think the extrusion is about perfect. I may be printing a bit close to the bed (the text on the bottom of the boat is a bit hard to read) but I’m pretty happy with this.
I’ve always fancied owning a digital Leica camera. Like I fancy owning a Porsche. But different. Anyhoo, a while back I discovered the Leica Diglux 1, which was produced in conjunction with Panasonic in the early days of digital photography. It looked really cool, but I couldn’t really afford one of those either. Then I discovered that as part of the joint development Panasonic actually made their own version. So I managed to find one at a price I could afford. When it arrived I took a brief look at it, discovered that the battery was broken and popped it in the loft.
Today I found it again and took a proper look. It has a very rare feature for a camera like this. You can plug in a mains adapter and power it directly. I did this and it worked fine. So I’ve ordered a battery. I’m not going to get super high resolution pictures from it, but I’d love to have a proper go.
I’ve bought another computer. I’ve rationalised this because even after all this time I don’t have a machine running Windows 11. And today someone asked me if some of my code would run that platform. And I rather wanted to give them an answer.
I don’t want to upgrade my present machine from Windows 10 for several reasons. The primary one is that I have no need to. The second is that it would cost a lot of money. The third is that I’d have to replace pretty much everything which would mean a complete reinstall of all the software, some of which I don’t think I have licence keys for any more.
I’d much rather spend my cash on something with just enough power and disk space to do what I want with Windows 11. Which is where I introduce the Geotab 110. For less than the price of a Surface Go type cover I can get a complete tablet with keyboard and pen. I’m not expecting the earth when it arrives, but I am looking forward to discovering what kind of tablet PC you can get for 120 quids.
Took the RF70 camera for a walk today. I think I’m getting the hang of it. Although I don’t think I opened the bellows correctly on the right hand side, which added a bit of weird barrel distortion. Still like the picture though.
I’ve been working on breaking my 3D printer. It’s going quite well. I’ve fitted a new direct drive printhead (which was really easy) and added a second lead screw for the z axis (which was really stupid). The principle is simple enough. Initially the printer had a single motorized screw on the left hand pillar which lifted the print gantry up and down. Thing is, when the print head moves all the way over to the right it is less well supported, so the gantry sags a bit. I thought it was a good idea to put a motorized screw on the other gantry so I bought the kit and fitted it. Which was a stupid idea. The problem is not so much with the drive system. That works fine. The problem is that if the two lead screws get out of sync (which they do) then the gantry tilts. When the printer is powered up the two screws are locked together by the stepper motors but when the power is switched off the weight of the gantry turns the two lead screws different amounts, putting the alignment out of whack.
The solution is to add a synchronisation belt at the top of the lead screws. This is what the latest printers have. So I’ve ordered one.
The cube in shinier times
Here in the UK we have this thing called the MOT (Ministry of Transport) test which we do to cars every year. Back in the day I used to take my old Mini for an MOT every Christmas and then spend a chunk of the festive season putting right all the things that had been found to be wrong with it. Particular highlights include replacing a leaking petrol tank with another leaking petrol tank, swapping a brake master cylinder with a clutch master cylinder and making a car with around a half an inch of brake pedal travel, taking the entire rear suspension to pieces and hefting it from dealer to dealer in two carrier bags until I found someone who could drill out the radius arms and fun with petrol blowlamps when we set fire to the grease in a kingpin and then broke the “special tool” that was supposed to take it apart. Then there was the time I painted the car, a good portion of the garage and probably my lungs a racy shade of “Daytona Yellow”. Happy days.
Anyhoo, the Cube passed with only a few advisories, which means that we are good for another year of square motoring.
Well, the boiler man couldn’t make it today, but the dentist yesterday was broadly OK, except for the filling I now have in my future. I’ve gone from “You’ve got good teeth” to “You’ve got good teeth for your age” to “You’ve got teeth?” in what seems to be a few short years. I was even complemented on my brushing technique. I was hoping for a lollipop or at least a sticker but I don’t think they do them for my age.
This is going to be a wonderful week. Starting today with a trip to the dentist, followed by a boiler service tomorrow and then an MOT test and service for the Cube on Wednesday. After which I’m probably going to do my taxes. So, an unappealing mix of pain and expense. My two least favourite things. Wish me luck.
My 3D printer has been working reliably for ages. I can go from an idea to a printed artefact with a minimal amount of messing about. So I’ve decided to upgrade it. It turns out that I can get a complete direct drive print head for a very tempting price. I was thinking of changing the nozzle, so I might as well change everything. The replacement head arrived today. You really do get everything, rollers, heater, thermocouple and wires.
The idea behind direct drive is that the filament feed mechanism (the bit which pushes the filament into the heater) is right next to the head itself. In the current configuration the feed motor is mounted away from the head and the filament goes through a tube (called a bowden tube) to the head. This adds friction and elasticity to the filament feed. Doing away with the bowden tube should improve print quality and let me print more exotic filaments.
It looks like an easy fix so I’m going to make it more difficult. The one thing I’m not happy about is the way that the print head now weighs a lot more than it did because it now has the drive motor on it. So I’ve ordered an extra Z axis drive screw so that the bar the print head moves along can be supported on both sides, rather than just one. It should arrive later in the week.
This is the cable release I thought I had lost. I found it a few hours after the replacement arrived. What makes this even more annoying is that it was in exactly the place I thought it was. I found it when I tried to put the replacement cable release away. Oh well, I really needed two anyway…
Went to the tip today. This is probably not an activity worthy of a blog post (although it is my blog) but the tip I go to is rather nice and getting there involves driving over a lovely “rickety bridge” which I’m sure has a troll living underneath it.
Each time I go I’m impressed by the increasing focus on recycling. They now help you go through the stuff you are bringing and direct you to the correct place to put it. Rather than pointing at a skip and saying “In there”.
Anhoo, it was as good a tip trip as I’ve had in a while. And it is now possible to walk to the bottom of the garage. Which is nice.
I’m currently doing the author review pass for the Begin to Code Cloud book. This is the part where I incorporate the comments from the editor and reviewer to produce what should be the final version of the text. As part of it I’ve decided to record a video for each of the “Make Something Happen” elements in the text. These are the practical exercises that help you understand the content. The book contains complete walkthroughs in the text, but I thought it might be useful to also provide video walkthroughs too. How hard can it be? Actually, it’s turning out to be quite fun.
I’m using the wonderful Camtasia program which provides fantastic screen and video capture along with a very powerful editor. It can also publish videos straight to YouTube. I’ve made a template and now it is just a case of running through the exercise, adding the start and end sequences and then sending out the video. The book will contain links and also QR codes that the reader can use to find the videos directly from the page.
I’ve created a playlist for all the content. It is all directly in the context of the book. You can find a book draft here. I’m doing the videos in one take, it is rather like giving a live lecture as I talk about and demonstrate the code. It is adding a bit more time to the editing process, but I think it is well worth it.
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.
