Smiggle Python Puzzle Game

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I’ve not maanged to make thie elephant yet, but I plan to Try

This is a nice little puzzle game courtesy of number one grand-daughter that you can pick up here. It’s a meter or so long and is made up of sixty little wedges which are all connected together in a line. The wedges can be rotated 90 degrees and you can fold sections back into themselves to make interesting shapes.

The connection between the wedges seems pretty strong, although the first one I got was in several pieces when I opened the pack, so you might need to be a bit careful. Well worth the price (especially now it’s reduced).

My AgendA Lives!

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She’s a bit dusty, and some of the dust is behind the screen…

I found my AgendA power supply in the garage today. I found the AgendA about six months ago, so this was quite a useful thing to do. The AgendA is a personal organizer from the 1980s with a fantastic chord keyboard. I loved using mine back in the day.

At first it looked like it was broken. Nothing appeared on the screen - then it started beeping every thirty seconds or so. Then I turned it off and on again and it sprang into life. The problem with the AgendA is that it uses nickel-cadmium batteries which have failed big time. So it only really works when plugged in. However, work it does. I’ve got the spreadsheet, some memory cards and even a low-level programming manual. Somewhere I’ve also got the serial and parallel connector cables. I might see about how much I can get working.

Next stop is the Cybiko……

Pardon?

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If you are wondering why I’ve put a picture of York city centre in a post about earwax, you have to ask yourslef what you would rather have a picture of…

I’ve been deaf in one ear for the last couple of days. The problems started when I was proving my manliness by going on the big water slides while on holiday. As a result I got a lot of water in my ears. Normally this disappears after a while. You get a warm feeling down the side of your head as half a pint of chlorinated water runs out of your ear into your collar and you get your hearing back with a pop and a gurgle.

Not for me this time though. My left ear was completely broken. I think a sudden inrush of water had forced a bunch of wax up into the ear and blocked it. In the long term I suppose this would save money on headphones and give me the perfect way of ignoring things I didn’t want to hear (which I have apparently been doing for ages). But I really wanted to go back to the stereo lifestyle and so today I tootled down to a place in Cottingham to have someone look into the problem. The process started with an examination of the working ear, which was completely clear. The broken one however, was very blocked. Ear wax removal involves using a funky sucking thing to gently remove the wax. My wax was apparently very sticky and it took several goes, plus some rinsing with another funky device, to get it all out. The sounds I heard during this process were awesome.

I was tempted to ask if they would do the job for half price, what with them only having to work on one ear, but in the end I was so pleased to get my proper hearing back that I paid up and left very happy.

Adventures in colourizing

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I’ve no idea how it knew that the dog was blue-grey. Or that the carpet had that pink bit

I’m taking lots of black and white pictures now. I thought I’d put one through the new Photoshop colorizing filter to see what it could do with it. The result is above. I’m actually very impressed. I made a few colorized pictures of people and it did a very good job on them too - even managing to spot the correct hair colour. If you really want a colour picture you should probably take it in colour, but it is nice to know that there are ways of adding colour that seem to work quite well.

Yet another camera for Rob

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This is the first picture I took… I think we are going to get along fine

Whisper it, I’ve bought another camera. It seems that I’m slowly converting all my music production devices into cameras. This was our first trip to York since before the pandemic. Last time we went I wandered into York Camera Mart and bought a lens. This time I’ve got a camera, for around the same price. It is a very old camera, but I really like the way it looks and how nice it is to operate.

When we got back home I processed the film and took at the negatives. Every time you take a picture on a film camera you are setting yourself up for a little bit of heartbreak when the developed version fails to match up to the lovely image in the viewfinder. This is especially true when you take black and white pictures. Things with different colours might map to exactly the same shade of grey and disappear into each other. I’m very happy with the shots that I got though. I need to work on my exposure technique - quite a few shots were over-exposed - but I’m very happy to do this because the camera itself is just so much fun to use. And now I’m going to sell another synthesizer….

Hello from Lytham

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I’ve on more piers in the last two days than I have in the last ten years.

Today finds us in Lytham St. Annes. It’s only a couple of miles from Blackpool (you can use the tram to get from one to the other) but it feels like a different world. The huge and wonderful beach is front and centre, although there are still piers and of course arcade machines. We did some kite flying, dug holes and buried bits of each other and all the other things you’re supposed to do on the beach. We even got to watch someone get their car stuck in the sand. Happy days.

The tide does go out a heck of a long way….

Hello from Blackpool

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The most difficult part of holiday preparation (at least for me) was deciding which camera to take…

We’re having a few days away. Today we headed onto Blackpool’s Golden Mile. Everything you would expect from a British seaside resort. I managed to talk folks out of buying me a “Kiss me quick” hat. But we did have fish and chips for lunch and they were excellent. Then we went up the tower.

This is a view through glass, but I still think it looks pretty OK

Behind the golden Mile

Use Proper Printing Paper

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The picture looks even better in the flesh. For some reason a photograph doesn’t do it justice.

I’ve been playing around with thermal printers and using them to print pictures. One piece of strong advice that I have for anyone else doing this is to get some proper thermal paper. While you can use cheap stuff purchased from stationers, you will get much better results with higher quality stuff. I’m using refills for the wonderful Kidizoom print cam. These aren’t massively expensive and they last a while. Plus you can print sticky labels too.

Lidl Led Panel

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It runs very well off USB battery packs

If you are after a led panel for tracing, or you want to back-light some negatives so that you can photograph them, you should take a look in the centre isle of Lidl in the UK. They are selling a rather nice LED panel for 10 pounds. The lighting seems nice and even to me, and it works very well. It goes quite bright, so you could probably use it as a softlight as well.

Tip Tips

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Took a bunch of stuff to the tip today. Going to the tip is becoming increasingly complicated. Now they have lots of different categories for rubbish. My pro-tip (which I will follow for next time) is to put different rubbish in different bags. Otherwise you will be standing there for ages pulling bits of cardboard out of a huge bag that you’ve just filled. Like I did. The other tip (at least where I go) is to go in the morning. The afternoons seem to be a lot busier.

One of the things that used to puzzle me back in the day was “How to you get rid of an old dustbin?”. If you leave it out for the dustman they just empty it and then move on. It turns out that the answer to this age old riddle is to take the bin to the tip and throw it into the skip by hand…

Bank Holiday shock - with added AI

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I was going to write “We had good weather today which was a bit of a shock, what with it being a bank holiday”. My blog host now has an AI button. I asked it to write something too:

We had good weather today. Bank holiday weather is always a topic of conversation in the UK, and unfortunately, it's typically not the most favorable. On the one hand, we have high hopes for clear skies and warm temperatures, but on the other hand, we are often met with gloomy, rainy weather. It's not uncommon for people to plan for a barbeque or picnic and then be forced to relocate indoors due to the rain. However, there are those rare moments when the weather decides to cooperate, and we are blessed with sunny days and blue skies, allowing us to fully enjoy the holiday weekend. So, while the weather may be unpredictable, it never stops us from making the most of our bank holidays.

There are a lot more words here, but I’m not sure how much value has been added…

Tears of the Kingdom vs Lego 2K Drive

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It’s not really fair (or perhaps meaningful) to compare the new Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom with Lego 2K Drive. They are completely different games. But then again, why not?

Tears of a Kingdom does an fantastic job of building on an amazing game (Zelda the Breath of the Wild) and making a six year old console feel new again. Lego 2K Drive is a racing game in the Lego universe with shades of the splendid Lego City Undercover. Zelda is great because of the depth and the number of things you can do. Although at the moment I’m still in the learning curve and expect to be there for some time. The nice thing about Lego 2K Drive is that the amount of learning that you have to do at the start is fairly minimal. It’s a driving game - and I’ve done those before. But the sheer scale of the game is very impressive with a huge open world to play in. I love the way that your vehicle changes to match where you are, flipping from car to boat to buggy as you smash across the terrain. The racing is intense, although the game works hard to keep up the tension by making sure there are the right number of cars in front and behind most of the time. I’ve not got the Lego game - with a bit of luck it will fall in price a bit and I’ll get a copy.

Climbing Hull Minster

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Looking south across the humber. On the left you can see “The Deep”.

I just happened to be up town with my camera, going past Hull Minster when I noticed a sign saying “Tower Tours £6”. I knew they could be booked on-line (you can do it here) but I thought there was no harm in asking if we could go up today. So I asked the question, and a guide was found who told us “I can take you up know if you like.” We liked. The staircase up the tower is a bit tight. My strong advice is make good use of the rope that hangs down the middle. But the views at the top were more than worth it.

This is the view west. On the left you can see the humber bridge on the horizon.

It was fascinating to hear how the bells and clock worked.

These are the bell ropes, ready for action.

Hull Minster has 12 bells, which apparently is a good number. The walls of the bell room were covered in plaques commemorating different peals rung in the past. Some of them can take three hours to complete. Although, as our guide told us, “Sometimes we just stop and head off to the pub..”

A workbench with a view

We climbed right to the top of the tower, stopping off at the clock room. This was a great experience. We were there for about an hour. If you’re from Hull you should go along and do the tour. If you’re not from Hull you should come to Hull, and then go on the tour.

3D Printed Camera article now in Hackspace magazine

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One of the funnest articles I’ve written

The article about my 3D printed camera is now in HackSpace magazine, which you can find in all good newsagents. There’s lots of great stuff in there along with my few pages. If you fancy making a camera like this you can find the designs and lots of useful stuff here.

The camera is now light tight and works a treat

I took the picture above with the 3D printed camera. The amount of detail in the branches is very impressive.

A free man

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I’ve shipped my “Bluetooth Chord Keyboard” article to Hackspace magazine. I’m now properly unemployed for a while with nothing outstanding (except perhaps for my talent - hem hem). It will be nice to have a break from doing much. Personally, I give it around a fortnight before I’ll be looking for things to do……