The colour for this year is yellow
Every year around now Yorkshire Water come down our street, take a look at the drain outside our house and notice it is broken. Then they paint a cross on the drain (last year it was blue as I remember) and go away for a year. I wonder what colour it will be next year.
I’m planning on getting all three
Had a really good day today. The weather was just the right temperature for a barbeque. I got a book I’ve been after for ages. I got to do some Lego, got a super-interesting book about the 6502 microprocessor (among other things). I also got to play with a camera, go for a walk and run a film off and then come home and develop it. Good times.
I’ve just shipped an article. Go me. To celebrate we went to York. It was very nice, although it did get super-busy after lunch. One of the attractions of York is York Camera Mart but today they didn’t have anything I fancied/could afford. Oh well. I don’t have to buy a camera every time I go out I suppose.
These are amazing. The first thirty seconds after you pop one in your mouth are pretty memorable. The outer coating is super sour. But once that’s gone you are left with a really nice lemon flavour. We got them when were on holiday.
You can track them down in the UK but they get a bit expensive once you add shipping.
I’ve got tennis elbow. I put it down to over-activity on the rowing machine. Not tennis, of course.
One of the great things about having a nine year old to stay is that you find yourself in a toy shop buying “Retro Miniatures”. They aren’t to scale (more’s the pity) but I really like them.
Today has been a good day.
Can you tell which is the broken one?
A while back I broke one of my Apple Newton eMate devices just by opening it and closing it. A hinge fitting broke in a way that caused it to pierce the ribbon cable that links the display to the main board. I’d give you more details, but I don’t want to talk about it at the moment.
Anyhoo, I ordered a replacement cable and last week it arrived in a huge box. At first I was sure the box was empty, but eventually I found the cable nestling in the middle of a big wad of padding. After spending a chunk of yesterday totally failing to fit the darned thing I thought I’d have another go this morning. It’s a bit fiddly. You have to wrap the cable around one of the hinges in exactly the right way, otherwise I’d have been ordering another replacement. Once I’d got the cable in place the rest of the device went together without incident and I now have 3 fully working Newton eMate devices. The next thing to do is complete upgrading the rechargeable batteries with ones that, er, recharge,
And then, just to build on my success I finally got Forza Horizon 6 working on my PC. I’m not sure what I did. Actually I am sure what I did. What I’m not sure of is why it worked. I plugged the PC into a different monitor. Forza sprang into life on the alternative screen and looked super. So I plugged the original monitor back in and it kept working. And off I went.
The game is fantastic. It follows the previous game pattern pretty closely, but you can now crash through scenery in a much more impressive way. I can’t find a Nissan Cube but they do have this really cute little van.
Jimmy
We didn’t have lunch there really. But I never let the truth get in the way of a good headline. Last week we walked with some alpacas. The weather was perfect. The alpacas were great fun and very characterful. If you live in Hull and want to have a go, you can find out more here.
Last night we discovered a big chunk of ice in our fridge freezer. You might think that this is the right place for it to be, but it was not. It had formed around the drain tray and along the bottom and was stopping condensed water from making its usual way out of the back of the fridge. Instead the water was pooling in front of the fridge. No fun.
After a bit of chipping and scraping we got rid of the ice and discovered that a little drain hole was blocked. Attempts to clear it with warm water and 3D printer filament failed so I ordered a kit of freezer drain hole unblocking tools (it’s a thing apparently).
Then later in the evening I discovered that the hole had unblocked itself. I’d obviously scared it into submission. So I consider the kit as six pounds fifty pence well spent.
Actual film pictures of the game. I lost.
What a lovely day for a barbeque and some “micro-croquet” in the garden.
You roll the ball to direct your shot. Not always successfully as it turns out
Today we spent a very happy morning at a retro games popup event in Leeds. Amongst lots of arcade machines, consoles and even a BBC Micro they had a copy of the Golden Tee Arcade Classic Golf game. I must have missed this first time around. You use a trackball to direct your shots and it all works rather splendidly (within the limitations of the 1989 vintage graphics). I managed to play an entire round (unfortunately the scores are not available) and it was super fun.
Update: I’ve since discovered that the game I played is a re-issue in a new cabinet. You can buy them for home use. After a lot of internal wrestling, and measuring up space in rooms I’ve decided to go for the Nintendo Switch version instead though.
I’ve been trying to pay the latest Forza Horizon 6 on my PC. It has not gone well. Seven frames a second is not conducive to good car handling. I’m going to have to do some digging. At the moment the primary suspect is my slightly elderly monitor. Or perhaps the cable.
The game does look very good though. Just not when played as a slide show.
Had a rather enjoyable evening watching Eurovision while playing Donkey Kong on the Switch2. While the performers were giving it their all on the stage I was busy winning boss fights.
And I thought the UK entry was splendid. Sure, he’s no Sam Ryder, But can Sam Ryder make a Furby organ? If you’ve not watched any Look Mum No Computer videos you really should.
Failed to buy a camera today. I got outbid at the very last second. Oh well. It probably wasn’t meant to be. And it’s not like I’m short of cameras.
When I was learning physics I found my flexi-curve invaluable. Every now and then I did an experiment to prove something or other. Proof of a successful outcome was usually a straight line of readings plotted on a graph. Of course, this hardly ever happened to me. But by bending my flexi-curve carefully through my points and drawing a nice thick line I could give the impression of something mostly straight and that was usually good enough.
I was reminded of my flexi-curve today as I was writing something about bSpline curves which do this kind of line bending for you. I had a look around and it turns out you can still buy flexi-curves. Although this particular product doesn’t have a very good review (but the review is worth reading for a giggle).
When I was much younger the annual Ministry of Transport (MOT) test was a big thing. I’d take my decaying Mini down to a garage and watch them chip paint and rust off it, test the lights, steering and the brakes and give the seatbelts a good tug. Then they’d tell me about about the worn bearings, loose steering kingpins and other things I’d been happily motoring around on for the last year. They didn’t mind about the hole in floor though, because apparently that wasn’t structural.
One time I was telling dad about what had gone wrong (in this case the bushes on the rear radius arms that hold on the rear wheels).He looked up from his paper and told me it sounded like a big job, so I should probably find somewhere to get them fixed. At which point I was forced to tell him that my car was in his garage with the rear suspension missing. He shuddered and went back to his paper. I had to go around all the local car dealers until I found someone who could drill out the radius arms and put in replacement bushes.
I got it fixed that time but the following year, when I took it for a test just after I’d replaced the silencer (muffler) because it fell off on the way to a party, I was forced to admit defeat (subframe mounts) and throw the car away. Oh well, at least it had the newest silencer in the scrapyard.
I was reminded of all this yesterday because my car was due for it’s annual test. It seems a lot more relaxing these days. I think cars are just better made (and painted) than they used to be. All I needed was a couple of tyres and a rear windscreen wiper. Good times.
Mowed the lawn today. I guess that means we are properly back home.
The WI in Beverley have taken it upon themselves to add some decoration to a post box. Not something we saw at Walt Disney world, but charming nonetheless.
Another memory
I was fairly sure I didn’t have jetlag. Not me. Not at all. Then I looked down and discovered that I’d just plugged the output of a USB charger into itself, rather than the phone I was supposed to be connecting. Oh well. Time for a lie down.
What do you do when all the talk is of war and disaster and life as we know it is coming to an end? You go off to a theme park for a holiday. At least, that’s what I’m doing. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks slightly more tanned and much more poor.
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.
