Electronic-ing
Sep0
A little while back I decided to get into electronics. I never really did much while I was at school, I was more into computers but about a year ago I bought myself some bits and a USBasp to program chips with but I think life caught up and I never found the time to learn about it properly. I still have the programmer somewhere but I never really learned how to use it.
So once again i’ve caught the bug, this time discovering Arduino. It’s an open source development board and IDE. It’s a little friendlier to use and there’s huge swathes of information about it on the internet. It’s more of a system around the chip than a way to program just the chip itself.
The IDE comes with quite a few example programs which are really handy for learning how to use it. I got my Arduino Duemilanove yesterday from a company based in Halifax called Oomlout who were recommended by a friend. They were really impressive and the kit arrived really quick. I went for the Arduino starter kit and a 16×2 LCD panel, they even threw in some extra LED’s for free 
Within a few minutes I was able to assemble a couple of circuits and modified some code I found for a cylon scanner. Take the arduino off the usb and plug in a battery instead and voila, so simple!
I’ll post the code up later, it’s stuck on my home computer.
So I have a couple of ideas and hopefully I’ll get time to make them a reality!
Bookmarks for August 25th through August 26th
Aug0
Links for August 25th through August 26th:
Bookmarks for August 20th through August 24th
Aug0
Links for August 20th through August 24th:
- WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE?: All In A Days Work…On a Non-Issue, Diversion from the Real Problems Facing Our Nation. – comment on the ridiculous mosque near ground zero situation in america.
- The Rap Map — Mapping the Gangsta Terrain of the Planet | Rap Genius –
- Translated Suntory Scene – what actually was said in that scene from Lost In Translation
- Hobby Robotics » Using Relays with Arduino – Turning on the Lights –
- .:oomlout:. Arduino & DIY Electronics and kits in the UK –
Bookmarks for August 18th through August 20th
Aug0
Links for August 18th through August 20th:
- Fraser Speirs – Blog – The iPad project.
- Tristan Perich: 1-Bit Symphony –
- BBC – About the BBC: BBC Genome: The Complete Broadcast History of the BBC –
- Daewoo Chevrolet Forums and Owners Club – Daewoo Lanos Forum –
- Car Forums Engines / Options: Daewoo Lanos R reg choke problem! – think our car might be doing this
- DC connector – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – snap and lock connector
- KYCON|KPPX-4P|PLUG, FREE, 4WAY | Farnell United Kingdom – connector for nas power supply.
Liz & Chris’ Wedding
Aug0
Every wedding is unique. Everybody likes to do their’s in a personal way and that contribute to how special each one is. Liz & Chris wrestled with marriage, they seemed to want to do it, but not want to go through actually getting married. So they had planned to elope to Iceland or something but it turned out to be more complicated than they wanted. So they decided on a small civil wedding with immediate family only. There were 11 of us at the ceremony, including the photographer, registrar and of course Liz & Chris.
It was a lovely day, after pictures by the river we went back for a couple of hours to the house for champagne, more pictures and a toast by the father of the bride. The we went to a nice restaurant in Perth called ’63′ and had a 7! course taster meal.
I haven’t given out the URL for the pictures I took as yet, but if you know what you doing you have all the clues you need already to find them.
Eventful Weekend
Aug0
Just had quite a big weekend, longer than expected too, but not for a good reason.
Hopefully I’ll get some time to write it up properly. At the moment i’m still a bit bewildered by the events. Came back on Sunday evening to discover that we’d been burgled. I haven’t been burgled before and I don’t think I’ve had anything stolen from me since primary school so it was a bit of a shock. I’ve not even had all that much contact with the police so that was an experience as well. We’ve still got to deal with insurance so I hope that goes OK and we can replace the stuff we lost. I described the feeling to Kate yesterday as being a bit like treading water at the moment, there’s always something else to knock you.
I’ll write it all in parts I think.
- Liz & Chris’ Wedding
- Edinburgh Festival
- Perth Highland Games
- The Burglary
Bookmarks for August 6th through August 12th
Aug0
Links for August 6th through August 12th:
- About Us – 2010 Glaston-Bury Festival –
- Smithsonian Oral and Video Histories: Steve Jobs –
- Wired 4.12: Mother Earth Mother Board –
- [GUIDE] How to create m4b audiobooks with chapter points for iTunes/iPod in Windows? [Archive] – Doom9′s Forum –
- Inside Google Books: Books of the world, stand up and be counted! All 129,864,880 of you. –
Bookmarks for July 29th through August 6th
Aug0
Links for July 29th through August 6th:
- Technika 19" HD Ready LCD TV with built-in Freeview & DVD player DVDID-208 – Tesco.Direct –
- MintyBoost – The mysteries of Apple device charging –
- BBC News – What’s the point of counties? –
- Inception soundtrack created entirely from Edith Piaf song | Music | guardian.co.uk – sweet
- Why The Hills defined the boom, and Jersey Shore defined the bust. – By Dana Vachon – Slate Magazine – Well written review of youth TV that represents the extremities of reality TV in the turbulant recession years.
Toy Story 3 3D
Jul0
Another night at the new Vue cinema in Bury, this time to see Toy Story 3.
The Toy Story trilogy has been an important one for Pixar, uncertain at times, they probably never thought they’d get to do 3 films and I suppose it’s the kind of situation where the audience demands it. To my knowledge Pixar haven’t done sequels for any of their other films and unfortunately, while I did enjoy Toy Story 3 I somewhat wish they hadn’t done it.
It was a lovely story and it was quite an emotional ride with the usual Pixar polish, jokes and references. It also had a final feel to it, this is the end for Woody & Friends.
It’s amazing how technology has developed since the first Toy Story, CGI is pretty much limitless now it what it can achieve and I think audiences might start getting a bit jaded with it soon, perhaps even reject it prefering shots done in camera to not. I didn’t fancy going to see Clash of the Titans for somewhat that reason. This Pixar film was also in 3D, possibly a necessity these days to compete, certainly not one that completes a film. I appreciate the hard work people put into adding a third dimension for us, I just don’t think it’s worth it or worth the extra money the theatres charge to see it. The short film preceding Toy Story 3, Day & Night was probably one of the best implementations i’ve seen yet of the technology though.
3D doesn’t seem to be dying, as much as many – myself included, would like to see it. We’ll see with the take-up of 3D TV sets as compared with HD ones. I watched 3D rugby at Manchester Filmworks, I wouldn’t do it again, I don’t think people would pay extra for it to watch football at home.
As far as Bury is concerned, I think the opening of the Rock is having a great effect. It’s great to see people in the town in the evening, it was a bit dead before – and young people too! We were beginning to wonder where they all were.
