My thoughts, electronics and adventures
Britons who chuckle at Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership in the USA should note that Reform UK is now regularly topping the national opinion polls here in Britain. It no longer seems far-fetched to imagine Nigel Farage, Prime Minister. Recent national polls indicate a close contest between Labour and Reform UK. A YouGov poll conducted on Continue reading It Could Happen Here.
Is it me or is there a pattern that each new US president is a rejection of the president that came before. Almost like the primaries and election filters out the person who has the opposite to the defining characteristic of the current president.
First I installed OpenSCAD: OpenSCAD is a way to design in code. For example to create a cube you just write cube(10,20,30); And the cheat-sheet and documentation is all you need. I used ChatGPT to help me design my cookie cutter in OpenSCAD code: Then I converted the .scad file into a .stl file (which Continue reading How to Design and 3D Print a Cookie Cutter
UK elections results seem to follow the narrative of the election before.
The older I get, the more I feel success in life is linked to the ability for one to tolerate uncomfortable situations. Being able to keep calm without getting violent, angry or resort to swearing. Being able to sit in the uncomfortable situation and still be able to reason and function effectively. Along with being Continue reading Being Uncomfortable.
One thing I have learned in life is that you can t be 100% sure of something beforehand. Maybe this is obvious to most people. Maybe it s my autism but I have this tendency to want to know beforehand if something like an event is worth going to. For example if I get invited to a Continue reading You Don t Know Everything.
An underrated productivity hack is to just do do it now. I learned from David Allen s book Getting Things Done where he suggest that tasks taking less than a minute should be tackled right away. The logic is the time and mental effort spent planning to do something is more than the time it would Continue reading Just Do It Now.
One Touch allowed. That s the Rule. How many of us, for example when coming into the house, throw our coat onto the nearest chair, then later move out of the way to another chair, before eventually putting it on the hook where it belongs. I know I do that. I do that with everything. That Continue reading The One Touch Rule.
In the TV series Star Trek, captains are given a training exercise: the Kobayashi Maru, a test designed to be impossible to pass. It exists explicitly to judge how the participant deals with stress and failure. The charismatic Captain Kirk becomes the first to pass the non-win scenario by reprogramming the conditions of the test. Continue reading Keir Starmer passes the Kobayashi Maru.
The best way to predict the future of working technologies is to look at costs. For example to know if self-driving cars will succeed you just have to answer one question: are the rides cheaper than a human-driven taxi. To predict the future of geopolitics look at the demographics. And the demographic trends of Northern Continue reading Moving Towards A United Ireland.
I enjoy making predictions about the future, even if they turn out to be embarrassingly wrong. So this is my scenario planning for the next general election, with what indicators we should be monitoring now that would point towards various outcomes. Landslide Labour Majority. ✅ Consistent Conservative polling break through lower ‘floor’ of 30%. ✅ Continue reading The Next UK General Election.
Liberal democracy and freedom are under threat in the world today. From a growing Communist China, from a kleptocratic Russian dictatorship threatening it’s neighbours again and attacks from within western nations on themselves. Democratic Taiwan is a beacon of light in this world showing that economic success and Chinese ethnicity are compatible with democracy and Continue reading Let Taiwan Have…
What nobody is saying is that the Labour victory at the next election could be bigger than Tony Blair s historic win in 1997. (And the election will be in January 2025, there is no reason for the Conservatives to call it early.) The Conservatives have already lost. The flickering hope in the Tory party that Continue reading Labour s Potential Super Landslide: An Unsettling Prospect for British…
Score each of these out of 5. If the total is more than 20, do it!
In a previous blog post, I shared my intriguing idea of incorporating an antiquated numerical system into a contemporary Smart Watch. Today, I am thrilled to announce the successful completion of this unique project! I fist heard about Cistercian numerals a while back, I think it was on Hacker News and had an idea to Continue reading The Revival of Cistercian Numerals: A Journey from the 15th…
Today, I experienced the delightful surprise of encountering a fresh organization system named Johnny Decimal. I suspect I may have come across it in the past, but I never really absorbed or fully read through it. This system was highlighted a while ago on HACKADAY, but that s not where I discovered it. Currently, I utilize Continue reading The Joy of Finding a New Organisation System
Services I love using: Services I tolerate: Services I hate using:
This is the first time I have seen robots exhibiting an uncannily human-like performance at football. It makes me thing where will robotics football be in 2033? (10 years from now)
Makes it easier to get started with programming. Makes hobby, beginner and amateur programmers better. Then end result should be more software, better software and quicker programming. Makes fixing software issues easier. Makes writing (formal) emails easier, makes writing letters easier, makes writing and editing articles easier. There will be a lot of junk websites and junk articles online…
A framework for buying stuff consists of scoring items.
I recently discovered Cistercian numerals which can display the numbers 0-9,999 in a single image: My plan was to make a watch face displaying the time using these numerals, with the bottom line being the hours and the top line being the minutes. Hubert Sablonnière s: A clock based on Cistercian numerals Programmer Hubert Sablonnière has Continue reading Creating a Cistercian Numeral Watch Face: A…
As of January 2023, Croatia has joined the Euro making it the 20th member of the Eurozone (The group of countries that use the single Euro currency). Croatia joined the European Union club back in 2013. The only other country that could join the Euro in the next two years is Bulgaria which plans to Continue reading Croatia joins the Euro.
These were my predictions on Ask HN: What are you predictions for 2022? with notes added now it s the end of the year: I didn t do very well with my predictions. Although I think some will still come to pass in 2023.
A script for automatically lowering the volume during radio advertisements and DJ announcements and turns the volume back up when songs are playing. It controls a Sonos speaker using the Soco-cli Python library when Tunein is being used.
I ve seen the future of search and it is chat. I theorised this a while back and should have written about it then. Now I ve seen screenshots of ChatGPT. The simple conclusion? Google is dead. Google search has gotten worse recently, or at least more frustrating. There are too many advertisements on search results. Youtube Continue reading Google is Dead: The Future of Search is Chat.
Twitter Payments Getting thousands (millions?) of people to sign up to Twitter Blue means their patyment details are on file to easily upsell people other services or money transfers. Imagine example, being able to sell products or services directly on Twitter and people just being able to use their Twitter accounts to make the purchase Continue reading Thoughts on Twitter
Making some football predictions, just to be embarrassed by them at the end of the season! Liverpool signed a replacement for Sane in Nunez who might turn out to be even better. Carvalho and Ramsey look like useful signings. 1st Man City Haaland likely to be top scorer in the league. But Phillip may struggle. Continue reading Premier League 2022-2023 Season Predictions.
Let s learn art by transforming The Art Book into a spaced-repetition Anki Deck. Step 1: Download The Art Book Get the PDF of this book and save it as TheArtBook.pdf Step 2: Make an image of each page Let s use python and a library called pdf2image does what it says on the tin: saves each Continue reading Learning Art Using Python and Anki
Looking at the numbers in the Conservative Leadership Race I think Mordaunt will pick up most of the votes from Tugendhat when he goes out next, but Truss will pick up most of the votes from Braverman and Badenoch when they go out. Truss may end up with more votes than Mordaunt, and possibly even Continue reading Prime Minister Liz Truss
As any player of the board game Risk knows, conquering Ukraine is easy but holding it is difficult. The Russian enclaves stop the realistic prospect of Ukrainian EU and NATO membership. Putin has created a land bridge from Russia to the Crimea and Transnistria in Moldova. Sanctions, ostracism and large number of Russian casualties will Continue reading Just By Being in Ukraine Putin Has Won.
In 2022 Russia is going to war in Europe and nobody cares. The West is so castrated by failures in Iraq and Afghanistan that we have swung from hawks to pacifists. There are no million people marching on the streets of London against the Ukraine War. People who protested the Iraq War are silent. The Continue reading The Ukraine War.
Every new technology is worse than the technology it replaces in some way. Also almost always the new technology starts of much more expensive (eg think iPhone vs standard phone, Tesla Vs gasoline car). At least initially. Some people (existing industry experts, journalists) can t see past the short term. MP3s worst than CDs. [quality] iPhone Continue reading Every new technology is worse than the…
My New Years Resolutions for 2022: Live in the moment. Be more me. Complain less.
God set the Speed of Light as a constant to make the math easier.
It has been a long road but Polio may soon be eradicated. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the final two countries with the disease but the last reported cases were back in January this year. Polio eradication would mark only the second human infectious disease to be defeated after Smallpox in 1980. The campaign to tackle Continue reading Polio is Almost Eradicated.
I made 2 magic balls for me and my girlfriend. Hold your ball and the other person s ball will light up blue (to show we are missing the other person). If both people hold their balls the balls will glow red to show a connection. Component list Wemos mini D1 Arduino board Battery shield for Continue reading Magic Ball using an ESP board, NeoPixel LED strip and Adafruit IO.
In an episode of The Big Bang Theory the character Sheldon Cooper turns their apartment flag upside-down to indicate distress. I wondered if I could design my own flag and make it sound an alarm when turned upside down. Step 1, design a flag and get it printed: Then using a coin cell + coin Continue reading Sheldon s House Flag Alarm
I ve just finished reading the book Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX by Eric Berger. This is a great book if you are interested in the early years of SpaceX. If you haven t read the biography of Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance read that first. However if you enjoyed that Continue reading Book Review: Liftoff
The ESP32 has a few pins for touch input using the touchread() command. I wire stripped some wire, taped it to a circular cutout of aluminium foil, connected it to one of the Touch pins on the ESP32. I am using a Wroom board, and you can see from this pinout diagram I found on Continue reading Touch Input on an ESP32 board using aluminium foil.
Pybytes is the free dashboard from pycom for displaying data from your pycom boards. First go to pybytes.pycom.io create an account and login. Add a Board to Pybytes Crick Add Device and then Add Device via USB: Then choose your board, in our case we are using a Wipy: Choose a name for your device Continue reading Getting Started With Pybytes.
Let s get our GPS position using a Pytrack expansion board! You will need: A Wipy, Lopy or Fipy. A Pytrack expansion board. An SD card (2GB or less, must format in Fat32) A USB cable. A USB power port in your car or a power pack. A GPS antenna (optional but improves connection). Use an Continue reading How get GPS data using a Pytrack.
Having fun with the RGB LED on the WiPy development board.
You will need: A pycom Wipy board A pycom Expansion board A standard USB cable Visual Studio with Pymakr extension (If you want help connecting your board and installing Pymakr check out my Quickstart guide to Wipy first.) Note: GPIO stands for General-Purpose Input/Output pins. Button to toggle LED Copy the following code into your Continue reading Using the GPIO pins on a pycom Expansion Board.
You will need: A pycom Wipy board A pycom Expansion board A standard USB cable Visual Studio with Pymakr extension (If you want help connecting your board and installing Pymakr check out my Quickstart guide to Wipy first.) Disable the Heartbeat Let s make our first blink program in Micropython. One of the things I love Continue reading A Blink Program for the Pycom WiPy using MicroPython.
You will need: A pycom Wipy board A pycom Expansion board A standard USB cable Visual Studio with Pymakr extension (If you want help connecting your board and installing Pymakr check out my Quickstart guide to Wipy first.) Hello World In Visual Studio create a folder called Hello World on your system and create a Continue reading A Hello World for the Pycom WiPy board in MicroPython.
You will need: A pycom Wipy board A pycom Expansion board A standard USB cable Hardware setup Open your Wipy and Expansion board and plug the Wipy into the Expansion board. With the Wipy LED lined up with the USB port on the expansion board, and the pycom texts of both boards lined up. Connect Continue reading A Quickstart Guide to the Pycom WiPy board.
The WiPy is a microprocessor development board from Pycom that runs MicroPython. What you ll need: A Pycom WiPy board A Pycom Expansion Board (or a PySense board) A USB cable Connecting the board to your computer Carefully plug the WiPy board into your expansion board (with the LED of board at the end of the Continue reading A first look at the Pycom WiPy MicroPython development board.
In this guide we will enable and setup Web REPL on a micro-controller board. First plug your micro-controller board into your PC and check you can get a serial port REPL going. (if you need help with this see my post REPL REPL on getting this set up): Now add the name of your wifi Continue reading Web REPL
How to connect to MicroPython on a MicroController board (such as a ESP8226 or ESP32 board or Rasbpery Pi Pico) over a Serial Port using REPL. There are several command line tools for this, including: Minicom Screen Picocom You can also use CoolTerm in windows or cross-platform Thonny code editor program (as we did when Continue reading REPL REPL
I connected a Zigbee Temperature Sensor to Home Assistant using an antenna and an MQTT server. I got a Zigbee antenna called CC2531 and plugged it into the Rasbperry Pi I have running Home Assistant. Install the Mosquitto MQTT broker in Home Assistant and create a username and password in the configuration tab: Create a Continue reading Zigbee Temperature Sensor