A thing by Tom Taylor
Important Satellite Eyes update! I've added solar farms, salt ponds and mines to the 'Interesting Sights' rotation. I've had this on for a few days to get a feel for it and I think it's turned out pretty nice. I used OpenStreetMap to find the locations, sorted by the largest area first, on the assumption those look the most impressive. It was a bit much for the Overpass Turbo API , which kept…
Back in 2012, which can't be more than 5 or 6 years ago, I made an app called Satellite Eyes . It sets your desktop wallpaper to the satellite view of your current location. It's quite popular - lots of people tell me it's the first thing they install on a new machine, which is lovely. I've just shipped a 2.0 release, which adds an option to rotate through a selection of interesting-to-look-at…
For the last few years I’ve been helping run Edinburgh Gravel Cycling Club , a large ish community for folks into gravel cycling. It’s been a lot of fun, very rewarding and I’ve made many, many wonderful friends through it. I was asked if I’d like speak about it at a monthly event called Towpath Talks. This is the audio of that talk . And because I refer to lots of photos and slides, here are the…
If you have too much Lego, then you might want to sell some of it so it can go to a better home. But if you have it all jumbled up in some massive boxes, then you’ve got a long few days ahead of you. By you, I mean my children. To make this a tiny bit easier, I got Claude (through Cursor) to make a thing to keep track of which pieces we’ve found. Maybe it’ll be useful for you too. Stick in a set…
I spent a lot of time in TV studios in my yoof. My dad was a sound engineer, and I took any opportunity I could to bunk off school or use the holidays to go and hang out on whatever he was working on. I’d generally be left alone, because my dad had an actual job to do, so I’d raid the vending machines, chat to bored camera operators, or get given menial jobs to do, like hold a cable for 3 hours or…
If I was very rich I would give every adult in the country £20 each to spend on Facebook/Instagram Ads. They could run ads for anything they want, subject to the usual approvals. They have to do it all themselves, in the Facebook Ads manager, no agencies or whatever. It would be very funny Everyone would get to learn about how the sausage is really made, which I think they'd find disappointing and…
I am good at two computer games and two only. The first is Tekken 3 . It's a punching and kicking game, where some of the punches and kicks are extra magical. I usually play as Xiaoyu, Hwoarang or Lei. I can do a mean Yoshimitsu if needed, but I don't enjoy it. I will play as Eddy if someone isn't expecting it, and I do enjoy it. I used to do the sound and lights for plays at school. Amongst the…
I always find it interesting when technological progress goes backwards. When something becomes unpossible. And I also love a good story in the nexus of manufacturing/fashion/materials science/cycling. One thing we've taken for granted over the last 30 years is good quality waterproofing. All that Gore-Tex and Hyvent and AquaDash. (Jokes, the last one is a kids' session at our local leisure…
A couple of years ago I converted an old Bang & Olufsen CX50 speaker to take a Hifiberry Beocreate DSP amplifier and a Raspberry Pi running Airplay and Spotify Connect. The Beocreate board has an active crossover and supports a DSP profile tuned for the CX50, so it sounds great. And I love the design — it’s just a nice object. Last week I managed to pick up a second board on eBay to convert the…
F cut my hair on Wednesday evening. The next morning L announced that I looked ‘hairyless’ and it's made me chuckle all week. I’ve been enjoying S and A playing Knights and Bikes on the PS4. It’s the first game that A has got into, and it's nice that it’s a co-op with her older brother. Fun fact: Rex, one of the makers, did the original Newspaper Club logo person. I rode out to a castle yesterday.…