Part one, in a journey to upgrade an old robot. This classic 80’s robot This robot was also known as: Tandy Robie, Radio Shack Robie, Robie the Robot, Talking Robie, RS 4061, Robocom 1000, Robie Parlant, and Robocom Robot (Super).
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What is the difference between a laser that will cut metals and one that won’t?
A friend who recently acquired a CO2 laser cutter for his school recently sent me a message. “What is the difference between a laser that will cut metals and one that won’t?”. I thought this is a good question, as the answer will help with understanding how to work with many materials.
Random Thoughts
Here are some random ideas, like: “Could we get street lights to start flashing 30 seconds before an ambulance is due to come through?”
Arduino Graphing Libraries
Here is a library to write GNUPlot output from the Arduino. Now the Arduino can produce a graph output that is directly renderable across multiple platforms and cloud services. Does not rely on some gone tomorrow software + lets you edit the plot afterward.
ASCII-Art Arduino Pinouts
Managing arduino projects can be a nightmare because its hard to keep track of your hardware setup in your code comments. To enable easy documentation of pin assignments, I created a couple of ASCII art arduino pin-outs.
These come complete with ports, PWM and coms all marked. Simply paste as a comment into your code and marvel at your new found organisation.
RGB Bias Lighting with Arduino (Part 1)
We are setting up an arduino with a WS2811 LED strip to do RGB based bias lighting effects.
When a picture is worth 1000 semilegible words.
(click for full size) All these uni adverts with different reasons you should attend them. None say “Hey south paws, you can actually take notes if you enrol with us”.
I reckon my fan guard design is pretty damn neat. (Free Plans)
I needed some fan guards for my arcade machine and for a neat little entertainment centre hack. Playing around I made a fish-eye honey-comb screen that looked pretty good. The pattern has larger holes near the centre of the fan and smaller holes where it counts.
Practical Iterative K-ary Tree (aka n-ary, n-tree) Traversal in C#. A surprisingly useful tool for the average programmer.
Introduction: A lot of components in the C# environment are essentially a K-ary [kay-er-ee] tree. From tree-view nodes, to serialising a type via reflection, to directory listings to menu hierarchies, and so on. Often we need to iterate through these types of structures, or our own trees, and we just write some code to do …
Continue reading Practical Iterative K-ary Tree (aka n-ary, n-tree) Traversal in C#. A surprisingly useful tool for the average programmer.
10 simple things search engines could do to save my sanity
I have felt for a while that web searching is still an awkward thing from a Human Computer Interaction point of view. So I made a wish list of simple improvements that would literally turn my world upside-down.
How to make coloured text in acrylic with spray paint.
Laser engraving text on acrylic / perspex does not create a lot of contrast. This leads to the subject of painting text on the acrylic. I have developed some useful methods of achieving this that I thought I would share.
Maze Making Software
This software creates mazes of different sizes and configurable appearance. It is designed for teachers. It can save the output as printable sheets or bitmap images.
List of the best pages/software that empowers you to generate awesome procedural art.
Firstly, you will find none of the “lets make homework cool” type stuff here. The Internet has become a much more stimulating place for maths, visualisation and generative images. This is in part driven by the death of those “java applets” as wonderful HTML5 based interactive maths content takes glorious hold. Trying to keep pace with …
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The scientific breakthrough discovered by inserting tampons into peoples noses.
So your here because you just couldn’t resit the title… or you used some very odd search terms in Google. In any case, welcome to the article that gave me the most pause to write about so far. Background. !t was the 1960s (this decade is developing a bit of a reputation) and doctors were treating …
Continue reading The scientific breakthrough discovered by inserting tampons into peoples noses.
Crossword Software (alpha)
Easy to use software to generate crossword puzzles.
This is still very much alpha software (totally unfinished). I appreciate anyone who wants to kick the tyres and let me know what they think.
Images that use one of every colour + Free Software to make your own.
Its kinda captivating, an image that uses only one of every colour possible on your computer. It makes for an odd desktop background on a 4K screen.
Large & Interesting Datasets
This is a list of impressive / interesting data-sets I have come across. They are typically free, machine readable, downloadable and extensive.