Personal
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As mentioned in this previous post, I've been having fun with an old 16K ZX Spectrum that a colleague kindly gave me a few months ago. After getting it working with a modern TV set, the next challenge was to get some games loaded into it. Pretty much any game you've ever played or heard of for the Spectrum is available online in digital format, although it should be stated that most are still protected by copyright. World of Spectrum has a great collection, and if you go further afield you can find "complete" archives that people have posted. For…
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I'm sitting at SFO, waiting for my flight to Heathrow to board and depart (hopefully on time, considering the series of storms that have hit San Francisco over the last few days). I was going to write something technical to post, but in the end I changed my mind: I'm going to sit back, watch some TV and have a drink. Thanks for all the support and kind words I received at this year's AU: as ever it was an incredibly interesting and rewarding experience (just speaking from a personal perspective), but it was especially important to me, this year,…
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I was going to start posting my AU handouts today, but I'll leave that until tomorrow (an exceptional four-post week for me!). I decided to fulfill a casual request from an old Autodesk buddy of mine, Thomas Schwaiger, although I thought I'd broaden the topic just slightly. ๐ I've been to see a couple of my favourite rock bands as they've passed through Switzerland, this year. The first was a bit opportunistic: some friends had tickets to the original Radiohead concert date in Switzerland on their recent tour to be held at an incredible venue, a disused quarry in Saint…
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For fun, here's a quick preview of this year's Halloween costume (our what-now-seems-to-be-annual Halloween Party is on this coming Saturday, but as it's the 31st I thought I'd put it on to scare any kids coming to the door). I hope those of you on the path of Hurricane Sandy have made it all safely through the "Frankenstorm" and that life returns to normal for you very soon.
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I had a fantastic surprise at the beginning of the week: a friend from work โ to whom I'd shown my retro-foolings with the Raspberry Pi โ brought a plastic bag to my desk containing an original Sinclair ZX Spectrum and power supply. He had talked about my project to a friend of his back home in Rome, who thought I'd like it (he was otherwise going to throw it away). The computer was in very good condition externally, at least: I was impressed by the condition of the keyboard, in particular, as these very quickly became dirty and damaged,…
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I've decided to interrupt my series on creating a face-recognising security cam to cover another Raspberry Pi-related topic, this week. I'll try to finish my series write-up for next Wednesday. At the recommendation of an old friend from University, I recently devoured the excellent "Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline. Ernest was apparently born about a year before me, so to say that the copious pop-culture references from the 1980s resonated would be a massive under-statement. I just wish I'd come across it sooner (in time to have a shot at solving the Easter Egg and winning a 1981 DeLorean,…
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This post is to belatedly congratulate Jim Quanci (Director of the Autodesk Developer Network, blogger over at Dances with Elephants and my former manager) for his recent win of the Singlehanded TransPac race from California to Hawaii. Jim sailed his 40ft boat, the Green Buffalo, singlehandedly from San Francisco on June 30th, 2012, arriving in Hanalei Bay, Kauai, on July 13th. The Buffalo crossed the line 3rd โ as you can see from the interactive race viewer โ but given the handicaps applied to the various classes of boat, Jim won the race by nearly 8 hours. By all accounts,…
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As I ended up not being able to post during the last week or so, I've switched to the past tense now that I'm back in Switzerland. I'll start back on more technical topics in the coming days, but as I'm still re-adjusting I may as well wrap up my holiday's travelog, first. ๐ After the unexpected highlight of visiting the Shard, I was worried the remainder of our time in the UK might prove a disappointment. Thankfully, my worries were completely unfounded: we had a great trip to London's Natural History Museum (with a quick stop by Harrods for…
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Today's post was going to be "Enjoying England" โ just to complete the series on our European tour โ but that's now going to have to wait. We are indeed enjoying England, but yesterday had a pretty unique and amazing opportunity that deserves a post of its own. Before yesterday, I admittedly didn't know very much at all about Shard London Bridge (which I'll refer to from here on as "the Shard"). But then a friend of ours offered us the chance to go to the top, which was pretty unique (he's been working on the project for the last…
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After a great week in Brittany, we took an overnight, cross-channel ferry from Roscoff to Plymouth to begin our fortnight in the UK. The ferry was a pleasant surprise โ far removed from the Dover to Calais "booze cruises" I remember from my student days. We had a cabin with a window and breakfast delivered an hour before arrival. All very civilised. On arrival, we headed on up through Devon and Somerset, stopping in Glastonbury for an early morning visit to the Tor. We then decided โ somewhat on the spur of the moment, as it was a bit out…