Knitting Machine Project
I've been interested in building a knitting machine for some time, and I've just got round to looking into it again. I found a few other projects in this area: - Knitic - this re-uses Brother electron…
My Wanhao Duplicator i3 Plus 3D Printer Upgrades
This is inspired by the "Prusa i3" range of 3D Printers. Even though its cheaper, this one still has a solid metal structure. I've heavily upgraded it: It would probably have been cheaper to simply bu…
New Project Items Arrived
A whole load of new project stuff arrived earlier today: - Steering Boot Set Bellow 38921. I don't actually have a car: I'm going to (ab)use this for a project. - Dixons Autocrat F3.5 75mm medium form…
Turn it Off and On Again
I've been doing a lot of interesting projects recently, so I decided to restart my blog. I wanted to keep the old articles, mainly for my own interest: However, I think things like the etched brass do…
Interactive fiction
Great! Finally found a decent IF interpreter for android: text fiction Now playing Anchorhead on my tablet. Really liking the SMS style interface, and it works really well with the android slidy keybo…
Mobile development on Android and iOS
I've been doing a spot of iOS and android development for some sample apps today, which I've not done for a while. TL/DR: Yuck, ObjectiveC is a horrible blast from the past. Yuck, Java is a horrible b…
MongoDb optimisation for scale
I redesigned the schema for one of our MongoDb clusters today. In doing so, I managed to reduce request times by 1.5 orders of magnitude! We're now sustaining request times of roughly 30ms. The first…
PHP MongoDb replicaset gotcha
Ran into a gotcha with PHP+MongoDb the other day. Now, PHP ain't my favourite language, but its what Piwik is written in so I'm stuck with it for that. I've partially ported Piwik to use mongodb (vs m…
Return to the joggler
Now that Intel have a slightly less crap driver for the Poulsbo/GMA500 chipset, with the more recent EMGD driver, I've converted one of my O2 Jogglers to be a touchscreen media player in the kitchen.…
A Walk in the Wind
A 15 minute walk in the winds currently battering Edinburgh. NOTE: This is a binaural recording; you MUST use headphones to get the proper effect!