A couple of years ago I saw that somebody on the internet had made a Slow Movie Player, and that piqued my interest. The basic idea is that your favourite film is displayed on a screen at a really slow framerate. Eink displays are ideal for this as they use no power except for when […]
During the 2021 lockdown I started a laser cutting project I’d wanted to do for a while. It turned out that the research on this went much much deeper than I first expected. You probably recognise this image, and think you know where it comes from. But what if I told you the story goes […]
A recent discussion started with the simple question “When is it New Year?”. Well, 1st January, right? The stroke of midnight on 31st December? Depends where you are on the planet? [depends what planet [if any] you are on]. It depends on which timezone you are in. So, we settled on it being at the […]
Yesterday this tweet appeared on my Twitter timeline [embedTweet url=”538666941335236610″] Now, being the geeky retro Sinclair fanboy I am, I read it, understood it, and retweeted it. Obviously.
As a child growing up in the 1970s, I had no idea of what the future held. I didn’t know if Mr Benn would be able to get back from his adventures, or if Scooby Doo could catch the Evil Swamp Monster, or even if we were going through the round or square window in PlaySchool. […]
So, having had a few fairly intensive days working on PCB design for my RC2014 computer, today was pretty much a day off. Apart from daily household chores, all I got done today was this; Now, to the untrained eye, that may look like a schematic layout for 4 8×8 LED matrix displayed connected to […]
Ok, so tomorrow the Summer RetroChallenge 2014 starts, so I thought it would be a good idea to bring you up to speed with what I’ve got so far so that you know where I’m starting from. I will also outline where I’ll be taking things for the RetroChallenge as well as where this project […]
I have always wanted to enter Retro Challenge, ever since I first heard of it nearly 24 hours ago. I followed a link that took me to http://retrochallenge.net/ and I read up on what it was all about, scrutinised the rules and checked out what others were doing. I quickly came to the conclusion that […]
When I bought my Sinclair C5, it came without many parts, such as wheels, motor, batteries etc. Seeing that my Robomow robotic lawn mower had all of these, I hit upon a foolproof plan! You should see the out-take video!
Back in July 2013, someone in the office mentioned the beautiful iconic 80’s disaster that is the Sinclair C5. Inevitably someone asked what they’re worth now, and apart from the fact they cost £400 new, was dropped to £199 shortly after and then the price plummeted like a stone, I had no idea. So I […]
In posts to come I’ll go in to some details about the breadboard Z80 computer I built recently, but, in the mean time, here’s a video that Computerphile made about it Be sure to check out Computerphiles Youtube channel too!
Whilst clearing out my wardrobe recently, I discovered I had 40 ties. Most of which I no longer wore. Some I have never worn. And some that I wouldn’t be seen dead in. But rather than just dispose of them all in one go, I decided to give them each one last outing, and I […]
I have seen the future of computers. Yes, really I have. What would you say if I said the future would be something about the size of a pad of paper. Which runs off of 4 AA batteries, giving it about 20 hours of use or 100 days of standby. Storage is solid state with […]
A machine is a device that does something useful, right? Well, what about if the thing it does is useless? Well, here is my useless machine