Welcome on NCoT Tech

Due to the untimely demise of my main PC, and it being the time of year where I have to get my car serviced, there will be a short break before my next video comes out.

Writing games is hard enough by itself, requiring a lot of different skills.

Early computers weren’t powerful enough to draw full-screen moving graphics, so they had to use clever tricks.

The end result is a fairly pretty scrolling text routine that demonstrates how to draw multiple bitmaps to the Agon Light’s display using VDP commands.

I bought a pair of cheapo outdoor solar lights from Amazon.

I bought some of those Sonoff BASIC smart switches off Amazon and flashed them with Tasmota.

My aim is not to simply program the Agon Light by cloning the Windows 3.11 screensavers, but to learn how to program the Agon Light at all.

This is where I figure out a simpler way to make my videos, and it seems really obvious when I explain it.

Easter eggs are usually hidden inside our games and software, but did you know there are some hidden inside the tools and languages used to make that software?

It’s my opinion that if you’re going to fill your home with smart devices, they need to be easy to control and monitor.

It’s the Easter holidays and I’ve got two weeks off work.

Let’s celebrate #piday in this appropriately short video by writing some #python programs to calculate Pi.

I’ve been having a bit of a play around with my Agon Light, trying to come up with some ideas for a future video.

Dive into the exciting world of DIY hardware hacking.

I’m working on getting a joystick port working on my Agon Light.

Today, we’re diving into the world of cellular automata.

In preparation for my next video I’ve been tidying up some cellular automata code I wrote.

Instead of bashing away in BASIC, it’s possible to do some coding in C on the Agon Light.

Hello everyone!

It’s Halloween, programming is an art form and there’s a darker side to it.

I have a whole house battery solar system with 3kW of roof mounted panels and 9.6kWh of battery storage.

Let’s look at FORTH, the obscure stack based programming language that nobody seems to use.

Some more stats on my home solar setup now it’s autumn and daylight seems to be a distant memory.

Just how did 8 bit computers like the ZX Spectrum or BBC Micro manage to cram an entire programming language into their tiny systems, and still have space for the user’s programs?

Is it self aware?

How to remove stupid “It looks like you’’re using an ad blocker” message from websites, and why they’re a stupid idea in the first place.

Here’s how my solar panels and battery system have been performing this month.

Let’s jack into the ‘net, surf the Information Superhighway and go visit the global village in this video taking a look at mid 90’s Internet culture.

Let’s go right inside a CPU and watch it execute code at the transistor level!

It’s a crappy cloudy day today.

What happens when you set out to build a pocket calculator?

How did the 1880 US Census and the end of World War 2 lead to the invention of the computer?

The RC2014 is a DIY Z80 based computer that talks to the outside world using serial comms.

Understand the concept of tiling a plane by arranging regular tiles in a systematic manner, creating visually pleasing patterns.

I replace the noisy fans in my hybrid solar inverter with quieter ones.

So I joined the Ryobi battery cult, but since their batteries are expensive I did the obvious thing and bought some off Amazon from random third party companies.

I use a Raspberry Pi Pico and turn it into a serial terminal for my RC2014.

The inverter I have for my DIY Solar setup is a noisy thing.

Our energy prices are ridiculous and even taking into account recent “world events” I find it hard to understand why electricity is so expensive.

You know this Mastodon thing everyone’s going apeshit over?

I am not a creative person, and I’d quite like to change this.

Let’s make the Internet of Things a bit more useful, and less like The Internet of Turd by hacking some smart plugs so they no longer phone home to China.

There’s a few of these types of video floating around YouTube at the moment.

Picture the modern world, but without Windows, PCs or Apple.

I go eBay shopping and buy something that might be useful in future videos.

The modern Internet is full of nasty things, most users need protecting from themselves.

Today on “weird crap that seems undocumented on the Internet” we have DNS that doesn’t want to resolve and DHCP that is acting weird.

This week I have literally been hacking smart home devices.

Let’s briefly look back at last year and see what things were like, then look forward to the coming year and what I want to achieve.

But this is not a post about that, that post was great, it was long and descriptive and kind of amusing to read.