Colin's Things that might be useful or interesting

We explore some green spaces in Edinburgh, from Dr Neil's garden in Duddingston and walk from Victoria Park in the north along an old railway line and visit the Water of Leith.

I have scanned in lots of 1990/2000s "Palmtop" magazines and list some of the articles within them, and their future predictions: "Do you remember when you didn't have a palmtop computer?

I was inspired after running photoshop on the same 60p chip as in a Raspberry Pi Pico.

I learned enough book binding skill to make a case for my new Xteink X4 e-reader.

We climbed around the clock tower of the old Portobello Police Station, to set the time and figure out how the chime mechanism worked.

How I am liking minidiscs and how I repaired some Sony portable players.

An example of making a web server that could be solar powered.

I had no luck with FreeCAD, so used Claude.ai to make a Javascript based CAD system.

I have a DEC VT320 video terminal, and I hooked it up to a Linux computer so I could write a blog post from it.

My notes on how I use emacs to publish this blog.

I try posting some photos I took for the first time.

Based on a discussion at the EdinburghJS meetup, what does it mean to have kind software, and software that lets you make personal maps?

A tale about how a group of people repaired something, and the hope that lots of groups of people doing small things can make the world much better.

I digitised a 1960s reel to reel tape about moon landings, and uploaded it to the Internet Archive.

Inspired by the Sony PCM1600 and early digital audio I tried to encode data by uploading a video of QR-Codes to YouTube.

I write about the ICL 2972 mainframe computer that ran the Scottish electricity supplier in the 1980s, and the building that houses it.

We mended our dishwasher and discovered the desginers had written their names inside.

Using a Pi Pico to make my own computer which generates video output.

Methven Simpson record shop in Edinburgh, recording records to a Tascam digital audio recorder and using icecast and liquidsoap software with a server to run an internet radio station.

Part 1 - how I repaired a record turntable.

Following on from my previous post, I connect the 1990s Psion 5mx computers to the internet.

I repaired some 1990s handheld computers and talk about this, and how I like these old machines.

Some notes on our experiments making apple juice and sharing it.

Hopefully a complete description of how to web able a knitting machine.

A writing experiment at writing about order and disorder, and feeling vulnerable in order to be creative.

During Lockdown in 2020 we ended up converting our electric bikes to run on solar power.

Some memories from my dad's work in the Scottish Grid Control about what it takes to keep us supplied with electricity.

I used a greaseweazle to extract data from a neighbour's floppy disks, and reverse engineered the data that was stored on them for him.

I wrote my own Meshtastic software in Rust and ran it on an STM32WL development board.

Cicely recreated her favourite childhood jumper, and I used OpenCV to help her extract the knitting pattern.

In the Edinburgh Hacklab we modified a Silver-Reed SK580 knitting machine to knit images, and got a robot to knit itself a scarf.

How I use emacs and org mode to take computer notes.