Tony is a Geek

What usually happens around this time of year is that I get an escape from the daily work/work life demands & I remember the things that "I" want to spend my time working on. Sounds odd, doesn't it? "Isn't that what your 'free time' is for?".  LOL. you funny.  you no work for the company I work for. They own your soul & you have to worship the god of commerce, else they throw you to the pit of redundancy and no-one wants that now you've "got a short runway" in a post-50yr old life span. Wow, that digressed quick - I must stop watching Geoff buys cars on YouTube, he has a lot of answer for :-) So, back to the point - robots!  yes, I've been faffing about with robots in one shape or form since about, well, since I can remember really, dabbed a bit in the early 90's, mid-90's, then again in early/mid 2000's & then when OOPIC came out, I dabbled there & then the Arduino early days.  Did a load of stuff with

Mermaid... and not the Disney kind, the JavaScript kind:  https://mermaid.js.org/ For quite some time now I've been using draw.io / diagrams.net (instead of the previous usage of Visio that cost money from M$oft) Whilst I love using Draw.io - it is very flexible, it is great for visually describing what I need to express to other people in nice simple graphical representation ( as I have found no-one seems to want to READ anymore, they want videos, pictures / images or diagrams ), which makes life interesting doing my work / work job role, it does have some limitations.... and this is the same no matter what tool you use and that is keeping it updated / current and a single-source of truth. The other BONUS was that Draw.io did NOT require you to use an online service - you can download / install the software ( yes, I know, an alien concept for a certain Gen Z. population - but it has HUGE benefits that are not part of your world, ie. some of us aren't "connected 24/7&quo

  https://neal.fun/internet-artifacts/  It's a journey back in time to the beginnings of what has become a daily part of life for most of us today – the Internet. Neal has unearthed a few gems that might make some laugh or bring tears to their eyes. Somehow, the web used to be a better, more colourful, and more free place than it is today. But let's be optimistic. Someday, someone will look back at the 2020s and say:  Remember back in the good old days... No, no they won't.  Why not? well, people in general today (Gen Z's) are users and mostly not creators.* Well, that was a flaming generalistic statement to make & will probably get me 'cancelled' - however, it is a much deeper conversation starter that I'm not going to attempt to embrace in textual verbage here, instead enjoy the trip down memory lane: https://neal.fun/internet-artifacts/ go buy the guy a coffee too. *note the final date in the list... not much has happened really since 2007, has it?...

Why revival?  Well... apparently I did "some stuff" with my Atari ST back in 2017 and then again in 2021 ... and due to over-working on work/work stuff and not setting aside enough personal-time, the machines kind of moved further and further under piles of "stuff". ( yes, that is an original Sony AIBO ERS-111 on the shelf that I purchased back in 1999/2000 - that little dog is still more advanced than most of the latest "AI" technology in the market-place today ) Well, I decided to take 2 weeks off work. literally. off work.  It took a few days, okay, about 5, to totally disconnect and wind down and stop / not think about work/work related things.  During this time, I decided to "sort out the 16/32 bit room".  This was my old home/office, basically a large double-bedroom that a child of any age would absolutely love to have; however, I had managed to overfill it with "stuff" and it had become a mini-cave with very little or not desk s