Tony is a Geek

If it's a clear night outside and you have the opportunity, it's always a nice thing to take time to look up at the stars above and put things into perspective. Last night, Venus was shining away super bright over to the west.  Quite a few normal satellites criss-crossing overhead - I must live on the M4/M25 crossroads as there are quite a lot going over my house! and then, just for a treat, there are these little beauties who zoom overhead making a great scene: https://findstarlink.com/ If someone hasn't heard of them, or even know about them - that's quite a lot of people, to be fair, then it's a great wind up (in the current climate), that the Aliens are driving in single file and making their way over to London, oh look.... there they go....  :-D You can select to see where they are in real-time, or see the Visible Times and you can plan when to go out into the garden.   have fun! UPDATE: Found a great website that shows you all satellites in 3D...

Those people that have known me for quite some time, know that I don't just do work-work.  I used to.  Oh, yes....I used to do that a lot.  I'm probably from the generation of IT guys that screwed it all up for the newer generation.  Why's that? Well, IT was fascinating in the late 80s and all the way through the 90s....the possibilities, the basic-ness of it all.  Yes, you as a single person "could" do it all.  you could be the person that knew about hardware, knew about infrastructure, could make your own 10-base-2 (or was it 10?) cables (the one's that used TV aerial cable), before cat5 cables took over - but hey, you still did that too.  You knew how to network PCs together, different network cards, token networks connecting to the 10-base-2/10/T (whatever), how to configure Windows or even Novell Netware (wow, there's a blast from the past for you) to use that networking....and you even knew how to write code, so you could write the application...

....and other grouchy grumblings from an old IT guy :-D Okay, first I'll say, I've been knocking around with IT since the early days, yes, yes, yes, that means I'm biased, IT racist (if you will) and very set in my ways about how things should and should not work with IT..... in fact, I'm not.  I'm actually quite the opposite.  I'm very flexible and open-minded.  That's how I've managed to stay relevant over the past 25+ years.  I've evolved with IT......where it makes sense. I've been cautious when I needed to, I've thrown caution to the wind on the odd occasion and just went with the flow to see where we'd end up. However.  All this new nonsense about A.I (Artificial Intelligence) and the term "Data Scientist" as a job role just rubs salt into a paper cut for me. 1st you are not a scientist.  yes, okay, you probably were very good as maths (correct spelling) and statistics at school, did that weird class you could d...

https://youtu.be/iEha--u0vB0 ah, my fave, Kali Linux.... (usage from 3:18) but if you cannot be patient and watch a video. go visit:  https://github.com/sherlock-project/sherlock git clone blah blah blah make sure you've got python3 installed (yeah, I know I grouch about python, but sometimes, like this case, it's useful) OR if even doing that is too much.... go visit:  https://elody.com/scenario/plan/16/ and do it live in a web-browser. Now...stick some ML around that and a decent application and think of the possibilities of how this could be (mis)used  ;-) happy hacking.

Buy a device from here (or you could make your own from parts, it's all open source) Pretty useful usage of an ESP32 IoT device = Arduino..... they forgot the whole "watch" part, but the next time you're in a 'chosen establishment' (does anyone visit real banks anymore?) you could have a little probe around to see what insecure wifi is hanging around.... or even just annoy your "friends" on the train... "fun for all the family" :-D

So, I've had Project 'O' on the back burner now for well over a year, I even started making headway around August 2019 ( for a week, during a vacation )....and well, yep, the usual happened.  I let myself get drawn into doing way too much stuff in the work/work environment and I have to sacrifice all my own inventions or innovations for the sake of the day job.  ( One day, I'll maybe get that changed, but I'm not holding out much hope, but we'll see ) Well, it's another vacation week, where I'm not actually vacationing ( again ), I'm going through a list of things that I wanted to do in 'my time'.  That means: 1) I've purchased a new 3D printer, I've built said 3D printer. I've had 4 failed attempts at printing with the ABS that I purchased 2-3 years ago (? cannot recall when was, but they've been sitting all sealed up in a box along with about 50 servo's that I was going to use for my robot )...spent a few lon...

This is pretty awesome idea for a Raspberry Pi: I can picture using it and leaving it in the greenhouse to monitor all my plants this summer. https://back7.co/home/raspberry-pi-recovery-kit Case can be bought here:  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pelican-1300-Camera-Case-Silver/dp/B00009XVKV/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=Pelican+1300+Camera+Case+With+Foam+%28Silver%29&qid=1581859455&sr=8-3 Keyboard from here: https://5z6p.com/products/plaid-through-hole/ https://mechboards.co.uk/product/plaid-ortho-kit/ and all the extra bits, I can now print on my wonderful new 3D printer!

Okay, so I got very excited a few years back and bought myself a 3D printer , loads of PLA and ABS reels and I even mostly build a 3D human head , fitted with servo's and web cams, hooked it up to an RPi and had it as an assistant of sorts....but I really wanted to print it in a more flexible material. Then I got very frustrated with all the messing around trying to 'level the bed', so much so that after re-trying simple prints over and over and over again, I just moved the 3D printer to the other side of the room to gather dust. I thought, I'll wait for an automated self-levelling version to come out and be at the right price and I'll get one of those. Well, guess what?! Yep...that just happened! I just ordered myself one of these little beauties....it'll arrive tomorrow: Good thing is, I have a week off (week after next), so I think there will be much 3D printing going on that week!  I've got lots of things that need to be printed.

At some point or other, we've all thought about it..... "This game is so buggy, I could have done better", "I wonder if I could write this game?", "If only I had time to sit down and make a game, I'd make it like this, only better", "Wow, do you remember Doom, I bet that was millions of lines of Assembler - there's no way I could make something like that nowadays". Well, you may just be in luck.  Here a link to a FREE DOWNLOAD (yes, free, as in beer) to a book that takes you through how to build a First person shooter using Unity . Those that know, know that I've been a fan of Unity for the past, well, for a long time! I've built 3D digital human assistants, I've build mobile applications using it, I've even written the odd game using it.... but I've never really had the time (or patience, to be fair) to sit down and make a first person shooter. Well, as I say, click HERE to either download the free...