Tony is a Geek

 So.......I took the plunge a month or so ago and decided to just buy a fully modded Atari ST 520STfm - except this one is a little different, this one has 4MB of RAM (instead of the normal 0.5MB) has some other internal upgrades and TOS v1.04.  It also has an UltraSATAN HDD plugged into the back allowing it to have a HDD up to 2GB - more than enough for the entire amount of software EVER released for this device. I found a big box of Double Density disks in the loft - yes the rare old 720KB versions, not to be mistaken for the PC disks that have 2 holes in them.  Yes, the old trick of putting tape over the hole to allow formatting back to a 720KB disk still works.  However, going through a lot of the disks has been somewhat of a bust - a lot of duff disks, which is a shame as a lot of them were original software. Ah, ha.... I then checked out my trusty 4TB Backup HDD and found that I had about 1.8GB of zipped .st files in a sub-folder from 2013....I must have been b...

Well.....I seem to have made "some" progress...of sorts.  I've managed to get the turtlebot3 software running correctly on the robot itself.  I have a Virtual Ubuntu 20.04 machine running ROS2 foxy edition and using all the OOTB stuff it seems to be behaving itself. I have created a map using SLAM and used the Navigator2 to click around and get the turtlebot3 to plot a course and move around avoiding obstacles as well as "new" obstacles, like the cat suddenly appearing in front of it.  It seems to handle it well. ( A bit like a certain "Routing Widget v2.1" ;-) ) However...moving over into the ROS2 coding side of things, I had to go back into refresher-land for a day or two (I really do recall doing all of this back in 2017/2018, the memories are still there!). If I do a direct call from the command-line: ros2 topic pub --once /cmd_vel geometry_msgs/msg/Twist "{linear: {x: 2.0, y: 0.0, z: 0.0}, angular: {x: 1.0, y: 0.0, z: 1.8}}" publisher: b...

 Proper retro-throwback this one.  Some of us may remember the glorious (no they weren't) days of text adventure games. Yes, the days of just having textual descriptions written out before you and a limited set of instructions you could perform, such as >go north and >pick up axe or even >use axe on elf If you had graphics, they were very limited and crude.  I do recall a game from around 1985-ish called: The Heroes of Khan I got stuck for soooooo long before someone else told me, >use tinder on gas (such a potential different meaning today) and I then managed to get a bit further, but then gave up and moved onto other things, like playing Manic Miner. Anyway, what I was meant to be doing was referencing this "new" website that allows you to build and run text adventures all within your web browser - you can now play them anywhere you have a fixed keyboard (as you have to be able to type). It's called https://adventuron.io/   Looks like a nifty, albeit n...

  Check out the article - it's only a 6 minute read, but it's worth it. https://sdsclub.com/21st-century-ai-biggest-achievements/ https://sdsclub.com/21st-century-ai-biggest-achievements/ Summary: GPT-3 – The Language of AI Healthcare and Drug Discovery AI Self-driving cars (driverless car or autonomous car) Virtual assistance, security, and surveillance technologies Chatbots are soooooo 2017/2018 - they've had their time getting the technology and concepts under peoples/companies noses, now we should be striving for more, doing more, stretching our innovations and minds more. Roll on the next 10 years...

 I originally ordered the RPi4 version; however I was contacted by Sparkfun.com to say that was not in stock and there was a min. of 2 weeks lead time due to worldwide delivery delays etc... Initially, I thought, "tch! typical!", then the nice support person asked if I wanted to use an RPI3 version instead, as they had 1 of those in stock and basically the kit is exactly the same, it's just a different RPi. Well....I already have an RPi4 inside the Robot Dog/Cat from Freenove....so, I could just swap that out if I really needed the performance....so, I agreed (with a little discount ;-) ) and well, the TurtleBot3 arrived the next day. Here's some images of me being on conference calls and making the TurtleBot3 on my home/work desk - it was pretty simple/easy - however, my only observation was the lack of clear instructions that should show putting little nuts into the bottom/insert of the PCB board holders, once I figured that out all the PCB boards were then nice and...

 Okay, I have decided to treat myself and have ordered on of these.  It's a TurtleBot3: Yes, I know/appreciate that I've got most of these "bits" in various forms and could probably have hacked them together from junk already in my possession, however, I have booked a week off (in a few weeks time) and after I've done the gardening (assuming it doesn't rain non-stop), I don't want to spend all week trying to get the hardware to work before moving onto doing the useful software. So.... I bought one of these with all the bits already included.  Yes, I still need to bolt it all together, but that's about an hour (tops). Yes....that is a LIDAR on the top.... and yes, I can include an RPi camera in the middle section.  I did order it from robosavvy.com in the UK, however the RPi4 version was out-of-stock with a minimum of 2 weeks lead time... but they did have an RPI3 version available.... well, I have a "spare RPi4" and I checked... it's just...

 It's a nice idea. Body structure reminds me of a hoover / dyson style design, so should be pretty good on flat-ish surfaces. That tablet head though...very much reminds me of my wifes Yoga tablet tacked on top: I'm not going to go down the usual road of Amazon / Siri conspiracy stuff and privacy issues blah blah blah.... no, I don't have any of the shouting / listening devices in my house, mainly because if I want to find out something I have these old things called "books" and I know how to type to search in DuckDuckGo... it's not quicker to speak and most certainly don't have things connected up to a Ring / Nest or anything stupid like that.  I'm not security certified for nothing you know :-)  it is soooooo easy to hack those things to get into the network and once in... whatever is connected to the WiFi is now connected to me...hey, Astro can I now control you and wander around the house looking for the nice / expensive items, if there aren't ...

 saw this the other day and I genuinely loved it - I thought I was one of only a few (maybe I am?) who knew this level of historic connectivity.  love the narrative. well presented. Please, spend the time to give it a watch....it is geeky, but also educational.

 From darkness into light OR light into darkness.... I'll let you decide. btw - a lot of people have been working from home during the 2020 covid-19 lockdown, unfortunately not me... I was still working onsite, today, however I get to work from home!  So, it was time to tidy-up (happens every few years) and now I have room to actually "see" the desk and have place to put my elbows! (panoramic image)

 Sometimes life / universe throws lemons at you.  So what do you do? Stand up straight and accept a lemon or two to the head / leg / knee-cap and move on with life, or, curl up into a ball get lemon juice squashed all over you? No, I have no idea what or why I'm talking about lemons either. What I wanted to post was that I had a mechanical failure occur in my (very expensive) custom car.  It did not "look" like a lot of damage, but as with most things in life, looks can be deceiving....  The infamous quote of, "it could have been worse" is not helpful and for an analytical brain that goes off pondering all of the potential outcomes of actions, this is really not helpful at all. Here's a photo of the aforementioned car on a recovery truck (that I REALLY want to purchase!), as you can see it is awesome on so many levels, not only can you load one vehicle onto it, you can load another one underneath...... OR, you can hoist one vehicle up in the air and do inspe...