Tony is a Geek

I highly recommend signing up to the Pimoroni notification email system to be informed when RPi4 devices become available for sale. As some of you may know, getting hold of an RPi4 4GB/8GB device over the past 6+ months has been nearly impossible - you "could" go on eBay or Amazon and fork out £275 for one from a "squatter", but that's just insane, no RPi 4 project is worth that much. https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/raspberry-pi-4-essentials-kit?variant=39850460086355 So, I did the proper thing and I signed up to get informed and that's exactly what happened.  I received the email yesterday morning, I clicked on the link - I see that Pimoroni have the RPi4 4GB in stock for £54 (basic board), they are limiting purchasing to 1-device for 1-person (totally agree with this approach), so as to be fair to everyone....  A few clicks later and one is winging its way over: I now just have to remember what it was that I needed the RPi4 for in the first place!?!?!?!...

well, it's been a rather long time coming, but I've finally gotten around to getting another campervan / motorhome. I did have one back in the early 2000's and think I 'sold it/gave it away' around 2006.  It was an old 1980 VW T25, not the sexy curvy ones that everyone pays silly money for nowadays, but the boxy practical one.  Well, I say practical, it had the 2.0Ltr petrol engine in it that did about 15miles-per-gallon and weighed about 3-tonne! She was great though, we did drive her all around the country, from the edge of Cornwall, all around Scotland and back again - mostly in the rain! I did say, we would get a proper motorhome "shortly" afterwards..... errr.... well, time flies doesn't it! I did start to make serious enquiries in 2018 and was going to look at getting a motorhome at the end of 2019... and then COVID-19 kicked in (I so wish I'd just gotten a van at this point - it would have saved about £30,000!!!! oh well.... it is what it is...

Okay, so I posted a while back that I had a PICADE that I had built and I was very happy with, although it wasn't the same playing XEVIOUS on it as it was the original arcade machine. Well.....some time went by....I bought an arcade cabinet - well, I bought just the pre-cut wood (it took a while to be delivered but I got it in the end).  It also did not come with any fittings, fixtures or instructions, apparently this was so I could "customise" it as I wanted.... hmmmm.... as you'll see this meant having to layout the pieces of wood and attempt to figure out what went where and use masking tape to hold it together as I figured it out.  It stayed in this format in the middle of the lounge for a few weeks :-) Then I went to B&Q and finally got some screws (wrong size, so had to get more), got some space blocker thingies that you use in the kitchen cupboards and some other bits & bobs. All put together and up-right, it looked HUGE from this angle! I also had to p...

I'm a sucker for a small sized device that is useful.  But, this one is lovely.  I love the look and potential feel of the keys. https://github.com/penk/penkesu Click the LINK to find out more.  It's built using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 (with Wifi). It has portable battery and USB.  It has "those" keys..... lovely lovely lovely.... ...and it's has the STLs for doing some 3D printing.  I know what I'm doing in my week off in March! Do I need it? no. Do I want it? yes. Will I make it? yes. Will I use it? probably not? we'll see!

 what is real & what is hype? very good article to reset the ground truth.......  https://blogs.gartner.com/anthony_bradley/2022/02/08/what-is-ai-really-looking-behind-the-hype/ some very valid & well thought out points that I totally agree with. A.I. = X Artificial intelligence is a computer program that accepts inputs and infers desired outputs using rules-based or statistics-based algorithms. M.L. = Machine Learning More accurately, machine learning is a computer program based on mathematical algorithms that use an example data set to determine the variable input parameters that deliver a desired output Artificial Neural Networks In business terms, neural networks are computer programs that break big problems into small pieces and aggregate the results to find an acceptable solution. Model Training In business terms, model training is using numerous examples of a desired result, most often in the form of large data sets, to build a mathematical model that can m...

So, I finally managed to take a week off... no work stuff was done during this time period ( at all ).  Very hard to resist, but I forced the scenario.  How?  Well, I took a photo of my home/office work desk area, attempting to fix two old PCs and get the netgear pci cards to work ( I failed ).  How did this prevent me from doing work/work?  Well, here is the photo in question: ....and when I looked at it I realised I had subconsciously made a "Sam cave" ( rewind many years ago to a nice old gentleman who I once knew, ex-marconi, fixer of PCs, loved drinking guinness / whiskey, wore sandles all year around, bearded, pot belly, coded in C - the stereotype before the stereotype was made cool - he had a home/office that had a desk and his chair in the center, everything else was stacked around him.  There was only his chair, that, I'd like to believe is so that you could enter the room, stand near the door, but not get too comfy or outstay your 10 minute welco...

I've broken my annual pattern of going all retro over the Dec/Jan period of time.  don't know why. Maybe I've lost my mojo? maybe the COVID-19 stuff has been a bit draining? maybe I've spent far too long of my spare time doing all the paperwork to apply for this (  https://www.credly.com/org/ibm/badge/architect-profession-certification-level-3-thought-leader   Which auto-grants me to be certified as an Open Group "Distinguished Architect": https://www.credly.com/org/the-open-group/badge/professional-certification-level-3-distinguished-architect  )  Yes, even though I've been working at the top of my game for the past 30years in the IT industry and have successfully delivered FOAK (first of a kind) awesome projects around the world - I still have to justify my existence to my employers.  No, I do not believe it is an "age" thing, even though I agree I am getting on a bit now, I'm still skilled up with all the relevant know-how, mainly because ...

I'm a bit of a CyberPunk geek.... you may have guessed that already. However, just watched the first 2 of these and man, did they take me back in time! Wow! I think I've had pretty much every one of those dodgy movies on VHS back in the early 90's, as for the games, had a few - didn't even know that a load of those even existed, life could have been very different had I known.... anyway, watch, observe and appreciate losing yourself for a few hours in these very well made videos about Cyberpunk. Part 1:   Part 2:   Part 3:   ....and now we will have the Omniverse / Metaverse.... looks like the old Cyberpunks are going to get their way in the end... dystopian future being jacked into a pointless existence of digital mayhem... oh well, let's join in and break some rules :-D

 I'll post an update about Metaverse later on and all the fun and games (and vapourware etc...) but for now I'll post this REALLY interesting video from NVIDIA (yes, that NVIDIA), wow! they have been very busy in the background.... ....OmniVerse is where it's going to be at - for Industry and Businesses...  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhDiaUL_RaM&t=2964s I just fired up the Unity Hub on my Mac - it needed a bit of an update, it's been 2years since I last used it and it was 6years since I originally installed it - wow, time flies.... and this is the thing to start learning....if you think HTML, then for this new Omniverse, the language to use is called USD: https://developer.nvidia.com/usd

 okay...okay...okay...so I managed to get Secret of Monkey Island running and working from the UltraSATAN disk drive - all is good with that. Then I thought, maybe I should get some of the "other" things I have lying around working too. Such as the NetUSBee that plugs in as a cartridge, here it is plugged into the 520 ST (with 4MB), although I did transfer over to use the 1040 ST (with 1MB) shortly afterwards: I found an old TPLink wifi extender device, that I could plug the Cat 5 cable into (and then downstairs, I had the other end plugged into the wifi router) and there is the device itself, not much to look at, but does what it was built for: This is a great little device that I obviously bought many years ago, got working once and then "forgot: about it.  It is basically a network card, plug in a CAT5/6 cable and you're good to go.  It has a couple of USB connections, someone wrote a USB Mouse driver for it, but doesn't look like anyone got any further with o...