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Programming posts

Generating Beatnik code - 23 Mar 2017 Esolangs  Programming  Rust 

Beatnik is an esoteric programming language that’s been recently amusing me (as they occasionally do). The core idea is that words in the source code are interpreted as their Scrabble scores, and those scores then do things (mostly involving messing with a stack). This leads then to the possibility of an alternate form of the language,…

Using the BBC micro:bit with PlatformIO - 28 Aug 2016 C  Hardware  Programming  Tools 

I recently acquired a micro:bit, the new BBC device intended for helping computer education. After a bit of delay, they’ve finally starting shipping the device, and now members of the public like myself can grab one. So, why this device in the middle of a sea of other options in the modern embedded environment? Well,…

Android Postcode app - 26 Sep 2010 Android  Programming  Technology 

I’ve been playing around with Android development recently, and one of the apps is now worth sharing with everyone else. It’s not particularly complex, but last I looked, there wasn’t an app to do this: tell me what my postcode is. Given you’re holding a phone that knows where it is, and that can talk…

“Nearby art”: using the V&A API and geolocation - 16 Jul 2010 Programming  Rant 

A little while back, I was informed that the V&A had an API. To be honest, my first response to this was “why on earth?”. There’s been a few similar APIs coming out recently from organisations, with some sort of “build it and they’ll come” expectations i.e. expecting that all they have to do is…