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Spark Core-based proxy - 10 Aug 2015 C  Hardware  Python 

Regular readers of this blog will have seen my earlier post on Dalek remote control where I used a Spark Core to connect the Dalek’s remote control to the internet. However, in the second post I noted how hotel Wi-Fi is basically evil, and so I ran into all manner of problems with connecting the Spark to the Wi-Fi in…

Automatic scheduling of people and rooms - 14 Jul 2015 Case Studies  Technology 

So we’ve recently been doing some work for a large public-facing organisation regarding some of their issues with scheduling. They’ve got a large number of staff (tens of thousands) and a lot of locations (hundreds), and they need to do good scheduling for when/where members of the public should come in and talk to them. Now,…

Telepresence Dalek: Part 2 – Video - 25 Jun 2015 Convention  Hardware  Javascript 

Previously I wrote about the remote control parts of the Telepresence Dalek, but that’s only half the problem. The other half is video, both to provide a view of the Dalek’s PoV for the operator and to display the operator’s face on the Dalek. I’d been thinking about this problem for several months before actually getting…

Coney: RabbitMQ config tool - 27 May 2015 Clojure  RabbitMQ  Tools 

A while back, I was playing around with a series of tools to test RabbitMQ in various related configurations. Now, one thing that these tools had in common, was that the users they were running as only had enough permissions to publish or consume messages, but not to configure the queues/exchange/bindings. This isn’t a common…

Telepresence Dalek: Part 1 – Remote control - 18 Apr 2015 Convention  Hardware  Howto  Javascript  Python 

Earlier this month, I went to a science-fiction convention by the name of Dysprosium. At said convention was a competition called “Dalekdrome”, with the idea of taking remote controlled Daleks and then customising them. When I was first told about this, I was at another convention where someone was attending via a telepresence robot, and so…

Tumblr blog generator - 28 Feb 2015 Clojure  Rant  Web 

TL;DR version – OAuth sucks, Tumblr’s API has some notable faults. So, a while back I came across the “dice shaming” meme. For those of you who haven’t seen this before, or who aren’t RPG players and so don’t know what’s going on, it’s a bunch of posts of people going “I rolled my dice…

Convention over configuration: other opinions - 22 Feb 2015

Part of me was idly thinking about the modern idea of Convention over configuration and idly wondering what some languages' anthropomorphic opinions on more important things than convention are..

Should I give up on Doctor Who? - 12 Oct 2014

So, I'm currently 3 episodes behind on Doctor Who, and I'm wondering if it's worth it anymore. To give some background, one of the changes I've been making over the last few years is to give up on TV series when I'm just not enjoying them anymore, rather than continuing out of sheer stubbornness.

NineWorlds 2014 writeup - 13 Aug 2014 Convention 

Despite having had the last couple of days off, I hadn't managed a NineWorlds writeup yet. That I basically went plonk on Monday is part of the reason, but hey, here I am now. When you look at the list of stuff I did, you may understand. Also, this is probably missing many things I can't remember. Note to self: write notes.

Things made this weekend: Beeminder failure calendar - 11 May 2014 Python  Web 

In my ongoing attempts to use various tools to try and reduce my levels of distraction and akrasia, I've been using Beeminder. It's a pretty simple service. To use it, you need a goal for a repeating task (e.g. doing the washing-up) with the following characteristics...

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