benjamin.computer2024-03-11HDMI Compatible PMOD for your FPGA2024-03-12HDMI Compatible PMOD for your FPGABuilding an HDMI PMOD for FPGA Dev boards18Running BirdNet 24/7 in a different way.2024-01-09Running BirdNet 24/7 in a different way.Playing around with a fun A.I - Birdnet673D Printing Bee Spacers2023-11-113D Printing Bee SpacersUsing new tech with old tech.87I built a mechanical trommel2023-10-11I built a mechanical trommelSieving compost has never been easier135Profiling Python programs promptly2023-09-19Profiling Python programs promptlyI've been looking at speeding up some of my python programs.120Get in the sea Arduino!2023-07-05Get in the sea Arduino!Working on an arduino system that listens for marine mammals78How to PhD, probably.2023-05-14How to PhD, probably.I've managed to (almost) finish a PhD in A.I. and microscopy.91An A.I. Christmas Message2022-12-06An A.I. Christmas MessageFor our sibling santa this year, I made an AI message117My approach to the passing of Elizabeth II2022-09-13My approach to the passing of Elizabeth IIMy approach to the passing of Elizabeth II60Multiply - a book about calculators I helped create2022-08-17Multiply - a book about calculators I helped createI've co-edited and designed a book about a collection of calculators130Assembly on the ZX Spectrum - Part 2 - Field-FX Demo at EMFCamp2022-06-08Assembly on the ZX Spectrum - Part 2 - Field-FX Demo at EMFCampI wrote a demo for the Field-FX Demo Party94FPGA Demo for Revision 20222022-05-18FPGA Demo for Revision 2022We entered the Wild Demo this year with our unique, homebrew FPGA board136Assembly on the ZX Spectrum - Part 12022-04-22Assembly on the ZX Spectrum - Part 1My first post on how to program the ZX Spectrum 48K63Writing. From Science Papers to Roleplay Games.2021-11-30Writing. From Science Papers to Roleplay Games.A blog post about writing55Making a computer game from scratch2021-10-30Making a computer game from scratchI've started to make a computer game completely from scratch. Should be fun!123Upgrading an Amiga 500 for today2021-09-30Upgrading an Amiga 500 for todayModernising a proper classic computer for funtimes today106Building an FPGA Board for pretty VGA graphics2021-08-30Building an FPGA Board for pretty VGA graphicsBuilding an FPGA Board for pretty VGA graphics96Microscopes meet Artificial Intelligence2021-07-30Microscopes meet Artificial IntelligenceI've been working hard on my PhD and here is the first result36The Home of Golf meets the Nintendo Famicom2021-06-30The Home of Golf meets the Nintendo FamicomI bought an old Famicom in Japan with a curious golf cartridge. So lets play golf on the Old Course131The ZX Spectrum 48K Today2021-05-28The ZX Spectrum 48K TodayI never had a ZX Spectrum back in the day, so I bought one and decided to modernise it.86A modern take on the plague doctor mask.2021-04-26A modern take on the plague doctor mask.A modern-ish plague doctor mask using neopixel rings, bluetooth and an android application54Building a Polybius Arcade Cabinet2021-03-28Building a Polybius Arcade CabinetPolybius is a gaming urban legend, serving as inspiration for my own arcade cabinet build.33Shutr, my own flickr replacement - Part 12021-02-25Shutr, my own flickr replacement - Part 1Images are still a pain to create, organise and get them to where they need to go.6My deepfake alternative Queen's speech2021-01-18My deepfake alternative Queen's speechI've always wanted to make a comedy Queen's speech. Now we have the technology.40Rust, Python and Fish2020-12-12Rust, Python and FishMixing Rust, Python and Poisson Sampling for improving A.I.31Making a VR tour of Antarctica2020-11-24Making a VR tour of AntarcticaFinally finished a long dormant video project. A 360 video tour of the Antarctic Penninsula.108Blocking Big Battery Booms! (with bootloaders)2020-10-21Blocking Big Battery Booms! (with bootloaders)I spent three months helping to build the software for a battery management system32The Holy Trinity of Wireguard, hosts and PiHole2020-09-17The Holy Trinity of Wireguard, hosts and PiHoleI've been paying a lot of attention to VPNs, trackers and DNS. Here are some tips for wireguard, PiHole and hosts.30The Gamemaker's Toolkit GameJam 20202020-08-16The Gamemaker's Toolkit GameJam 2020During lockdown, I entered my first ever gamejam. Here is what I learned.111My First Demoscene production2020-07-15My First Demoscene productionFinally got around to joining the Demoscene with my first production.109Generating Statistics in A.I. and Science2020-06-09Generating Statistics in A.I. and ScienceHow I generate stats for our experimental A.I runs in microscopy science.9Visualising the PyTorch Compute Graph for Bug Fixing2020-05-15Visualising the PyTorch Compute Graph for Bug FixingPyTorch tends not to warn you about mistakes in your graph, so I made a quick tool to see what is going on, under the bonnet.129Making your terminals a bit nicer2020-04-23Making your terminals a bit nicerI'd never heard of neofetch and powershell before but they've made things just that little bit nicer.72How I do imaging for my PhD research2020-03-29How I do imaging for my PhD researchI use a lot of images, programs and scripts in my research. Some of this might be useful for others working in science.115Turning old mini-routers into useful remote cameras2020-02-18Turning old mini-routers into useful remote camerasI've finally got around to using up a load of TP-Link routers and webcams to make something useful.68What makes a computer role-playing game great?2020-01-12What makes a computer role-playing game great?I've been playing a lot of computer roleplay games, but what makes a good one?20Cell segmentation at The Alan Turing Institute2019-12-20Cell segmentation at The Alan Turing InstituteI was fortunate to be selected to take part in the December Data Study Group at the Alan Turing Institute35Why I'm not a Hackspace member anymore.2019-11-17Why I'm not a Hackspace member anymore.I've been thinking a lot about Hackspaces recently22The first year of a Biology and A.I. PhD2019-10-21The first year of a Biology and A.I. PhDWhat is the first year of a science PhD like?50Retro computers, vegetarianism and booze in Japan2019-09-10Retro computers, vegetarianism and booze in JapanA computer nerd's guide to travelling Japan.51Rust reverses research ruin2019-07-31Rust reverses research ruinSo I've been learning Rust and I've found a great use for it in real research.73Debugging neural networks2019-04-02Debugging neural networksDebugging neural networks with a little pdb and pytorch88Surface mount soldering with BGA and hot-plates2019-03-05Surface mount soldering with BGA and hot-platesI've been learning about BGA, surface mount soldering and hotplates79Using PyTorch to find the orientation of a torus2018-12-12Using PyTorch to find the orientation of a torusI've started working with PyTorch to find 3D parameters of objects in images81Planescape Torment, Adam Curtis and Gaming today2018-12-07Planescape Torment, Adam Curtis and Gaming todayI just finished Planescape Torment. It seems very relevant, especially today.99The Flickr diaspora, website bloat and what is important.2018-11-17The Flickr diaspora, website bloat and what is important.Flickr has changed. So has the web. I've had some thoughts and I think things need to change.133Hacking the Nintendo Powerglove2018-10-15Hacking the Nintendo PowergloveEveryone loves the 80s! Everyone loves Cyberpunk! So lets hack on the Powerglove! It's so bad!89Tips for a budding Masters Student in Bioinformatics2018-10-02Tips for a budding Masters Student in BioinformaticsSo I've submitted the thesis, had the viva, gotten the result and it's the end of a two year stint at trying bioinformatics. How did it go?37The Cybar at EMF 20182018-09-10The Cybar at EMF 2018The first themed area at Electromagnetic Field Camp - The Cyberpunk Cybar116Metaballs on the Arty FPGA2018-07-04Metaballs on the Arty FPGAI've been working with my friend Will on some FPGA graphics demos. This one draws metaballs - a funky oldskool effect15Sequence classification and labelling for protein loops2018-06-11Sequence classification and labelling for protein loopsSequences appear a lot in biology, as you might expect. A and C and T and G, or ASP, GLY, VAL, PRO and many others. Looking for patterns in this data is half of the battle. Looking for patterns in the mountain of data is a herculian task. No wonder we are trying to teach machines to look for patterns.56Hydroponics build with the EMF Tilda badge2018-05-07Hydroponics build with the EMF Tilda badgeI decided to improve on my old hydroponics setup, with some proper pumps, pipework and the EMF tilda badge.27Attempting to modify e-coli with CRISPR in my bathroom2018-04-20Attempting to modify e-coli with CRISPR in my bathroomI figured I'd see what all these wetlab biologists are getting up to and give it a go myself.4Reading ROMs from a scanning electron microscope2018-04-05Reading ROMs from a scanning electron microscopeFor some reason, HacDC has a scanning electron microscope, and it might just work48Protein Loops in Tensorflow - A.I Bio Part 22018-03-16Protein Loops in Tensorflow - A.I Bio Part 2How can we go from a list of amino acids to a full 3D structure, using just a neural network?16Writing a electron microscopy python plugin for ChimeraX2018-02-26Writing a electron microscopy python plugin for ChimeraXElectron microscopy data is getting pretty big in the bioinformatics world at the moment. As a side project, I've been porting some EM software to ChimeraX.11Learning how to AI and Biology at the same time - Part 12018-02-10Learning how to AI and Biology at the same time - Part 1I've been spending most of my time these days learning AI and biology. Here's the first part of what I've been up to.71Making a 3D Scanning Dome - Part 22018-02-01Making a 3D Scanning Dome - Part 2The second part of building a 3D scanning dome. This time, we deal with skins and cameras12Programming an Android Zotero Client - Part 12018-01-18Programming an Android Zotero Client - Part 1I've started writing an Android application. It's almost ready for release on the Google Store. This is the first time I've properly ventured into the app-economy. It's been an interesting few months thus far. I have a few tips for these starting out.24Making a 3D Scanning Dome - Part 12018-01-08Making a 3D Scanning Dome - Part 1I'm keen to scan quite a few objects and I figured building a proper scanning rig would be a good start.105Setup for the Scarab miniSpartan3 FPGA2017-12-20Setup for the Scarab miniSpartan3 FPGAI bought a miniSpartan3 a long time ago and now it's tricky to get them to work but I've found a way.59Keeping track of a load of Molerats2017-02-28Keeping track of a load of MoleratsHow do you improve an existing project for a long term study of animal behaviour97word2vec, Tensorflow and Vector Counts2017-01-28word2vec, Tensorflow and Vector CountsSo in addition to getting married, helping plan a move to the USA and learning all about bioinformatics, I've been working a lot with word2vec, tensorflow and various word vector counts to figure out similarities between verbs. It's a fun little project that sits right at the heart of natural language processing.77An Electronic Wedding Invitation2016-11-29An Electronic Wedding InvitationSo I'm getting married. Since we are both nerds, my fiancee and I wanted some sort of nerdy aspect to our wedding and we figured that the invite itself was the best thing to work on.119Twitter meets SVM and Deep Learning2016-11-01Twitter meets SVM and Deep LearningIt's no secret that I'm not a fan of social media generally. It has potential to be amazing but appears to be going down a route that I'm not very comfortable with. One way that I deal with this is to write robots for Twitter in order to get around the problems of noise, irrelevance and hate speech. I've been trying to find a few ways around this and I've entered into the world of SVMs and Neural Nets.17PXLjs WebGL Engine first version2016-10-05PXLjs WebGL Engine first versionMy WebGL engine, PXL.js hit v0.1.0 and it's not too shabby but I've learned other things besides programming.38Electronic Magnetic Field Camp 20162016-08-17Electronic Magnetic Field Camp 2016EMFCamp happened this year and I helped out with the First Aid Team. Here is how it went down.70Electronic Patient Report Forms for EMFCamp 20162016-07-15Electronic Patient Report Forms for EMFCamp 2016Two years ago, I built an ePRF system for EMFCamp. This year, we've improved it significantly.74Go-lang and CMake2016-06-22Go-lang and CMakeAt QMUL, we are a CMake shop. I personally love cmake, and how easy it is to integrate into other things like test frameworks, Jenkins and the like. Go makes a really good attempt to force you into proper management of your projects but it's a bit of a pain to force into your workflow sometimes. Fortunately, we've managed to get cmake to play nicely with golang's various commands.46BSides London 20162016-06-09BSides London 2016I try to make it every year to BSides. It's a great litle conference, which is saying a lot for someone who isn't really a conference fan. I'm not particularly involved in the Security Industry but it's something I'm interested in, both as a hobby and professionally, as all software engineers should be really.137Fortran, CUDA and Fluid Dynamics2016-05-16Fortran, CUDA and Fluid DynamicsI've been working on a project here at QMUL for a while now, utilising Fortran90, CUDA and a library called OP2. It's been quite a ride really, with lots of things to learn. I've finally had a bit of a breakthrough getting things working, so it seems like a good time to share some thoughts.122Writing a password management page in Go2016-03-01Writing a password management page in GoI've been meaning to play around with Go for a while. A project came across my desk that was just perfect for getting to grips with this modern language44FOSDEM 20162016-02-02FOSDEM 2016I recently visited Brussels for the FOSDEM Conference. It's perhaps something that has been long overdue really. I've been using opensource software for a long time, and I'd heard of the conference a few years ago, but finally I've made it to Belgium! I figure I'll split this post into two part probably. I'll save the reports of talks till the end.100Modding a Theremin2015-12-01Modding a ThereminA while ago, my partner expressed an interest in theremins. I figured it would make a nice present for her, but simply buying one off the shelf doesn't quite have the level of love I was going for.118Building a SmartWatch Part 12015-10-26Building a SmartWatch Part 1Watches in general fall into one of two categories - a tool to tell the time, or a fashion statement. Increasingly, I believe the latter category is larger than the first. With the advent of the iWatch, Pebble and the like, fashion and making a statement has moved into technology. It's not quite a new thing but nevertheless, it's something I'm not too fond of. My solution? Make your own smartwatch.98Transsiberian Slitscan2015-08-25Transsiberian SlitscanI wrote quite a bit about the Trans-siberian trip I recently went on. One thing I only briefly mentioned was the video I took of the trip.64CCCamp20152015-08-16CCCamp2015I've never been to Defcon or The CCC Conference or Blackhat, so I felt it was finally time to take the plunge.104R2kS - A Novel Measure for Comparing Gene Expression Based on Ranked Gene Lists2015-07-06R2kS - A Novel Measure for Comparing Gene Expression Based on Ranked Gene ListsOne of the first jobs I've worked on for Queen Mary University is a small program to compared two ordered lists. Pretty simple right? Well, not when you have lists 200 thousand plus elements wrong and several hundred thousand of theses lists! Now we have a lot of computing power for this but we have to apply a bit of brain power to harness all that metal.90Giant Tetris on a building; RI Xmas Lectures2014-12-30Giant Tetris on a building; RI Xmas LecturesMyself and Tom Wyatt were approached by the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures this year to help with one of the demos for the lectures; a giant game of Tetris to be played on the side of the Shell Building, Opposite the London Eye. Of course, such opportunities don't often arise, so we jumped at the chance! A fun, interesting project to inspire children to hack more with their gadgets and possibly annoy their parents in the process! Fantastic!124UTOPIA Bio-informatics Toolkit2014-12-21UTOPIA Bio-informatics ToolkitUTOPIA is a collection of two programs and set of plugins written in Python. Cinema is a sequence alignment tool and Ambrosia is a 3D visualiation program. The two are designed to work together; one can visualise a particular section of a protein and analyze the 3D structure of certain elements. Both programs can load python plugins to import different sequences and alignments, allowing researchers to work with different online databases (of which there are many I've found).52Bullseye's playground for Target and Psyop2014-12-12Bullseye's playground for Target and PsyopI was asked to help out with Target's latest marketing campaign; a set of mobile games running through WebGL, called Bullseye's Playground92Oyster Card RFID Ring Mk32014-11-25Oyster Card RFID Ring Mk3I've been playing around with RFID Rings for a while now. Using a ring to control access to the hackspace door, as an Oyster card (yeah, I said it - I'm sure TFL don't really care) and generally as a way to interact with things is quite fun and cool. I've made some progress from the last version and significantly improved on it.75Seven Languages in Seven Weeks2014-11-03Seven Languages in Seven WeeksMore like Seven Languages in Seven Months! :D I started out on this course with the best of intentions but after about 3 weeks, things began to slow down. Nevertheless, I've been determined to finish it, or at least put as much effort in as I could.107Echoforms at Lexus NX Launch2014-09-26Echoforms at Lexus NX LaunchHellicar and Lewis and I were asked by Lexus to take EchoForms to their launch event in Paris.121Nook Patient Report Forms2014-09-06Nook Patient Report FormsAnyone who volunteers for St John Ambulance or similar, or works with the ambulnance service will know that patient report forms are a sort of necessary pain-in-the-backside. Paper forms generally require a flat surface, pen and dry conditions. Efforts to replace such forms with iPads and similar haven't caught on due to battery life, capacitative sensing and cost. Enter the Nook.49900 RGB LED Screen2014-09-06900 RGB LED ScreenI've been interested in large pixel displays for a while now. As part of EMFCamp2014, I decided to submit a proposal to the shiny projects part of the camp. I wanted to create a 30 x 30 RGB LED screen after working with another designer chap and link it to the Internet, letting the festival go-ers update it with images over the weekend.53Kaleidoscope for Lexus2014-07-28Kaleidoscope for LexusIt's not often I do advertising work. It all depends on who I'm working with and what the challenge is. In this case, I was approached by Hellicar and Lewis to build a WebGL based Kaleidoscope in about 4 days. No small order really, but I decided to step up and give it a bash.84The Equatorie2014-05-28The EquatorieI was approached by The Whipple Museum at the University of Cambridge to help build a 3D representation of the Equatorie as part of the digitisation of the original manuscript. I was teamed up with a lovely historian Seb Falk, who you may have seen running the London Marathon as the London Gherkin. Together, we got cracking.93Revision Demo Scene Party2014-04-21Revision Demo Scene PartyI've been quite busy, working on a few professional and personal projects, But I took some time out to do something I've never done, and have wanted to do for a while - visit a demo-party! The demo scene is something I've long be interested in and have had little chance to see for myself.95Oculus Rift, meet Phantom Limb Therapy2014-02-13Oculus Rift, meet Phantom Limb TherapyWorking with the University of Manchester, I built a 3D engine that combines the oculus rift, the asus xtion and the MD5 Model format attempting to treat sufferers of Phantom Limb Pain This is version 3 of the project and is the best yet, thanks largely to the Oculus Rift.3Phantom Limb Dev Diary Part 42014-02-05Phantom Limb Dev Diary Part 4Skeletal Animation is annoyingly hard! To be fair though, its the real crux of this whole gig. Getting the skinning working right, the bones all moving properly and the whole thing being easy to use is 90% of this project. So i’ve been spending a fair bit of time with the MD5 model format.25Phantom Limb Dev Diary Part 32014-01-28Phantom Limb Dev Diary Part 3One of the things you don’t find a lot of, is how people organise their graphics engines or similar. I’ve begun reading up on the Doom3 engine but it’s quite extreme, or rather, quite a lot to take in at once. Im concerned with how things like three.js, Cinder, or OpenFrameworks deals with the problem of the graphics Pipeline.134Phantom Limb Dev Diary Part 22014-01-12Phantom Limb Dev Diary Part 2So Ive been working on the Seburo backend and I’ve hit that old chestnut again - textures and images. Classically, I’ve had issues with this because its something that just needs to be done, and I get frustrated with how tedious it can be.13RFID Ring2013-11-30RFID RingI have a chip on my shoulder about wearable technology. There is a lot of hype out there and the good stuff is rare. Its a shame because I'm really keen on personal uses of technology and getting closer to it. I think there are some gimmicks out there and things that people are playing with, but they just seem to be not really wearable or not really tech. Enter the RFID Ring.80Phantom Limb Dev Diary Part 12013-11-25Phantom Limb Dev Diary Part 1So the time has begun to start on Phantom Limb Part 3. For these who have not seen the previous versions of this project, the idea is to immerse a person, who suffers from phantom limb pain, inside a Virtual Reality simulation in order to learn more about the condition and hopefully, provide some comfort for the person in question.128Another year for S92013-10-24Another year for S9I started section9 a while ago now. There were are few periods where the business was on hold, where I took a full-time or part time job, but around October 2012, I made the jump to being a limited company and going all the way. As Vinnie Jones once said - "Its been emotional".57LED Pendant2013-09-30LED PendantWhilst working on the Doorbell I had another AVR project on the go; a pendant for a necklace as an anniversery present. I had the idea after seeing a post on hackaday that described a simple project to turn an LED matrix into a fun, little necklace. I decided I'd give it a go.112The EMF TilDA Badge Doorbell2013-09-12The EMF TilDA Badge DoorbellThis doorbell is one of these projects that has been hanging around for ages, waiting to be finalised. It's the old cliche right? The girlfriend mentions a DIY style problem and you decide to step in. Over a year later, the job is actually done.113Photo-realistic hands2013-08-06Photo-realistic handsThe University of Manchester came to me, asking if I could render a series of hands that were as realistic as possible. The plan is to fool a human into thinking the resulting images are real. With that in place, certain parameters can be tweeked in order to facilitate an experiment into mirror neurons.58Burberry Kisses, with Google and Grow Interactive2013-07-12Burberry Kisses, with Google and Grow InteractiveRecently, I was approached to work on the new Burberry Kisses campaign with many other people, in order to help Google and Grow Interactive get their interactve maps in order.This involved working in WebGL, javascript and a little bit of Unity.8Museum of Rural Life Smart Audio Guide2013-04-08Museum of Rural Life Smart Audio GuideHave you ever been in a museum and wondered about what you might be missing? Things you might not have seen but want to see? Well, this is a step towards that. A system that tries to figure out other objects you might be interested in.42Linear Rail Time Lapse2013-03-04Linear Rail Time LapseI'm a bit of a photography nerd, it has to be said. when I was introduced toOpenMoco I knew I was in for some fun times! When I saw the Chronos by Chris Field, I immediately jumped at the chance to build it. I've enjoyed doing time-lapse stuff for a while and I figured parallax was the next thing to try.83Coin Detection at the British Museum2013-02-18Coin Detection at the British MuseumThe Coins and Medals Department at the British Museum have a problem. They need to keep records of their collection. This involves scanning each and every coin, cropping the images, rotating them, stitching the two sides together and processing the filename. You can quickly imagine how labour intensive and tedious this job can be.19Phantom Limb at the Science Museum2012-12-13Phantom Limb at the Science MuseumIm quite excited to see this display. At the back of the Science Museum, in the Antenna area, there is a new exhibition called Painless that deals with the new ways researchers are tackling pain.2The Carp and the Seagull2012-11-19The Carp and the SeagullA WebGL Interactive movie. The story revolves around our chap, Masato. He is a fisherman who is doomed, basically. The story is told in 4 chapters inside a cube. As the cube is spun we see the real world and the netherworld, lighting strikes, fish jump and our fisherman fishes. The story is a classic tale of one man's life going wrong.101A Touch Wall under the M1 Motorway2012-09-04A Touch Wall under the M1 Motorway823D Organ Reconstruction2012-08-173D Organ Reconstruction26Animation12 - The Boom Box!2012-08-10Animation12 - The Boom Box!As some people might know, I like to take part in things like Animation12. Its a good thing to do for children and it helps make for an interesting day out. This year I wasn't attending but I was asked to create a gadget, a special prop65Building a Vertical Touch Wall2012-08-01Building a Vertical Touch WallAfter watching the Mill Touch video and after Building my own touchtable, I've wanted to build a large touch wall of my own. Now that EMFCamp is not far away, we have a great oppotunity to build and test something in a field with a captive audience.125User Interfaces in OpenGL2012-07-02User Interfaces in OpenGLUser Interfaces are the bane of most programmer's lives. They really are. UI people don't often understand the true horror faced by a programmer when they are asked to write good UX code.10Modern OpenGL2012-06-15Modern OpenGLI've spent the last couple of weeks working on some code for The University of Leeds. Rather than actual research, this time has been spent on learning and adapting my code to be more compliant with OpenGL. I've done away with OpenFrameworks.21Stereo Vision2012-05-08Stereo VisionSo what have I been up to these last few months? I've not had a lot of chance to mess around in the graphics domain, largely because I've been working on a large project for The University of Leeds. I've been interested in computer vision for a while and this seemed like a good chance to get to grips with it. Im working on the reconstruction of meshes from multiple camera viewpoints. This leads me into the realms of stereo vision.45BSides London 20122012-04-27BSides London 2012It's not often I post about security stuff but I do like to know how the otherside lives. In my mind, I've always wanted to be an 'uber l33t haxor' but I just about rate script kiddie level. I'm not one for sniffing out exploits but one thing I do like is the intelligent vandalism side. Think Banksy, but in a more internet, technological sense.76Minimus and Sega2012-04-04Minimus and SegaMy sister has been a big fan of retro gaming for some time and for her birthday I decided to make a USB convertor for the sega megadrive pad in order to play [MAME](http://mamedev.org) the way it's meant to be played.126Resonate Festival2012-03-21Resonate FestivalThe festival itself had its fair share of rockstars - the lineup consisting of almost everyone who is anyone in my particular field. We'd decided to take some of the students along with us as they were perhaps more into it than I was. Ultimately, it was aimed at them. Most of the talks were rehashings of things I'd see before.102Spying and starting services with OSX2012-03-10Spying and starting services with OSXUnbelievable! It's been almost a month since my last blog post which is, quite frankly, terrible. What have I been doing?7Phantom Limb Pain2012-02-03Phantom Limb Pain41A Mosaic of snaffled images2012-01-13A Mosaic of snaffled imagesAs is my way, I decided to embark on some intelligent vandalism, only this time, in the digital realm. We have several machines in our lab at Central St Martins and access to these is completely open. There are no student passwords and as such, students here have become lazy and left all their data on the desktop or trash. I decided to write a script to pull off all the data from these machines, find the images and mash them all together in a mosaic.132Linux and Lion together at last (almost)2011-12-28Linux and Lion together at last (almost)I must have spent an age getting this to work! Several forums and blog posts later I *think* I've managed to sort this. My laptop had been suffering from slow-downs with Lion installed and the wifi had begun to break. I figured it was high-time to re-install the lot.29Lowry to Life2011-12-05Lowry to Life28Smiling-Film-Student-Geekery2011-11-09Smiling-Film-Student-Geekery114MongoDB Fun with Cinder2011-11-02MongoDB Fun with CinderSo I've been playing around with MongoDB for a little while now. Im certainly no expert but I get the feeling its pretty darn handy for smaller apps and webservers doing simple things or many, many small things.0OSX Admin for the lulz2011-10-26OSX Admin for the lulzAt one of my jobs, I've been thrown into the deep end when it comes to sysadmin. I've always done this a little but largely on a Linux based platform. As I'm involved with an Arts University, most of the machines here are Apple based. It's a little bit different in certain cases and there are some fun things already installed. The first is the *screen sharing* app.69Defeating Firewalls2011-10-05Defeating FirewallsIn addition to my own business, I work part-time over at the University of the Arts helping out students and making cool things. The problem with such large places are their draconian I.T rules.66Node and Mongo2011-09-25Node and MongoRecently, I've been working with a good client on a project that requires network communication between two sites and provision for a history feature.1Running with Nginx2011-09-16Running with NginxSo I've decided to play with Nginx on my server, leaving Apache behind. I must admit, I've had a lot of fun with it. It appears to be a good front end for funneling web requests to other services.85Denied2011-08-14DeniedI've been looking at WebGL and I've been quite excited. The chance to merge design, the web and my favorite graphics library is not something I'd pass up. It's not all roses though because WebGL doesn't have uniform support across browsers. That said, it seems to be gaining ground.103Animation11 - Only2011-07-03Animation11 - Only127Only Installation at the Lowry2011-06-15Only Installation at the LowryAfter seeing the video for 'Only' by NIN, I decided I really wanted to make that work in real-time. The very first version used an infrared camera and OpenCV within OpenFrameworks and was quite a laugh really. I learnt a lot while building it. When the Kinect came out, I figured a rewrite was needed and since I wanted to learn more hardcore C++, I decided to go with Cinder.34Wireless Headtracking and FabLab2011-06-03Wireless Headtracking and FabLabTwo posts combined! I've been busy trying to figure out a good way of doing headtracking on the cheap. Vuzix have not been too helpful when it comes to their VR920 headset. I've managed to get some working results with the Windows drivers but there is an issue when it comes to OSX and Linux. It was decided we should build our own Gyro unit. Not knowing anything about such things, I went straight in.14Deutsche Bank Installation2011-05-24Deutsche Bank InstallationIt's arrived! Finally, out of NDA we have the Hong Kong Deutsche Bank Installation. This was led by the rather talented Field.io who decided to pass around some of the work to local creative, programming types such as MSAVisuals.43Cookbot2011-01-23CookbotNo, don't misread that (although a colleague of mine is working on something more 18 rated). This small bot is the beginning of (hopefully) even tastier meats. Its a hacked slow cooker that can hold a temperature reliably for a long period of time.39Cinder Shadow Volumes2010-12-21Cinder Shadow VolumesI was asked to come up with some shadows in Openframeworks on a tight timescale.... I kinda failed on that one, having gone down the wrong route of shadow maps (I'd previously used VSM for my first NIN project). Looking it over, it seems that shadow volumes, or some hybrid approach with both is probably best. I've spent far too long on this but so far, I've managed to get a reasonable approximation of depth pass shadow volumes going.110British Library Tweet-o-meter2010-10-15British Library Tweet-o-meterThe tweet-o-meter is a set of meters that records the rate of tweets around the world.47Structured Light2010-10-06Structured LightA test of a simple structured light setup. The idea was to use a PS3 Eyetoy and the excellent code written by Kyle MacDonald62How Leaky is your Country?2010-09-19How Leaky is your Country?Or rather, how much hammering can your server actually take? That is probably closer to the mark! I made the mistake of putting wikileaks in the URL. After wikileaks got hold of it, my server was absolutely hammered and as I hadn't managed to get it setup properly, it died rather quickly. It still seems up now though *touch wood*, after the initial rush has worn off.61TouchTable DJ Decks2010-09-12TouchTable DJ DecksAlthough we didn't get this quite finished (I made the mistake of adding multiple touches too late in the game) we did get it sorted by the next hackspace tuesday meeting. Nevertheless, I soldiered on and it finally works.....ish23