Hi all,
I’m very sorry about the lack of communication recently, work has been so manic I haven’t really felt up to it since I’ve really needed to relax in the evenings.
I’m very much still a part of this and I will let you know when it all calms down. I hope you are all well and staying safe during this time.
That’s absolutely fine - good to hear from you and hope to see you again in due course.
Last night we held (mostly) real life meet up - six real people and one virtual person Zoomed in. So that was legal! It was our second real life meetup during the pandemic, the first being a picnic in Victoria Park and this recent one being similar but in a private garden - so we could have a fire, for the semblance of heat, and use of a toilet, should it be needed. In both cases Will has kindly collected pre-ordered food from Lungi Babas at the station.
We can’t, of course, do any technical making or tinkering in such cases, but we did have a good old chat, covering pyromania, pyrotechnics, various technologies and their failings, and a bit about ongoing Tech Shed activity and possibilities for future Wednesdays.
It was all very convivial and satisfactory.
We thought we should introduce some kind of spotlight session within the weekly meetups, where one of us gets a chance to demonstrate or speak about something that interests them and might interest others. In a 15 min slot there will only be time for the most rudimentary demonstration, but that should be good for the absolute beginner and can be followed by a free discussion. By keeping things short we hope to keep the burden of preparation to a minimum.
Good virtual meetup last night: a new format, with relatively brief reports from the two groups (Clean Air Frome and 3D Printing) and then a ‘spotlight’ discussion kicked off by Paul (@qscons) on the topic of assembly language and machine code programming. We touched on computer history, computer architecture and the teaching of computational thinking. Some links turned up during the evening:
@qscons was particularly taken by the macro assembler available for the IBM 360 architecture, and the conveniently powerful instruction set, especially Base & Displacement addressing mode.
@Ed_S recommended Matt Godbolt’s Compiler Explorer for exploring assembly language output for a variety of architectures from a variety of compilers.
@will mentioned a remarkable and amusing presentation on anti-reverse-engineering:
and the abstraction-busting security fail known as Row Hammer:
@Ed_S mentioned the “One page computing” challenge in computer architecture, and a thread on a forum all about CPU design and criticism.
@joe mentioned he’d been following Ben Eater’s 6502 computer on a breadboard:
@Ed_S recalled a tiny computer simulation on the micro:bit
@Ed_S shared a blog post on some performance problems:
@danny shared some tips on home office setup:
Another good virtual meetup last night. This week we spent a bit more time on project updates - specifically, see Joe’s thread on the Pop-Up 3D Printer idea.
@qscons and @Al_B shared notes on free website possibilities - seems good if people can make their own, when their needs are simple. Example 1 and 2.
@Laurentius shared a campaign link, and I’ve started a meta-response thread here.
@joe noted there’s a sale on at Pi Hut.
And then I went off the deep end a bit talking about some reverse-engineering of 1970’s chips which I’ve been following. @will and @joe had some thoughts about the applicability of machine learning to the problem: @will found some relevant papers and links: 1, 2, 3, 4 and suggested searching for [machine learning for reverse engineering of Integrated circuits].
At yesterday’s meetup Joe did a spotlight on 3D CAD modelling, making it all look very easy. His preferred solution is Fusion360, and he shared a link to the free personal edition. Al asked about the best choice for a Code Club kind of application, and Joe recommended the free, in-browser Tinkercad.
Will showed off the latest enhancements to the Clean Air Frome statistics (might not yet be live) and we discussed further work.
Danny’s been looking into Observable, a live-coded in-browser data visualisation lab.
Ed shared a video on Boosting Stop-Motion to 60 fps using AI and we talked about various visual enhancement demos we’d come across. Will shared some findings in the etherpad:
Related to the stop-motion smoothing:
“Motion Magnification” or "motion amplification: MIT [1] and [2].
Because of an announcement yesterday by Fusion 360 that I didn’t see before the meeting, I am going to have to retract my recommendation for Fusion 360. They are gutting their features for the free version at the end of the month. I’m going to have to have a search for my new favourite
Oh no! I remember playing with SketchUp back when it was new and free. But only for fun, not for modelling. Perhaps a new thread with some findings would be good?
Will do! Might take a while as I try a few
Thanks for write up @Ed_S to clarify, I’m playing with using ‘OBS’ open broadcast software
https://obsproject.com/
(oops, wrong OBS, my mistake.)
OK, it’s Saturday, let’s see what I can remember of Wednesday… it was a good meetup, with a couple of absences from regulars but also a new face: Ella joined and introduced her art installation project, which she needs to finish in a matter of weeks, if I remember correctly. It seems very interesting and also very possible to set up the hardware - hopefully we will hear more and perhaps TechShed will even be part of the process.
In the course of welcoming Ella we also did some short introductions and waffled a bit about the history and mechanics of Tech Shed as an organisation. Maybe one day we’ll have premises and be able to meet there and will look back on this strange period.
Joe showed the latest refinement of the new-style printed insert for the air sensors, and also shared some more info about choosing 3D modelling tools.
We had the idea of doing another real life meetup: perhaps a Sunday lunch in the park, or in a garden? (Bring your own picnic) I’ve started a new thread on that.
As ever, I’m sure I’ve missed something interesting or important…
Various techie links appeared in the etherpad during the meeting:
RunwayML (Machine learning for creators)
Art Breeder - interactive evolution of images (reminds me of Dawkins’ biomorphs.)
Article on Style Transfer relates to Ella’s project.
This AI Creates Real Scenes From Your Photos! (two minute papers)
Word of the week: Infodemiology
Documentary about computers, history, where it all went wrong:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/messagenotunderstood/message-not-understood
Since my mini demo on Weds didn’t show up on camera (I think having it in stills mode probably messes with the framerate), I’ve recorded it as a Gif from my iPad (hopefully it’s still animated after upload)
Still quite flickery, but you can at least see the image now!
Hmm I seem to have written nothing about the past two meetups - they both went well, with the usual modest numbers. There’s a record in our etherpad of course, with some links too. But let’s see what we can say by way of summary:
Oh no, two more Tech Shed weeklies have passed without notes! Very briefly and impressionistically:
Thank you for update
Just to note, although this thread has gone quiet, we’ve continued the weekly online sessions throughout, with attendances ranging from, I think, 4 to 7 people. We’ve shared interesting conversations, often held one or even two spotlight sessions, and collected some interesting links. We’ve also shared updates on techshed projects.