The good folks at Sonoff have sent me a bunch of kit to review. First up, the S20 WiFi Plug - an easy way to retrofit IoT smarts to your existing appliances. This fills the same niche as the Belkin WeMo but with one crucial difference - it's about half the price. Direct from Sonoff it's US$13 - from Amazon UK the smartplug is £15. The cost of the WeMo is £40. How does it compare to the B…
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I read a Guardian article about an artist who set up an analogue camera in front of their TV, set it to long exposure, and set a movie playing. The result was a rather wonderful collection of images. You can see more of Jason Shulman's works Is there a way to automate this process? Yes! Here's my attempt at a "Long Exposure" of "Taxi Driver". It's not the same as Shulmans's process, but I …
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I recently downloaded an album from Bandcamp. On trying to extract the zip file using Ubuntu, I got the error "File name too long." This is a known problem with Bandcamp. If you have a problem with long filenames in zip files, here's how to fix it. Quick Solution unzip -p -c whatever.zip "filename.ogg" > shortname.ogg That will extract a specific file from the zip and then rename it before …
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Imagine that you are sat, blindfolded, in the back of a taxi. How could you tell if you were being driven by a human or an autonomous vehicle? If you've not read Alan Turing's The Imitation Game, I can highly recommend it. The paper is short, well written, and contains a whole world of ideas. This is where we get the concept of the Turing Test. Can a human be fooled into thinking that the…
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Five years ago, Twitter updated its logo and demonstrated that it could be made entirely of circles. Interestingly, the official Twitter logo doesn't use circles directly. So, here is an SVG I've made which is only circles: Or, without the edges, and no transparency: And the raw code: <svg height="100" viewBox="0 0 100 100" width="100" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <circle…
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I was incredibly fortunate that my new employer sent me to a conference in China recently. I can't discuss what I did out there - but I can report on all the delicious food I ate! (NB - I paid for all meals myself!) Being veggie in Beijing was relatively easy. I had a stock phrase "我吃素" (Wo Chi Su - I eat vegetables), and a smattering of tourist level Mandarin. I had recommendations from frie…
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I can now query my solar panels via my Alexa Amazon Dot Echo thingie (why so many names?). https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/VID_20170501_161804.webm I flatter myself as a reasonably competent techie and programmer, but fuck me AWS Lambdas and Alexa skills are a right pile of shite! Sorry if that sounds a bit harsh, but they're a pain in the arse to get anything done. I…
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Regular readers will remember that I have had a disastrous experience with WiFi light switches. I've had pretty good results with LIFX bulbs - but I really wanted something which can control my lights' switches. Enter the new WisQo smart lightswitches. The company claims that they'll work with the UK's "unique" wiring designs. They've kindly sent me a set to review - adjust your bias filters…
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A few days ago, I ranted about how chat apps have poor support for URI schemes. By "Chat Apps", I'm talking about the new wave of messengers - WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegram, Wire, and the like. What do I mean by "URI Scheme"? You're probably familiar with: https://example.com The "scheme" is https - it tells the computer "Open the web browser and load the specified resource." You may also be …
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Recently, I've become obsessed with the speed and efficiency of my web sites. I'm in the middle of slimming down this blog - but I thought I'd take a first attempt at my contact site - https://edent.tel/ A few weeks ago, the .tel registry released their domain restrictions - users can now host their site anywhere. I'd already experimented with about.me/edent as a contact site - but even that…
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Many years ago, when Foursquare was still cool, I built an app to let people check into chocolate bars. You know, "@edent is eating a Wonka Bar classic. 4/5?" It was a quick and dirty hackday project. Ever since, I've had the hankering to build something a bit more generic. I currently use Untappd to check into beer and Vivino for wine. I'd like to be able to check in to: Artwork Boardgames …
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Long time readers will know that the happiest day of my life was when I got married. Dressed as Darth Vader. The most expensive thing about our wedding was probably that Vader suit. After nearly 10 years of marital bliss, I got bored at having that gorgeous suit packed away in a box. So I bought a full-sized mannequin and set about dressing it up. Having a box of limbs delivered is a little…
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