These things only cost a £5 so I figured it would be worth seeing what they were like and how much use they might be. Just for fun you understand. Nice idea though.
Cardboard Radio
Category: Tech
At times wonderful, and at times totally frustrating too. That’s technology, my experience of it anyway. I do a lot of stuff with technology and I suspect I will continue to do that.
Apple opens up iMessage to developers, maybe in response to FB Messenger bots?
This is what they announced yesterday at the WWDC keynote. It was an interesting but not entirely unexpected development. Apple probably want to compete against the FB developers deploying bots into messenger. So they’ve responded with developer access to iMessage. I wonder how that will work out?
Then I found my old VL-1 MIDIfier kit!
I was looking for something else when I found this! I knew, or at least I seemed to remember that I’d bought one of these ages ago. Well I’ve found it and I’m planning to get it going soon(-ish). Ideally I’d like to get it running so that I can get it to work with my VL1 bot. We’ll see about that.
And then I got this (Timex 1000)
The Timex 1000 is the US equivalent to the ZX81. I was given it when in Canada last week and it looks like it’s in pretty good shape actually. I’m going to be very careful about firing it up though as I don’t want to get the power supply wrong in any way. When it’s all up and running I’ll post some stuff about what I’m doing with it.
Still waiting for the KDJ-One
So it feels like this has been ‘on the way’ for a very long time. There’s still no news in terms of a specific delivery timeline and it is a year overdue already. I’m still just hoping that it will eventually turn up. I guess I should be pleased that at least they’re staying in touch. When projects go silent it’s usually then that you know your money has gone down the toilet.
I’d like to think that I’m going to get my KDJ-One this year. Maybe.
Messing around with chat bots
So I’ve been experimenting with the whole chat bot thing. Messenger chat bots to be precise. It’s a very interesting area actually. Creating a bot that can respond in a rudimentary way to what people are saying to it is quite a fun thing to experiment with. The main idea so far is to make a bot that can respond to questions for PalmSounds. My first attempts are up and running and working though. I’m quite pleased so far, but it needs more work before it’s ready for prime time.
Arduboy (and a little retro comparison)
I got this last week, which was much sooner than I’d expected to see it. It is tiny. About the size of maybe 3 or 4 credit cards stacked on top of each other. That’s why I thought it would be interesting to see it with a Rex 6000. Of course the Rex has a lot more memory than an Arduino and is of course designed to be a PDA where the Arduino nor the Arduboy is. Even so, it’s an interesting comparison.
When I get some time I’m going to try and see what I can make with the Arduboy as you can code to it via Codebender. So that’s really the next step.
MIDI Thing is coming
You may have heard from PalmSounds that MIDI thing is now actually a thing. In fact it’s now in test and there’s even a Facebook page and everything!
Now that’s a shame, The Aria Pebble Strap is running 2 months late
I was looking forward to this. It seemed like a great device and I’ve got quite a few ideas on how to use it, but they’re going to have to wait now for at least an extra couple of months it seems. These things happen I guess, and let’s face it, all kickstarter stuff tends to be late, especially hardware, so I shouldn’t be too surprised really.
Teenage Engineering OP-1 Crank
I’m slowly adding to my collection of Teenage Engineering stuff and my latest addition is the crank for the OP-1. As ever, the packaging is pretty cool too.
I am Ashley Elsdon 