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A little while ago I was designing and printing an update to my printer to allow it to use one less motor for controlling the z-axis. The basic printer design uses two lead screws to raise and lower the x-axis. It still does, but now it only uses one motor to control both screws instead of the original two. But that is not what this post is about. Instead it is about staying cool under circumstances to drive one mad.

I quite like gadgets. So it should come as little surprise that I have been drawn by the bright future promised by smart bulbs. By their nature, in order to retain access to their smart functionality they need to be ‘on’ even if they are not shining. This presents a problem when faced with several decades of habit of flicking the power switch when you walk in to and out of a room.

Being ‘smart’ you can voice control them using Alexa, but that has some faintly annoying lag and that is even if she understands you the first time. Plus, shouting “you damn well know what I meant, Alexa!” to turn off the bedside light can be disruptive to one’s sleeping partner.

So this is about the start of my quest to find another way.

Yesterday, Terry Haynes from Studio Gobo and Electric Square came to Computer Science to talk about why our students might like to work there.

Today we fielded our first teams to the UK and Ireland Programming Competition. In it teams of up to 3 are given 1 computer and 0 internet to solve up to 12 secret programming puzzles in just 5 hours.

http://ukiepc.info/2018/

Today we fielded our first teams to the UK and Ireland Programming Competition. In it teams of up to 3 are given 1 computer and 0 internet to solve up to 12 secret programming puzzles in just 5 hours.

http://ukiepc.info/2018/

https://threethinggame.com/post/2018-10-01-the-autumn-event/

To cap off our induction week we ran a Bored? Games! event. Specifically the Festival of Daring and Excitement.

Still wondering? Let me explain.

During induction week this year I put together a lab activity based around Robocode (https://robocode.sourceforge.io/). The students were introduced to it on Wednesday afternoon and had lab slots during Thursday to further refine their creations.

Today we got to find out how they all did in an epic showdown.

I have mentioned my 3d printer a few times on the blog now and I have been meaning to document the various modifications and the overall journey that I have taken with it.

So here it is.

Introducing Butch. Butch is Smiler’s new stable mate. Look how happy she is to have some company!