Showing posts from 2013

Techniques for learning German - podcasts.



Situations where you may be able to learn with a podcast:




Serial and pixels for breakfast. Arduino + pygame.


Coffee too?  Naturally.


The arduino code#include <Servo.h> Servo myservo; int potpin = 0; int val; voidsetup() {   Serial.begin(9600);   myservo.attach(9); }    voidloop() {   val = analogRead(potpin);   Serial.println(val);   val = map(val, 62, 540, 0, 179);   myservo.write(val);   delay(15); } python pygame code Extended the "green eggs and ham" code I made recently to read serial data from the Arduino, and paint the screen different shades of green, whilst also making some silly sounds depending on the value read from the light sensor.

import os import pygame import serial # guessing serial ports names. Linux or macosx. #'/dev/tty.usbserial' ser = serial.Serial('/dev/tty.usbmodem1411', 9600, timeout =…

Touchless UI with a Light Dependent Resistor, and the Arduino.



Arduino Servo motor, and a Potentiometer


Arduino, Analogout fading LED.


Vietnamese style coffee.

Coffee good.  Different styles of coffee good.  Viet coffee good.

Try and get the viet bean, and get it ground the way they do it too.  It's usually a mild flavour... but with the sweetened condensed milk it can be very sweet.  Plus you can make it on your desk!  Mostly I don't drink it sweetened, but that's the way they mostly do it, so for this video I did that too :)

Here is a much better video on how to make Vietnamese style coffee... great song too!

LED, lumens and a multimeter

Picked up a small 360 lumen LED light with built in heatsink. As well as a multimeter.  Going to use them in a projector project with the Arduino.

Reducing the number of concepts. To make teaching easier.

I am Sam.  Sam I am*.  Well at least my middle name is Sam.  So of course, one fun book I've always been drawn to is Green Eggs and Ham. The famous beginners book by "Dr. Seuss".


A great beginners book, because it's a full story teaching a number of other concepts using a limited amount of words.  It's a clever bootstrapping hack to language learning.  Apart from all its cleverness, it's a fun & entertaining read too! :)

So you want to teach some newbies how to be l33t python pygame pr0grAmm3rs?  Maybe Sam I am, and Green Eggs and Ham have something to teach us, the teachers?

Let's reduce the number of concepts!
Classes, packages, and even functi…

Raspberry pygame

The Arduino adventure took a little pause today...

I finally managed to buy a raspberry pi.




Amplification via a NPN bipolar transistor.

In this part of the little Arduino adventure, I've been messing around with the Fritzing prototyping application.  This lets you design things based on bread board layouts, then to generate Schematics and PCB.

Unfortunately I couldn't get the schematic to draw properly.  Some connections are missing or wrong.  But that's ok, I'm not using it for anything serious :)

Behold some pretty screenshots!

Push the button!

The little Arduino makes the lights go on and off.  Simply amazing ;)



Shelf painting

Roughly sanded, and now coated twice with grey. What remains is masking tape to get straight strong lines where the grey meets the pink.

Italian white bean 'soup'

*Onion diced along with three bits of garlic smalled.
*In a pot with olive oil Browning.
*Then brown red capsicum (paprika) with about a cup of mushrooms(chunkily chopped).
*Fresh parsley and basil chopped up with a knife.
*Tomatoes 2 cups.
*White beans, cup of.
*Pesto, basil spoon of.
*Diluted half teaspoon of veggie stock in cup of water, add to pot.
*half hour later chop more flat leaf parsley.
*Serve in a bowl each with a spoon of sour cream.

pygame logo colour swatches


Arduino blinking lights.

Working on an Arduino(micro controllers) project with a friend.  Have to start somewhere... and that somewhere is programming the famous Blinking Lights!

Tape Wallet.