So I guess work has tried to filled that colourless void, seeping in to the gaps. After now thirty years of toil and not centering my life around that toil, what does happen when the toil is all there is? Thin, odourless, tasteless gruel of an existence. Thinking about work in hours that used to be allocated totinkering. And remember, all my tinkerings were constrained: I could never afford the latest computer, or the expensive lenses, or equipment to do all the things others did. I made do. Secondhand cobbled bits and bobs from charity shops, ebay for electronics from China, basics to build upon.

On the plus side, being constrained in that way meant you had to think about the problem and project, and work around it. Innovating, being tricksy, stupid, clever, pleased, frustrated. Making do and finding ways as an art. It did impress some, but mostly it was an embarrassment I kept to myself: I couldn’t afford otherwise. When you duck out of things for that reason, it isn’t quite a shame, but you don’t admit it. And it seeps in to everything else. ‘Oh, are you going to get [new gadget X]?’ Nope.

Everyone knows I have no ‘smart’ equipment, partly due to I don’t trust any of it, as I wouldn’t really ‘own’ any of it. A subscription for an item I bought? No, just no. Like the piece I read a while back about how heated seats are an optional extra in a new BMW. But not as they aren’t fitted, they are, you just need a subscription to that. Money will always find a way. Returning to first lines, I don’t have that smart gear for a secondary reason as it is all expensive distrations from living. Ring doorbell or paying some bills, mine or others’. Those are the decisions, glibly restarted, I’ve had for the past thirty years.

Which all means I don’t quite work harder, although I always work hard. Which all means I don’t quite pay more attention to work outside times, although it is heading that way. I m, however, good at what I do. It is just I can no longer really describe what that is, what is the actual point of me. This isn’t some imposter syndrome thing, it isn’t the fact I don’t ever code professionally any more, despite what I might think.

Presumably this is a middle-age malaise setting in, and maybe I should read those kind of novels to understand the condition. But I am not entirely convinced. Covid, empty nest, concious unwinding, receding prospects of the parts of life everyone else had that I missed out on, a bland anonymous invisibile engine running on fumes. A cocktail for dull unravelling.

I just wonder what actually happens when I don’t care anymore at all, when I can’t cope with it anymore at all, when there is nothing anymore at all.

Atomised

I’ve never been to Disneyland. Never been skiing, never seen a West End show. My car is thirteen years od, my laptop twelve. There is no huge TV on the wall (or any, for that matter). My children weren’t taken on two foreign holidays a year (or even one). We only bought our first sofa a few years ago (all others were inherited). We live in a mid-terrace, three bedroom ex-council house, where my three children were raised. We are still here, although the children are out in the world themselves now.

How do others do it? All the holidays, the multiple big cars, the latest tech, the mansion? Oh, two incomes and inherited wealth? Huge debt and ongoing stress? I don’t get it. What did I do wrong, or different? Would I have wanted all that? Maybe, or maybe not, depending on the conditions. I just don’t know how they managed to get there. What did I do different, or wrong?

I’ve been in the working world for a while now, later this year being a rollover to a new leading digit as to how long I’ve been out of education. And in all that time, I’ve never had a career. I’ve never had a path. I’ve never had a trajectory. I’ve also never been out of work, one blessing. A blessing for others, all the same, not me. Take time off to travel? How? A few weeks between jobs to relax? How?

But every year I’ve had a ‘five year plan’. Where I’d like to be, who I’d like to be, what I’d like to be. It had never worked out. As the saying goes, we are all merely four pay cheques away from being homeless. I can’t see myself stopping working before I keel over to be honest, and not through any want of being continually productive. I have plenty to do if I could retire, and maintain the lifestyle. I am aware putting money into pensions young would’ve solve that (… … …) and how could I have afforded not to? Easy, I couldn’t afford to. Which means redoing the five year plan again.

No one wants to make money, they want to be given money.

Then there are the revelations as you haven’t been paying attention. The world moves on, not so much forgetting you as not even being aware you were there. But there still are the record-scratch moments. Ones which brought me up short.

I never really believed the (right-wing) press shrill shrieks about ‘YoUR ChilDRen ArE BEing TauGHt bY RadicAL MARXisTS’ but you know, it is strange when you bump up against that being actually true. Added in there is the implication I need sent to reeducation camps, and the pervasive meme heterodoxy is now actual public policy. ‘Be Kind’ is all well and good, but not believing impossible things rubs against that. And none of it in good faith. And so strange for it to appear where I wasn’t expecting, anticipating.

Live your life, don’t cause others’ lives to be harder. This does not mean you roll over and accept everything. Don’t mistake my kindness for weakness (thanks Lana). And yes, I blame the parents. Social media. You can’t identify your way out of reality. I am now part of the problem, so please, let me be. I don’t want to interact with that world, so don’t bring me in to it. But if you ask, I am not going to lie.

I’m tired, I think I’m close to being done. It’s okay. I’m okay. There is no choice but for it to be okay. It has to be okay. It is too late. The habit is ingrained.

No, thank you.

The woods always call

This is my story.

It does not need qualified or ranked. It does need someone who has had it worse to pitch in, for I know those people. There is no hierarchy of victims. It is all ‘lived experience’ these days, isn’t it? You reality trumps all others, no? When did everyone get so hyper-defined? Choose your flag and fly it, seems to be the replacement of a personality. No matter.

This is my turn.

Back when it all started, I forget the date now, I was asked ‘you used to work at home. How did you manage?” Of course, that is easy to answer; Back then I could go out places, I wasn’t isolated. I saw friends, I went to pubs, I attended and gave talks. Three years I worked from home, from the shed at the bottom of my garden. And you know, life didn’t stop.

And then it did.

Once the world got over the initial shock, there was an outpouring of hobbies. People taking up bread making. People taking up sewing. People taking up the things they hadn’t before, and always wanted to. There was the rise of the YouTube stars, the home makers and home shakers, the bright and beautiful people being bright and beautiful as ever. Cute atomic families harmonising, cute couples raising dogs, cute lifestyles on display everywhere. I was told it must be great for me, with all my myriad of Things I Do™, now I had the time.

And then I didn’t.

The entire opposite happened. And is still happening. Everything for me slowed. Then slowed more. While others lost their physical taste, I lost something. Not my ability, nor my capacity. Not even the want. It all just slowed, never coming to an entire standstill. Put on slight pause. An internal holding of breath, that this would blow over and I could return to schemes, dreams, plans and exploits.

I no longer had a life, I had a routine.

The slowing turned into a ceasation, I guess. Not entirely, just all the extra fun bits. Making electronics, stopped. Making clothes, stopped. Running, stopped. (That one is slightly unfair due to some health issues that took a while, and an operation, to get sorted out.) Even observing nights got less. (This one is also slightly unfair, due to the past years being the most cloudy I have in my logs.) Reading, music, cooking, everything above a certain baseline. Stopped. At some point. And with an admission. Stopped.

The frayed edges of habit erode routine.

Life does, however, continue. We adopted an old dog, who was expected to live six months or so, and we would give him a restful few months. In the end, he lived a fine and enjoyable two years with us, even as we watched him wind down to the end. I missed saying goodbye to Tycho on his last day, but I was there when Kai left the world. We haven’t yet adopted another old dog, but we will. In all probability it will be another Staffie, too.

The world doesn’t wait for me.

I also changed job during the pandemic (to somewhere I should have know better to avoid, given I nope-ed out of them about a decade ago), if only to prove I could. It was, evidently, more than just that, but moving from where I was once hyper-creative (that got stifled) to somewhere I am not creative at all added to the suspended state of being. Who knew I am good at being creative, driving and building, helping and instigating? And when some of that is taken, it all looks a bit different. The advantage of being a competent coder and technical innovator allowed me to continue to work, not be furloughed. All I need, and have done for decades, is a laptop and a net connection. And the freedom to be employed from the neck up. Why would you employ me, of all people, to micro-manage and direct and stifle? Let me do the melding of research, fun and production code that makes money. Still, I am, I believe, look upon favourably. Aside from the internal pressure of feeling I am getting too old for this all, but can’t stop working. We are all four pay cheques away from being homeless after all. If they had sentenced me to twenty years of boredom, I’m well past that now. I have forgotten more than I ever learned.

I’m not waiting for me.

That said, I’ve started to crank the handle a little. I’ve read a lot more over the past six months. I’ve started to mess around with some AI code projects again. I intend on setting up the sewing machine, if only to shame me as I walk past it, and make something soon. I done some field recordings that should be tunes. I’ve been out on walks with the binoculars, enjoying the trees and the birds. Turns out the job market is hyper-bouyant, and it shouldn’t be much to shift to somewhere I can be creative, productive and interested in again. Many conversations are happening. Even looking at my draft folder, there are half a dozen vignettes over the past three years. I’ll rework some of them. Oh, the things you’ve missed. Or I’ve missed writing about. I also used to like that. There is no song threaded through this post. I almost did that. Maybe the next one, when I have something less self-indulgent to write about. Not that anything here was ever anything but.

You can’t hold your breath forever.

I think, once again, I almost have plans.

The world is different here.

I have grown older

A small, wrinkly thing with an uneven distribution of hair. (Which the vet was skeptical of him growing properly, it has to be said.) The first night we had him, we were prepared. A cage (voluminous) with blankets, pillows. Comfortable. Would he go in the cage to sleep? Not in the slightest. But in he had to go. And proceeded to cry, keeping the whole house awake. So I slept in the kitchen beside the new pup. For days. As that kept him quiet. I thought it would be just while he was getting used to his new home. Up to the night before he died, he was never further than a few feet from where I slept.

I mean, we’d researched the breed and theoretically knew what to expect. Strong, wilful, intelligent, loyal. He was certainly all those. And Staffy puppies do like to chew. And by goodness chew he did. He used to take books off the bookshelf, and chomp them. But he was highly selective. Turns out the only books he ever did this to were mine. I mean, he actually managed to pull a single book from among many others based on the fact it was mine. Good taste, obviously.

And if you ever see toys described as ‘indestructible’, you can bet it has never been given to a Staffy. The one toy that lasted longest was his beloved football, a solid (and I mean solid) plastic globe. He only went through two of those in his lifetime. I remember playing with him as a puppy with it in a local field, when a happy toddler came bouncing over to kick it to him. I shouted for him to not to (I had just kicked the ball, which is why I wasn’t that close) to the look of consternation of the parent. When the child pulled his foot back and tried to hoof the ball, the ensuing cries and wails made it obvious why I was shouting. It was indeed a solid plastic globe. In the rain, in the snow, in the sun, Tycho and I would be in the back garden, kicking his ball. If I dallied putting my shoes on, he would tell the whole street I was late.

But oh, the puppy field. Where locals take there puppies for safe training. There is a carpark, and they lock the gates at dusk. Many nights, the person who locked the gate would look on in disbelief as I tried to catch this little black bundle of energy. Tycho would always stay just out of my reach, then sit. I’d approach, he’d scarper. And sit. Could take hours and the chap got used to it, telling me it was funny as it looked like I was as stubborn as the animal.

I never taught him any tricks, but the others did. For me I was there to chase him, play the strength/resistance games, kick his ball. And take him for walks. When V used to take the children to school, he’d go for the walk. Half way. Then refuse (and stories of her having to carry him…) But I’d be too thran for that caper, and we’d go on walks. This was the first inkling of his high degree of order and routine. Or, you know, doggy-OCD. He’d happily walk his traditional routes, but vary those? You’d end up with a solid mass on the ground, seemingly heavier than the frame that was looking up at you. But if you chose the right route, that wouldn’t happen.

In the end, it wasn’t so much that I was the only one who could walk him, it was more no one else quite understood some of this. But mostly I was the only one who could walk him. And not for the want of everyone else trying, I have to say. They wanted to take him, but he’d refused. But me? He’d not refuse me, and off we’d go. It also annoyed others when they walked with us, as they had to go not only at our pace, but our direction.

He loved a good explore through woodland. He loved the beach. About the only thing he didn’t really like was water. No rivers or streams for him, if the water came up above his ankles. As the years wore on, his speed decreased. But we’d still do as many Sundays as we could in Wandlebury. Same route, every week. Just Tycho, the trees and I. (The Sunday after he died, I walked our route on my own. It…wasn’t easy. But I am not avoiding it because of all the memories, rather it is a celebration wander of everything he gave to us.)

I could fill this with anecdote after anecdote about him. He wasn’t just woven into our family life, he was part of our family life. Everyone who met him loved him, and was surprised as ‘they never considered Staffys before’. He was a character and a loyal companion.

So whatever celestial forest you are snuffling around and exploring, wait for me old buddy, I’ll catch you up soon enough.

Sleep now

There is no other reading of a situation where someone stands inside your personal space, jabbing a finger worryingly close to your face and snarls ‘You better be careful’. This is a pure threat. Pure intimidation. Pure and simple.

People worry about ‘political engagement’ and the ‘voters being put off’. So while I laughed this ‘threat’ off (turns out there is more, and who knows, even a law suit over an identity-politics joke I made years ago as well), my thought process these days is different from when I was a somewhat wilder youth.

What if it was said to someone else? Someone trying to get involved in politics, but came up against neanderthal attitudes? I mean, there has even been a resignation from the Parish Council in the last year, and while I can’t confirm it, seems to be around if not bullying, then an abrasive and unsupportive atmosphere. Now, I would have not-quite scoffed at that, but been a bit surprised. But after a finger in my face and a stupidly ugly threat, I can see it.

Oh, right, how did it get here? Many threads, so I’ll try and weave them together.

Years ago, I started (for some unknown reason) attending our local Parish Council meetings (we are South Cambs, not City, forever looked-down upon, but hey-ho). And I loved them. I still describe them as either awesomely tedious or tediously awesome. The lowest tier of government discussing what little powers they have. And forever having to tell parishioners that no, they can’t do X, as that isn’t their remit. They still get blamed anyhow, but that is how it goes.

At some point, I also decided to video the proceedings, but that comes later.

Way back then (and this is how long ago it was), I was also a member in the local Facebook group. Obviously not using my real name, whatever a real name even means. I think it was around the time of the elections, and the whole current councillors were standing. Only to be elected unopposed, as there were (and still are) more vacancies than people standing. No one wants the job, better to snipe from the side. (Yes yes, I do this, but I don’t want to join the council. It would drive me insane. And you have to give over a level of information on the application form I’m not comfortable with.)

There was some thread on this (other people probably can get this more correct than me, I’m doing it from memory. Luckily enough the snarling councillor printed them out and brandished them at a full council meeting at one point.) on the village Facebook group, and a few of my quips were about ‘entitled middle-class privileged males’ dominating the chamber. Which is hardly news, given we are in South Cambs, and it is a Parish Council. There were (again, from memory, without going to check as I’m typing here and don’t want to stop) about 12 males and three (or maybe four) females. And the average age of the males were certainly north of 50, if not 60. (One whippersnapper bringing that average way down. Which was great to see, even if he somewhat misguided politically. Ah, but he is still young. Top chap all the same.)

Now, anyone with a modicum of knowledge about modernity, and modern politics, will be aware of this imbalance and the problems it brings. I mean, #NotAllParishCouncillors or something. But it does seem this is the seed of annoyance that lead to the threat. But seeds grow, so let’s move on.

At some point over the next year, I did start to video proceedings, and putting them online. I mean, I love politics, and it would be great if there were more people involved. There are three locals who go regularly, but as in most things, there is general apathy. And as it happens, I get over 100 views per video each month. Which is ace. I know people do watch them. And they have been used as ‘evidence’ in a Parish Council investigation into voting intentions.

Back to the same old, white, male councillor. He really does not like this, and even at one point wanted to get the Parish Council to write to the Minister in charge of the legislation that allowed for the public to record public meetings and get it rescinded. Luckily sanity prevailed there. Grief.

At some other point, I was asked if I’d like a column in our local village magazine to write about Parish Council issues. And I do. It is quite good fun. I’ve written more ‘procedural’ information, rather than a rewording of the minutes. Triggered by events that happen at the meetings I attend.

I’ve gotten good feedback on these, people seem to like them. (Including members of the Parish Council. Although….)

And of course the same old white male councillor takes exception to these as well. Funny, if anything happens and there is exception to something I’ve written (I check both the law and the recordings to make sure I don’t say something out of turn, and the editor does a wonderful job too) there is nowhere to hide. For him or me.

But still, while all that is funny as I am, as the tile says, big enough and ugly enough to take it, what message does it send? That the Parish Council doesn’t want to be scrutinised? (I know the Chair, and Vice-Chair, and get on well with them. I like them. Similarly for a few other Parish Councillors. I like them. In fact, I don’t (or didn’t) have anything against old white male councillor. He just takes exception to me.) That if you want to get involved, you’ll get attacked and denigrated? How off-putting would it be for someone attending first time to if not have that directed at them, but even just to see it?

I pondered putting in an official complaint. It is probably too late now, over a month has passed, but such behaviour is unacceptable. I still think about it. It is funny, but what if it was someone else? He even made sure his back was to everyone else so there was less chance of being overheard or seen. It also took me by surprise, else I’d have said something else. (I was also packing up my video gear, which is a shame as a recording of that would have been golden.) I am not slow of wit or tongue, but as I was humming while taking down my tripod, and this was so very unexpected, I was mostly agog. Did he…really try to intimidate me? (Laughable, it would take better than the likes of him to do that to me.)

Hardly rough-and-tumble of smear and innuendo politicking, but even so. Small village, you just don’t act like that. It will, however, be interesting to see what kind of lawsuit he thinks he can bring.

And how small-minded and petty that would look. “I don’t like what he writes, it hurts my feelings”. I’d say grow up, but he has many decades on me. So I’ll revert to the vernacular of my childhood, and leave with: wind yer neck in, big lad.

The circulation of a breeze

Wake up you sleepy head
Put on some clothes, get out of bed
Put another log on the fire for me
I’ve made some breakfast and coffee
Look out my window and what do I see

Fast forward let’s say…a year or two. If I was Down With the Kids, I’d say something like ‘Machine Learning, so hot right now’. But I’m only aware of the meme, I’ve never seen the source material. In a shock to no-one. Never one to be left out, I thought I’d have a poke around with The Latest Tech and see what it is all about.

A crack in the sky
and a hand reaching down to me
All the nightmares came today
And it looks as though they’re
here to stay

First reaction? Seriously, has there been no advance in neural net theory in twenty-fivefive years? (In a parenthesised aside: full disclosure: much like QCD and General Relativity, I grok the maths of neural nets. But understanding it at some deep inner-soul level? Nope.) Anyhow, prevailing wisdom indicates installing some python libs and playing around. Why not? Sounds fun. Except…python. And libs. Dependencies that don’t install, won’t work out of the box and a general chore. (And in another parenthesised aside: so the world uses the same set of python libs for this? All they are doing is…fiddling config numbers and rerunning training scripts? Really? For this this get the big bucks? Isn’t that already just baked-in bias from the off?)

What are we coming to
No room for me, no fun for you
I think about a world to come
Where the books were found by the Golden ones
Written in pain, written in awe

Frustrating. Irritating. And not going anywhere. But as ever, I hit on an idea. Why don’t I write it from scratch? That way, maybe I’ll finally get some insight into what it means. The classic example is a simple neural net that mimics XOR. So I sat down, in and of a Friday night, with a text book and wrote myself a neural network. From scratch. In golang. Because, why not? (And in a third parenthesised aside: nope, I still have no idea what it does and how it does it. The very definition of a back-propogated black box.)

By a puzzled man who questioned
What we came here for
All the strangers came today
And it looks as though they’re here to stay

Anyhow, there it is. Working. But there must be more to it than that. AIs are built on this stuff. So I melded the Feed Forward with a Recurrent Network, just because I could. Still thinking on what to do with it until…a misuse of a compute cluster from years ago came into my head. I might have mentioned this before, to do with weirdo ways of predicting football scores. And a use-case for a neural net. Maybe, just maybe…oh alright, I did. But before I get to that, I should talk on training the net.

Oh You Pretty Things
Don’t you know you’re driving your
Mamas and Papas insane

One of the standard training sets (aside from XOR) is image data. Feed in lots of images of digits into the net, and have it learn to recognise them. Whatever. But what if I fed it in all the football scores ever, could it predict the results for me? Worth a shot. But there are problems with match data. Mostly as there is bias involved (Manchester United are playing Bogtrotters Town? The hallions have no chance. But turns out giant killing happens…). Can I get round that? I’m glad you asked.

Oh You Pretty Things
Don’t you know you’re driving your
Mamas and Papas insane

Stripping the names out isn’t enough. What I did was grab the results of the entire history of football. (Well, I will. Long time ago I dumped the Premier League data into a database, so I had that to hand.) Now, for each week, I build the league table. Easy done, simple rules. However, what I also did was keep the position of the teams in the league, the week of the season and the result. For example, week 3 the fifth placed team played the seventeenth and it was an away win. And I do this, for every week of the season, for every season.

Let me make it plain
You gotta make way for the Robo Superior

And that is my training data. Of course, the eagle-eyed stats chaps will spot I’m giving the net conflicting information: one season the above example could be an away win, a few season down the line a draw, and so on. I only came to this conclusion after I tried to use the net for predictions. However, when I fudged that and averaged the amount of points for that season/positions, it made little to no difference. shrug.

Look at your children
See their faces in golden rays
Don’t kid yourself they belong to you
They’re the start of a coming race
The earth is a bitch

But I have a corpus of data, and I fed it into the neural net. Gah, to save me calling it a ‘neural net’ each time, I’m going to call it what the repo is called: Cortex The Killer.

So I fed Cortex The Killer all this information.

I’ll put an API online in front of this soon, for those who want to play. I even added an interface to continually teach it. Scrapes the sports sites, gets the results, adds it to Cortex’s innards.

We’ve finished our news
Homo Sapiens have outgrown their use
All the strangers came today
And it looks as though they’re here to stay

After the initial training, I asked Cortex to ponder the weekend’s forthcoming games. He got four right out of ten.

Oh You Pretty Things
Don’t you know you’re driving your
Mamas and Papas insane

Four out of ten. That is abysmal. And not one away win predicted at all. (As a last parenthesised aside: he did better than I did. I predicted three right.)

Oh You Pretty Things
Don’t you know you’re driving your
Mamas and Papas insane

But the thing is: I know how it works, I understand all the code, and the theory. And yet, when I throw the training set at it, it arrives at answers, and I have no idea why.

Take us out, Mr Bowie:

Let me say it again
You gotta make way for the Robo Superior

Make Room Make Room

One monkey don’t stop the show
One monkey don’t stop the show
One monkey don’t stop the show
Whoa, so get on board

I love the whole Quantified Self deal. That is a given. But I decided to think…beyond myself. And quantify my surroundings. This came out of another progression in my interests, music. And radio. Bizarrely. It goes from receiving transponder data from aircraft and transforming it into tunes to…well, what I’m about to explain.

Oh, one monkey don’t stop the show
One monkey don’t stop the show
One monkey don’t stop the show
Whoa, so get on board

Mapping your own data is if not a solved problem, at least one where you can get lots of the data. Pulse, temperature, salinity, skin resistance, all sorts. But what about just around me? Where are the drafts coming from? What is the humidity of the area I am about to wander into? (OK, so that last one is a bit…irrelevant, as you can see, and it doesn’t change that much. You can extrapolate yourself, or read on and see where I take it.)

Here comes the freight train
Here comes the freight train
Here comes the freight train
So get on board

My surroundings then. I’d need some autonomous drones feeding me back sensor information. Before I take it further, let’s solve this problem. Which means I better define the problem, and the parameters which I want to work in. (If you are, as is likely, two-steps ahead of me, why yes, I know lots of the problems encountered would be solved by adding multiple GPS chips, but that isn’t the point, nor the way I want to solve it.)

Oh, one monkey don’t stop the show
One monkey don’t stop the show
One monkey don’t stop the show
Whoa, so get on board

Requirement number one: keep the price down, and use what I have.
Goal: at least two drones that follow me around, sending back info

There is a purpose, a running keep
There is a captain, with a steady wheel
Wheel

Given my numero uno requirement, it is going to be arduino-based. Which…is obvious. Keeps the costs down. But I didn’t quite have all the bits I needed, so I bought a GPS chipset. This breaks my less-than-a-fiver for any single component, but I gritted my teeth and waited for a few weeks for it to arrive from Mother China. And it rules out buying more.

An’ one monkey don’t stop the show
One monkey don’t stop the show
One monkey don’t stop the show
Whoa, so get on board

Which means solving my problem of having drones follow me needs a sideways think. What did I have in my boxes? Well, Bluetooth chips, so I can get info to and from my little drones. And my solution to the moving problem was to use what I call ‘relative GPS’. Why do I need to spend lots, when I know where I am? Sampling where I am every…few seconds, I can tell how far I’ve moved, and in what direction. Sending that info to my drones, they can react, and move. Simple. Dumb. But easy to do. And I did it.

Oh, one monkey don’t stop the show
One monkey don’t stop the show
One monkey don’t stop the show
Whoa, so get on board

You can even watch a cobbled-with-old-children’s-toys drone follow my lead. The drone code is about 4k, the device I have on me about 9. I’ll do another video when I move from breadboards to perfboards, and miniaturise it. Coming soon.

Here comes the slow train
Here comes the slow train
Here comes the slow train
So get on board

But that is all very well and good. All very well and good and…useless. So let me extrapolate. (I’ll leave the more lurid extrapolations of flying drones with lasers and the like as an exercise for the reader.)

Oh, one monkey don’t stop the show
One monkey don’t stop the show
One monkey don’t stop the show
Whoa, so get on board

I’ve also been chasing tumuli, and there are plenty that haven’t been excavated, which is a good thing. And there isn’t enough time and archaeologists in the world to properly survey them all. But I can do my bit. With my army of drones and some ground-penetrating radar. Load the drones with sensors, fan them out around me, and away I go. Underground-mapping-tastic. Once I learn how to interpret the reflected wave data and discover treasure hordes.

She’s at the station, running slow
Ready for leavin’, she’s gonna go
Go

I’ll sidestep into paranoia for a second, too. While I’ve handwaved and said data flows back and forth, nothing is stored on the devices, which keeps them safe from prying hands. And the data that does flow back and forth is encrypted, which keeps it save from prying sniffers. And once the data hits the device on me (I really need a name for that, too) it just gets relayed to a webservice sitting on one of my servers. And being a server under my control, it can decrypt the data, and dump it into camlistore. Oh, and no, I don’t care if some data is lost, this is just a little system I’m playing about with. I am well aware of improvements that can be made.

One monkey don’t stop the show
One monkey don’t stop the show
One monkey don’t stop the show
Whoa

Anyhow, where was I? Oh yes. Drones, loaded with sensors/radio busying themselves collecting data while I move along. I haven’t quite got round to considering cameras on them all, as they is spendy. And I’d need more horsepower in the central unit, again adding to the cost. Quit with the extrapolating, let’s make first things first.

Here comes the freight train
Here comes the freight train
Here comes the freight train
So get on board

Oh, wait, I have. I’ve got drones that follow me around, and upload data to be stored. What gets uploaded? Well, as this isn’t fully non-me friendly, lots of things are hardcoded and flashed onto the arduinos. Like how far away from me they start. Then when data gets uploaded, it sends that delta (my GPS coords, drone offset and sensor data. Job done.)

Oh, one monkey don’t stop the show
One monkey don’t stop the show
One monkey don’t stop the show
Whoa

Yes. This all works. What comes next? I am thinking probably working on the drones more. Make them…slightly less dumb. I’ve got bluetooth sensors on them, so I could probably make a proximity sensor, using the signal strength. I mean, didn’t really explain how they follow me. Embarrassingly, again I kept it simple. These wee motors drive the drone at about 1m in six seconds. Which means I…turn the motor on for six seconds for every metre I move. What’s that? You would do something different, cleverer and better? Good for you. Again, I’m keeping the cost down, and making it work from the off. But using the signal strength, I can make it a bit fuzzier. Different terrain, the motor might need run for less time. Or more. But I can couple it with the signal strength, and keep the motor running, or stop it early.

One monkey don’t stop the show
One monkey don’t stop the show
One monkey don’t stop the show
Whoa, so get on board

My main problem is that if someone lifted the drone and pointed it elsewhere. Or it hits a bump, and is no longer following my direction, and me sending headings and distance means it would veer off more. Next thing is, therefore, to add accelerometers or the like, so if it takes a sudden knock, it can tell, and try and orientate itself back with me. I don’t know, still pondering that one.

Oh, one monkey don’t stop the show
One monkey don’t stop the show
One monkey don’t stop the show
Whoa, so get on board

But there we have it. For now. Though my mind whirls with what else I could do with this. If they were actual flying drones, you could pass over disaster-struck areas, and check for mobile phone signals, finding trapped people. (The central unit doesn’t have to be a person, you could put it on a remote-controlled expensive drone.) I quite like the idea of mounting a GoPro on each one, and making some trendy video (while I run, maybe, or cycle, or whatever). Use in exploration, photography, all sorts. Of course, for the money-no-object classes, there is no need for this relative GPS solution, but that is the way I solved it. And I had fun solving it, and continue to have fun solving more, with the bits I have to hand.

Here comes the freight train
Here comes the freight train
So get on board

I haven’t even mentioned the machine learning aspect I’m considering for later, too (once I’ve taught myself some machine learning). Always be thinking. Always be having plans. Always be learning.

Painted butterflies

Oh me oh my oh, look at Miss Ohio
She’s a-running around with her rag-top down
She says I want to do right but not right now

Should I qualify? If I must. Let’s start from the beginning. The keynote. A trite talk whereby some ‘community leader’ points to a platitude on the screen, and…. repeats it… very… slowly… to….. give it…. gravitas. Sometimes they have a bit of wit about them, and the trite topic is wrapped in puns and merry japes, but even at that, trite.

And is it just me? But this next talk is obvious. We’ve been doing it for ages, the interwebs are full of people talking about it, you are speaking to a room full of clever people, do you think they are unaware of it? Or does every generation really ignore the previous? Hey look! We should all be writing tests for our code! This would be cool! All aboard the MSV Not Invented Here

Gonna drive to Atlanta and live out this fantasy
Running around with the rag-top down
Yeah I want to do right but not right now

But oh! Here is the token nutjob doing a niche and interesting thing. I’ll grab them after, this is worth it. So, so, worth it.

Had your arm around her shoulder, a regimental soldier
An’ mamma starts pushing that wedding gown
Yeah you want to do right but not right now

As for the first-time speakers, I’m all for that. But it is worth remembering the lessons from the keynotes of yore, don’t present it as Enlightenment From On High. War stories, yes, we like those. Novel solutions. But less and less over the years have I got worthwhile info from a talk. Mostly it is the throwaway lines I listen for, they can be gold. These nuggets are not the point of the talk, throwaway, duh, but can be tech I was unaware of, or things I need to look up, and those are great. But panning for gold in Niagara is not the best way of getting gold. Armoured cars and a few Browning M50s would be better. Though lifestyle choices after implementing the BankRobbery pattern might be limited.

Oh me oh my oh, would ya look at Miss Ohio
She’s a-runnin’ around with the rag-top down
She says I want to do right but not right now

I guess, I suppose, sometimes the ‘sponsor stands’ are good. I’m sure I’ve been at a conference once where they were. However, I don’t need any more free cheap plastic pens. Or try your ‘code competition to win a twenty quid Amazon voucher’. You are hiring? Yeah, you and everyone else, buddy.

Then again, I’ve been told people go ‘for the hallway track’, which is just like hanging around in IRC, but in Real Life. If you want to converse with someone, drop them a line. Going just for this is pointless. Then again, if you are hiring it can be worthwhile. (But I don’t want to get into balance, and qualify these paragraphs with a both-sides argument, sheesh, you can see why I’m…you can, right? )

I know all about it, so you don’t have to shout it
I’m gonna straighten it out somehow
Yeah I want to do right but not right now

Free wifi is a boon, I guess. The food can be passable. Aircon for summer conferences is great. (Don’t trigger me on Codes of Conduct, or safe spaces, or the ‘low sugar room’, which is a new one on me, first seen this year. Seriously, the rules are easy: don’t be a dick. Which, granted, is tough for lots of people.)

Maybe I am getting old, and there is nothing new under the sun. But there is, otherwise I wouldn’t still be interested in tech. What’s that Skippy? I much prefer the lo-fi, lo-tech end of things? Well, quite, but I’m talking work mostly here, not outside.

So basically, just a few days off work, hopefully in some foreign place I’ve never been to before. That is definitely the best thing. I’ve been to some amazing places. And catch up with some people I only ever see at conferences. And without a doubt, talking to them, the clever people, is better than most of the talks.

Oh me oh my oh, look at Miss Ohio
She a-runnin’ around with her rag-top down
She says I want to do right , but not right now
Oh I want to do right but not right now

But really? Tech conferences suck.

Damage control

Lots of strands of my life have started to coalesce. And they are starting to coalesce towards Good. Not coalescing in any obvious way, but those who are aware of all the contexts I hold in my head, it isn’t surprising. But I don’t want to talk about some of the more…esoteric branches, this one is an idea borne out of many things. Let me explain these many things, none of which involve sealing wax nor kings.

I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

Ever since I started tinkering with radio in a (slightly more) serious manner, all sorts of thoughts have tumbled through my head. And as these fall, accreting as they go, other tangents get drawn in. As I…dislike the current tech rallying cry of ‘an app will solve the world!’, I always look for the low, and lower, tech solution.

As an aside, the problems are never in the technology, they are always with the people. I mean, there is more than enough food to feed the world, more than enough energy to keep everyone warm, more than enough brains to solve all sorts of problems. But we don’t. Because…people. People are always the weak point in the chain.

Anyhow, mostly to contradict myself, this isn’t a low-tech solution to a problem, but it isn’t archly high either.

There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

Not so long ago, I was talking to the lead on one of the research groups at the Computer Lab in town. And some of his PhD students, as well. Now, turns out, a lot of what they were trying to do I’d already achieved in my shed. Me. In my shed. With my soldering iron and cluelessness. (Though that is another (few) posts for another time. I mean, I haven’t even written a post on my musical envirogenerations yet, and I love that, it is hyper-cool.)

Some of the problems they were trying to solve involved drones and flying datacentres. Now that is ace, but beyond my budget. All my playing-arounds are cheap, using what I have, and sticking to secondhand stores, Mother China for electronics and spending less than a posh cup of coffee from That London.

So I’m not going to solve that problem, but it did get me thinking. Surely some handwringing do-gooders helping refugees would have some convergent device with them, which they might allow to be a hotspot for others to use. (There is a internet-in-a-van that visits Calais, but this isn’t quite the same as that.)

I’ve an idea then, but I need to proof-of-concept it first. The next trigger was while walking around Bridge End Gardens in Saffron Walden, when I came across a young gentlemen whom I use to fight on a Sunday night. He was out catching Pokémon, but had run out of 3G, so was heading to a free wifi zone.

My thoughts wended their own merry way, as they do. Then I got an idea: What is there was some way of having a mesh network, say village wide, offering free wifi to all who wanted it?

It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

Now, there are many solutions to this. This one, however, is mine. But let’s still go through the motions, laying it out. Imagine, in the first instance, a few people on every street set up a second wifi network. Totally open. No charges, no passwords, just open. And as I wandered around, I could connect to one, then the next, then the next. It should be possible for me to wander around the streets and always be connected. Wouldn’t matter if there was a mobile blackspot, as there would always be someone’s open network within reach.

Right, OK, so there are probably alarm bells going off already, so let me allay some fears. Because, you know, I’ve already thought of them all, and solved them. Firstly, this will not be like those irritating pub/shopping centre/other places that have ‘free wifi provided by BT’. Those aren’t free. You give away a little piece of your soul. Or your email address. And they track you, know your device, know what you are doing (unless…well, let’s say they don’t get much from me). I despise that. Invasive, and unnecessary. My model is nothing like theirs. At all.

Rule 1 then: There will be no tracking/monitoring on my ‘village-wide wifi’, it is anonymous and nothing can be traced to an individual’s broadband account. More on this later, I’m still addressing concerns here.

Which leads into ‘stealing all my bandwidth/downloading all the torrents’ issues. But that’s simple. It will be throttled. No one device will be able to leech so much, or upset everyone else on the network. This isn’t meant to be a super-fast free-for-all scrounger’s network. This is a polite, fair-use public-spirited service. Imagine if you knew people who couldn’t afford broadband. This would give them a first-in to the digital world. Or if you were in a place that couldn’t get it, some of the fringes round here are like that. But it would be a boon for those disenfranchised from services like this.

Rule 2 then: Download your movies elsewhere, buddy.

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

But in case you missed it, it still looks like a patchwork of decent people opening a second network, and my device having to connect to one after the other. This is a bit sub-optimal. This is where my cheap-electronics-from-China comes into it. Before I got to the endpoint, my thinking was like this: Imagine if I took an ESP8266 and used it as a wifi repeater. Or better yet, as those things are ace, as another access point.

You should be able to see where is this going, given I don’t write linearly, and I’ve already given the game away.

Everyone gets a device, that connects to their network, but presents as a different one. And it can see other ones, and meshes with them as well. Again, showing as a single network. These are distributed all over, with little aerials and brains. Even better, others can be added easily, and taken away. It grows and shrinks, but seamlessly, adding a new one just increases the coverage.

And their little brains are paranoid. Which means they won’t tell, as they won’t know, where the in-and-out data came from. Which means they won’t track you, and everything is also encrypted, protected and anonymised. Nothing can be traced back to any router, it isn’t possible. Distributed, secure, safe. I certainly won’t let the Government in.

All the code it runs on will be open source, as will the electronics. In fact, all the schematics will be published under an open licence, and people will be encouraged to build their own, and add it to the mesh. Initial estimations put each mesh node at under a tenner to build. At the very most. But we’ll see. This is the manifesto-esque post, the tech one, with pictures and steps-to-reproduce, will come later.

It’s s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

That is all well and good for affluent South Cambs, but how will that help refugees, disaster areas or Third World countries? Now all it needs for a a wifi network is some people with phones (and data) at strategic points. Doesn’t even have to be phones, hook up some satellite internet (which is slow, granted) points and drop these devices round and about. The could act both as access points, mesh points and repeaters.

The point is, these should be cheap to build, easy to install and low-maintenance. Arduinos, ESP8622s, solar cells cover all this. (If you are interested, I’ve managed to get a steady 8V from B-grade solar panels. Running in my conservatory. While cloudy. They cost, from memory, about two quid each. Trickle-charging batteries are left as an exercise for the reader, as the writer has more than enough projects on the go.)

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away

The main thing is to reassure people their broadband won’t suffer. I know mine won’t, I’m on some stupid 300mb line, and even when the house was full, with gaming/streaming children, it never hit much of a problem. Of course, this might be against the terms and conditions. But having read some of those, it mentions about securing your network, mostly to avoid people leeching your allowance, or hacking your router. Neither of these are a concern, as there will be limits (could be built in, so each mesh node knows how much it has served, and could shut itself down as and when) and there is no direct route to any individual machine. This really does present itself as a single, wide, free network.

We better stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

But it only works if people are willing to donate a little slice of their broadband. Even before I get to that stage, I need to prototype it myself. My plan is, initially, to build two. One I connect to the router, the other, my phone. Using these two internet bridges, I mesh a little network. Then run some tests using a third device, and see how it goes. Expand out to a few more people, test, and see how it goes.

With enough people, and coverage, they needn’t even all run at once. They could be aware enough to shut themselves off if they are quorate, and bring themselves back in if others fall out. Maybe even be more intelligent than that, but one step at a time. The first thing is to make it work. Remember the rules: 1. Make it work 2. Make it fast 3. Make it right (and feel free to ignore step 3, and yes, I know. I know.)

Stop, now, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

We shouldn’t be scared of stepping on BT’s, or Virgin’s, or EE’s, toes. We shouldn’t be scared to open the lids of devices and peek inside. We shouldn’t be scared to help each other. We shouldn’t be scared to dream, think, make. We shouldn’t be scared to go beyond accepting what we are given. We shouldn’t be scared to be active rather than passive.

For what its worth.

We can pluck the wings from painted butterflies

Then again…what is the right question?

There is a big push on at the moment to make Cambridge a better place to live, work, and play. I presume this isn’t particular to Cambridge, but it is where I find myself, so I’ll roll with that. There might be extrapolations to be made, generalisations to be inferred, but mostly this is about my surroundings.

Everyone (sort of…) agrees there are too many cars on the roads. Solutions differ (more bus lanes! more buses! more public transport! Then we have the Cambridge Cycle Nazis Campaign whose only solution is ‘ban cars!’) but all are (sort of…) agreed Something Must Be Done™.

Parking a car in town is extortionate (at one point it was cheaper to take the hit of a parking fine than all day in the Grand Arcade), and the Park and Ride a chore. The good middleclass cyclist will have you do everything online, so you can cycle in, get everything delivered. Which isn’t always practical.

But that isn’t the point I want to make. Let’s imagine all the problems the single-issue pressure groups are solved. Doesn’t matter how. Super-sized underground magic car park with spaces for the whole of Cambridgeshire, no-car-everyone-cycles hippy utopia, matter transfer physics-defying teleport beam, whatever. Just roll with it being solved somehow. Or partially solved. Whatever. Everyone is happy, right?

No, they have solved the wrong problem. Made new ones, which they should have seen. Imagine all the routes are clear, no one has any hassle getting into, or out of, town. Happy locals, happy cyclists, happy commuters, happy drivers, happy tourists. Everyone is happy.

The problem has shifted. Now we have pedestrian congestion. All these people, with easy, hassle free access to Cambridge, are now wandering around a compact city centre.

I’ve heard no mention of what we do when we have all these non-car-users in the centre.

This is the more pressing problem, the question no one has asked. What do we do with people congestion? Litter? Signage? How can we manage the people in the city centre, to make sure they have an enjoyable, stress-free dander around? OK, so King’s Parade is never going to be clear, nor the new stand-in-the-road junction by the Corpus clock, but we can make the rest better.

Why do we not have pedestrian signs much like the car park ones? ‘Market Square is 90% filled’, or ‘Heavy Tourist activity by Mill pond’? Imagine an app on your phone that meant you could plan your shopping/touristing/route around town to avoid such areas?

Well, imagine no more, gentle reader! I trialled a solution to this very issue, and in principle, it works splendidly. The journey to this covers several projects I worked on, and I came to this natural end point. Stay with me a bit longer, and I’ll recount the history, thinking and tech used to get to that point.

Here comes the history, insert wavy-vision lines if you want.

I can’t remember how I first came across the Cambridge Quantified Self group, but it ticked a lot of the boxes I like, so I approached them and asked if it would be acceptable for me present some ideas/gadgets I’d built to them. This was indeed deemed acceptable, and I’ve spoken to them many times since, but that is not for this tale.

At the height of summer (it is worse then, but only marginally) Cambridge is filled with tourists, cyclists and locals scowling at both. (Not-summer is filled with tourists, cyclists, students and locals, all scowling at each other. If you can see the cyclists as they wear all black and have no lights.)

It is widely known I am not a fan of crowds, and it is only by dint of many, many years of martial arts training that I don’t repeatedly punch people out of my way in their seemingly directionless meanderings at varying speeds around town. To which end I tend to avoid Cambridge at the weekend. (Specifically after 1pm. Before that is fine, Cambridge sleeps in, and you can get in and out relatively unscathed. Presuming I can make that window, all is generally fine.)

As inspiration struck me, I built a (nnnnn) wearable, that monitored my heart rate, perspiration rate, skin temperature and so on. If it triggered certain levels (for a sustained period of time) it would work out where I was, talk to an app I wrote and give me directions to the closest pre-programmed places of calm I could escape to. And it worked swimmingly. All cobbled together by me, at home, with basic electronics and even more basic code.

Fast-forward a year, and there was a 24-hour civic hackathon on, to which I went. The City Council (amongst other bodies) were opening their data feeds, and asking local people to come up with innovative ways to use them, to help make Cambridge a better place. Nothing therein inspired me, people were doing the same old tired things (where is my bus? how long will it take me to get to X? how many cycle nazis does it take to change a lightbulb?) and asking the same old tired questions.

I wanted access to the CCTV feeds. Live. (To count…circles, equating them to faces, and getting a count of people in an area. Can you see where this story is going yet?) But, alas, that can’t be done. (Yes, there would be privacy issues, but I only wanted to count ‘circles’, nothing else. And the data feed would only spit out a number. But, as I said, alas, not to be.)

Undeterred, I thought if I can’t get that from them, can I…get it myself? Back to the soldering iron, batman! The first rule of homebrew club, is that you use what you have to hand. Or at least in my club it is, as I don’t have the cash to spend on expensive trinkets. But how to solve it?

Let’s ask the right question.

What can possibly be used to estimate the amount of people in an area? Well, this is the 21st century, and everyone carries a mobile phone. Is there…anything I can do there? Of course there is! And I’m not talking about surveillance state sniffing here, I want the equivalent of counting circles. Mobile telephony is at a certain frequency, and talks to the base station. Is there any way I could…ascertain field strength? And correlate that to the number of people in an area?

It is pretty much given these days that there is a one-to-one correlation to people and phones. Those who carry multiple will offset those who carry none (what is red and invisible?). Doesn’t matter if it isn’t exact, that isn’t the point. I was more interested in if I could get some sort of reading, calibrate it, and get at least a ballpark figure of how many people were in the ballpark.

Having recently turned myself into a radio ham (without a radio, alas, damn those things are expensive, which is why I guess Radio Club is all old white dudes) I knew something like this might be possible. So I set myself the task of during the 24-hour hackathon of constructing something like this.

And I did.

While everyone else was worrying over map rendering in javascript, I was connecting resistors and diodes to aerials and seeing if I could discern anything above the noise floor.

And I did!

I even moved away from people, signal dropped, and as people left for the evening, the signal dropped. Concept, proved.

Now I could tie all my ideas together. I could monitor myself for signs of getting annoyed walking around town (I built-in prediction, too, based on history, time, location and so on) and also see where the crowds where, to better navigate my way around.

Well, not quite, as I didn’t have a sensor network installed around town. And I’m not sure a bearded Oirishman walking around gaffer-taping electronics and aerials to various landmarks would go unnoticed.

But that isn’t the point. This is eminently viable, in my opinion. We have traffic counters, why not people ones? Feed it all back to a central sever, have an app that gives people information in realtime. It is only a rough count, but enough you could build a heatmap of activity across the town.

And there are other uses, too. Music festivals, to help people move from stage-to-stage, crowd control, to help the filth kettle hippies better. All sorts. But mostly I just want to be able to avoid the hotspots in town, even if it means I have to walk the long way round. And the sensors would be cheap to build, easy to install and low maintenance. And again, open the data feeds, let people build more, and better, apps. You could monitor bus stops, and know how many people were going to get on your bus, and wait for the next one (as the bus data isn’t open, due to someone not reading the contract at the council).

A simple, low-tech solution to a question no one has asked, but they are asking the wrong questions. And why yes, yes I am available to head this up, work on it to completion, but I don’t think you can afford me. But do try :)

I have grown older

Very superstitious, writings on the wall,
Very superstitious, ladders bout’ to fall,
Thirteen month old baby, broke the lookin’ glass
Seven years of bad luck, the good things in your past

If you know me, you are probably aware I am not a big fan of crowds. (And by extension cities. Country boy still, me.) If for some reason I need to be in town, I’ll do it early. Cambridge on a Saturday is great before 1pm, as no one seems to be up before then, and I can get in and out. After that, well, years of martial arts training comes in very handy. Of course, if you don’t want to end up breaking jaws and ribs, you can always sit in the Central Library, it is usually peaceful there.

When you believe in things that you don’t understand,
Then you suffer,
Superstition ain’t the way

But I got to thinking…what if I had a list of places to seek out, boltholes, sanctuaries, places I could sit, think, read while Κασσάνδρα bought handbags. Then I got to thinking more, what if this happened automagically, and something alerted me that it would be a good idea if I headed to The Urban Shed for another cup of coffee? Then I got to thinking, someone must have done this, and charge for it. Then I got to thinking, sure isn’t that a grand wee project, why don’t I tackle it myself?

Very superstitious, wash your face and hands,
Rid me of the problem, do all that you can,
Keep me in a daydream, keep me goin’ strong,
You don’t wanna save me, sad is my song

So I did.

When you believe in things that you don’t understand,
Then you suffer,
Superstition ain’t the way, yeh, yeh

(Cheap) heartrate/pulse sensor connected to a (cheap) bluetooth transmitter that talks to a (maybe cheap) android phone (simulator, as I don’t have one, cheap or otherwise) that monitors heart rate that triggers a call to a (cheaply hosted) web service that sends back directions to the nearest (cheap) place that will provide a calming environment.

Very superstitious, nothin’ more to say,
Very superstitious, the devil’s on his way,
Thirteen month old baby, broke the lookin’ glass,
Seven years of bad luck, good things in your past

And it all works. I dumped some local places in my database, gritted my teeth to write some java (nnnnn) for an android app, knocked up a web API and pieced it all together. If multiple people are using my system, it won’t send you to an overly occupied place, rather the next one after that. It is kinda time sensitive, and gives different routes depending on time of day. I intend to add some (nnnn) learning to it, so it can predict early, rather than wait for the sensor to react. I’m also surface mounting it, and sew it into my glorious full-length tweed jacket. Hey, I’m all about the wearables! I must surely be on the cutting edge of something. Even at my age, one step ahead of The Kids. (Which is sort-of the point, all those The Kids hanging around in town in clouds of short-attention-spanned opinions drive my blood pressure up. Nah, just kidding, it isn’t them per se, more just EVERY DAMNED PERSON IN CAMBRIDGE GOING INTO TOWN AT 3pm ON A SATURDAY.)

Very superstitious, nothin’ more to say,
Very superstitious, the devil’s on his way,
Thirteen month old baby, broke the lookin’ glass,
Seven years of bad luck, good things in your past

OK, so all so very trivial, but you know, it could be made into an actual real device, extend the API so it does lots more (I do have many, many ideas) and it might be a useful system for really anxious people. Hey, maybe I should (nnnnn) kickstart it!

When you believe in things that you don’t understand,
Then you suffer, Superstition ain’t the way, no, no, no

Jumpstarted

I no longer need to imagine it. On the plus side, I managed to only lose my cool once. Well, once where I raised my voice, the rest of the time I just had my head in my hands. Metaphorically and physically.

Let’s start with the raising-of-my-voice incident. Oh, sure, it is a trigger phrase, probably not intended the way it was meant, an overloaded term from where I come from. Three quarters of the way through the meeting, which lasted only an hour, though it felt much, much longer, there needed to be some correction on the rampant mis-representation of a certain road in our village. This road is part of my regular dog-walking route, quite literally round two corners from my house. I run down it, use it en route to the shops and pub, so let’s say I’ve been up and down it a time or two, and all times of the day and night.

‘Cars can only pass one at a time down it’, ‘People park on the pavement all the way along’, those sorts of statements. The first is true at one section, but nothing wrong with that, as it is legitimate parking on one side. The second is true, due to, well, people. But for most of the road, it is fine. ‘It is so bad, two cars were hit only a few weeks ago’. Now, that is correct, but nothing to do with the road.

Interlude:

What was the meeting about? A developer wants to build fifty houses off this road, and people were concerned about the amount of traffic coming from this mini-estate. Oh, I’ll use this interlude to remind myself of the funniest sequence of the night. So, it was asked how many car parking spaces this would hold (averages out at just over two per dwelling, bigger ones with more allocation, smaller with less. You know, the way it usually works.) Then it was asked what happens in twenty years time when those living there have children, who learn to drive, and now there are five, six cars per dwelling, where are they all going to park? Where indeed? WHERE INDEED. Truly a car-jumping-shark moment right there, folks.

End interlude

There was lots of murmuring, agreement, loud acclamations of support, about the nature of this road. Nonsense. I raised my hand, and pointed out that I use the road regularly, and speeding, bad practise has nothing to do with the road, and all to do with the drivers. And the two cars that were hit? That was a drunk driver, took the sweeping bend too fast and ploughed into them. You know how he was caught? (He drove off home, was arrested there, in next village along.) His number plate fell off in the collision, and he didn’t notice.

At this point, it now looks like I am some developer plant or something. But a chap a couple of seats turns round to me, and says ‘And who are you?’ Well. There is only one inference I can take from that, and that is that I have no right to be here, to speak and to participate. Because I don’t sound like I come from round here. I might (might, mind) have retorted that I was highly offended by the question, and why did that even matter, this was a public meeting for locals, and I was local. I might also have used terms like ‘protectionist local’, and how this wouldn’t lower their house prices, but hey, why listen when I have to raise my voice (again) to be heard over the hubub.

Which neatly brings me on to the only other point I really want to make. The Parish Council were all gathered at the top table, name placards in front of them so we knew who they were. And I could see who the clerk was, but not the chair. Shall we go with the person at the centre? Seems…a viable proposition. The developers, there with their charts and plans, were invited to present first. Of course, it turns out they weren’t expecting it to be attended by the public, thinking it was a presentation to the council only. I’ll cut them some slack here, as I am sure they would have approached it differently if they knew. And besides, there is an all-day exhibition of the plans in the local church hall for all to see, and comment on. This chap was not the drainage consultant, how was he expected to answer detailed questions on that off-the-cuff? I’d have been impressed had he, but people were starting to grumble when he couldn’t.

After his short outline, the chair (…I think) invited questions from the floor. And this is where it started to go wrong. It was the worst chaired meeting I’ve ever attended. If you are going to take questions from the floor, you need a modicum of control. There was none. People talked over each other, while others were asking, while others were answering, three, four questions came at once, people got ignored, questions half-answered interrupted and then ignored as someone else came in. In fact, the questions were coming from the floor the whole time, unbidden, with no direction from the chair. With a little more control from the chair, I feel it would have been more worthwhile, not the nonsense I sat through. Unless, of course, the council’s plan was to let the mob mentality bully its way through…

A few of the councillors did speak, on points of procedure and on the inner workings of local government. Committee this, panel that, whatever. No one was listening anyhow. ‘The flood plain has been re-evaluated, and no longer covers this area’. Quick, let’s all shout conspiracy! Developer underhandedness! (I do find it a strange thing to happen, but it has happened nationwide, so NATIONAL CONSPIRACY!) sigh

You might be aware I love a good debate, but this was not that. A hatchet job, people already having made up their minds, truly not in their back yard. And this brought out the contrarian in me, it really did. They could have been all clamouring for world peace, and I’d have advocated nuking the earth from orbit.

As a final note, I’ve nothing against them building there. There are certainly engineering issues, to do with flooding, drainage, access, but nothing I don’t think that couldn’t be worked out, and if it turned out it was a risk, then the planning application should be thrown out. It has even been tossed into the ring yet.

If this is the state of ‘devolve powers to locals’, I don’t want it. Or perhaps I want a better sort of local. At least student politics was funny. This is more serious as here the busybodies can affect me. I wonder when the minutes will get posted, and how it tallies with my impression of it all.

Wait…this probably wasn’t representative of the good work the Parish Council does behind the scenes? No, really? I hadn’t thought of that, honest. Pfft.

Hunted, high and low

Eventually, I sold it on to the Polish HipHop Mafia. And thought no more about it, other than what a wasted chance it was. It also made me…wary of the whole ‘Internet of Things’ caper, even though that is something I should have loved.

Time passes. As that is what it does.

I’ve always been aware, on a meta-level, of the whole arduino scene, mostly as I’ve seen the articles in the ever ace Makezine. But even at that, I much preferred the non-electronic lo-tech make-ing. But a few things changed.

There was an democracy-hacking meeting on in town, being held at MakeSpace. Now, I got a little tour beforehand, and was chatting to chaps therein. And it all sounded…rather like something I’d love to do. (And I’d still love to join them, but not only does time pass, but it presses, and I’d need to free other things up to enjoy the benefits.)

Thereupon I decided to try this arduino stuff. But, like everything, there is little point in just buying it to have, I needed some projects to put together, to make it worthwhile. In time and effort. Of course, I could make some sensors for my planned observatory (which will take me years to save for, build and commission). Using an infrared thermometer, I could even gauge cloud cover. No, it isn’t that I am too lazy to look outside, I can join this to the camera, and mount, so it closes the shutter when clouds come over, and opens again when it clears.

With other ideas, I got a little kit. And started to tinker. And man, it is great. Forget the crippled RaspPi, get an arduino. (So my observatory also has a twitter account. And the temperature readings are sent, via radio, to a receiver linked to the laptop which then tweets me. Successful first project.)

And now my mind races, there are lots of things to do, so I do. Lasers pulsing morse code as a check on the transmitted environmental readings, sidereal clocks and so on. It helps that buying these sort of bits and pieces are pennies. A RTC for GBP1.29? Why, thank you, Hong Kong. Sure, it takes a week or two to get here, but what odds? For that price? Super stuff.

Then at some point, in $latest_work, there was some gentle derision going on, and during one particular keyboard-mashing incident, some wag point out they would be better dancing on their keyboard. To which some other wag mentioned DDR, and my mind turned. And forgot about it, until yet another wag pointed out you can encode the entire keyboard on eight points of a dance mat. (With a selector to switch to numerics and symbols.)

Guess what, gentle reader? I had an old PSone dance mat in the shed, a pair of pliers and an arduino. So I build a keyboard dance mat.

Video of the first hack, merely a proof of concept.

Some better code, and we have a fully working keyboard. With a shift key, and everything possible, using just your two feet. Of course, that there mat is a bit…crufty, and the foot-points stick, but regardless, you can dance everything on the keyboard. Everything. (Bonus on that video is you can hear my voice. If by bonus I mean ‘never let me hear that again’.)

Total time spent, maybe a few hours. Most of which was faffing with the controller. Imagine you cut off the end, to reveal wires. There is a red one…but no black. Meh, whatever. They don’t match any other online schematic, but the pinouts do. Sort of. At which point you find out that the red is a control wire, and the positive is white, and the ground yellow. HELLO? WUT?

I even wrote some code that would take any text, and translate it into dance moves. Worst rhythm game ever, but so? SO? (That is what is in the second video, which I am sure you know, having watched it by now, right?)

Still, a little bit of hokey C code and job done. And I have the next project lined up too. The arduino is such an awesome tool. I now have two of them (well, the radio signal does need received somewhere, that was an exercise left to the reader), and plenty of ideas. The soldering iron is beside me, ammeters, voltmeters, breadboards. An oscilloscope would be neat…and more lasers, and motors, and, and, and….

Slips the bonds

Then Eldest Male Child mentioned something to me. He passed a flyer tacked to the railing in town (nestled alongside the promos for operas, open air theatre, lunchtime organ recitals and the like) for a play. Not any ordinary play, but two Lovecraft stories. In the Cambridge Union no less. This…intrigued me. And how could I not go?

Staged by a new company, Shedload Theatre, I had no idea what to think. Which was good. But what would they do to my long-beloved, never-understood Howard Phillips? And also, the two being performed: ‘The Statement of Randolph Carter’ and ‘The Temple’. An…interesting choice. As it happens, two very, very good choices.

How would you stage Lovecraft? Certainly not in the way many disasterous films have been made. (I made the mistake of catching ‘Beyond Re-animator’ once, a while ago. My main thought was ‘why are all those busty nurses wearing such tacky pr0n outfits…oh, right.’) Given the first-and-a-half person story modes, perhaps a minimal set?

Actually, it was superbly staged. All dark, a lecturn for the narrator and live sound effects off-stage. The sounds effects were fantastic. Proper gravel, real trowel, superb effect. Crashes, bangs, mad, manic whisperings. The only props used was that to represent the ‘electonic telephone’ that Carter uses to talk to Warren at one point. Tins connected by a string, along the length of the Union. A nice touch.

Two voices in ‘The Statement of Randolph Carter’, the interplay was quite good, although I could have done with a little less plummy Brannagh from the chap who played Warren, but that is certainly only a personal feeling, and not one that detracted from the performance. The mad, manic whispers during the prolonged submersion of the submariners in ‘The Temple’ worked well, kudos to those providing that, it was great.

The single torch underlighting each narraror was fine, but I felt the room could have been darker. Although hard to do given it was the height of summer, and the curtains all pulled, with no aircon, made the room stifling hot. Which actually made the tension heighten. No one made a sound, you could feel the audience being drawn in. (In fact, I had to resist making a muwhahahah to the young lady in front of me, thereby causing her to jump out of her skin. But resist I did. As I didn’t want to be arrested/thrown out/banned from their next performance.)

From buying the tickets (two quid! No, seriously, two quid!), the troupe (do I call them a troupe? A company?) were friendly, professional and the little niggles during the performance hardly worth mentioning. I’d have happily paid over double for that. And I hope they doing more. The styling of the tickets, the information posters (tentacles out the bottom of the phone for ‘turn your mobile off’ nice little touches), the whole ambiance, I enjoyed.

I’d love to see them get more ambitious, and perhaps reimagine something like ‘The Colour Out of Space’ (being my personal fave). Or maybe some Poe. Or Milton, even. But the Lovecraft stories worked fantastically. In fact, far better than I hoped. Thinking on it, maybe even outdoors, we have plenty of college grounds around. Movement and space, immersive Lovecraft. Get on it, chaps!

Give me something to breath

You’re tempting me
to all of life and all its pleasure
take me to the dream
to the highs and the depths of my soul

I also want to tie my thoughts on these two books in with me (as it is all about me, remember), history, Irish Republicanism, moral outrage and justice. While I type this, mostly it will be about justice. Whether it turns out like that, I don’t know, but remember it was supposed to be. As, for those who know me, I hold justice in very, very high regard. This is different from fairness, as that is relative. You can’t have a universal fair application, as inherently someone will lose out, and that isn’t fair to them. It isn’t fair that I pay taxes, as that means I have to deny my family certain things. is that fair to me? No, not at all. But we live in a society that (supposedly) helps protect the weak and vunerable, so I pay my dues. An awful lot of them, but that is for another time.

Here we free thoughts inside
giving up for giving time
but a world without end
where no soul can descend
there will be no sumertime

Let’s begin with my roots, the history of my land, and justice. Growing up, there were lots of things I didn’t, couldn’t, understand. Given the thread of this post, we’ll stick with justice, not everything else. It offended me that everyone on that (very) small patch of a (very) small island were treated differently.

One of my earliest memories is being kicked off my bike by bigger lads, and being asked if I was kaff-lick or praddy-sent. I hadn’t a clue what they were on about, it must have been obvious from my response, so they left me, as I don’t remember getting a beating. But why would it make a difference what I was? What had that to do with it? Given I was a child of The Troubles, it wouldn’t be long before I would know what that was all about. Even after we moved further out into the countryside, it was never far away.

How lost lifes been
afraid of waking up
so afraid to take the dream

And as soon as I understood why themmuns had grievances against usuns, I was angry. Leaving aside the bombings, shootings and beatings, why the majority ruling class (Protestants) didn’t treat the minority (Catholics) with justice was odd to me. Discrimination was rife, and that was wrong. Collusion and coverups by the State? Sort that out, clamp down on it, arrest and try those doing that. (I’ll ignore the fact that maybe, perhaps, you know, the judical system might have been corrupt too. I’d sort that one out as well.) If the justice system was seen to work, and give recourse to everyone (as it should) then we could treat those still involved in the physical force tradition in the same way. Arrest and try them. To the same standards we hold the State forces. No exemptions. To my mind, it was easy.

Strip out discrimination in housing. Strip it out in (State) discrimination (as I believe in discriminating. I don’t want everyone to be my friend, I reserve the right to call out people as dicks. I’ll discriminate. But justice should be blind, but not be turning a blind eye). Strip out those grievances. Those shouldn’t be grievances, that I could never get. We have laws. Apply them. To one and all. It would also negate the MOPEry, the whataboutery. Oh, wait, MOPE. Most Oppressed People Ever. Sorry, I forget, dear reader, you might not be as familiar with the nuances, acronymns and twisted alleys of Norn Iron politics.

Shapes of angels the night casts
lie dead but dreaming in my past
and their here they want to meet you
they want to play with you so take the dream

But what did I know? I was just some kid who even then advocated getting Sinn Fein on television for debating with. How can you argue against someone if you don’t let them speak? Oh, they are saying we should bomb, maim and kill? Then let them say that, in the open, and have been see them for what they are. Oh, they are saying their community is being harrassed and subjucated by The State? Then investigate that, and weed it out. Justice.

Take the dream
take the dream
can’t break free
I can’t break free

Given the history of the British in Ireland, there was obviously going to be mention of this in ‘Cruel Britannia’. Torture goes on all across the world, since the dawn of time, but I am not going to fall in to whataboutery, and mention America, Syria, China, or anywhere else. This is about the British. How could right-thinking, supposedly fair-play chaps engage in such things? It is the hyposcrisy of it all. What would I do if I were in charge of intelligence-gathering? Not torture. Never that. I believe in open government, and justice. See the theme here yet? And free speech. You are offended by what I say? boohoo. It gets murky with hate speech and encitement, as I wouldn’t really clamp down on that, as I believe in individual responsibility (and answering for your own actions), but abuse of power coupled with encitement can be dangerous.

Then again, we can deal with that. Justice.

And I hear them call they want to plauge you
their here once more they want to lay with you
they want to take you to the shame of your past
take the dream

And we don’t deal with the Third World in a just way, it is all protectionism. And paternalism. To misquote several people, mostly Professor Easterly, what is good for Gambia isn’t necessarily good for a Gambian. People need to have rights, and access to justice. (Not as tenuous a connection to tie these threads together as you might think, but it hasn’t progressed quite the way I was intending, given I went on longer about the old country that I intended.)

Whenever I hear of cases where The West uses its dominant position to push through their own agendas, I get annoyed. But wait, wouldn’t some of this…protectionism protect me and mine, my job and those around me, their jobs too? If we open up our markets, we will just get dragged down, no? No. We apply the same rules to us as them. There are no usuns and themuns. Justice. For one, and the same for the other.

We’re but fools of our fate
on this earth I shall wait
by the roots of my soul
I am loosing control
take the dream

I am not big on revenge, though. Sometimes that is what people want, an eye for an eye. I believe in forgiveness, once there is repentance. Forget? Oh no, regardless of anything else, my race remembers, which is part of their problem. Though it wouldn’t be, if there was equal access to justice.

We treated the Third World poorly. We treated our minorities poorly. We can, and should, admit that. But do we set up lots of Truth and Reconciliation commissions? Do we prosecute old (white) men for misdeeds decades past? Tricky. I’d say yes. Or, rather, I’d say we apply the same procedures of justice to them all. No whataboutery. Shine the same standard everywhere.

The sleepers in you shapes of angels
so deep within you
feel your soul drowning
unloosen your soul drowning
drowning - drowning in waters of reality

The problem is, and I have had this problem over the years, is it is hard to debate with those who have been oppressed for so long, whether real, imagined or otherwise. (‘Otherwise’ being real, then the problem goes away, but the, to use an appropriate North Irish interpretation of it, bitterness doesn’t.)

There are no easy solutions to all this. But the first step is to make sure there is justice. To make sure no one is treated differently before a court of law. To make sure the State doesn’t discriminate (as it will only really discriminate against the lower classes, the underclasses, the ones it should be helping the most, not the like of me, educated middle-class affluent. Though I wasn’t always those things, let me tell you). To make sure everyone realises these are truths.

Tell me what is reality
tell me tell me thoughts of god
do dreams fall from god
tell me what dreams may come

But it is alright for me, I am educated, middle-class and affluent (after a fashion, in the grand scheme of things, but I am by no means rich. I still have to work, couldn’t afford to not be working, even for a month). But it shouldn’t be alright for me and me alone. What would happen if I was lifted by Special Branch, accused of something I wasn’t told about, and kept in the dark? I am under no illusions it could happen. It happens to others.

Guantanamo Bay? I’d have them appearing before a court. Not hidden away. Justice, even for our enemies. Daylight needs to be shone on the dark corners. Give them their day before a judge. If you have nothing on them to hold them, let them go. If you have something on them, charge them and try them. Is it really that hard? Why deny justice to some? Apply it, and apply it everywhere. …and Justice for all.

Break free thoughts all gone
we’re all come down
take me
thoughts of god
take me
fall from god
tell me what dreams may come

But what do I know? What dreams may come?

Save me from tomorrow