Work in progress sketch of our youngest dog.

Sketchbook Album

Trying to keep the Inktober mojo going.

Inktober 2024 Album

Inktober 2023 22, Scratchy

Inktober 2023 21, Chain

Inktober 2023 20, Frost

Inktober 2023 19, Plump

Inktober 2023 18, Saddle

Inktober 2023 17, Demon

Inktober 2023 16, Angel

Inktober 2023 15, Dagger

Inktober 2023 14, Castle

Inktober 2023 13, Rise

Inktober 2023 12, Spicey

Inktober 2023 11, Wander

Inktober 2023 10, Fortune

Inktober 2023 9, Bounce

Inktober 2023 8, Toad

Inktober 2023 7, Drip

Inktober 2023 6, Golden

Inktober 2023 5, Map

Inktober 2023 4, Dodge

Inktober 2023 3, Path

Inktober 2023 2, Spiders

Inktober 2023 1, Dream

Had a great day on my blacksmith course making a Ram’s head fire poker at Adrian Wood’s Forge, I would highly recommend it.

I went back for a second course after making a dragon coat hook last year, course which was part of my 50th birthday presents.

Tentacle sketch

Flickr Album for Inktober 2022

Inktober 2022 12, Forget

Inktober 2022 11, Eagle

Inktober 2022 10, Crabby

Inktober 2022 9, Nest

Inktober 2022 8, Match

Inktober 2022 7, Trip

Inktober 2022 6, Bouquet

Inktober 2022 5, Flame

Inktober 2022 4, Scallop

Inktober 2022 3, Bat

Inktober 2022 2, Scurry

Inktober 2022 1, Gargoyle

Walk to the office last Thursday morning in Leeds.

Flickr Album from Weekend break to Seaham in County Durham, England.

Rectangle Filling

Packing with Rectangles using the Open Processing website.

Source Code

Circle Packing

Been watching some more old Coding Train Videos so have written a basic circle packing script.

p5* Script output

Source Code

Online p5* Editor

Inktober 2021 52 Week 17, Waves

Inktober 2021 52 Week 16, Stand

Inktober 2021 52 Week 15, Star

Inktober 2021 52 Week 14, Shield

Inktober 2021 52 Week 13, Brave

Inktober 2021 52 Week 12, Microscopic

Inktober 2021 52 Week 11, Spaceship

Inktober 2021 52 Week 10, Powerful

Inktober 2021 52 Week 9, Egg

Inktober 2021 52 Week 8, Camping

Inktober 2021 52 Week 7, Dragonfly

Inktober 2021 52 Week 6, Monster

Inktober 2021 52 Week 5, Remote

Inktober 2021 52 Week 4, Ancient

Inktober 2021 52 Week 3, Reflection

Inktober 2021 52 Week 2, Home

Inktober 2021 52 Week 1, Fresh

My picture on Flickr which have been liked by four or more people.

Short code for embedding Flickr albums easily. Here demonstrated with my Inkotober 2020 album.

Short code defined like this

<a data-flickr-embed="true" data-header="true" data-footer="true"
href="{{ index .Params 1 }}"
title="{{ index .Params 0 }}">
<img src="{{ index .Params 2 }}"
width="800" height="600"
alt="{{ index .Params 0 }}">
</a><script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

First parameter is the album title. Second parameter is the album URL. Third parameter is a URL to an image to use for the album.

Inktober 2020 Flickr Album

All my drawings from Inktober 2020

Photos from recent trip to Hornsea.

Code can be found at Shapes

Further modification produce different results for Shapes Colours

Created with Processing

Fractal application running on my Amazon Kindle 10

Testing a Flickr shortcode I found here flickr-hugo-embed and tweaked for my own needs.

After watching Speed Cubers documentary on NetFlix decided to start back trying to learn to solve the cube from memory rather than following the instructions.

So far I can get upto the middle layer without refering to the online walk through instructions.

Cubes

Rediscoverying Inkscape vector drawing application after a few years, its even better than before.

Had a lot of fun converting some of my doodles into vector line art.

Rainbow Light

Testing including pictures from my Flickr Account

Rusty sculpture in Valley Gardens Harrogate

Work in progress sketch of our youngest dog.

Having been a bit lazy in not updating my Hugo version since I started which was recently breaking one of my Github actions, I decided do do that.

This lead to an cascading update cycle.

• Updating Hugo version broke the theme I was using.
• Updating the theme broke the Tweet shortcode, no longer on Twitter so edited those post which referenced my old Twitter account.
• Updating the Hugo version, broke the Github Action which was building and uploaded to S3. This was due to newer versions of Hugo now having an “extended” and “with_deploy” versions.
• Raised a PR against the Github action to update to use the “with_deploy” version.

Still a couple of deprecated warning and fixing background and social icon links to sort out but at least now running against the latest version of Hugo.

Sketchbook Album

Trying to keep the Inktober mojo going.

Inktober 2024 Album

Inktober 2023 22, Scratchy

Inktober 2023 21, Chain

Inktober 2023 20, Frost

Inktober 2023 19, Plump

Inktober 2023 18, Saddle

Inktober 2023 17, Demon

Inktober 2023 16, Angel

Inktober 2023 15, Dagger

Inktober 2023 14, Castle

Inktober 2023 13, Rise

Inktober 2023 12, Spicey

Inktober 2023 11, Wander

Inktober 2023 10, Fortune

Inktober 2023 9, Bounce

Inktober 2023 8, Toad

Inktober 2023 7, Drip

Inktober 2023 6, Golden

Inktober 2023 5, Map

Inktober 2023 4, Dodge

Inktober 2023 3, Path

Inktober 2023 2, Spiders

Inktober 2023 1, Dream

Had a great day on my blacksmith course making a Ram’s head fire poker at Adrian Wood’s Forge, I would highly recommend it.

I went back for a second course after making a dragon coat hook last year, course which was part of my 50th birthday presents.

Tentacle sketch

Flickr Album for Inktober 2022

Inktober 2022 12, Forget

Inktober 2022 11, Eagle

Inktober 2022 10, Crabby

Inktober 2022 9, Nest

Inktober 2022 8, Match

Inktober 2022 7, Trip

Inktober 2022 6, Bouquet

Inktober 2022 5, Flame

Inktober 2022 4, Scallop

Inktober 2022 3, Bat

Inktober 2022 2, Scurry

Inktober 2022 1, Gargoyle

Walk to the office last Thursday morning in Leeds.

Flickr Album from Weekend break to Seaham in County Durham, England.

Inktober 2021 52 Week 17, Waves

Inktober 2021 52 Week 16, Stand

Inktober 2021 52 Week 15, Star

Inktober 2021 52 Week 14, Shield

Inktober 2021 52 Week 13, Brave

Inktober 2021 52 Week 12, Microscopic

Inktober 2021 52 Week 11, Spaceship

Inktober 2021 52 Week 10, Powerful

Inktober 2021 52 Week 9, Egg

Inktober 2021 52 Week 8, Camping

Inktober 2021 52 Week 7, Dragonfly

Inktober 2021 52 Week 6, Monster

Inktober 2021 52 Week 5, Remote

Inktober 2021 52 Week 4, Ancient

Inktober 2021 52 Week 3, Reflection

Inktober 2021 52 Week 2, Home

Inktober 2021 52 Week 1, Fresh

Been trying to relearn 6502 assembly language for fun, its a lot faster and easier than the first time on actual hardware when I was a teenager.

Been using a book I picked up from eBay Discovering BBC Micro Machine Code by A.P. Stephenson

Using BeebAsm assembler on my Mac with a BBC Micro emulator, rather than build in BBC BASIC one.

You can find my code at Github https://github.com/alastairhm/beebasm

This example draws a line of zeros to Mode 7, see screenshot below.

My picture on Flickr which have been liked by four or more people.

Short code for embedding Flickr albums easily. Here demonstrated with my Inkotober 2020 album.

Short code defined like this

<a data-flickr-embed="true" data-header="true" data-footer="true"
href="{{ index .Params 1 }}"
title="{{ index .Params 0 }}">
<img src="{{ index .Params 2 }}"
width="800" height="600"
alt="{{ index .Params 0 }}">
</a><script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

First parameter is the album title. Second parameter is the album URL. Third parameter is a URL to an image to use for the album.

Inktober 2020 Flickr Album

All my drawings from Inktober 2020

Photos from recent trip to Hornsea.

Interest video about modding the Acorn Electron.

Testing a Flickr shortcode I found here flickr-hugo-embed and tweaked for my own needs.

One thing I like about Hugo is how easy it is to expand its functionality with your own code.

For example was able to create a shortcode to embed Lbry.tv videos into a post in around five minutes.

First I created an empty file layouts/shortcodes/lbry.html which I pasted the basic embed code take from the share button on one of their videos.

<iframe id="lbry-iframe" width="560" height="315" src="https://lbry.tv/$/embed/this-new-fedora-powered-thinkpad-p53-is/097106eb68aebc90b33d83bb053467af942a8e20" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Then parameterized this so that the src url can be changed.

Work in progress sketch of our youngest dog.

Having been a bit lazy in not updating my Hugo version since I started which was recently breaking one of my Github actions, I decided do do that.

This lead to an cascading update cycle.

• Updating Hugo version broke the theme I was using.
• Updating the theme broke the Tweet shortcode, no longer on Twitter so edited those post which referenced my old Twitter account.
• Updating the Hugo version, broke the Github Action which was building and uploaded to S3. This was due to newer versions of Hugo now having an “extended” and “with_deploy” versions.
• Raised a PR against the Github action to update to use the “with_deploy” version.

Still a couple of deprecated warning and fixing background and social icon links to sort out but at least now running against the latest version of Hugo.

Sketchbook Album

Trying to keep the Inktober mojo going.

Inktober 2024 Album

Inktober 2023 22, Scratchy

Inktober 2023 21, Chain

Inktober 2023 20, Frost

Inktober 2023 19, Plump

Inktober 2023 18, Saddle

Inktober 2023 17, Demon

Inktober 2023 16, Angel

Inktober 2023 15, Dagger

Inktober 2023 14, Castle

Inktober 2023 13, Rise

Inktober 2023 12, Spicey

Inktober 2023 11, Wander

Inktober 2023 10, Fortune

Inktober 2023 9, Bounce

Inktober 2023 8, Toad

Inktober 2023 7, Drip

Inktober 2023 6, Golden

Inktober 2023 5, Map

Inktober 2023 4, Dodge

Inktober 2023 3, Path

Inktober 2023 2, Spiders

Inktober 2023 1, Dream

Tentacle sketch

Flickr Album for Inktober 2022

Inktober 2022 12, Forget

Inktober 2022 11, Eagle

Inktober 2022 10, Crabby

Inktober 2022 9, Nest

Inktober 2022 8, Match

Inktober 2022 7, Trip

Inktober 2022 6, Bouquet

Inktober 2022 5, Flame

Inktober 2022 4, Scallop

Inktober 2022 3, Bat

Inktober 2022 2, Scurry

Inktober 2022 1, Gargoyle

Walk to the office last Thursday morning in Leeds.

Flickr Album from Weekend break to Seaham in County Durham, England.

Inktober 2021 52 Week 17, Waves

Inktober 2021 52 Week 16, Stand

Inktober 2021 52 Week 15, Star

Inktober 2021 52 Week 14, Shield

Inktober 2021 52 Week 13, Brave

Inktober 2021 52 Week 12, Microscopic

Inktober 2021 52 Week 11, Spaceship

Inktober 2021 52 Week 10, Powerful

Inktober 2021 52 Week 9, Egg

Inktober 2021 52 Week 8, Camping

Inktober 2021 52 Week 7, Dragonfly

Inktober 2021 52 Week 6, Monster

Inktober 2021 52 Week 5, Remote

Inktober 2021 52 Week 4, Ancient

Inktober 2021 52 Week 3, Reflection

Inktober 2021 52 Week 2, Home

Inktober 2021 52 Week 1, Fresh

Been trying to relearn 6502 assembly language for fun, its a lot faster and easier than the first time on actual hardware when I was a teenager.

Been using a book I picked up from eBay Discovering BBC Micro Machine Code by A.P. Stephenson

Using BeebAsm assembler on my Mac with a BBC Micro emulator, rather than build in BBC BASIC one.

You can find my code at Github https://github.com/alastairhm/beebasm

This example draws a line of zeros to Mode 7, see screenshot below.

My picture on Flickr which have been liked by four or more people.

Short code for embedding Flickr albums easily. Here demonstrated with my Inkotober 2020 album.

Short code defined like this

<a data-flickr-embed="true" data-header="true" data-footer="true"
href="{{ index .Params 1 }}"
title="{{ index .Params 0 }}">
<img src="{{ index .Params 2 }}"
width="800" height="600"
alt="{{ index .Params 0 }}">
</a><script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

First parameter is the album title. Second parameter is the album URL. Third parameter is a URL to an image to use for the album.

Inktober 2020 Flickr Album

All my drawings from Inktober 2020

Photos from recent trip to Hornsea.

Interest video about modding the Acorn Electron.

Testing a Flickr shortcode I found here flickr-hugo-embed and tweaked for my own needs.

One thing I like about Hugo is how easy it is to expand its functionality with your own code.

For example was able to create a shortcode to embed Lbry.tv videos into a post in around five minutes.

First I created an empty file layouts/shortcodes/lbry.html which I pasted the basic embed code take from the share button on one of their videos.

<iframe id="lbry-iframe" width="560" height="315" src="https://lbry.tv/$/embed/this-new-fedora-powered-thinkpad-p53-is/097106eb68aebc90b33d83bb053467af942a8e20" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Then parameterized this so that the src url can be changed.

Work in progress sketch of our youngest dog.

Sketchbook Album

Trying to keep the Inktober mojo going.

Inktober 2024 Album

Flickr Album for Inktober 2022

Walk to the office last Thursday morning in Leeds.

Flickr Album from Weekend break to Seaham in County Durham, England.

My picture on Flickr which have been liked by four or more people.

Short code for embedding Flickr albums easily. Here demonstrated with my Inkotober 2020 album.

Short code defined like this

<a data-flickr-embed="true" data-header="true" data-footer="true"
href="{{ index .Params 1 }}"
title="{{ index .Params 0 }}">
<img src="{{ index .Params 2 }}"
width="800" height="600"
alt="{{ index .Params 0 }}">
</a><script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

First parameter is the album title. Second parameter is the album URL. Third parameter is a URL to an image to use for the album.

Photos from recent trip to Hornsea.

Fractal application running on my Amazon Kindle 10

Testing a Flickr shortcode I found here flickr-hugo-embed and tweaked for my own needs.

After watching Speed Cubers documentary on NetFlix decided to start back trying to learn to solve the cube from memory rather than following the instructions.

So far I can get upto the middle layer without refering to the online walk through instructions.

Cubes

With WFH since March I have been finding myself fidgetting more while on video calls.

Usually with a lump of Blu-Tak (other options are available), but got this delivered yesterday to keep my fingers busy.

Rainbow Light

Testing including pictures from my Flickr Account

Rusty sculpture in Valley Gardens Harrogate

Work in progress sketch of our youngest dog.

Sketchbook Album

Trying to keep the Inktober mojo going.

Work in progress sketch of our youngest dog.

Sketchbook Album

Trying to keep the Inktober mojo going.

Nearing the time for Advent of Code 2024 thinking of using Node NPM again this year.

Hopefully will complete more this year than before.

https://github.com/alastairhm/adventofcode

Nearing the time for Advent of Code 2024 thinking of using Node NPM again this year.

Hopefully will complete more this year than before.

https://github.com/alastairhm/adventofcode

Learning Node JS

I’ve started playing about with Node JS to learn it enough to modify some legacy Lambda code.

One of the tasks I set myself was to write a Joke bot for Mastodon, which work out to be fairly easy with a couple of packages got and masto.

Dad Joke Bot the code is only 32 lines long, looking to expand it to be able to post images as well.

Icecream Debug

Do you ever use print() or log() to debug your code? Of course you do. IceCream, or ic for short, makes print debugging a little sweeter.

ic() is like print(), but better.

https://github.com/gruns/icecream

I got a cheap SPI TFT ST7735 Display module with SD Card reader off ebay, it had an unusual number of pins on the back.

It took a while searching about on the internet and some head scratching to find a library and work out what connected to what on the Pico.

This is what I found, and worked out.

Using that information I was able to put together this library based on a few others I found and a few test programs.

Something I did a few (8) years ago on the Arduino to display two-digit numbers on a 8x8 LED matrix, this is an update to do the same in Micropthon.

Numbers have been defined to 3x5 pixels, so for a two-digit number it fits into 8x5 LED grid with spacing, saving some LED Matrix space.

The code for this can be found here numbers.py

Just a short bit of code to test a DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor module.

This version has just three pins VCC, GND and data, so easy to connect and use with the DHT library.

dht11.py.

Found a LED Matrix with a Max7219 in my parts bin (box of random electronics in the garage) so looked into getting it working with the Pico and MicroPython.

This is an example why I love open source. The original library I found was functional but sparse, last committed to 4 years ago. There were a few forks, most not much activity. One had been active recently and had some major improvements in functionality so switched over to that fork. https://github.com/enchant97/micropython-max7219

Stumbled across a Python script to run a Mandelbrot set in ASCII in Python so I thought I would see how it ran on the RaspberryPi Pico.

After tweaking it slightly from the source it ended up like this mandelbrot.py

This results in the following;

                             ...................................................................................................
                           .....................................................................................................
                         .......................................................................................................
                       .........................................................................................................
                     ...................................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.......................................................
                    ..........................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.............................................
                  .....................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,......................................
                 .................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------,,,,,,,,,,,,.................................
               ...............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------:i;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,.............................
              .............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::;ih$+;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,..........................
             ...........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------------::::;;+# hiiii :---------,,,,,,,,,.......................
            .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------:::::;;i+hM MM #+;;:---------,,,,,,,,,,....................
          .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------::::::;;ii+hH* $H+ii;:::---------,,,,,,,,,,..................
         ........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;i+HhH     *h++;;::::---------,,,,,,,,,,................
        .......,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;;;+           *@ +i;::::::-------,,,,,,,,,,,..............
        .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::;;;;;ii+hM@          $hii;;:::::::------,,,,,,,,,,,............
       .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------:::;;;;;;iiii++h            *h+ii;;;;:::::::----,,,,,,,,,,,...........
      ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------::::;ii++ ++++++hhHH$@         @MHhh++ii;;;;;ihi;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.........
     ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::::::;;+H   @MHhH$  #                 $@  h++ii++M$i;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,........
     ...,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------::::::::::;;;ii@      #@                         $HH*  $#  #;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.......
    ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------:::::::::::::;;;;ii+hM                                        * i;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,.....
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----:::::::::::::::;;;;;i++HHM#                                       *+;;:::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----::::::::::::::::;;;;;;iiM                                           #Mhii;;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
  ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------::;iH+;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;iiiii++H$                                            Mh++;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,...
  .,,,,,,,,,,,,---------::::;;iH#++iiii++H*++iiiiii+++H$                                               $ H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,..
  ,,,,,,,,------------:::::;;;+h **M HhhM  $HHMhhhhhhHM@                                                 H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
 .,,,,,------------::::::::;;ii+hM#    @@      #$HHHHM                                                 H+i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
 ,,,,------------:::::::::;iiiihh$                 $$*                                                 @ i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,,-------------::::::::;;iii+H *                   @                                                  M+;:::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,------------:::::;;;;i+#HhhhM$@                                                                      Mi;:::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ----------::;;;;;;;iii+hH* *  @                                                                      hi;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ::::;;;iiMiiiiii+++++MHM                                                                           $+i;;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
                                                                                                  *Hh+i;;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ::::;;;iiMiiiiii+++++MHM                                                                           $+i;;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ----------::;;;;;;;iii+hH* *  @                                                                      hi;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,------------:::::;;;;i+#HhhhM$@                                                                      Mi;:::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,,-------------::::::::;;iii+H *                   @                                                  M+;:::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,,,,------------:::::::::;iiiihh$                 $$*                                                 @ i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 .,,,,,------------::::::::;;ii+hM#    @@      #$HHHHM                                                 H+i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
  ,,,,,,,,------------:::::;;;+h **M HhhM  $HHMhhhhhhHM@                                                 H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
  .,,,,,,,,,,,,---------::::;;iH#++iiii++H*++iiiiii+++H$                                               $ H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,..
  ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------::;iH+;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;iiiii++H$                                            Mh++;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,...
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----::::::::::::::::;;;;;;iiM                                           #Mhii;;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----:::::::::::::::;;;;;i++HHM#                                       *+;;:::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
    ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------:::::::::::::;;;;ii+hM                                        * i;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,.....
     ...,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------::::::::::;;;ii@      #@                         $HH*  $#  #;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.......
     ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::::::;;+H   @MHhH$  #                 $@  h++ii++M$i;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,........
      ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------::::;ii++ ++++++hhHH$@         @MHhh++ii;;;;;ihi;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.........
       .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------:::;;;;;;iiii++h            *h+ii;;;;:::::::----,,,,,,,,,,,...........
        .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::;;;;;ii+hM@          $hii;;:::::::------,,,,,,,,,,,............
        .......,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;;;+           *@ +i;::::::-------,,,,,,,,,,,..............
         ........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;i+HhH     *h++;;::::---------,,,,,,,,,,................
          .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------::::::;;ii+hH* $H+ii;:::---------,,,,,,,,,,..................
            .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------:::::;;i+hM MM #+;;:---------,,,,,,,,,,....................
             ...........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------------::::;;+# hiiii :---------,,,,,,,,,.......................
              .............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::;ih$+;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,..........................
               ...............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------:i;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,.............................
                 .................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------,,,,,,,,,,,,.................................
                  .....................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,......................................
                    ..........................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.............................................
                     ...................................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.......................................................
                       .........................................................................................................
                         .......................................................................................................
                           .....................................................................................................

I amended the code to update the OLED I was using in the temperature sensor tests mand_oled.

Have been tinkering with temperature measurement using the Raspberry Pi Pico.

First with the internal temperature sensor and then using a TMP36 temperature sensor externally.

I wrote two classes to access these and return the reading.

• Internal Temperature
• External Temperature

Here is an example using the two sensors together temps.py

You will need to upload the two classes to the Pico first in a library sub-directory.

Here is how you would wire it up on a breadboard tmp36.fzz

Some components arrived from AliExpress recently so been able to play with an I2C OLED display with my Pico W.

Hello World Test

Code of this is here https://github.com/alastairhm/pico_w/blob/main/i2c_scan.py

And also used here to display the IP address after connected to the wifi https://github.com/alastairhm/pico_w/blob/main/wifi_oled.py

Next thing I’ve been playing with is internal and external temperature sensors, I will post about that soon.

Just before Christmas I got a Raspberry Pi Pico W to have a play with.

Looking forward to using MicroPython to do some LED flashing and other things.

Started a repo on Github for it Pico W Repo

Rectangle Filling

Packing with Rectangles using the Open Processing website.

Source Code

Circle Packing

Been watching some more old Coding Train Videos so have written a basic circle packing script.

p5* Script output

Source Code

Online p5* Editor

Nearing the time for Advent of Code 2024 thinking of using Node NPM again this year.

Hopefully will complete more this year than before.

https://github.com/alastairhm/adventofcode

Installing Ruby and Node on Redhat 8

Quick tip on how to install Ruby 2.7 and Nodejs 12 on Redhat 8, as it can default to older versions.

# Enable new versions
dnf -y module reset ruby nodejs
dnf -y module enable ruby:2.7 nodejs:12

# Install
dnf install nodejs ruby

# Check installed versions
ruby --version
node --version
npm --version

Nearing the time for Advent of Code 2024 thinking of using Node NPM again this year.

Hopefully will complete more this year than before.

https://github.com/alastairhm/adventofcode

Learning Node JS

I’ve started playing about with Node JS to learn it enough to modify some legacy Lambda code.

One of the tasks I set myself was to write a Joke bot for Mastodon, which work out to be fairly easy with a couple of packages got and masto.

Dad Joke Bot the code is only 32 lines long, looking to expand it to be able to post images as well.

Nearing the time for Advent of Code 2024 thinking of using Node NPM again this year.

Hopefully will complete more this year than before.

https://github.com/alastairhm/adventofcode

Nearing the time for Advent of Code 2024 thinking of using Node NPM again this year.

Hopefully will complete more this year than before.

https://github.com/alastairhm/adventofcode

A simple Python script to allow you to quickly search from the command line that I’ve been playing with on and off for a while.

https://github.com/alastairhm/searchit

It uses the Python Library Fire to automatically generate the command line interface which is something I stumbled across recently.

You either pass it a paramater for the search term or if one it not passed it used whatever is in your clipboard buffet.

Updating the parameter file you can add other search engines and pick which one to use as your default.

Came across this article of ways to Learn C on Linux which took me back to my 3rd real programming job.

It was with a software house mainly working with C/C++ on Linux/ Unix and embedded systems.

My first real experience use C/C++ in a professional environment, happy days with a good bunch of geeks.

If you’ve never tried it before it would be a good change from more recent languages to learn C for a challenge.

Learning Rust

New year, new programming language, decided to go and learn Rust programming.

Some interesting concepts so far.

Learn Rust Repo

Resources

• https://www.udemy.com/course/learning-rust/
• https://www.rust-lang.org/

Make learning programming fun

It is funny how things come around again, when I started learning to programming back in the 1980s on my 8 bit machines (ZX81, Acorn Electron, BBC Micro) I used to play with graphics a lot. It gave instant feedback and visually showed the results of things like recursion. I had great fun playing with Fractals and other procedural generated images.

Recently I discovered a YouTube channel and programming platform which took me right back to those days.

Having been a bit lazy in not updating my Hugo version since I started which was recently breaking one of my Github actions, I decided do do that.

This lead to an cascading update cycle.

• Updating Hugo version broke the theme I was using.
• Updating the theme broke the Tweet shortcode, no longer on Twitter so edited those post which referenced my old Twitter account.
• Updating the Hugo version, broke the Github Action which was building and uploaded to S3. This was due to newer versions of Hugo now having an “extended” and “with_deploy” versions.
• Raised a PR against the Github action to update to use the “with_deploy” version.

Still a couple of deprecated warning and fixing background and social icon links to sort out but at least now running against the latest version of Hugo.

Been trying to relearn 6502 assembly language for fun, its a lot faster and easier than the first time on actual hardware when I was a teenager.

Been using a book I picked up from eBay Discovering BBC Micro Machine Code by A.P. Stephenson

Using BeebAsm assembler on my Mac with a BBC Micro emulator, rather than build in BBC BASIC one.

You can find my code at Github https://github.com/alastairhm/beebasm

This example draws a line of zeros to Mode 7, see screenshot below.

Make learning programming fun

It is funny how things come around again, when I started learning to programming back in the 1980s on my 8 bit machines (ZX81, Acorn Electron, BBC Micro) I used to play with graphics a lot. It gave instant feedback and visually showed the results of things like recursion. I had great fun playing with Fractals and other procedural generated images.

Recently I discovered a YouTube channel and programming platform which took me right back to those days.

Interest video about modding the Acorn Electron.

One thing I like about Hugo is how easy it is to expand its functionality with your own code.

For example was able to create a shortcode to embed Lbry.tv videos into a post in around five minutes.

First I created an empty file layouts/shortcodes/lbry.html which I pasted the basic embed code take from the share button on one of their videos.

<iframe id="lbry-iframe" width="560" height="315" src="https://lbry.tv/$/embed/this-new-fedora-powered-thinkpad-p53-is/097106eb68aebc90b33d83bb053467af942a8e20" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Then parameterized this so that the src url can be changed.

Having been a bit lazy in not updating my Hugo version since I started which was recently breaking one of my Github actions, I decided do do that.

This lead to an cascading update cycle.

• Updating Hugo version broke the theme I was using.
• Updating the theme broke the Tweet shortcode, no longer on Twitter so edited those post which referenced my old Twitter account.
• Updating the Hugo version, broke the Github Action which was building and uploaded to S3. This was due to newer versions of Hugo now having an “extended” and “with_deploy” versions.
• Raised a PR against the Github action to update to use the “with_deploy” version.

Still a couple of deprecated warning and fixing background and social icon links to sort out but at least now running against the latest version of Hugo.

More fun playing with BBC Twitter Bot.

https://tco/ks0jhudxdM

https://t.co/xBabCMPWCX

https://tco/jVpUMLBa8D

https://tco/Rt3DOf1FOh

BBC Micro machine code take on C64 10 Print one line random pattern generator.

Code at Github 10print.asm

\ 10 PRINT
\ Using BeebASM assembler
\ (c) Alastair Montgomery

INCLUDE "../lib/constants.asm"
seed = &70

ORG &2000

.start
    LDA #23
    STA seed
    LDA #63
    STA seed+1
    LDX #0
.char
    LDA chartable, X
    JSR oswrch
    INX
    CPX #23
    BNE char
.loop
    JSR random
    BMI two
.one
    LDA #224
    JMP print
.two
    LDA #225
.print
    JSR oswrch
    JMP loop
.finish
    RTS
.random
    INCLUDE "../lib/random.asm"
.chartable
    EQUB 22,0
    EQUB 23,224,8,8,12,7,224,48,16,16
    EQUB 23,225,16,16,48,224,7,12,8,8
.end

SAVE "MyCode", start, end

BBC Micro take on C64 10 Print one line random pattern generator.

10 MODE 0
20 N=RND(1):IF N > 0.5 THEN PRINT "/"; ELSE PRINT "\";
30 GOTO 20
RUN

Twitter Post

New retro game, looks worth getting a Amstrad CPC emulator setup to play it.

Video Source Retro Collection

Juan’s games: (https://www.usebox.net/jjm/)

Buy physical copies of these games:

Golden Tail

Kitsune Curse

Mr. Ee from Micro Power for the BBC Micro nice variation on the Pacman theme.

Play Online at BBC Mirco

Interest video about modding the Acorn Electron.

One thing I like about Hugo is how easy it is to expand its functionality with your own code.

For example was able to create a shortcode to embed Lbry.tv videos into a post in around five minutes.

First I created an empty file layouts/shortcodes/lbry.html which I pasted the basic embed code take from the share button on one of their videos.

<iframe id="lbry-iframe" width="560" height="315" src="https://lbry.tv/$/embed/this-new-fedora-powered-thinkpad-p53-is/097106eb68aebc90b33d83bb053467af942a8e20" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Then parameterized this so that the src url can be changed.

New retro game, looks worth getting a Commodore emulator setup to play it.

This style of game is one of my favorites, loved Boulder Dash and Repton.

Video Source Retro Collection

The Pit Download

Play Online

Having been a bit lazy in not updating my Hugo version since I started which was recently breaking one of my Github actions, I decided do do that.

This lead to an cascading update cycle.

• Updating Hugo version broke the theme I was using.
• Updating the theme broke the Tweet shortcode, no longer on Twitter so edited those post which referenced my old Twitter account.
• Updating the Hugo version, broke the Github Action which was building and uploaded to S3. This was due to newer versions of Hugo now having an “extended” and “with_deploy” versions.
• Raised a PR against the Github action to update to use the “with_deploy” version.

Still a couple of deprecated warning and fixing background and social icon links to sort out but at least now running against the latest version of Hugo.

Learning Node JS

I’ve started playing about with Node JS to learn it enough to modify some legacy Lambda code.

One of the tasks I set myself was to write a Joke bot for Mastodon, which work out to be fairly easy with a couple of packages got and masto.

Dad Joke Bot the code is only 32 lines long, looking to expand it to be able to post images as well.

Icecream Debug

Do you ever use print() or log() to debug your code? Of course you do. IceCream, or ic for short, makes print debugging a little sweeter.

ic() is like print(), but better.

https://github.com/gruns/icecream

I got a cheap SPI TFT ST7735 Display module with SD Card reader off ebay, it had an unusual number of pins on the back.

It took a while searching about on the internet and some head scratching to find a library and work out what connected to what on the Pico.

This is what I found, and worked out.

Using that information I was able to put together this library based on a few others I found and a few test programs.

Something I did a few (8) years ago on the Arduino to display two-digit numbers on a 8x8 LED matrix, this is an update to do the same in Micropthon.

Numbers have been defined to 3x5 pixels, so for a two-digit number it fits into 8x5 LED grid with spacing, saving some LED Matrix space.

The code for this can be found here numbers.py

Just a short bit of code to test a DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor module.

This version has just three pins VCC, GND and data, so easy to connect and use with the DHT library.

dht11.py.

Found a LED Matrix with a Max7219 in my parts bin (box of random electronics in the garage) so looked into getting it working with the Pico and MicroPython.

This is an example why I love open source. The original library I found was functional but sparse, last committed to 4 years ago. There were a few forks, most not much activity. One had been active recently and had some major improvements in functionality so switched over to that fork. https://github.com/enchant97/micropython-max7219

Stumbled across a Python script to run a Mandelbrot set in ASCII in Python so I thought I would see how it ran on the RaspberryPi Pico.

After tweaking it slightly from the source it ended up like this mandelbrot.py

This results in the following;

                             ...................................................................................................
                           .....................................................................................................
                         .......................................................................................................
                       .........................................................................................................
                     ...................................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.......................................................
                    ..........................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.............................................
                  .....................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,......................................
                 .................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------,,,,,,,,,,,,.................................
               ...............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------:i;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,.............................
              .............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::;ih$+;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,..........................
             ...........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------------::::;;+# hiiii :---------,,,,,,,,,.......................
            .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------:::::;;i+hM MM #+;;:---------,,,,,,,,,,....................
          .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------::::::;;ii+hH* $H+ii;:::---------,,,,,,,,,,..................
         ........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;i+HhH     *h++;;::::---------,,,,,,,,,,................
        .......,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;;;+           *@ +i;::::::-------,,,,,,,,,,,..............
        .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::;;;;;ii+hM@          $hii;;:::::::------,,,,,,,,,,,............
       .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------:::;;;;;;iiii++h            *h+ii;;;;:::::::----,,,,,,,,,,,...........
      ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------::::;ii++ ++++++hhHH$@         @MHhh++ii;;;;;ihi;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.........
     ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::::::;;+H   @MHhH$  #                 $@  h++ii++M$i;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,........
     ...,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------::::::::::;;;ii@      #@                         $HH*  $#  #;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.......
    ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------:::::::::::::;;;;ii+hM                                        * i;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,.....
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----:::::::::::::::;;;;;i++HHM#                                       *+;;:::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----::::::::::::::::;;;;;;iiM                                           #Mhii;;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
  ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------::;iH+;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;iiiii++H$                                            Mh++;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,...
  .,,,,,,,,,,,,---------::::;;iH#++iiii++H*++iiiiii+++H$                                               $ H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,..
  ,,,,,,,,------------:::::;;;+h **M HhhM  $HHMhhhhhhHM@                                                 H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
 .,,,,,------------::::::::;;ii+hM#    @@      #$HHHHM                                                 H+i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
 ,,,,------------:::::::::;iiiihh$                 $$*                                                 @ i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,,-------------::::::::;;iii+H *                   @                                                  M+;:::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,------------:::::;;;;i+#HhhhM$@                                                                      Mi;:::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ----------::;;;;;;;iii+hH* *  @                                                                      hi;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ::::;;;iiMiiiiii+++++MHM                                                                           $+i;;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
                                                                                                  *Hh+i;;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ::::;;;iiMiiiiii+++++MHM                                                                           $+i;;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ----------::;;;;;;;iii+hH* *  @                                                                      hi;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,------------:::::;;;;i+#HhhhM$@                                                                      Mi;:::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,,-------------::::::::;;iii+H *                   @                                                  M+;:::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,,,,------------:::::::::;iiiihh$                 $$*                                                 @ i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 .,,,,,------------::::::::;;ii+hM#    @@      #$HHHHM                                                 H+i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
  ,,,,,,,,------------:::::;;;+h **M HhhM  $HHMhhhhhhHM@                                                 H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
  .,,,,,,,,,,,,---------::::;;iH#++iiii++H*++iiiiii+++H$                                               $ H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,..
  ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------::;iH+;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;iiiii++H$                                            Mh++;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,...
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----::::::::::::::::;;;;;;iiM                                           #Mhii;;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----:::::::::::::::;;;;;i++HHM#                                       *+;;:::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
    ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------:::::::::::::;;;;ii+hM                                        * i;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,.....
     ...,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------::::::::::;;;ii@      #@                         $HH*  $#  #;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.......
     ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::::::;;+H   @MHhH$  #                 $@  h++ii++M$i;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,........
      ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------::::;ii++ ++++++hhHH$@         @MHhh++ii;;;;;ihi;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.........
       .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------:::;;;;;;iiii++h            *h+ii;;;;:::::::----,,,,,,,,,,,...........
        .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::;;;;;ii+hM@          $hii;;:::::::------,,,,,,,,,,,............
        .......,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;;;+           *@ +i;::::::-------,,,,,,,,,,,..............
         ........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;i+HhH     *h++;;::::---------,,,,,,,,,,................
          .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------::::::;;ii+hH* $H+ii;:::---------,,,,,,,,,,..................
            .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------:::::;;i+hM MM #+;;:---------,,,,,,,,,,....................
             ...........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------------::::;;+# hiiii :---------,,,,,,,,,.......................
              .............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::;ih$+;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,..........................
               ...............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------:i;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,.............................
                 .................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------,,,,,,,,,,,,.................................
                  .....................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,......................................
                    ..........................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.............................................
                     ...................................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.......................................................
                       .........................................................................................................
                         .......................................................................................................
                           .....................................................................................................

I amended the code to update the OLED I was using in the temperature sensor tests mand_oled.

Have been tinkering with temperature measurement using the Raspberry Pi Pico.

First with the internal temperature sensor and then using a TMP36 temperature sensor externally.

I wrote two classes to access these and return the reading.

• Internal Temperature
• External Temperature

Here is an example using the two sensors together temps.py

You will need to upload the two classes to the Pico first in a library sub-directory.

Here is how you would wire it up on a breadboard tmp36.fzz

Some components arrived from AliExpress recently so been able to play with an I2C OLED display with my Pico W.

Hello World Test

Code of this is here https://github.com/alastairhm/pico_w/blob/main/i2c_scan.py

And also used here to display the IP address after connected to the wifi https://github.com/alastairhm/pico_w/blob/main/wifi_oled.py

Next thing I’ve been playing with is internal and external temperature sensors, I will post about that soon.

Just before Christmas I got a Raspberry Pi Pico W to have a play with.

Looking forward to using MicroPython to do some LED flashing and other things.

Started a repo on Github for it Pico W Repo

Picked this indie retro style platform game for my Playstation 5 cheap recently.

It was released in 2013, so old now but still a good play.

Links

Game Wiki

More fun playing with BBC Twitter Bot.

https://tco/ks0jhudxdM

https://t.co/xBabCMPWCX

https://tco/jVpUMLBa8D

https://tco/Rt3DOf1FOh

I wrote a simple Python script to monitor the clipboard and write any unique text content out to a YAML file for a history. It might turn into something better eventually.

Update

Updated to use a settings file for file location and size.

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import pyperclip
import time
import yaml
import toml
import os
from yaml.loader import SafeLoader

script_path = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))
settings = toml.load(os.path.join(script_path, "clippy.toml"))
history = settings["history"]
max_size = settings["size"]

cliptext = ""
clip_array = []
with open(history, "r") as f:
    clip_array = list(yaml.load_all(f, Loader=SafeLoader))
    clip_array = sum(clip_array, [])

while True:
    tmptext = pyperclip.paste()
    if tmptext != cliptext:
        cliptext = tmptext
        if cliptext not in clip_array:
            clip_array.insert(0,tmptext)
            if len(clip_array) > max_size:
                clip_array.pop()
            with open(history, "w") as f:
                f.write(yaml.dump(clip_array))
    time.sleep(1)

Script on GitHub https://github.com/alastairhm/automate_python/blob/main/clippy.py

Got a new Mac with Catalina pre-installed, so had to compile my own version of Beebasm for the 64 bit OS.

BeebAsm.zip

BBC Micro machine code take on C64 10 Print one line random pattern generator.

Code at Github 10print.asm

\ 10 PRINT
\ Using BeebASM assembler
\ (c) Alastair Montgomery

INCLUDE "../lib/constants.asm"
seed = &70

ORG &2000

.start
    LDA #23
    STA seed
    LDA #63
    STA seed+1
    LDX #0
.char
    LDA chartable, X
    JSR oswrch
    INX
    CPX #23
    BNE char
.loop
    JSR random
    BMI two
.one
    LDA #224
    JMP print
.two
    LDA #225
.print
    JSR oswrch
    JMP loop
.finish
    RTS
.random
    INCLUDE "../lib/random.asm"
.chartable
    EQUB 22,0
    EQUB 23,224,8,8,12,7,224,48,16,16
    EQUB 23,225,16,16,48,224,7,12,8,8
.end

SAVE "MyCode", start, end

Recently had a need to get the CA Thumbprint from the Root certificate of a domain. This was for creating OIDC provider for an AWS EKS cluster.

This is the solution I came up with.

Been trying to relearn 6502 assembly language for fun, its a lot faster and easier than the first time on actual hardware when I was a teenager.

Been using a book I picked up from eBay Discovering BBC Micro Machine Code by A.P. Stephenson

Using BeebAsm assembler on my Mac with a BBC Micro emulator, rather than build in BBC BASIC one.

You can find my code at Github https://github.com/alastairhm/beebasm

This example draws a line of zeros to Mode 7, see screenshot below.

One thing that I’ve never got around to seriously try in my years messing around with different operating systems is BSD, other than the flavor of it your get with MacOs.

Having watch a lot of videos around it recently on YouTube by RoboNuggie on FreeBSD it encouraged me to have to give it a go.

It went surprisingly well the and have tried both XFCE and Mate desktop installs. Something that I’ll look at using more of in the future as a backup daily driver.

One of my favorite low foot print Linux installs is Puppy Linux been using it on and off for years.

It has saved my bacon on a few times used to boot and restore or save data from a dead OS install.

New version looks good so far.

BBC Micro take on C64 10 Print one line random pattern generator.

10 MODE 0
20 N=RND(1):IF N > 0.5 THEN PRINT "/"; ELSE PRINT "\";
30 GOTO 20
RUN

Twitter Post

Make learning programming fun

It is funny how things come around again, when I started learning to programming back in the 1980s on my 8 bit machines (ZX81, Acorn Electron, BBC Micro) I used to play with graphics a lot. It gave instant feedback and visually showed the results of things like recursion. I had great fun playing with Fractals and other procedural generated images.

Recently I discovered a YouTube channel and programming platform which took me right back to those days.

I made the switch from Bash shell to the FISH shell a couple of years ago now and never looked back.

Customization and auto-complete features was the killer features for me.

Jump to the 20 minute mark for the shell discussion if you want.

Video Source Destination Linux

Links

friendly interactive shell

ZSH

BASH

FISH vs ZSH

New retro game, looks worth getting a Amstrad CPC emulator setup to play it.

Video Source Retro Collection

Juan’s games: (https://www.usebox.net/jjm/)

Buy physical copies of these games:

Golden Tail

Kitsune Curse

Mr. Ee from Micro Power for the BBC Micro nice variation on the Pacman theme.

Play Online at BBC Mirco

Interest video about modding the Acorn Electron.

Interesting looking Pi Os

One thing I like about Hugo is how easy it is to expand its functionality with your own code.

For example was able to create a shortcode to embed Lbry.tv videos into a post in around five minutes.

First I created an empty file layouts/shortcodes/lbry.html which I pasted the basic embed code take from the share button on one of their videos.

<iframe id="lbry-iframe" width="560" height="315" src="https://lbry.tv/$/embed/this-new-fedora-powered-thinkpad-p53-is/097106eb68aebc90b33d83bb053467af942a8e20" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Then parameterized this so that the src url can be changed.

New retro game, looks worth getting a Commodore emulator setup to play it.

This style of game is one of my favorites, loved Boulder Dash and Repton.

Video Source Retro Collection

The Pit Download

Play Online

One of the games I loved playing in my youth on my BBC Micro, I’m still rubbish at it to this day.

Links

Play Online at BBC Mirco

Game FAQs

Found this useful Android Mark down application.

Markor it has a Hugo template to use for blank documents which is useful.

It’s on FDroid so it’s easy to install o on my kindle as well.

Then use Github website to upload the new file to my Hugo blog repo.

Testing github Web upload.

Update

Edited on mark down app, uploaded again via github web page.

Found mGit App which looks like it would do the job of repo management on Android.

First trial not so good.

Wondering if its an issue with having MFA enabled on my Github account, although using my personal access token instead of the password should work I would have thought.

I’ve submitted an issue on their Github page, so wait and see what they say about it.

Trying to think of a way to be able to post content from my Android devices (phone/ Fire Tablet).

Basically would need just the following;

• Text editor for creating markdown for the post.
• Git to checkout, commit and push updates to GitHub.

My Travis CI pipeline would then handle the publishing.

Finding a text editor app isn’t a problem there are any number of them on both Google Play and Amazon Kindle stores which could be used.

Automate publishing

To make the publishing of new content easily I am using Travis CI to publish changes.

I did try installing Hugo from source but this took longer and was producing errors so it was easier to download the binary.

Using this as the Travis CI pipline yaml.

Travis CI Pipeline

# Auto deploy repo from Github to Amazon S3 bucket via Travis CI
# * Set env vars for ACCESS_KEY_ID, BUCKET_NAME and SECRET_ACCESS_KEY on Travis
# * Update `bucket.name` in `sync` command
# * Assumes your `publishDir` is the default (`public`) - if not update `sync` command

language: go
before_install:
addons:
  apt:
    packages:
    - libcurl4-openssl-dev # required to avoid SSL errors
install:
  - curl -LO https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/releases/download/v0.74.3/hugo_0.74.3_Linux-64bit.deb
  - sudo dpkg -i hugo_0.74.3_Linux-64bit.deb
before_script:
  - python --version
  - sudo pip install s3cmd
script:
  - hugo
after_success:
  - s3cmd sync -v --delete-removed --no-preserve --access_key=$ACCESS_KEY_ID --secret_key=$SECRET_ACCESS_KEY -r public/ s3://$BUCKET_NAME
notifications:
    email: true

Learning Node JS

I’ve started playing about with Node JS to learn it enough to modify some legacy Lambda code.

One of the tasks I set myself was to write a Joke bot for Mastodon, which work out to be fairly easy with a couple of packages got and masto.

Dad Joke Bot the code is only 32 lines long, looking to expand it to be able to post images as well.

Learning Node JS

I’ve started playing about with Node JS to learn it enough to modify some legacy Lambda code.

One of the tasks I set myself was to write a Joke bot for Mastodon, which work out to be fairly easy with a couple of packages got and masto.

Dad Joke Bot the code is only 32 lines long, looking to expand it to be able to post images as well.

Icecream Debug

Do you ever use print() or log() to debug your code? Of course you do. IceCream, or ic for short, makes print debugging a little sweeter.

ic() is like print(), but better.

https://github.com/gruns/icecream

I got a cheap SPI TFT ST7735 Display module with SD Card reader off ebay, it had an unusual number of pins on the back.

It took a while searching about on the internet and some head scratching to find a library and work out what connected to what on the Pico.

This is what I found, and worked out.

Using that information I was able to put together this library based on a few others I found and a few test programs.

Something I did a few (8) years ago on the Arduino to display two-digit numbers on a 8x8 LED matrix, this is an update to do the same in Micropthon.

Numbers have been defined to 3x5 pixels, so for a two-digit number it fits into 8x5 LED grid with spacing, saving some LED Matrix space.

The code for this can be found here numbers.py

Just a short bit of code to test a DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor module.

This version has just three pins VCC, GND and data, so easy to connect and use with the DHT library.

dht11.py.

Found a LED Matrix with a Max7219 in my parts bin (box of random electronics in the garage) so looked into getting it working with the Pico and MicroPython.

This is an example why I love open source. The original library I found was functional but sparse, last committed to 4 years ago. There were a few forks, most not much activity. One had been active recently and had some major improvements in functionality so switched over to that fork. https://github.com/enchant97/micropython-max7219

Stumbled across a Python script to run a Mandelbrot set in ASCII in Python so I thought I would see how it ran on the RaspberryPi Pico.

After tweaking it slightly from the source it ended up like this mandelbrot.py

This results in the following;

                             ...................................................................................................
                           .....................................................................................................
                         .......................................................................................................
                       .........................................................................................................
                     ...................................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.......................................................
                    ..........................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.............................................
                  .....................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,......................................
                 .................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------,,,,,,,,,,,,.................................
               ...............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------:i;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,.............................
              .............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::;ih$+;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,..........................
             ...........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------------::::;;+# hiiii :---------,,,,,,,,,.......................
            .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------:::::;;i+hM MM #+;;:---------,,,,,,,,,,....................
          .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------::::::;;ii+hH* $H+ii;:::---------,,,,,,,,,,..................
         ........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;i+HhH     *h++;;::::---------,,,,,,,,,,................
        .......,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;;;+           *@ +i;::::::-------,,,,,,,,,,,..............
        .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::;;;;;ii+hM@          $hii;;:::::::------,,,,,,,,,,,............
       .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------:::;;;;;;iiii++h            *h+ii;;;;:::::::----,,,,,,,,,,,...........
      ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------::::;ii++ ++++++hhHH$@         @MHhh++ii;;;;;ihi;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.........
     ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::::::;;+H   @MHhH$  #                 $@  h++ii++M$i;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,........
     ...,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------::::::::::;;;ii@      #@                         $HH*  $#  #;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.......
    ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------:::::::::::::;;;;ii+hM                                        * i;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,.....
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----:::::::::::::::;;;;;i++HHM#                                       *+;;:::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----::::::::::::::::;;;;;;iiM                                           #Mhii;;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
  ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------::;iH+;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;iiiii++H$                                            Mh++;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,...
  .,,,,,,,,,,,,---------::::;;iH#++iiii++H*++iiiiii+++H$                                               $ H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,..
  ,,,,,,,,------------:::::;;;+h **M HhhM  $HHMhhhhhhHM@                                                 H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
 .,,,,,------------::::::::;;ii+hM#    @@      #$HHHHM                                                 H+i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
 ,,,,------------:::::::::;iiiihh$                 $$*                                                 @ i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,,-------------::::::::;;iii+H *                   @                                                  M+;:::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,------------:::::;;;;i+#HhhhM$@                                                                      Mi;:::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ----------::;;;;;;;iii+hH* *  @                                                                      hi;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ::::;;;iiMiiiiii+++++MHM                                                                           $+i;;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
                                                                                                  *Hh+i;;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ::::;;;iiMiiiiii+++++MHM                                                                           $+i;;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ----------::;;;;;;;iii+hH* *  @                                                                      hi;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,------------:::::;;;;i+#HhhhM$@                                                                      Mi;:::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,,-------------::::::::;;iii+H *                   @                                                  M+;:::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,,,,------------:::::::::;iiiihh$                 $$*                                                 @ i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 .,,,,,------------::::::::;;ii+hM#    @@      #$HHHHM                                                 H+i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
  ,,,,,,,,------------:::::;;;+h **M HhhM  $HHMhhhhhhHM@                                                 H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
  .,,,,,,,,,,,,---------::::;;iH#++iiii++H*++iiiiii+++H$                                               $ H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,..
  ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------::;iH+;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;iiiii++H$                                            Mh++;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,...
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----::::::::::::::::;;;;;;iiM                                           #Mhii;;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----:::::::::::::::;;;;;i++HHM#                                       *+;;:::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
    ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------:::::::::::::;;;;ii+hM                                        * i;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,.....
     ...,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------::::::::::;;;ii@      #@                         $HH*  $#  #;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.......
     ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::::::;;+H   @MHhH$  #                 $@  h++ii++M$i;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,........
      ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------::::;ii++ ++++++hhHH$@         @MHhh++ii;;;;;ihi;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.........
       .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------:::;;;;;;iiii++h            *h+ii;;;;:::::::----,,,,,,,,,,,...........
        .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::;;;;;ii+hM@          $hii;;:::::::------,,,,,,,,,,,............
        .......,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;;;+           *@ +i;::::::-------,,,,,,,,,,,..............
         ........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;i+HhH     *h++;;::::---------,,,,,,,,,,................
          .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------::::::;;ii+hH* $H+ii;:::---------,,,,,,,,,,..................
            .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------:::::;;i+hM MM #+;;:---------,,,,,,,,,,....................
             ...........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------------::::;;+# hiiii :---------,,,,,,,,,.......................
              .............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::;ih$+;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,..........................
               ...............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------:i;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,.............................
                 .................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------,,,,,,,,,,,,.................................
                  .....................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,......................................
                    ..........................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.............................................
                     ...................................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.......................................................
                       .........................................................................................................
                         .......................................................................................................
                           .....................................................................................................

I amended the code to update the OLED I was using in the temperature sensor tests mand_oled.

Have been tinkering with temperature measurement using the Raspberry Pi Pico.

First with the internal temperature sensor and then using a TMP36 temperature sensor externally.

I wrote two classes to access these and return the reading.

• Internal Temperature
• External Temperature

Here is an example using the two sensors together temps.py

You will need to upload the two classes to the Pico first in a library sub-directory.

Here is how you would wire it up on a breadboard tmp36.fzz

Some components arrived from AliExpress recently so been able to play with an I2C OLED display with my Pico W.

Hello World Test

Code of this is here https://github.com/alastairhm/pico_w/blob/main/i2c_scan.py

And also used here to display the IP address after connected to the wifi https://github.com/alastairhm/pico_w/blob/main/wifi_oled.py

Next thing I’ve been playing with is internal and external temperature sensors, I will post about that soon.

Just before Christmas I got a Raspberry Pi Pico W to have a play with.

Looking forward to using MicroPython to do some LED flashing and other things.

Started a repo on Github for it Pico W Repo

A simple Python script to allow you to quickly search from the command line that I’ve been playing with on and off for a while.

https://github.com/alastairhm/searchit

It uses the Python Library Fire to automatically generate the command line interface which is something I stumbled across recently.

You either pass it a paramater for the search term or if one it not passed it used whatever is in your clipboard buffet.

Updating the parameter file you can add other search engines and pick which one to use as your default.

I wrote a simple Python script to monitor the clipboard and write any unique text content out to a YAML file for a history. It might turn into something better eventually.

Update

Updated to use a settings file for file location and size.

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import pyperclip
import time
import yaml
import toml
import os
from yaml.loader import SafeLoader

script_path = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))
settings = toml.load(os.path.join(script_path, "clippy.toml"))
history = settings["history"]
max_size = settings["size"]

cliptext = ""
clip_array = []
with open(history, "r") as f:
    clip_array = list(yaml.load_all(f, Loader=SafeLoader))
    clip_array = sum(clip_array, [])

while True:
    tmptext = pyperclip.paste()
    if tmptext != cliptext:
        cliptext = tmptext
        if cliptext not in clip_array:
            clip_array.insert(0,tmptext)
            if len(clip_array) > max_size:
                clip_array.pop()
            with open(history, "w") as f:
                f.write(yaml.dump(clip_array))
    time.sleep(1)

Script on GitHub https://github.com/alastairhm/automate_python/blob/main/clippy.py

Recently had a need to get the CA Thumbprint from the Root certificate of a domain. This was for creating OIDC provider for an AWS EKS cluster.

This is the solution I came up with.

Inktober 2023 22, Scratchy

Inktober 2023 21, Chain

Inktober 2023 20, Frost

Inktober 2023 19, Plump

Inktober 2023 18, Saddle

Inktober 2023 17, Demon

Inktober 2023 16, Angel

Inktober 2023 15, Dagger

Inktober 2023 14, Castle

Inktober 2023 13, Rise

Inktober 2023 12, Spicey

Inktober 2023 11, Wander

Inktober 2023 10, Fortune

Inktober 2023 9, Bounce

Inktober 2023 8, Toad

Inktober 2023 7, Drip

Inktober 2023 6, Golden

Inktober 2023 5, Map

Inktober 2023 4, Dodge

Inktober 2023 3, Path

Inktober 2023 2, Spiders

Inktober 2023 1, Dream

Tentacle sketch

Inktober 2022 12, Forget

Inktober 2022 11, Eagle

Inktober 2022 10, Crabby

Inktober 2022 9, Nest

Inktober 2022 8, Match

Inktober 2022 7, Trip

Inktober 2022 6, Bouquet

Inktober 2022 5, Flame

Inktober 2022 4, Scallop

Inktober 2022 3, Bat

Inktober 2022 2, Scurry

Inktober 2022 1, Gargoyle

Walk to the office last Thursday morning in Leeds.

Inktober 2021 52 Week 17, Waves

Inktober 2021 52 Week 16, Stand

Inktober 2021 52 Week 15, Star

Inktober 2021 52 Week 14, Shield

Inktober 2021 52 Week 13, Brave

Inktober 2021 52 Week 12, Microscopic

Inktober 2021 52 Week 11, Spaceship

Inktober 2021 52 Week 10, Powerful

Inktober 2021 52 Week 9, Egg

Inktober 2021 52 Week 8, Camping

Inktober 2021 52 Week 7, Dragonfly

Inktober 2021 52 Week 6, Monster

Inktober 2021 52 Week 5, Remote

Inktober 2021 52 Week 4, Ancient

Inktober 2021 52 Week 3, Reflection

Inktober 2021 52 Week 2, Home

Inktober 2021 52 Week 1, Fresh

Inktober 2020 Flickr Album

All my drawings from Inktober 2020

Rediscoverying Inkscape vector drawing application after a few years, its even better than before.

Had a lot of fun converting some of my doodles into vector line art.

Inktober 2023 22, Scratchy

Inktober 2023 21, Chain

Inktober 2023 20, Frost

Inktober 2023 19, Plump

Inktober 2023 18, Saddle

Inktober 2023 17, Demon

Inktober 2023 16, Angel

Inktober 2023 15, Dagger

Inktober 2023 14, Castle

Inktober 2023 13, Rise

Inktober 2023 12, Spicey

Inktober 2023 11, Wander

Inktober 2023 10, Fortune

Inktober 2023 9, Bounce

Inktober 2023 8, Toad

Inktober 2023 7, Drip

Inktober 2023 6, Golden

Inktober 2023 5, Map

Inktober 2023 4, Dodge

Inktober 2023 3, Path

Inktober 2023 2, Spiders

Inktober 2023 1, Dream

Inktober 2022 12, Forget

Inktober 2022 11, Eagle

Inktober 2022 10, Crabby

Inktober 2022 9, Nest

Inktober 2022 8, Match

Inktober 2022 7, Trip

Inktober 2022 6, Bouquet

Inktober 2022 5, Flame

Inktober 2022 4, Scallop

Inktober 2022 3, Bat

Inktober 2022 2, Scurry

Inktober 2022 1, Gargoyle

Inktober 2021 52 Week 17, Waves

Inktober 2021 52 Week 16, Stand

Inktober 2021 52 Week 15, Star

Inktober 2021 52 Week 14, Shield

Inktober 2021 52 Week 13, Brave

Inktober 2021 52 Week 12, Microscopic

Inktober 2021 52 Week 11, Spaceship

Inktober 2021 52 Week 10, Powerful

Inktober 2021 52 Week 9, Egg

Inktober 2021 52 Week 8, Camping

Inktober 2021 52 Week 7, Dragonfly

Inktober 2021 52 Week 6, Monster

Inktober 2021 52 Week 5, Remote

Inktober 2021 52 Week 4, Ancient

Inktober 2021 52 Week 3, Reflection

Inktober 2021 52 Week 2, Home

Inktober 2021 52 Week 1, Fresh

Inktober 2020 Flickr Album

All my drawings from Inktober 2020

Had a great day on my blacksmith course making a Ram’s head fire poker at Adrian Wood’s Forge, I would highly recommend it.

I went back for a second course after making a dragon coat hook last year, course which was part of my 50th birthday presents.

Had a great day on my blacksmith course making a Ram’s head fire poker at Adrian Wood’s Forge, I would highly recommend it.

I went back for a second course after making a dragon coat hook last year, course which was part of my 50th birthday presents.

Tentacle sketch

I got a cheap SPI TFT ST7735 Display module with SD Card reader off ebay, it had an unusual number of pins on the back.

It took a while searching about on the internet and some head scratching to find a library and work out what connected to what on the Pico.

This is what I found, and worked out.

Using that information I was able to put together this library based on a few others I found and a few test programs.

Something I did a few (8) years ago on the Arduino to display two-digit numbers on a 8x8 LED matrix, this is an update to do the same in Micropthon.

Numbers have been defined to 3x5 pixels, so for a two-digit number it fits into 8x5 LED grid with spacing, saving some LED Matrix space.

The code for this can be found here numbers.py

Just a short bit of code to test a DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor module.

This version has just three pins VCC, GND and data, so easy to connect and use with the DHT library.

dht11.py.

Found a LED Matrix with a Max7219 in my parts bin (box of random electronics in the garage) so looked into getting it working with the Pico and MicroPython.

This is an example why I love open source. The original library I found was functional but sparse, last committed to 4 years ago. There were a few forks, most not much activity. One had been active recently and had some major improvements in functionality so switched over to that fork. https://github.com/enchant97/micropython-max7219

Stumbled across a Python script to run a Mandelbrot set in ASCII in Python so I thought I would see how it ran on the RaspberryPi Pico.

After tweaking it slightly from the source it ended up like this mandelbrot.py

This results in the following;

                             ...................................................................................................
                           .....................................................................................................
                         .......................................................................................................
                       .........................................................................................................
                     ...................................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.......................................................
                    ..........................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.............................................
                  .....................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,......................................
                 .................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------,,,,,,,,,,,,.................................
               ...............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------:i;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,.............................
              .............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::;ih$+;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,..........................
             ...........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------------::::;;+# hiiii :---------,,,,,,,,,.......................
            .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------:::::;;i+hM MM #+;;:---------,,,,,,,,,,....................
          .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------::::::;;ii+hH* $H+ii;:::---------,,,,,,,,,,..................
         ........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;i+HhH     *h++;;::::---------,,,,,,,,,,................
        .......,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;;;+           *@ +i;::::::-------,,,,,,,,,,,..............
        .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::;;;;;ii+hM@          $hii;;:::::::------,,,,,,,,,,,............
       .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------:::;;;;;;iiii++h            *h+ii;;;;:::::::----,,,,,,,,,,,...........
      ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------::::;ii++ ++++++hhHH$@         @MHhh++ii;;;;;ihi;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.........
     ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::::::;;+H   @MHhH$  #                 $@  h++ii++M$i;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,........
     ...,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------::::::::::;;;ii@      #@                         $HH*  $#  #;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.......
    ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------:::::::::::::;;;;ii+hM                                        * i;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,.....
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----:::::::::::::::;;;;;i++HHM#                                       *+;;:::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----::::::::::::::::;;;;;;iiM                                           #Mhii;;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
  ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------::;iH+;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;iiiii++H$                                            Mh++;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,...
  .,,,,,,,,,,,,---------::::;;iH#++iiii++H*++iiiiii+++H$                                               $ H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,..
  ,,,,,,,,------------:::::;;;+h **M HhhM  $HHMhhhhhhHM@                                                 H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
 .,,,,,------------::::::::;;ii+hM#    @@      #$HHHHM                                                 H+i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
 ,,,,------------:::::::::;iiiihh$                 $$*                                                 @ i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,,-------------::::::::;;iii+H *                   @                                                  M+;:::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,------------:::::;;;;i+#HhhhM$@                                                                      Mi;:::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ----------::;;;;;;;iii+hH* *  @                                                                      hi;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ::::;;;iiMiiiiii+++++MHM                                                                           $+i;;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
                                                                                                  *Hh+i;;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ::::;;;iiMiiiiii+++++MHM                                                                           $+i;;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ----------::;;;;;;;iii+hH* *  @                                                                      hi;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,------------:::::;;;;i+#HhhhM$@                                                                      Mi;:::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,,-------------::::::::;;iii+H *                   @                                                  M+;:::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,,,,------------:::::::::;iiiihh$                 $$*                                                 @ i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 .,,,,,------------::::::::;;ii+hM#    @@      #$HHHHM                                                 H+i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
  ,,,,,,,,------------:::::;;;+h **M HhhM  $HHMhhhhhhHM@                                                 H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
  .,,,,,,,,,,,,---------::::;;iH#++iiii++H*++iiiiii+++H$                                               $ H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,..
  ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------::;iH+;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;iiiii++H$                                            Mh++;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,...
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----::::::::::::::::;;;;;;iiM                                           #Mhii;;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----:::::::::::::::;;;;;i++HHM#                                       *+;;:::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
    ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------:::::::::::::;;;;ii+hM                                        * i;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,.....
     ...,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------::::::::::;;;ii@      #@                         $HH*  $#  #;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.......
     ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::::::;;+H   @MHhH$  #                 $@  h++ii++M$i;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,........
      ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------::::;ii++ ++++++hhHH$@         @MHhh++ii;;;;;ihi;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.........
       .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------:::;;;;;;iiii++h            *h+ii;;;;:::::::----,,,,,,,,,,,...........
        .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::;;;;;ii+hM@          $hii;;:::::::------,,,,,,,,,,,............
        .......,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;;;+           *@ +i;::::::-------,,,,,,,,,,,..............
         ........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;i+HhH     *h++;;::::---------,,,,,,,,,,................
          .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------::::::;;ii+hH* $H+ii;:::---------,,,,,,,,,,..................
            .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------:::::;;i+hM MM #+;;:---------,,,,,,,,,,....................
             ...........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------------::::;;+# hiiii :---------,,,,,,,,,.......................
              .............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::;ih$+;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,..........................
               ...............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------:i;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,.............................
                 .................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------,,,,,,,,,,,,.................................
                  .....................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,......................................
                    ..........................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.............................................
                     ...................................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.......................................................
                       .........................................................................................................
                         .......................................................................................................
                           .....................................................................................................

I amended the code to update the OLED I was using in the temperature sensor tests mand_oled.

Have been tinkering with temperature measurement using the Raspberry Pi Pico.

First with the internal temperature sensor and then using a TMP36 temperature sensor externally.

I wrote two classes to access these and return the reading.

• Internal Temperature
• External Temperature

Here is an example using the two sensors together temps.py

You will need to upload the two classes to the Pico first in a library sub-directory.

Here is how you would wire it up on a breadboard tmp36.fzz

Some components arrived from AliExpress recently so been able to play with an I2C OLED display with my Pico W.

Hello World Test

Code of this is here https://github.com/alastairhm/pico_w/blob/main/i2c_scan.py

And also used here to display the IP address after connected to the wifi https://github.com/alastairhm/pico_w/blob/main/wifi_oled.py

Next thing I’ve been playing with is internal and external temperature sensors, I will post about that soon.

Just before Christmas I got a Raspberry Pi Pico W to have a play with.

Looking forward to using MicroPython to do some LED flashing and other things.

Started a repo on Github for it Pico W Repo

I got a cheap SPI TFT ST7735 Display module with SD Card reader off ebay, it had an unusual number of pins on the back.

It took a while searching about on the internet and some head scratching to find a library and work out what connected to what on the Pico.

This is what I found, and worked out.

Using that information I was able to put together this library based on a few others I found and a few test programs.

Something I did a few (8) years ago on the Arduino to display two-digit numbers on a 8x8 LED matrix, this is an update to do the same in Micropthon.

Numbers have been defined to 3x5 pixels, so for a two-digit number it fits into 8x5 LED grid with spacing, saving some LED Matrix space.

The code for this can be found here numbers.py

Just a short bit of code to test a DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor module.

This version has just three pins VCC, GND and data, so easy to connect and use with the DHT library.

dht11.py.

Found a LED Matrix with a Max7219 in my parts bin (box of random electronics in the garage) so looked into getting it working with the Pico and MicroPython.

This is an example why I love open source. The original library I found was functional but sparse, last committed to 4 years ago. There were a few forks, most not much activity. One had been active recently and had some major improvements in functionality so switched over to that fork. https://github.com/enchant97/micropython-max7219

Stumbled across a Python script to run a Mandelbrot set in ASCII in Python so I thought I would see how it ran on the RaspberryPi Pico.

After tweaking it slightly from the source it ended up like this mandelbrot.py

This results in the following;

                             ...................................................................................................
                           .....................................................................................................
                         .......................................................................................................
                       .........................................................................................................
                     ...................................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.......................................................
                    ..........................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.............................................
                  .....................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,......................................
                 .................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------,,,,,,,,,,,,.................................
               ...............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------:i;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,.............................
              .............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::;ih$+;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,..........................
             ...........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------------::::;;+# hiiii :---------,,,,,,,,,.......................
            .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------:::::;;i+hM MM #+;;:---------,,,,,,,,,,....................
          .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------::::::;;ii+hH* $H+ii;:::---------,,,,,,,,,,..................
         ........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;i+HhH     *h++;;::::---------,,,,,,,,,,................
        .......,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;;;+           *@ +i;::::::-------,,,,,,,,,,,..............
        .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::;;;;;ii+hM@          $hii;;:::::::------,,,,,,,,,,,............
       .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------:::;;;;;;iiii++h            *h+ii;;;;:::::::----,,,,,,,,,,,...........
      ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------::::;ii++ ++++++hhHH$@         @MHhh++ii;;;;;ihi;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.........
     ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::::::;;+H   @MHhH$  #                 $@  h++ii++M$i;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,........
     ...,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------::::::::::;;;ii@      #@                         $HH*  $#  #;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.......
    ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------:::::::::::::;;;;ii+hM                                        * i;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,.....
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----:::::::::::::::;;;;;i++HHM#                                       *+;;:::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----::::::::::::::::;;;;;;iiM                                           #Mhii;;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
  ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------::;iH+;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;iiiii++H$                                            Mh++;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,...
  .,,,,,,,,,,,,---------::::;;iH#++iiii++H*++iiiiii+++H$                                               $ H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,..
  ,,,,,,,,------------:::::;;;+h **M HhhM  $HHMhhhhhhHM@                                                 H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
 .,,,,,------------::::::::;;ii+hM#    @@      #$HHHHM                                                 H+i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
 ,,,,------------:::::::::;iiiihh$                 $$*                                                 @ i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,,-------------::::::::;;iii+H *                   @                                                  M+;:::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,------------:::::;;;;i+#HhhhM$@                                                                      Mi;:::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ----------::;;;;;;;iii+hH* *  @                                                                      hi;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ::::;;;iiMiiiiii+++++MHM                                                                           $+i;;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
                                                                                                  *Hh+i;;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ::::;;;iiMiiiiii+++++MHM                                                                           $+i;;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ----------::;;;;;;;iii+hH* *  @                                                                      hi;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,------------:::::;;;;i+#HhhhM$@                                                                      Mi;:::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,,-------------::::::::;;iii+H *                   @                                                  M+;:::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,,,,------------:::::::::;iiiihh$                 $$*                                                 @ i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 .,,,,,------------::::::::;;ii+hM#    @@      #$HHHHM                                                 H+i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
  ,,,,,,,,------------:::::;;;+h **M HhhM  $HHMhhhhhhHM@                                                 H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
  .,,,,,,,,,,,,---------::::;;iH#++iiii++H*++iiiiii+++H$                                               $ H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,..
  ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------::;iH+;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;iiiii++H$                                            Mh++;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,...
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----::::::::::::::::;;;;;;iiM                                           #Mhii;;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----:::::::::::::::;;;;;i++HHM#                                       *+;;:::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
    ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------:::::::::::::;;;;ii+hM                                        * i;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,.....
     ...,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------::::::::::;;;ii@      #@                         $HH*  $#  #;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.......
     ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::::::;;+H   @MHhH$  #                 $@  h++ii++M$i;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,........
      ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------::::;ii++ ++++++hhHH$@         @MHhh++ii;;;;;ihi;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.........
       .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------:::;;;;;;iiii++h            *h+ii;;;;:::::::----,,,,,,,,,,,...........
        .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::;;;;;ii+hM@          $hii;;:::::::------,,,,,,,,,,,............
        .......,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;;;+           *@ +i;::::::-------,,,,,,,,,,,..............
         ........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;i+HhH     *h++;;::::---------,,,,,,,,,,................
          .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------::::::;;ii+hH* $H+ii;:::---------,,,,,,,,,,..................
            .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------:::::;;i+hM MM #+;;:---------,,,,,,,,,,....................
             ...........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------------::::;;+# hiiii :---------,,,,,,,,,.......................
              .............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::;ih$+;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,..........................
               ...............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------:i;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,.............................
                 .................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------,,,,,,,,,,,,.................................
                  .....................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,......................................
                    ..........................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.............................................
                     ...................................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.......................................................
                       .........................................................................................................
                         .......................................................................................................
                           .....................................................................................................

I amended the code to update the OLED I was using in the temperature sensor tests mand_oled.

Have been tinkering with temperature measurement using the Raspberry Pi Pico.

First with the internal temperature sensor and then using a TMP36 temperature sensor externally.

I wrote two classes to access these and return the reading.

• Internal Temperature
• External Temperature

Here is an example using the two sensors together temps.py

You will need to upload the two classes to the Pico first in a library sub-directory.

Here is how you would wire it up on a breadboard tmp36.fzz

Some components arrived from AliExpress recently so been able to play with an I2C OLED display with my Pico W.

Hello World Test

Code of this is here https://github.com/alastairhm/pico_w/blob/main/i2c_scan.py

And also used here to display the IP address after connected to the wifi https://github.com/alastairhm/pico_w/blob/main/wifi_oled.py

Next thing I’ve been playing with is internal and external temperature sensors, I will post about that soon.

Just before Christmas I got a Raspberry Pi Pico W to have a play with.

Looking forward to using MicroPython to do some LED flashing and other things.

Started a repo on Github for it Pico W Repo

I got a cheap SPI TFT ST7735 Display module with SD Card reader off ebay, it had an unusual number of pins on the back.

It took a while searching about on the internet and some head scratching to find a library and work out what connected to what on the Pico.

This is what I found, and worked out.

Using that information I was able to put together this library based on a few others I found and a few test programs.

Something I did a few (8) years ago on the Arduino to display two-digit numbers on a 8x8 LED matrix, this is an update to do the same in Micropthon.

Numbers have been defined to 3x5 pixels, so for a two-digit number it fits into 8x5 LED grid with spacing, saving some LED Matrix space.

The code for this can be found here numbers.py

Just a short bit of code to test a DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor module.

This version has just three pins VCC, GND and data, so easy to connect and use with the DHT library.

dht11.py.

Found a LED Matrix with a Max7219 in my parts bin (box of random electronics in the garage) so looked into getting it working with the Pico and MicroPython.

This is an example why I love open source. The original library I found was functional but sparse, last committed to 4 years ago. There were a few forks, most not much activity. One had been active recently and had some major improvements in functionality so switched over to that fork. https://github.com/enchant97/micropython-max7219

Stumbled across a Python script to run a Mandelbrot set in ASCII in Python so I thought I would see how it ran on the RaspberryPi Pico.

After tweaking it slightly from the source it ended up like this mandelbrot.py

This results in the following;

                             ...................................................................................................
                           .....................................................................................................
                         .......................................................................................................
                       .........................................................................................................
                     ...................................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.......................................................
                    ..........................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.............................................
                  .....................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,......................................
                 .................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------,,,,,,,,,,,,.................................
               ...............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------:i;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,.............................
              .............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::;ih$+;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,..........................
             ...........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------------::::;;+# hiiii :---------,,,,,,,,,.......................
            .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------:::::;;i+hM MM #+;;:---------,,,,,,,,,,....................
          .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------::::::;;ii+hH* $H+ii;:::---------,,,,,,,,,,..................
         ........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;i+HhH     *h++;;::::---------,,,,,,,,,,................
        .......,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;;;+           *@ +i;::::::-------,,,,,,,,,,,..............
        .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::;;;;;ii+hM@          $hii;;:::::::------,,,,,,,,,,,............
       .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------:::;;;;;;iiii++h            *h+ii;;;;:::::::----,,,,,,,,,,,...........
      ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------::::;ii++ ++++++hhHH$@         @MHhh++ii;;;;;ihi;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.........
     ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::::::;;+H   @MHhH$  #                 $@  h++ii++M$i;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,........
     ...,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------::::::::::;;;ii@      #@                         $HH*  $#  #;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.......
    ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------:::::::::::::;;;;ii+hM                                        * i;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,.....
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----:::::::::::::::;;;;;i++HHM#                                       *+;;:::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----::::::::::::::::;;;;;;iiM                                           #Mhii;;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
  ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------::;iH+;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;iiiii++H$                                            Mh++;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,...
  .,,,,,,,,,,,,---------::::;;iH#++iiii++H*++iiiiii+++H$                                               $ H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,..
  ,,,,,,,,------------:::::;;;+h **M HhhM  $HHMhhhhhhHM@                                                 H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
 .,,,,,------------::::::::;;ii+hM#    @@      #$HHHHM                                                 H+i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
 ,,,,------------:::::::::;iiiihh$                 $$*                                                 @ i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,,-------------::::::::;;iii+H *                   @                                                  M+;:::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,------------:::::;;;;i+#HhhhM$@                                                                      Mi;:::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ----------::;;;;;;;iii+hH* *  @                                                                      hi;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ::::;;;iiMiiiiii+++++MHM                                                                           $+i;;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
                                                                                                  *Hh+i;;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ::::;;;iiMiiiiii+++++MHM                                                                           $+i;;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ----------::;;;;;;;iii+hH* *  @                                                                      hi;::::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,------------:::::;;;;i+#HhhhM$@                                                                      Mi;:::------,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,,-------------::::::::;;iii+H *                   @                                                  M+;:::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 ,,,,------------:::::::::;iiiihh$                 $$*                                                 @ i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 .,,,,,------------::::::::;;ii+hM#    @@      #$HHHHM                                                 H+i;::-----,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
  ,,,,,,,,------------:::::;;;+h **M HhhM  $HHMhhhhhhHM@                                                 H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
  .,,,,,,,,,,,,---------::::;;iH#++iiii++H*++iiiiii+++H$                                               $ H;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,..
  ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------::;iH+;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;iiiii++H$                                            Mh++;::----,,,,,,,,,,,,,...
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----::::::::::::::::;;;;;;iiM                                           #Mhii;;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
   ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----:::::::::::::::;;;;;i++HHM#                                       *+;;:::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,....
    ..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------:::::::::::::;;;;ii+hM                                        * i;::---,,,,,,,,,,,,,.....
     ...,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------::::::::::;;;ii@      #@                         $HH*  $#  #;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.......
     ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::::::;;+H   @MHhH$  #                 $@  h++ii++M$i;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,........
      ....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------::::;ii++ ++++++hhHH$@         @MHhh++ii;;;;;ihi;:---,,,,,,,,,,,,.........
       .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------:::;;;;;;iiii++h            *h+ii;;;;:::::::----,,,,,,,,,,,...........
        .....,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::;;;;;ii+hM@          $hii;;:::::::------,,,,,,,,,,,............
        .......,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;;;+           *@ +i;::::::-------,,,,,,,,,,,..............
         ........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------------::::::;i+HhH     *h++;;::::---------,,,,,,,,,,................
          .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--------------::::::;;ii+hH* $H+ii;:::---------,,,,,,,,,,..................
            .........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-------------:::::;;i+hM MM #+;;:---------,,,,,,,,,,....................
             ...........,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,------------::::;;+# hiiii :---------,,,,,,,,,.......................
              .............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------:::;ih$+;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,..........................
               ...............,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,---------:i;;::::-------,,,,,,,,,.............................
                 .................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,----------,,,,,,,,,,,,.................................
                  .....................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,......................................
                    ..........................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.............................................
                     ...................................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.......................................................
                       .........................................................................................................
                         .......................................................................................................
                           .....................................................................................................

I amended the code to update the OLED I was using in the temperature sensor tests mand_oled.

Have been tinkering with temperature measurement using the Raspberry Pi Pico.

First with the internal temperature sensor and then using a TMP36 temperature sensor externally.

I wrote two classes to access these and return the reading.

• Internal Temperature
• External Temperature

Here is an example using the two sensors together temps.py

You will need to upload the two classes to the Pico first in a library sub-directory.

Here is how you would wire it up on a breadboard tmp36.fzz

Some components arrived from AliExpress recently so been able to play with an I2C OLED display with my Pico W.

Hello World Test

Code of this is here https://github.com/alastairhm/pico_w/blob/main/i2c_scan.py

And also used here to display the IP address after connected to the wifi https://github.com/alastairhm/pico_w/blob/main/wifi_oled.py

Next thing I’ve been playing with is internal and external temperature sensors, I will post about that soon.

Just before Christmas I got a Raspberry Pi Pico W to have a play with.

Looking forward to using MicroPython to do some LED flashing and other things.

Started a repo on Github for it Pico W Repo

Walk to the office last Thursday morning in Leeds.

A simple Python script to allow you to quickly search from the command line that I’ve been playing with on and off for a while.

https://github.com/alastairhm/searchit

It uses the Python Library Fire to automatically generate the command line interface which is something I stumbled across recently.

You either pass it a paramater for the search term or if one it not passed it used whatever is in your clipboard buffet.

Updating the parameter file you can add other search engines and pick which one to use as your default.

Came across this article of ways to Learn C on Linux which took me back to my 3rd real programming job.

It was with a software house mainly working with C/C++ on Linux/ Unix and embedded systems.

My first real experience use C/C++ in a professional environment, happy days with a good bunch of geeks.

If you’ve never tried it before it would be a good change from more recent languages to learn C for a challenge.

Installing Ruby and Node on Redhat 8

Quick tip on how to install Ruby 2.7 and Nodejs 12 on Redhat 8, as it can default to older versions.

# Enable new versions
dnf -y module reset ruby nodejs
dnf -y module enable ruby:2.7 nodejs:12

# Install
dnf install nodejs ruby

# Check installed versions
ruby --version
node --version
npm --version

Devops Docker images again

Another Docker image with some tools useful for devops, this time includes the TIG CLI utility.

Tig

Tig Docker image https://github.com/alastairhm/docker-tig

To use run the following;

Directly on the CLI

docker run --rm -ti -v $(pwd):/mnt ghcr.io/alastairhm/docker-tig:latest

As an alias

alias tig='docker run --rm -ti -v $(pwd):/mnt ghcr.io/alastairhm/docker-tig:latest'

For full instructions on using TIG visit the offical instructions page.

Learning Rust

New year, new programming language, decided to go and learn Rust programming.

Some interesting concepts so far.

Learn Rust Repo

Resources

• https://www.udemy.com/course/learning-rust/
• https://www.rust-lang.org/

Devops Docker images

I’ve built a few Docker images with some tools useful for devops lately.

SpaceVim

SpaceVim Docker image with NeoVim https://github.com/alastairhm/spacevim

CFSSL

CloudFlare’s SSL tools Docker image https://github.com/alastairhm/docker-cfssl

Terraform Security

TFSec and TFLint tools Docker image https://github.com/alastairhm/docker-terraform-check

Bitwarden CLI

Bitwarden CLI tool Docker image https://github.com/alastairhm/docker-bw

Devops Tips

Here are a couple of DevOps tips I’ve picked up after a week at my new job which are worth sharing.

IAM Policy JSON to Terraform

This is a useful command to convert AWS IAM Policy JSON to corresponding Terraform code.

https://github.com/flosell/iam-policy-json-to-terraform

AWS Extend Switch Roles

This browser extension allows easy role switching with AWS.

https://github.com/tilfinltd/aws-extend-switch-roles

Came across this article of ways to Learn C on Linux which took me back to my 3rd real programming job.

It was with a software house mainly working with C/C++ on Linux/ Unix and embedded systems.

My first real experience use C/C++ in a professional environment, happy days with a good bunch of geeks.

If you’ve never tried it before it would be a good change from more recent languages to learn C for a challenge.

Came across this article of ways to Learn C on Linux which took me back to my 3rd real programming job.

It was with a software house mainly working with C/C++ on Linux/ Unix and embedded systems.

My first real experience use C/C++ in a professional environment, happy days with a good bunch of geeks.

If you’ve never tried it before it would be a good change from more recent languages to learn C for a challenge.

Installing Ruby and Node on Redhat 8

Quick tip on how to install Ruby 2.7 and Nodejs 12 on Redhat 8, as it can default to older versions.

# Enable new versions
dnf -y module reset ruby nodejs
dnf -y module enable ruby:2.7 nodejs:12

# Install
dnf install nodejs ruby

# Check installed versions
ruby --version
node --version
npm --version

One of my favorite low foot print Linux installs is Puppy Linux been using it on and off for years.

It has saved my bacon on a few times used to boot and restore or save data from a dead OS install.

New version looks good so far.

I made the switch from Bash shell to the FISH shell a couple of years ago now and never looked back.

Customization and auto-complete features was the killer features for me.

Jump to the 20 minute mark for the shell discussion if you want.

Video Source Destination Linux

Links

friendly interactive shell

ZSH

BASH

FISH vs ZSH

Installing Ruby and Node on Redhat 8

Quick tip on how to install Ruby 2.7 and Nodejs 12 on Redhat 8, as it can default to older versions.

# Enable new versions
dnf -y module reset ruby nodejs
dnf -y module enable ruby:2.7 nodejs:12

# Install
dnf install nodejs ruby

# Check installed versions
ruby --version
node --version
npm --version

Installing Ruby and Node on Redhat 8

Quick tip on how to install Ruby 2.7 and Nodejs 12 on Redhat 8, as it can default to older versions.

# Enable new versions
dnf -y module reset ruby nodejs
dnf -y module enable ruby:2.7 nodejs:12

# Install
dnf install nodejs ruby

# Check installed versions
ruby --version
node --version
npm --version

Installing Ruby and Node on Redhat 8

Quick tip on how to install Ruby 2.7 and Nodejs 12 on Redhat 8, as it can default to older versions.

# Enable new versions
dnf -y module reset ruby nodejs
dnf -y module enable ruby:2.7 nodejs:12

# Install
dnf install nodejs ruby

# Check installed versions
ruby --version
node --version
npm --version

Devops Docker images again

Another Docker image with some tools useful for devops, this time includes the TIG CLI utility.

Tig

Tig Docker image https://github.com/alastairhm/docker-tig

To use run the following;

Directly on the CLI

docker run --rm -ti -v $(pwd):/mnt ghcr.io/alastairhm/docker-tig:latest

As an alias

alias tig='docker run --rm -ti -v $(pwd):/mnt ghcr.io/alastairhm/docker-tig:latest'

For full instructions on using TIG visit the offical instructions page.

Devops Docker images

I’ve built a few Docker images with some tools useful for devops lately.

SpaceVim

SpaceVim Docker image with NeoVim https://github.com/alastairhm/spacevim

CFSSL

CloudFlare’s SSL tools Docker image https://github.com/alastairhm/docker-cfssl

Terraform Security

TFSec and TFLint tools Docker image https://github.com/alastairhm/docker-terraform-check

Bitwarden CLI

Bitwarden CLI tool Docker image https://github.com/alastairhm/docker-bw

Devops Docker images again

Another Docker image with some tools useful for devops, this time includes the TIG CLI utility.

Tig

Tig Docker image https://github.com/alastairhm/docker-tig

To use run the following;

Directly on the CLI

docker run --rm -ti -v $(pwd):/mnt ghcr.io/alastairhm/docker-tig:latest

As an alias

alias tig='docker run --rm -ti -v $(pwd):/mnt ghcr.io/alastairhm/docker-tig:latest'

For full instructions on using TIG visit the offical instructions page.

Devops Docker images

I’ve built a few Docker images with some tools useful for devops lately.

SpaceVim

SpaceVim Docker image with NeoVim https://github.com/alastairhm/spacevim

CFSSL

CloudFlare’s SSL tools Docker image https://github.com/alastairhm/docker-cfssl

Terraform Security

TFSec and TFLint tools Docker image https://github.com/alastairhm/docker-terraform-check

Bitwarden CLI

Bitwarden CLI tool Docker image https://github.com/alastairhm/docker-bw

Devops Docker images again

Another Docker image with some tools useful for devops, this time includes the TIG CLI utility.

Tig

Tig Docker image https://github.com/alastairhm/docker-tig

To use run the following;

Directly on the CLI

docker run --rm -ti -v $(pwd):/mnt ghcr.io/alastairhm/docker-tig:latest

As an alias

alias tig='docker run --rm -ti -v $(pwd):/mnt ghcr.io/alastairhm/docker-tig:latest'

For full instructions on using TIG visit the offical instructions page.

Devops Docker images

I’ve built a few Docker images with some tools useful for devops lately.

SpaceVim

SpaceVim Docker image with NeoVim https://github.com/alastairhm/spacevim

CFSSL

CloudFlare’s SSL tools Docker image https://github.com/alastairhm/docker-cfssl

Terraform Security

TFSec and TFLint tools Docker image https://github.com/alastairhm/docker-terraform-check

Bitwarden CLI

Bitwarden CLI tool Docker image https://github.com/alastairhm/docker-bw

Devops Tips

Here are a couple of DevOps tips I’ve picked up after a week at my new job which are worth sharing.

IAM Policy JSON to Terraform

This is a useful command to convert AWS IAM Policy JSON to corresponding Terraform code.

https://github.com/flosell/iam-policy-json-to-terraform

AWS Extend Switch Roles

This browser extension allows easy role switching with AWS.

https://github.com/tilfinltd/aws-extend-switch-roles

Rectangle Filling

Packing with Rectangles using the Open Processing website.

Source Code

Circle Packing

Been watching some more old Coding Train Videos so have written a basic circle packing script.

p5* Script output

Source Code

Online p5* Editor

Code can be found at Shapes

Further modification produce different results for Shapes Colours

Rectangle Filling

Packing with Rectangles using the Open Processing website.

Source Code

Circle Packing

Been watching some more old Coding Train Videos so have written a basic circle packing script.

p5* Script output

Source Code

Online p5* Editor

Rectangle Filling

Packing with Rectangles using the Open Processing website.

Source Code

Circle Packing

Been watching some more old Coding Train Videos so have written a basic circle packing script.

p5* Script output

Source Code

Online p5* Editor

Code can be found at Shapes

Further modification produce different results for Shapes Colours

Created with Processing

Picked this indie retro style platform game for my Playstation 5 cheap recently.

It was released in 2013, so old now but still a good play.

Links

Game Wiki

Picked this indie retro style platform game for my Playstation 5 cheap recently.

It was released in 2013, so old now but still a good play.

Links

Game Wiki

New retro game, looks worth getting a Amstrad CPC emulator setup to play it.

Video Source Retro Collection

Juan’s games: (https://www.usebox.net/jjm/)

Buy physical copies of these games:

Golden Tail

Kitsune Curse

Mr. Ee from Micro Power for the BBC Micro nice variation on the Pacman theme.

Play Online at BBC Mirco

New retro game, looks worth getting a Commodore emulator setup to play it.

This style of game is one of my favorites, loved Boulder Dash and Repton.

Video Source Retro Collection

The Pit Download

Play Online

One of the games I loved playing in my youth on my BBC Micro, I’m still rubbish at it to this day.

Links

Play Online at BBC Mirco

Game FAQs

Picked this indie retro style platform game for my Playstation 5 cheap recently.

It was released in 2013, so old now but still a good play.

Links

Game Wiki

Picked this indie retro style platform game for my Playstation 5 cheap recently.

It was released in 2013, so old now but still a good play.

Links

Game Wiki

More fun playing with BBC Twitter Bot.

https://tco/ks0jhudxdM

https://t.co/xBabCMPWCX

https://tco/jVpUMLBa8D

https://tco/Rt3DOf1FOh

BBC Micro machine code take on C64 10 Print one line random pattern generator.

Code at Github 10print.asm

\ 10 PRINT
\ Using BeebASM assembler
\ (c) Alastair Montgomery

INCLUDE "../lib/constants.asm"
seed = &70

ORG &2000

.start
    LDA #23
    STA seed
    LDA #63
    STA seed+1
    LDX #0
.char
    LDA chartable, X
    JSR oswrch
    INX
    CPX #23
    BNE char
.loop
    JSR random
    BMI two
.one
    LDA #224
    JMP print
.two
    LDA #225
.print
    JSR oswrch
    JMP loop
.finish
    RTS
.random
    INCLUDE "../lib/random.asm"
.chartable
    EQUB 22,0
    EQUB 23,224,8,8,12,7,224,48,16,16
    EQUB 23,225,16,16,48,224,7,12,8,8
.end

SAVE "MyCode", start, end

BBC Micro take on C64 10 Print one line random pattern generator.

10 MODE 0
20 N=RND(1):IF N > 0.5 THEN PRINT "/"; ELSE PRINT "\";
30 GOTO 20
RUN

Twitter Post

New retro game, looks worth getting a Amstrad CPC emulator setup to play it.

Video Source Retro Collection

Juan’s games: (https://www.usebox.net/jjm/)

Buy physical copies of these games:

Golden Tail

Kitsune Curse

Mr. Ee from Micro Power for the BBC Micro nice variation on the Pacman theme.

Play Online at BBC Mirco

Interesting looking Pi Os

New retro game, looks worth getting a Commodore emulator setup to play it.

This style of game is one of my favorites, loved Boulder Dash and Repton.

Video Source Retro Collection

The Pit Download

Play Online

One of the games I loved playing in my youth on my BBC Micro, I’m still rubbish at it to this day.

Links

Play Online at BBC Mirco

Game FAQs

Picked this indie retro style platform game for my Playstation 5 cheap recently.

It was released in 2013, so old now but still a good play.

Links

Game Wiki

Make learning programming fun

It is funny how things come around again, when I started learning to programming back in the 1980s on my 8 bit machines (ZX81, Acorn Electron, BBC Micro) I used to play with graphics a lot. It gave instant feedback and visually showed the results of things like recursion. I had great fun playing with Fractals and other procedural generated images.

Recently I discovered a YouTube channel and programming platform which took me right back to those days.

Interesting looking Pi Os

One of the games I loved playing in my youth on my BBC Micro, I’m still rubbish at it to this day.

Links

Play Online at BBC Mirco

Game FAQs

More fun playing with BBC Twitter Bot.

https://tco/ks0jhudxdM

https://t.co/xBabCMPWCX

https://tco/jVpUMLBa8D

https://tco/Rt3DOf1FOh

Got a new Mac with Catalina pre-installed, so had to compile my own version of Beebasm for the 64 bit OS.

BeebAsm.zip