Ada's Technical Books Rocks

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I have a number of favourite places in all the world (it saves on the travel). I've now got a new one. Ada's Technical Books. It's a cafe. And a bookshop. And a technical library. And a meeting place. And wonderful.

Our apartment is just down the street from the place (you can even see the Space Needle on the walk down 15th Avenue). Ada's become our place of choice for coffee and meals. I'm not saying that I'll travel all the way back to Seattle to go there again. Oh, hang on, yes I would. 

Living Computer Museum Grand Opening

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I'm impressed that people could actually use these lights to understand what the machine was doing 

Another favourite place of mine. The Living Computer Museum in Seattle has a fantastic collection of computers, both large and small, going back to the days of valves. And, as the name implies, many of them are working machines, including some mainframes. 

I first went there a year ago, and I really wanted to go back again. So we did. They were having a grand opening of some new exhibits, and it was awesome. They now have robots, cubelets, embedded stuff, they have a full size computer controlled car and of course all the computers that I know and love. If you are in Seattle you really, really should visit. I'd go every week. 

This is what I learned to program on. No. Really.

Boeing Factory Tour

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Apparently Disneyland would fit in here

A major holiday highlight today. We went to see airplanes  being made on the Boeing Factory Tour.  Most impressive. All the numbers are big. From the size of the plant to the price of the product (at least 200 million dollars). On the factory floor we saw five planes in different stages of construction. That's a billion dollars, right there. And they are making up to forty of these in a month in one plant. 

Within the constraints of the business (they've got a lot of planes to make) the tour was excellent. We weren't allowed to take cameras into the factory (shame) but we did get a feel for just what they do there. Highly recommended. 

High Fashion and Bainbridge Island

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As part compensation for a day spent looking at cars, today number one wife and I went to look at the Yves Saint Laurent exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum. 

There is true genius in the way that a few pencil lines can evoke a figure and a style. 

The finished product.

After as much haut couture as we (or at least I) could handle, we headed off to take a ferry ride to Bainbridge Island. We had no particular need to go there, but the weather was being very kind to us and, hey, life's in the journey....

Seattle waterfront from the ferry

View of Seattle going out...

View of Seattle coming back....

Surface Dial controlling a Hull Pixelbot

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I've managed to get my hands on a Surface Dial. It's a spiffy new PC control that acts like an, er, dial. You can use it to manipulate value in programs in a very precise and controlled way. The dial works best with the Surface Studio (which I've not been able to get my hands on) but you can use it on any PC which has Bluetooth. It appears as a Human Interface Device and has a really simple API that you can use to make any of your programs dial controlled. 

I wanted to use it to control the movement of my Hull Pixelbot and, after only half an hour or so of coding I had it working. 

It's not a particularly direct form of control just yet, but that is because of the way I'm sending control messages via the Azure Internet of Things hub, which is not really created for such rapid messaging, but it does work, which is rather nice.  I made a "hotel vision" video of the program working. I'm going change the code to make a more direct connection to the robot. 

Of course, what I really want is two dials on the PC, one for speed and the other for direction, but just at the moment you can't connect two Surface Dial devices to a single PC. 

MVP Summit Day 4

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MVP Robot ready for action. 

Day 4, and I don't think I'll be breaking any non-disclosure agreements by telling everyone that I went to a session about Microsoft Azure Internet of Things today. I took a long a Hull Pixelbot that I happened to have brought with me, and showed what my particular style of connected device looked like. Folks seemed quite impressed, which was nice. 

First Day in Bellevue

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The weather in Bellevue is un-seasonably nice. It's much warmer than where we came from. We went for a walk this morning without needing heavy weather gear, which was nice. 

I have no idea who is getting the love here. Or even if it was always the same person.

In the evening we had a great time at an MVP event in the Georgetown area of Seattle. There are lots of fascinating bars and whatnot, one of which had an amazing collection of pinball machines.

They even had a Twilight Zone machine, which was awesome, even though I still can't play it.Thanks so much much to the Microsoft folks who did such a great job of setting up the event.

Flying Icelandic

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They have the Northern Lights built into their planes

I've not used Icelandic Air before. But I will again. First up, their flights to Seattle are a bit shorter, since they fly further over the poles. And they found me legroom seats, which was very nice, But the most important thing to be aware of if you fly Icelandic is that there are no free meals and only free soft drinks. I don't actually have a problem with this. It does mean that I get the food that I want and that my brain is not strained deciding between "Chicken or Pasta".

 

An Idiot on eBay

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Can you work out what's in these two packages? Neither can I. 

I've been raising funds for the purchase of a Playstation VR (of which more later). Part of this involved selling some computers that I deemed surplus to requirements. So I took lots of pictures and, being a clever person, I boxed the computers before advertising them. Good plan.

Then I sent the wrong box to one of my customers. Less good plan.

It just goes to show that my capacity for stupidity is expanding all the time. As I taped them up I reflected on whether or not I should label each box so that I would know what is in it. I thought there'd be no way I could make a mistake, which of course is the reason why I did. 

Fortunately my customers are being understanding and it should all be sorted soon.