Splendid Tech Session Tonight

Hot on the heels of DDD North last weekend we now have more high quality technical content which has free food (thanks to Hull University for the spread). Tonight at the Tech Sessions we had two excellent talks.

First up was Martyn Coupland who has the kind of life that I want when I grow up. By day he pilots planes around the world. And at night he develops software using .NET (actually this might not be precisely how he divides his time, but he definitely does both). His talk was titled “Cleared for Takeoff: Navigating the Intersection of Aviation and Technology” and gave some great insights into the hugely complicated business of getting people from A to B safely through the air.

It was nice to see the views from his “office” at 30,000 feet but it was even more interesting to see the server room underneath the cockpit containing all the computers that keep the plane in the air. There are four copies of one crucial component, along with a box that contains the height above sea level of just about every point on the surface of the earth. Aviation tech has to be done right and this point was made time and again as systems were described. Everything was pilot-centric since they are the people who have to make decisions that are literally life and death. Very impressive.

Next up was Elliot Fearn talking about “Building a RAG-Based LLM with Vector Databases”. Elliot explained that RAG stands for “Retrieval Augmented Generation”. This is a technique for boosting the usefulness of a Large Language Model (LLM). An LLM takes in questions and gives you answers to them. Elliot gave a great explanation of how this process works, with individual tokens in a question being converted into vectors which are then mapped into the knowledge space of the LLM to produce a useful answer, one token at a time.

The RAG bit serves as a kind of “booster” pack of local knowledge which is combined with the content of the prompt string which is given to the LLM to get the answer. For example, you might ask an LLM about “sales”. This could mean that you want to know where things are being sold cheaply, or how well a marketing plan is working. If you have a system that puts the word “sales” in a marketing context by adding sales information to the prompt string you have better chance of getting a useful answer.

Elliot described systems that could help to automate this process, so corporate information could be packaged and formatted to be used in this way. Very interesting stuff with some nice demonstrations of the tech.

I really looking forward to the next session. If you want to join in go here on Eventbrite and follow The Tech Sessions.

Tech Session at Hull University Thursday 27th Feb

Yesterday I did a post about things you can do that will help you get a job in the future. One great thing to do is attend events, meet folks and learn new stuff. There’s an event this week which is just the kind of thing you should be going to. And you might learn something too. A group called “The Tech Sessions” has organised an event on Thursday evening this week at the University of Hull. They’ve got two speakers, Martin Coupland is talking about “Aviation’s Tech Lessons “ and Elliot Fearn is talking about building large language models. It starts at 6:60 pm and you can sign up here.

I know very little about either of these topics, but I’m looking forward to finding out more.

Making Stuff at DDD North

What a great ajudience looks likE…

Well, that’s the presentation over. It’s been a while since I took an audience picture. I took this at the end of the presentation too. And they were still smiling. Thanks for that.

I’ve put the slide deck for the presentation here. If you actually decide to make something it would be lovely to hear from you about it. And if you are in Hull you are welcome to come along to our Hardware Meetups. They take place every couple of weeks in Hull MakerSpace at the top of the Central Library. The next one is on Wednesday 5th of March starting at around 5:00pm.

You don’t have to bring any hardware to the meetup, although I like to take things along to talk about. If you are thinking of building something (or if you aren’t sure what to build) then it woudl be lovely to see you for a chat about it.

Thanks to Derek for the picture

Yorkshire Traction Engine Rally 2024

One of the highlights of my year is the Yorkshire Traction Engine. In Yorkshire. With traction engines. This year we were blessed with great weather and more engines that you could shake a stick at. Along with some awesome motorbike action. I took along a proper camera and pushed my luck a bit. I’m not unhappy with the results.

DDD North in Hull was completely wonderful

DDD North today at Hull University. Lots of interesting talks. Including one from me. First live event since forever. What’s not to love. Although I really wish I’d taken a notebook and pen. Completely forgot how useful they are.

The first session I went to was by Derek Graham. How to be psychic. It turns out that you don’t actually have to be psychic to write useful code. But if you get it right you can certainly appear to be. This was a great description of sensible things to do when writing software. I particularly liked his tip for someone who didn’t know what to make. He said “Make something”. There’s a hugely important lesson here for folks learning to program. “Your first attempt doesn’t have to be right”. Even if you are an expert it is virtually guaranteed that your first attempt will not do everything the problem demands. So why not lean into that and make something that kind of works and then have a framework that lets you iterate. I was also impressed by the term “walking skeleton”. A version that does the absolute minimum the requirements need but will serve as the basis of more discussion and development to get to the finished solution. Brian even mentioned UML (great stuff) and a tool that I’m going to look at for making diagrams from text: https://plantuml.com/

The second session was by Luce Carter. Productivity++: Things I Have Learned from Managing My ADHD. This was a very confident presentation of strong content. Turns out that it is really all about organisation and mindset. I’m not sure I’m prone to ADHD any more than I think I might be psychic. But it was a great description of tools and techniques that you can use to keep yourself moving forwards. Luce mentioned a tool called Notion which looks really interesting. I organise my work using a single word file that contains my diary and all my projects. Not optimal. Notion looks super useful. It stores data in the cloud and runs across all my devices.

Third session was by John Stavely. Getting started with Satellite IoT. It turns out that there is low-cost gear you can get which lets you send packets of data to a satellite as it flies overhead. Then, when the satellite goes over a downlink it will send the data down to earth where it appears in MQTT messages that can pop up in your Azure IoT Hub application. You have to do some work to predict when to send to the satellite. They come along every now and then and precess as they orbit the earth. You also have to do a bit of error correction and bit twiddling to make the best of the 64 bytes you can send. But it means you could make something that can send data from anywhere on the surface of the earth. Amazing. At the moment it is even free to use. You’ll have to buy some kit and you need somewhere with a good view of the sky, but it works. John has a GitHub site here with his software and more details.

Thanks to DDD North for the picture

Then it was time for my talk. I was talking about getting started on the internet. In rhyme. I changed into my red jacket and went for it. I really enjoyed the talk. I just hope the audience did. I’m not sure how many folks learned much, but I like to think they picked up a few interesting rhymes in amongst the cheese puns. I was quite merciless in my extraction of funds for Red Nose Day. I think for everyone who came along it was the most expensive experience they’ve had for a while. But by the end we’d raised over 120 pounds for a super-good cause. The audience were fantastic. They rolled with all the punches, threw money at me (in the form of carefully folded five-pound notes - not painful coins) and went along with everything. I’d taken my Mint TL70 and I was taking pictures of the audience wearing my big hat (for a fee of course). The camera did a great job. People loved having a physical picture of themselves to take away. You can donate too if you like. Go here.

The final session I went to was from Don Wibier of DevExpress. State Management in Blazor. I’m getting very interested in Blazor. It will be featuring in the next version of the C# Yellow Book. There was some great technical content, but my mind was a bit full of bad rhymes and not in a state to absorb a great deal. Fortunately, Don has put a whole slew of videos on YouTube which I now intend to search out.

Thanks so much to the DDD team, and particularly Boss, for setting up such a wonderful event.

Fun at Dot Net North

Just the setup for your average talk….

Well, that was fun. Dot Net North invited me to do a session for them. First “in-person” talk for ages. No pressure then…

I got a bunch of kit together and headed over to Manchester. I gave the talk at the Auto Trader offices. Wonderful place. Got a great audience and I really enjoyed myself. Thanks so much to Claire for making us all welcome. The food was lovely and the room we had was great. Thanks to Pete for inviting me. You can find the slides and sample code here.

Me in action. Photo Credit: Pete Vickers MVP, International Man of Mystery and Corns Cut While You Wait

I’ve really missed doing live presentations. Yesterday reminded me of how much fun they can be. Especially if we end them by raffling some socks.

Lucy May Walker and Nerina Pallot at Cottingham Folk Festival

Had a great night out at Cottingham Folk Festival. We saw Lucy May Walker and Nerina Pallot perform in the parish church. They were both awesome. Lucy (or is it Lucy May) was up first. Just her and a guitar in front of an audience who hadn’t paid to see her and were probably wondering who she was. Such is the life of a support act. Anyhoo, she gave a fantastically assured performance. Her audience banter was right on-point and she ripped through her set with aplomb. Catchy songs sung from the heart.

Then it was time for the main attraction. I first heard Nerina Pallot via number one daughter who had some of her music back in the day. Her voice was in amazing form. Some new stuff and some of the older stuff, which sounded as clear and tuneful as the songs I’d listened to as I refreshed my memory in advance of the night.

It’s amazing that we get such good people allong to our little village like this. Thanks to everyone for making it happen. It really was a great night out. It was so good I forgot to take any pictures….

Rob at Dot Net North

I’m back on the road again. Dot Net North have kindly invited me to be the speaker at their first in-person event since the pandemic kicked off. Really looking forward to the event. I’m going to be talking about making music with hardware. There will be devices you can build, devices you can marvel at and hopefully devices that work in front of an audience.

The event is in Manchester on the evening of Tuesday 20th September. You can sign up here.

DDD Registration open - and I'm doing a session

The bad news is that the DDD event is online so we don’t get a trip out this time. The good news is that the DDD event is online so you don’t need to make trip out. You can register here.

I’m doing a session about Pure Data and making musical instruments using the Raspberry Pi PICO. I’ll also be performing the world premier of my “Concerto in A Room” (It’s slightly smaller than a “Concerto in A Flat”) using the PICO MIDI Cheesebox and Crackers controller. Surely that’s something you mustn’t fail to miss.

Fun at Tech Week Humber

Well, that was fun. Brian and I have just spent a day at the Tech Week Humber Expo. We got into place nice and early, made sure that everything worked and we knew where to get the coffee from and then settled down for the day. It was great. Lots of people asking what were doing and seeming to like it when we told them. And plenty of solid contacts to follow up after the event.

This is our Connected Little Boxes demo, showing how you can configure them to keep in touch with loved ones. We don’t want to sell these as a healthcare solution, but we think it might be fun if you got together with your kids to build one for grandad…..

Thanks to the folks at the Bonus Arena for looking after us so well (especially the packed lunches), Lucy Clark for keeping everything bowling along and finally to Hull City Council (particularly Richard) for organising things for us, getting all our mains adapters (there were a few) PAT tested so we could power up our toys and then getting our amazing stand made.

I love to see all the local expertise being showcased. It’s great to meet up with people that used to come along to my programming lectures back in the day and now find themselves running thriving companies.

DDD Goes Online

Developer, developer, developer (DDD) events are one of my favourite places to meet up and talk tech. There’s one due at the end of November and the original plan was for a physical meetup. However, with Covid cases on the rise the decision has been made to make the event online. The good news is that this means that anyone can come along (the event usually fills up really quickly) and the event is not constrained by space, so there can be lots more tracks and sessions. You can sign up and take part here.

Judging at MedHack 2021

I had a great time today helping with the judging of the MedHack Hull event. Over the weekend teams had been working away on their ideas (although it wasn’t all work and no play, they found time for some Pictionary and Among Us. Over lunch I got to chat with them about their entries.

It was great. I took away a number of things from the event. First you can totally do these things online very successfully. The organisation was top notch and the teams all used Discord to talk to each other and the judges. All I had to do was enter the chat group, fire up my webcam, admit I knew nothing and then wait to be told all about their idea. Then I popped some writeup into a shared spreadsheet and moved on to the next team.

All the teams were wonderful. There was a huge range of different ideas all centred around the medical theme. I’ve watched a lot of presentations over the years and one thing that struck me today was how we have moved on in the quality of presentation skills (or perhaps this was just a very good bunch). Either way, It was great fun. I told as many teams as I could that they should make participation in these events “pay for themselves” by making sure that they form part of the “brand” that they should be building as they go through life.

Kudos to the folks at Hull for organising the event. I hope that they run it again next year.

Talking Connected Little Boxes at MedHack 2021

Today I did my session about Connect Little Boxes for MedHack 2021. It seemed to go OK. By that I mean that most of it worked (although I did have one jaw dropping moment where I shared a screen that showed an image of the screen being shared, which led to a very impressive “Hall of Mirrors” effect.

Thanks for being a great audience folks. If you are not sure what Connected Little Boxes are and why you want one (or two) you can find our more at my Lecture in Rhyme on Friday 19th of March. Keep an eye out for more announcements coming soon.

MedHack 2021 on March 6/7

If I have one piece of solid advice for students it is to do stuff. Not just the coursework - everybody has to do that - but the other things that make you interesting. If you want to form a band, then go for it. If you want to write a book, why not? If band forming and book writing are not for you, the very least you should do is take part in events like the upcoming Med-Hack at Hull.

Events like this let you hone your skills, try out new technologies and work with people. They are invaluable. Med Hack has a workshop track alongside the hacking which you can use to spark ideas. You can sign up here.

Developer Developer Developer 2020 online

Giving a session online is a very strange thing to do. You sit in a room in front of a camera giving it your all and hoping that there is someone on the other end watching. I was first on one of the tracks, so I was able to kid myself that I was actually doing the keynote presentation….

I did a talk abut Bluetooth and Furbies. It seemed to go OK, except for the bit at the end where I lost my way around Teams and couldn’t find the Q&A window. As you can see above, the I was also doing well with the feline audience. Thanks to @developerday for the picture. All the sessions are going to appear on YouTube in due course. Keep an eye on here.

Fun with Furbies

I’m dusting off my Furby and the code that goes with it for a session I’m doing next Saturday. Should be fun.

Talking Air Quality at Notts IoT

Well, that was fun. Steve and I both did talks at Notts. IoT. Steve managed to remotely control a door lock using a cunning combination of IoT and AI. I managed to make the lights on my hat flash. You can find the PDF of my presentation here. You can find a complete recording of the event here.

Thanks to Pete for inviting me and making it so much fun.

Rob at Notts IOT

Steve and I will be delivering talks for Notts Iot in a few days. If you really want to see what my home office looks like (and who wouldn’t) then you can sign up here.

DotNetSheff-York Air Quality with added Top Hat

Thanks to the DotNetShef folks for the picture.

I was supposed to be going to a couple of .NET events to talk about Air Quality earlier this year. But instead I’m sitting at home in front of a camera waving my arms around. It was great fun though, and I hope that everyone enjoyed it. You can find some code resources for the presentation here.

If you want to get involved with our efforts in Hull you can find us on Mattermost here

Rob at DotNetShef

I was meant to be going to Sheffield a while back but, thanks to a nasty little virus, that got cancelled. However, you can’t keep a good presenter down (or even me). So on Tuesday next week I’m doing my session remotely from the discomfort of my own home.

If you want to join us (and you don’t have to live in Sheffield to do it) you can sign up here.