Playdate Podcasts are awesome (and the console's pretty good too)

I’ve fancied a Playdate for ages, ever since I played with the number one son’s. It is a tiny games machine with a super sharp black and white screen and the usual buttons and stuff. Plus a crank. You can see it on the right hand side of the picture above. You swing out the handle and, er, crank it. If you’re not sure what I mean by this, all I can say more is that it would be absolutely perfect for a fishing game. It’s about the same size as the top half of a small Gameboy. When you aren’t using it, it turns into a clock - Game-watch style.

It is powered by a meaty Cortex chip with an ESP32 doing the Wi-Fi and whatnot. You can write your own games for it in Lua or C++. It’s made by Panic, who seem to have got themselves into the lovely position of being able to afford to do things for fun, or because they might be interesting. The Playdate is that kind of thing. I don’t think Panic need the Playdate to sell massive numbers for them to keep developing it. They’ll only stop (or hand it off to someone else) when they stop enjoying the ride. Here’s hoping its no time soon.

The way they send out games is interesting. When you buy the Playdate you get a subscription to “Season 1” which arrives in the form of two games a week for 12 weeks. They’ve just released “Season 2”, which costs 39 dollars for another tranche of games.

They make Podcasts about what they are up to. These are impeccably produced and very informative. I think anyone interested in making hardware should listen to their first episode. It does a fantastic job of telling you how making something that works is the easy bit. Making large numbers of them and managing that process is the really difficult stuff. Students of electronics and computing would learn a lot from listening to these. You might too.

Rob's Podcasting Tips

I’m still not sure why I decided to make podcasts by reading out all the first drafts of Begin to Code with JavaScript. But I must admit that I’ve learned a lot by trying to do it. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

• Don’t read from a script. Unless you are very (and I mean very) good it will sound like you are reading. If you listen to my earlier efforts you can tell that I’m reading words what I wrote. In later podcasts I’m using my words as a starting point for what I’m going to say which sounds a lot more natural. By all means have some notes, but don’t write down exactly what you are going to say.

• Have something for your hands to fiddle with while you talk. My mind tends to be able to run faster than my mouth (which is surprising) so I have something to fiddle with to keep bits of my brain busy that would otherwise run ahead and make me trip over my words.

• Don’t have a squeaky chair (or indeed anything else).

• Make sure you stay a constant distance from the microphone. I do this by using a headset mic, I’ve always had real problems using desktop microphones. Other tricks include putting your elbows on the desk to stop yourself from rocking backwards and forwards.

• Don’t sweat the fluffs. If you make a mistake don’t go back and edit, just make a joke of it and carry on. I can guarantee that the second time you try to retake something you think you got wrong the first time, you will be a lot more nervous and inclined to get it wrong again….

• Find a style that you like and grow into it. I’ve noticed that my podcasts are getting better (at least I think this is the case) because I’m now more relaxed and at home with what I’m doing. I seem to be establishing a relationship with a listener even though I know that at the time (and probably afterwards) there is nobody there.

• Force yourself to listen to yourself. I don’t like doing this, but I do try to make constructive notes to myself to try and make the next podcast better.

• Try to enjoy it. I quite like doing podcasts and that for me is a good enough reason for doing them (although you can regard this as a form of public speaking and therefore very, very useful to get good at). It doesn’t really matter if nobody listens, just by trying to do this you are adding value to yourself.

You can find my podcasting efforts here. I’d love to hear what you think of them.

Listen to "The Global Ventilator Race"

“The Great Ventilator Race” is a most excellent podcast about worldwide attempts to respond to the Covid 19 pandemic by making ventilators that will keep people breathing while their lungs recover from the virus.

You can find it on your podcast provider, and it is also here.

It’s a well told tale of hubris and a whole bunch of people finding out that some things are just hard to make and that people who have been making them for a while might have something of an inside track. I found it fascinating that large companies and very clever people were all falling foul of the same mistakes that I used to tell Imagine Cup teams off for making all those years ago. Lots of folks had plunged into making something before taking the trouble to find out if it was useful, deployable or even needed by the target audience.

Well worth a listen.