Jungle Freedom Fighters

Back in the crazy foo factory days I bought a magnetic white board to design level layouts and dune buggys and stuff.  It kinda sat/hang languishing on my wall for a few years before I offered it to Emma.  She accepted it but said she wouldn’t need it for a while.  That very day I got sick of having photos sitting around on my desk and stuck them on the magnetic white board….no way is Emma having it now.

Not quite as much fun as the real thing but still had a lovely time.  It was a bit embarrassing when drool started coming out of my mouth – don’t remember that happening in California!

The usual Saturday morning

I hope nobody has their washing out…

Cousin Nik on his whisky drinking mission

There’s two things I always buy at the Xmas market. Coconut macaroons… See above, and then a £10 bag of mixed sausages. Mission accomplished. 

We took a family trip to the Manchester Christmas market. It all started with a fantastic breakfast at Bills. A new Steele family tradition has been born

The eleventh theatre performance of 2016 was excellent fun. Thoroughly recommended

The power company had to turn our electricity off for a while. We wanted tea. Out came the camping stove. 

Now this is what I call a happy work environment

Usually I’d just have cheddar or maybe a chili based cheese, but put some Camembert on those mushrooms topped with finely sliced chorizo and boom, breakfast heaven

Several people opine that Santa Maria is the best pizza place in Ealing if not the whole of London. We recently heard that L’Oro Di Napoli, right around the corner, was even better. We went, ate, drank and had fun. It was a great place and we thoroughly enjoyed it. I still think Santa Maria is a little better but I haven’t been for a while so maybe I should check it out again soon

It may be a big, bulky and heavy thing to carry around but it really is excellent fun.

I don’t need no stinking omelette pan

Before

After

There really isn’t that much difference. Not sure why I bothered

Spent an awful long time trying to work out if my smoothieboard was giving me a decent PWM signal. The only way forward was to grab an oscilloscope. 

Once I had an oscilloscope I had to work out how to use it. So I fired up an old raspberry pi. Wrote a bit of python to drive one of the GPIO lines and boom. We’re in business 

Had an afternoon off after working on a Sunday morning to investigate some DST issues.  It coincided nicely with half term so we had a family walk in Fairy Glen.

 

On All Hallows’ Day I finally managed to bag another one. I think all that time spent watching YouTube videos about catching moles is starting to pay off. 

I love timehop!

During the hot hot hot Summer our fan broke.  One of the blades ripped itself free and over time another two just sort of fell off.  The metal ummm thing that was holding the blades on must have just got old and tired.  This is a job for my laser cutter, thought I.

I attached the blades….

and then attached the whole thing to the fan.

It was only at this moment, after several months thought and planning, did I notice that the arm of the metal thing was kind of angled…to kind of angle the blade and make it move air and stuff.  The way mine is set up those blades are just going to efficiently slice through the air and make barely a draught.

Can I be bothered having another go at fixing it or does it just get recycled???

From this

To this

Via this

Not sure about the new car bit yet, but it helps to be prepared