100 Years ago today the inventor of the universal programmable computer was born, Alan Turing.
Category Archives: engineering
Playing with ImageMagick
For some Slow Scan TV (SSTV) experiments I want to be able to overlay text on images from the command line or within a script. The Swiss-army-knife of image manipulation is ImageMagick, so I’m using that. Starting with a a photograph I took a few years ago, I resized it to 320×256 pixels – that’s …
It’s Oak Apple Day
An oak-themed week so far… The 29th of May is Oak Apple Day – I’ve an interest in oak apples due to my job, but I didn’t know the details behind Oak Apple Day until I read this post by Tom Sykes.
GPSd and xGPS on OSX 10.6.8
Just documenting how I got GPSd and xGPS running on a Mac running OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard). First off, install MacPorts – this is a bunch of *nix tools, utilities and applications packages for OSX. After you do the basic install of MacPorts, do a self-update and upgrade: sudo port update [Lots of output will …
Bells
Something like thirty years ago, I was on a bus with my grandfather passing The Whitechapel Bell Foundry; he told me a little about the place and promised to take me for a visit when I was older. Three years ago, I bought a ticket for a tour the following year, then forgot to go. …