Got my hopes up this week that maybe Espressif had added Bluetooh Auracast broadcast audio support to more of their chips.
Spent the afternoon experimenting with the upshot of opening an issue deep in their github libraries to ask for support for the ESP32C3 to be added 😞
Which is progress (because I can go back to my Nordic nRF version) but it doesn't really feel like it 😄
May the gods I don’t believe in bless and preserve @dracos. The man is a British national treasure:
@adamgreenfield Is it LifeHousey to contribute to getting an upcycled cargo bike for people to share in Dundee via Critical Mass? https://arielbikes.com/rego-cargo/
I wonder how many Chesterton's Fences were taken down to get what we're seeing today.
"That can either be a good cup or a good biscuit."
Reader, it was both!!
RE: https://functional.cafe/@otfrom/117608325648351856
Has anyone built an uptime monitor with a badge you can put on your site that says "better uptime than Outlook", "slightly lower than US-East-1", etc. yet?
When I get the merseyshipping bot up and running, it'd be great to work out some way to algorithmically spot when the tugs are clustering near to a ship to escort them in or help them leave.
Data-gathering notes: I've moved the receiver down to @DoESLiverpool to see if that has a better "view" of the river. Still can't see the pilots, and doesn't seem much different otherwise.
Planning; thinking about sustainable product design; and spotting ships. This week's #weeknotes
https://mcqn.com/posts/week-1102-yearning-for-the-vast-and-endless-sea/
Let’s Build A Videogames Museum In Dundee!
Youth Group HELM Crowdfunding To Build Dundee Games Museum
There is a moment in the campaign materials for the proposed new Dundee games museum that captures the imagination.
Two young people at HELM, the youth charity that has supported young Dundonians for more than 40 years, were talking about the city:
“Dundee made Lemmings. Dundee made Grand Theft Auto.”
“No way,” said one young person. “Y’ken, the gaming story is massive in Dundee.”
“Where?” said another.
That brief exchange illustrates both the extraordinary legacy of Dundee and the ongoing opportunity to make it front and centre of Scotland’s contemporary games ecosystem.
Dundee is globally recognised as a videogame pioneer. It is home to world-class studios including (deep breath…) 4J Studios, Rockstar Dundee, Hyper Luminal, Bit Loom, Outplay, Denki, GameMaker, Ninja Kiwi, Umbra Dynamics, Team Terrible and many (many) more… It is where Abertay University launched the world’s first computer games degree, back in 1997; it’s where the Timex factory assembled the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, sparking the UK’s home-computing revolution that inspired the Kingsway Computer Club and led directly to, well, everything else.
The city’s contribution to interactive entertainment is remarkable. What makes the latest development so exciting is seeing the next generation step forward to celebrate that heritage on their own terms.
Donate Nowhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmS4sfDOoxc
Grassroots Energy Championing Local Heritage
The Scottish Games Network is proud to officially back the initiative launched by the HELM Youth Collective (HYC), a group of young people aged 14 to 25 who help shape HELM’s work. The Collective has taken on the challenge of designing and prototyping Dundee’s first dedicated video game museum space inside HELM’s home, The Sea Captain’s House.
Preserving video game culture and heritage is essential work. As a Trustee of the National Videogame Museum in Sheffield, I see first-hand how celebrating the history of interactive media inspires confidence, sparks technical curiosity, and connects generations.
Having this project led directly by young people brings an authentic, creative energy to the city’s cultural landscape. From February 2027, the team will:
The Collective will present their initial plans to Dundee City Council and key civic partners before hosting a public, interactive exhibition in June 2027 to invite the entire city to share their vision for what a permanent gaming museum could look like.
Back the Crowdfunder Today
You have a chance to directly support HELM and establish a dedicated games museum in Dundee..
To fund this first stage, HELM has officially launched a Crowdfunder running until 16:00 on Friday 18 December 2026.
Here is why our collective backing matters right now:
While offers of archived hardware and classic games will no doubt be welcome further down the line, the immediate priority today is pure financial support to get stage one funded and off the ground.
As Scotland’s games ecosystem continues to expand globally, the Scottish Games Network encourages studios, developers, founders, and industry colleagues across the country to throw their support behind HELM’s young creators.
Donate NowClare Taylor Brown, Chief Executive of HELM, noted:
Many of the young people we work with play games but have never pictured themselves making them. This project changes that. They’ll work alongside artists and industry experts, be paid for their time, and build something the whole city can be proud of.
Pat Kerr, who wrote the original physics code for Grand Theft Auto at DMA Design, highlighted the social significance of the initiative:
A games museum in Dundee would help to explore a valuable piece of local social history, showing part of the post-industrial transition of the city away from factory work and into the new technological and cultural sectors. It would hopefully also be quite good fun, and possibly even more exciting than jute!
Professor Robin Sloan, Professor of Game Design and Culture at Abertay University, also endorsed the project:
Dundee has played a remarkable role in shaping the history of video games, and it’s really important that we celebrate and preserve that heritage. With next year marking both 30 years since the launch of Grand Theft Auto and 30 years since Abertay launched the world’s first games degree, it’s a great time to be looking towards projects that help our video games stories to be more visible and accessible and to use our history to inspire future generations.
How to Get Involved
Dundee helped shape Scotland’s games culture and brought GTA to the world. By supporting this initiative, we ensure the next chapter of the story of games can be written by the young people living in the city.
Back the campaign today: dundeemadegames.org.uk.
#Crowdfunding #dundee #games #HELMCollective #history #Museums #scotlandhere's a take that'll please no one: the belief that computers are difficult to use—especially foss and tools related to programming—is mostly constructed by politics and marketing, not by any inherent characteristics of the software. reasoning: (a) people master very complicated and user-hostile processes *all the time*. knitting, driving a car on the interstate, playing a musical instrument, being a baseball fan, using the subway—all just as complicated imo as (e.g.) learning the command line
I haven't been reading lots about Brand and Walliams, but these two links felt worth sharing.
Rachel Robbins reminding us what's important
https://vocal.media/viva/i-knew-he-was-a-wrong-un
And this much-needed, touching, interview with comedian Lucy Beaumont
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiuOCjS62JI
With so many wrong 'uns about, Lucy Beaumont is very much a right 'un.
The ocean tide around the world: the white lines show where it is high water right now, sweeping around the points where there is almost no tide (amphidromic points)
(by u/ThisRelation5974)
So @smithadrianpaul is giving an online talk about the #LucasPlan this evening.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/time-for-a-new-lucas-plan-tickets-2003814016665
Annoyingly it clashes with the @DoESLiverpool community meeting so I can't make it.
✅ Coppice and propagate willow along the river Avon.
Very grateful for my hairy little helpers hard work at Warleigh Nature Reserve. They’ve worked through several nights this week to bolster the riparian woodland.
Anyway, I think that's got to be the three pillars of the next generation of free software, if we want free software to produce a free society for a free people.
- Software liability at the point of deployment.
- Transparency and legibility, supported by the state wherever necessary, in all software deployed by the state for any legislative or regulatory capacity, and
- A right to traceability, accountability and appeal in any decision made by or mediated through software.
Here's a Pecha Kucha talk (6:40sec) I gave last month for London Cycling Campaign/Osbornes Law on what #London can learn from #Utrecht
In short, a great city for biking starts w a city smart enough to control cars.
Only then can we build bike transportation that works for everyone.
@londoncycling
A problem with explicitly writing something for LinkedIn is you lose track of what you meant to say, while setting it out in Business Grindr terms
There's also a moderating effect which is welcome though. Better to put something out there than to sit on half-formed thoughts until the moment passes.
Wish i knew what more i could offer, about Edinburgh's arts crisis and how that reflects on Scotland's priorities. But already have a full-time job, and this is at least several more
I don't always use my Monday essays to comment on current events, but when I do, it's in the form of cozy thought experiments about what's going wrong now in F/LOSS.
#HIRING - CTPO for the Internet Watch Foundation // £110,000 // hybrid Cambridge+London&remote.
From AI innovation & auto detection to building products & partnerships with some of the world's largest technology companies, this is an opportunity to put technology at the heart of protecting children online, at a defining moment for the IWF.
Find out more and apply: https://www.iwf.org.uk/about-us/who-we-are/careers (by end of Nov 26)
Full recruitment pack: https://www.iwf.org.uk/media/5hult53e/recruitment-pack-ctpo.pdf