Computer Education in Schools in the 2020s

December 2, 2024 | Comment

A little while ago I wrote about my computing education growing up in the 1980s where I learned CECIL before progressing on to BASIC. Now, some 40 years later, I am discovering what computing children are being taught.

Enter Code Club

I had decided that once I retired, I wanted to give something back to the community, and using my core computing skills seemed like an obvious place to start.

I’d seen that the Raspberry Pi Foundation ran something called Code Club which aims to teach development skills to children from about aged five and up. These are mostly run … Read the rest

Posting to Bluesky via the API from PHP – Part Ten – Adding ALT tags to Images

November 18, 2024 | Comment

I have to admit that I didn’t think I’d be back with another post on my php2Bluesky library quite so soon but Dr Paul Lee on Bluesky pointed out that while you can post images from the library you can’t also send ALT text to go with them.

But what is ALT text?

Alt text is descriptions of images added to the HTML or metadata of a post on social media or websites. They are primarily used for accessibility and SEO purposes. Here’s what they do:

1. Accessibility

ALT text helps visually impaired users understand the content of images through

… Read the rest

Posting to Bluesky via the API from PHP – Part Nine – Handling Hashtags

November 17, 2024 | Comment

Bluesky has gone from a very niche platform to one that is getting more coverage and seeing explosive growth thanks in part to the actions of the overlord at Twitter. The following was the count of users when I wrote this post.

Expanding functionality

At the same time as the user growth, the platform itself has been growing features to bring it more in line with what its competitors are offering. This includes hashtags, which are now fully supported both in the app and API. What this also means is that I can now add support for … Read the rest

When Did I Last? (WDiL) – Version 4

November 14, 2024 | Comment

It’s been a while since I last pushed a new version of WDiL but finally I got round to adding the few things left that I wanted in the app – most notably notifications. Read on for details of that and everything else that’s included.

New Functionality

Let’s take a look at what has been included in this latest release:

the interval between triggers is now shown on the trigger stats page
added a user account page to allow setting of Pushover details
send reminders notifications via email and Pushover
fixed some bugs.

Notifications

One of the things I felt … Read the rest

AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation Review

November 8, 2024 | Comment

It’s been a while since I have reviewed any hardware but upgrading my AirPods to the latest version gives me the opportunity to rectify that.

There are now four different variants of the AirPods – two for the standard edition and two for the Pros. I have decided to go for the more expensive of the standard editions, the AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation, which is what I am reviewing here.

In (and out) of Use

Everything about these new AirPods is small: the box, the charging case and the headphones themselves. Gone is the old toothbrush design to … Read the rest

Using Cursor to Generate Code

October 25, 2024 | Comment

I have written about the use of AI in programming previously but I recently came across Cursor which is Visual Studio Code with AI built in so I thought I would give it a go but what to do?

Road Trip

I have recently returned from a driving holiday around the East Coast of the US and was, as ever, amazed at the price of petrol (“gas”) compared to the UK but how much cheaper was it? I decided that this would make a simple test for Cursor.

As always, what is important is the prompt you give the AI … Read the rest

When Did I Last? (WDiL) – Version 3

October 4, 2024 | Comment

I’ve pushed another update to WDiL adding lots of new functionality and bug fixes. The most impactful of these is the forgotten password routine as this now requires the addition of the ever reliable PHPMailer. However, the most useful and visible are the changes on the activity stats page which now includes more statistics and a graph showing trends.

New Functionality

Let’s take a look at what has been included in this latest release:

graph of triggers and intervals on stats page
details of the general interval trend on stats page
you can add a comment to a trigger

… Read the rest

Using a Raspberry Pi Camera to create a time-lapsed video (Revisited)

September 25, 2024 | Comment

Last January I wrote about the Raspberry Pi Camera that I had set-up to take hourly pictures of my garden which I then turned in to a time lapse video. You can read about that and see the resulting videos and code here:

Using a Raspberry Pi Camera to create a time-lapsed video

One of the things that I said at the time I wanted to do was to do a video that cover the whole year. Now that 12 months have passed since the first snaps taken I am in a position to do so.

Getting the Pictures

Like … Read the rest

Forwarding SMS from US to UK via Twilio

September 23, 2024 | Comment

I’m going to the States soon and have been looking at booking up some restaurants while I’m away. In particular, I wanted to book for Cheesecake Factory, but when I went to do so, I found I could only do that if I registered. Fair enough, so I went to the registration page. I discovered that you needed a US mobile number that they could text a code to. 🙁

I suspect that at this point most would have given up and joined the wait line at the restaurant but not me. I needed a solution to this pressing problem … Read the rest

When Did I Last? (WDiL) – Version 2

September 16, 2024 | Comment

When I launched WDiL earlier this week I knew that it was what might be politely described as a MVP. And while I like SimpleCSS it doesn’t make for the most attractive sites. Therefore, I set about making it more appealing while also adding more functionality.

Moving from Simple CSS

I spent quite a bit of time looking for a pre-built theme that I could use as the basis of WDiL but none seemed to be where I wanted to go. In the end, I plumped for vanilla Bootstrap which with its pre-built components allowed me to get a … Read the rest