July 23, 2017 [Programming, Python, Raspberry Pi, Tech] Today at the Egham Raspberry Pi Jam we did two things: 1. The Broken Levels Challenge Some nasty person came and broke our levels for our game Rabbit Escape and we need you to fix them! To play this game…

August 07, 2017 [Programming, Python] If you want “tomorrow” in Python datetimes, don’t construct a datetime like this: from datetime import datetime, timedelta td = datetime.today() tm1 = datetime(td.year, td.month, td.day + 1, 14, 0, 0) # Don't do this! Because it will work sometimes, but fail when…

Last time we started a JezzBall clone by allowing you to move a cursor around the screen and draw lines across the playing area. This time, we add balls bouncing around. Will we get far enough for them to collide with the walls? The code is at Follow…

September 12, 2017 [ACCU] I used to run Planet Code using Venus but that started breaking recently with 500 errors for SNI-enabled sites, and it looks very unmaintained. I considered some other static aggregators, but on shared hosting it’s hard to get the right Ruby version and gems…

September 14, 2017 [Java, Maven] Today I was trying to make a simple tarball of a project + its dependent jar using the maven-assembly-plugin. I know this is a terrible way to do anything, but hey, just in case someone else wants to do something just as terrible,…

September 20, 2017 [Programming, Tech] I have been working on a prototype level editor for Rabbit Escape, and I’ve had trouble getting the layout I wanted: a toolbar at the side or top of the screen, and the rest a zoomable workspace. Something like this is very common…

Today I found I could not connect out through my proxy server with FileZilla It stopped working when I changed my password to something containing a double quote “. The solution? Change to use WinSCP. PakarPBN A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are…

October 10, 2017 [Programming Languages, Python, Tech, Writing] My OpenMarket colleagues and I ran a workshop at TECH(K)NOW Day on how to write your own programming language: A big thank you to my colleagues from OpenMarket who volunteered to help: Rowan, Jenny, Zach, James and Elliot. An extra…

January 07, 2018 [Games, Raspberry Pi] Stop! This blog post is out of date – see Recording gameplay videos on RetroPie for a live version in codeberg that may be more helpful. Credits: this is a slightly corrected and shortened version of How To Record A GamePlay Video…

January 19, 2018 [Pepper, Programming Languages, Tech] Series: Examples, Questions I have restarted my effort to make a new programming language that fits the way I like things. I haven’t pushed any code yet, but I have made a lot of progress in my head to understand what…