@Cloudscout Your post about minidiscs inspired me to make a blog post: https://pointinthecloud.com/2026-03-27-134200.html
shortcolin
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I'm in Edinburgh. I like designing simple technology and riding my solar e-bike - which even works in Scotland!
The Omni Centre in Edinburgh had slight cyberpunk vibes today. Such a terrible shame I couldn't be advertised to.....
I repaired a Psion pocket computer from 1999 and got it online so wrote a blog post: https://pointinthecloud.com/2025-10-13-154800.html
Retro computing enthusiasts in Edinburgh: there is a Bush CRT TV with SCART input dumped by a bin in Rankeillor St, near the university. I know these things are becoming desirable for the proper period feel in case anyone wants one!
Was browsing photos in William Patrick Library, Kirkintilloch at the weekend. Discovered the Lion Foundry made these panels for Lothian House at Tollcross, Edinburgh. Trades of Edinburgh: "Printing, Engineering, Brewing, Building"
I knew the Lion Foundary for red phone boxes, but they made all sorts of things - e.g. the giant window surround at Constitución railway station, Buenos Aires
https://www.edlc.co.uk/heritage-arts/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/the-lion-foundry/
Have started noticing panels in other places now - e.g. Fountainbridge library
Browsing the swimming pool timetable and they have "casual swimming" this afternoon. I don't have a swimming tuxedo for the formal swimming which I assume is at the other times.
As an experiment @cicely Soldered a MEMS microphone onto a pi pico, and we got it to classify bats using the https://github.com/macaodha/batdetect2 model. Exciting to hear the bat chirps when playing the WAV file slowed down. Will have to write a blog post soon to explain what we did but for now it is getting dark - which means more bats to spy on!
At 5am both the birds and me are awake and the first detections on BirdNet Pi have been made, which is exciting.
Using an Adafruit PDM Microphone and ARM USB microphone library to make a USB Microphone from a Pi Pico, connected to a Pi400: https://github.com/ArmDeveloperEcosystem/microphone-library-for-pico.
There are some weirdnesses still to be investigated but it is nice to see it detecting something.
I just experimented by using an AI to help me write an AI. It was successful (and I'm impressed), but I suspect I may be being reduced to a tool to help them reproduce.
(I don't why it asked me for help with motors and steel and opposable thumbs when I'm trying to write an audio classifier tool, but nobody really knows how deep neural networks work so I suppose it knows best).
Discovered this mysterious old radio aerial/antenna during our Pentland Hills walk yesterday. The information board says it was used to receive signals from South Africa during WW2 but it feels too small and unlikely a location for this. Found a blog which believes it was used by Edinburgh university electrical engineering dept in the 1960s for ionospheric research: https://boghall-radio-masts.blogspot.com/2017/
I'm posting masts on Mastodon!
