Currently feeling overwhelmed by all the decluttering books I have and feel I must tidy up.
shortcolin
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- 295 Posts
I'm in Edinburgh. I like designing simple technology and riding my solar e-bike - which even works in Scotland!
I made this case for my XTEInk X4 reader https://makerworld.com/en/models/2484325-book-style-case-for-the-xteink-x4 and blogged about it https://pointinthecloud.com/2026-05-06-150400-xteink-x4.html @neil and @concretedog I was inspired by your reviews to get the reader and I like it very much so thank you for blogging.
@Cloudscout Your post about minidiscs inspired me to make a blog post: https://pointinthecloud.com/2026-03-27-134200.html
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.
