Wonderful Weavering WordPress

Posted on February 6, 2011 by Howard

After just a bit of juggling, I’ve successfully replaced my blog software from the (basic) version I wrote 5+ years ago, with a much more modern and flexible set of software using WordPress (from www.wordpress.org ).  So many configuration options and nice features, including being able to post to it from the wordpress app on my iPad… perhaps I’ll even be posting more regularly again ;)

The theme is based on the Weaver / Wheat theme, but I did decide to include my old scary header image!

Lots more things to try out – hoping to reimport all (or most) of my old blog posts, as long as I can date them correctly, and then will try out the various widgets… Hoping that if all is good, we can use the same software on the Astraware website for some of the more in-depth technical and design articles.

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Big News

Posted on January 9, 2008 by Howard

The big news is that Astraware is shortly to be acquired by Handmark, once the inevitable paperwork has finally gone through

The more interesting news is how some of the reporting draws attention to one of my… features…

Pocket Info News – you don’t have to read Dutch to get the point!
and
Pocket Gamer

It is nice to be known for something, even if it isn’t quite what I’d hope for :D

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More Howard Tomlinsons

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Howard

So far I’ve found a total of 4 other Howard Tomlinsons!
Using some of the US census data, I worked out the relative likelihood of both Howard and Tomlinson and came up with an expectation of there being around 4 in the UK and 20 in the US. (Just based on population sizes).

Some day I really must start a list on here :D

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Trebuchet Inspiration!

Posted on April 24, 2007 by Howard
treb1

Over the Easter holiday – while our children were off school, Kirk noticed that Warwick Castle was advertising a number of events over the holidays, including firing of a large trebuchet. For those that don’t know, a trebuchet is a siege engine built for throwing rocks at castle walls. Here is the Warwick trebuchet wound up and ready to fire!


treb2

Here’s the magnificent Warwick trebuchet up close, after it has done its work.

I’ve always loved anything that fires or shoots things through the air… right from an early age, from far before I knew that this was called ballistics. From making long ramps to launch toy cars, to shooting rubber bands, from catapults to making simple bows (called self bows) from sticks, I’ve always been fascinated.


I’ve always had a leaning towards science, with great TV shows like Tomorrow’s World, Horizon, and especially The Great Egg Race being essential viewing for me. As I got through school, I discovered that Physics was the branch of science that dealt (amongst other things) with ballistics, and incredibly there were formulae that described how things fly through the air, how far they go, what the forces on them are… and that was my hook into the subject. (I went on to study more, but that was definitely the start!)

This idea of things being deterministic – that is, predictable from their launch conditions, really fell neatly in with computers for me. Providing you set up the instructions right, computer programs are predictable, and in just the same way I enjoyed computer programming, writing all kinds of computer simulations and games that involve things moving and flying. The game Bzzz! was one of these – my first commercial game, and still popular now!

Since watching the trebuchet, I’ve been feeling inspired to do some more ballistic things… I’ve been getting out my archery kit and making repairs and adjustments, I’ve been helping Kirk to make a set of arrows for her longbow… and I’ve been eyeing that pile of wood in the corner of my shed, just wondering if it could be fitted together to make something interesting…

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Spam blast appearing to come from howardtomlinson.com

Posted on March 30, 2007 by Howard

Within the past 24 hours, it seems that one of the spammers has been connecting to some open mail servers (not mine!) and sending tons of spam emails out, with the headers to make it look like it was sent from an address @howardtomlinson.com.I found out because of the hundreds of bounce messages that have arrived in my various inboxes, and if there are hundreds of bounces that probably means they’ve reached thousands of valid email addresses. The bounces are set to come back to me, even though this domain isn’t the real source of the spam!If you’re checking this site because you’ve just received some spam, sorry – it’s not me, just someone taking my name in vain!

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A brave man

Posted on March 15, 2007 by Howard

Yesterday, I heard reports of the Zimbabwean opposition party MDC’s leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. He had been beaten, according to reports, after a rally in opposition of the ruling regime in Zimbabwe. I heard reports that the beatings of some of his party had occurred during a prayer meeting, now that gatherings of any kind are being restricted.

Being a victim – getting beaten up – does not make you brave.

What makes him brave is that this is not the first time he has been beaten, threatened, imprisoned, or seriously injured, all in the cause of what he believes in. At any time, he could have fled the country and sought asylum elsewhere. He must love his country very much indeed.

A very brave man.

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Two Cool Video-Audio Links

Posted on December 13, 2006 by Howard

Two things that really caught me as cool:

First – a guy who can’t play drums or piano, making a really good sequence out of tiny video fragments of him (otherwise) abusing the instruments: See him on YouTube. . Impressive!

Next, a demo a very cool interactive table, where you place sound generating and modifying objects on the table to make noise/music (take your pick!). Looks a lot of fun, but very impressive stuff again! See it at poetv.com.

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Pic Of The Week: Pop Art Maria

Posted on October 25, 2006 by Howard

Maria Plays Piano

mariapop

I had some fun trying out a great photoshop tutorial – Pop Art Inspired by Lichtenstein, with a pic from earlier this summer of Maria playing the piano.

Making the Pop Art version of her was fun to do, although the pic probably wasn’t the best choice because the contrast wasn’t great. I was pleased with the effect of putting in the background of the original picture, capturing the real shadows from the picture.

Maria herself liked the picture, but wanted me to adjust the colours to look more like her – it took a bit of explaining and an example to that if I wanted a picture that was her exactly, I’d already got that in the original, but I was working to come up with something that gave the impression of Maria.

I’ll definitely be trying out that technique in the future, I think! I’ll have to look for good candidate pictures!

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The Mac Honeymoon

Posted on September 11, 2006 by Howard

Well, much of the weekend was spent playing with the Mac… and the question is, what’s the verdict after the honeymoon?

So the wedding service (buying it) was great, and the honeymoon (installing and registering and trying everything out) was fantastic… but while the Mac has a great presence and the initial experience was great, it has some little… how to explain?… habits…

Don’t get me wrong, the Mac is really great for the things that I wanted, but I was starting to see some flaws as I went along. Some of them enough to not just be noticeable, but occasionally annoying. Kind of like discovering that the bride farts in her sleep and leaves her knickers on the floor, to stretch the analogy a little too far.

I know I only got the lower end MacBook – so the processing power isn’t the highest, but at least in GHz measurements the thing has more speed than either of the desktop PCs in my house. So, why the looong delays? Sometimes opening up an app takes over 15 seconds, sometimes app switching takes a long time too.

Worse still is that sometimes clicking on a button (and what a lovely, well formed button it is) doesn’t seem to have an effect. There isn’t some kind of UI change to inform you that it has accepted your click and is working on it. It just… waits. And if you reckoned you might have misclicked and click again… well you might be waiting even longer. And click again. (And then the proverbial three come all at once!)

On balance, I think the machine is great – and it really does the jobs I bought it for well – but it isn’t perfect. The argument is, is it closer to perfect than a current windows PC? (Possibly so). And is it closer to perfect than Vista? (That’s a closer one).

I know there are people who stay happy and oblivious in their glow of Mac-marital-bliss, and perhaps they stay blind to their lovely object’s faults, but I don’t think I’m one of them. Perhaps they don’t notice the faults, perhaps they are subscribed up Apple Cultists (which is a tempting group, I must admit), perhaps they are just blinded by some kind of self-healing buyers remorse. I think I can safely say that I’ll be remaining relatively platform agnostic, and even, computationally polygamous ;)

Tools for the job. Its all about the right tool for the job.

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Once you go Mac?

Posted on September 10, 2006 by Howard

Yesterday, the inevitable happened.

It started with buying an iPod while in Seattle earlier in the year. I had been deliberately looking not just for the qualities of the device, but the whole experience – browsing in the store, getting assistance and purchasing, the packaging, installation, ease of use… and I’ll admit I was quite surprised just how good the whole experience was!

That started the inevitable slide into considering getting a Mac, driven predominantly I must admit by GarageBand, and all of the fun I’ve been having with playing instruments and writing music recently. I’d been considering for a while, and a couple of weeks ago went to the Trafford Centre (a great – in both senses – shopping centre in Manchester) to look into the store and ask advice.

Despite the children not wanting to spend too long in any one place, I did get to see a couple of long demos in the store on using GarageBand (and the Logic range of upgrades), and also the range of Macs to consider. Yesterday, we went back, having considered for a week or so and made my choices. I left the store with a MacBook, a USB 49-note keyboard, a USB midi adapter, and various bits of software.

If might still be early days, but I am extremely pleased with how well everything works, how usable it is, and the level of attention to detail with everything. I hope it stays this much fun!

Does this mean I’m stopping using Windows & Linux? That seems pretty unlikely – its all about the right tool for the right job – and for the moment at least, my work needs are pretty well served by my PC, Laptop, and Server setups.

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