Posts

Tufties for Tumble dryers

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HOW MANY HOURS IS IT TIL 5AM?? TELL ME NOW!  Stressful, isn't it? It's been a while since I've shared one of my stupid personal dev projects with you all, so thought I'd treat you! Got a new tumble dryer last week:  Snazzy, eh! I've done this for energy saving reasons. This is a "heat pump" tumble dryer. Which a) uses less energy all the time and b) is safer to run overnight.  (NB - full disclaimers apply...manufacturers would never recommend large appliances run overnight, etc) By using less energy, and running overnight, I can drop costs from ~£1.50/load to £0.16. Winning.  There's one issue... the way the delay timer works is really counter-intuitive to my mind. You have to tell it in how many hours you want it to end . The eco cycle takes 3.5 hours, so I want it to end around 5am to make the most of cheap energy. So, back to the original question...how many hours is it til 5am?  Actual footage. I worried that the mental load of figuring this out wo...

Come vibe with me: Timelapse for tightwads

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  Shark under construction.  It's been a while.  Sorry, I feel like I owe all you adoring fans an apology... I've not updated much lately. I've been busy with a few different things. Life, mainly. But also a new app I've been working on (more on that later) and a game (more on that much later) and some books (more on that...maybe never...let's see).  In the midst of these efforts, my experiments in vibe coding are continuing. Most recently resulting in this excelled typing game where you compete in dinosaur jousting:  I know it's not pretty...but whaddya want from a single prompt!? But, anyway, I've also been back to my 3D printing over the last month - and doing some of my typical nerdery...So I thought I'd drop an update about that.  So...the whole thing was driven by an upgrade to my machine: So, why did you upgrade, James?  A few reasons...  The A1 Combo is multi-colour. That's new since I bought my old machine. I thought it would be cool to g...

I emotionally broke my AI agent (and I feel terrible about it)

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  Actual footage Say hi, James...  Hey y'all,  It's "been a minute", as the kids say. So, what have I been up to?  Well, I've been continuing my experiments with vibe coding. More specifically, I've been experimenting with Gemini within Android Studio - and its ability to generate apps based on wireframes I provide it.  And, actually, that experiment has been going quite well:  Not looking too shabby! I was doing this kinda piecemeal ("make a screen that looks like this... now, when they click that button, show them another screen that looks like this..."), but it was working pretty well.  So, what went wrong?  I became too demanding:  Yes, that's right... I asked it to change font!  And that's when things started failing: And even Gemini struggled to make their solution build:  But at least it was very apologetic about its errors:  And it solved the issue eventually:  Oh no, my mistake... it didn't solve the issue at all:...

Techie Tinkering: Come vibe with me - Episode 2

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  Show these two characters holding hands and skipping towards the camera through a meadow You asked for it, you've got it! Part 2 of my vibe coding series. Let's recap where we go to last time... Where we left off  We'd basically recreated my old excel graph and got it working pretty well:  Pretty!  ...But I'd listed a bunch of stuff I'd still like to explore: 1. I'd like to press the "yes please" button to the database question and see how that works.  2. I've not got as far as deploying the solution yet - keen to see what happens there.  3. I've not really strayed from the happy path yet - what happens if you upload something weird? How does it handle exceptions? 4. For the sake of ease, I've been choosing the CSV file manually so far. I wonder if it's possible for it to go grab it from the raspberry pi. In my head I believe this is a step too far, but I wonder what replit will do when something is a step too far.  5. I want to learn...