http://www.freesteel.co.uk/wpblog Two CAM programmers on the loose Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:26:35 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Big news! The Government is beginning to support its unique citizen-grown movement of... making new web-pages of data that they have managed to present so badly that any kid who knows javascript could do better at. As reported on the BBC (with practically invisible links to the web-page the ... http://www.freesteel.co.uk/wpblog/2008/07/show-us-the-better-money/ My long-planned visit to Pembrokeshire to see my old club UBUC on their annual Skomer trip was delayed by going to Mashed -08 on the weekend of Saturday 21 June, a canceled visit by a friend on Wednesday, and Becka's sudden urge to review a paper throughout all of Thursday, ... http://www.freesteel.co.uk/wpblog/2008/07/skomer-timed-for-the-rain/ Back in 1999 the Select Committee on Administration, the Clerk of the Parliaments, and all those out-of-touch fuddy-duddies in the House of Lords thought that maybe it was about time to stop printing every public Act of Parliament on vellum (calf hide). We're not talking about just the covers ... http://www.freesteel.co.uk/wpblog/2008/06/the-vellum-has-got-to-go/ And so another entirely inexplicable hack-day (called mashed) in Alexandra Palace was served. (Last year's event is written up here.) I had plenty of sleep on the night, lying across three triangular bean bags. It was the night before that was the problem, with the insane plan ... http://www.freesteel.co.uk/wpblog/2008/06/how-hackday-was-not-mashed/ Amazingly, although I have been ranting about this issue in various private and public group emails for a year now, the matter never seems to have hit the blog. I'd pretty much given up attempting to persuade the TheyWorkForYou.com crew to make a move in this direction, so I ... http://www.freesteel.co.uk/wpblog/2008/06/add-your-comment-considered-harmful/ Trying to clear some space on the front page of freesteel in order to fill it with videos and other attractive stuff. I've uploaded the old ones we have had there from years ago: That final one has some banjo music in it rather than the usual ... http://www.freesteel.co.uk/wpblog/2008/06/old-machining-videos-in-a-new-way/ I've done a full photographic write-up for last weekend receiving intromediate instruction over in Anglesey. Below is a video of my failed attempt at rolling. http://www.freesteel.co.uk/wpblog/2008/06/intro-mediate-sea-kayaking/ Unless you can see what you are doing, it's hard to program it. I'm trying to make some algorithms which work, before I have time to make them fast. As you can see, the model has very few triangles to make the holder collision calculations quick. But ... http://www.freesteel.co.uk/wpblog/2008/06/five-axis-slow-progress/ A colour clone of TheyWorkForYou.com has appeared, calling itself OpenAustralia. I have had a little snoop round and found evidence that they're going to need to get the video streams included as there appears to be a degree of editing of the transcripts going on. For example, there ... http://www.freesteel.co.uk/wpblog/2008/06/wheres-the-australian-public-whip-then/ Some pictures and notes from three weekends that didn't make it onto the blog on time. At the end of April, Becka and I headed down to Babbacombe beach near Tor Bay on the invitation to teach a couple of divers how to dive from kayaks. As usual, they had ... http://www.freesteel.co.uk/wpblog/2008/06/several-missing-weekends/