A Tea between friends :-) How was Your Day

[ivan.akapulko]

One of my friends lives on the Isle of Man in the UK where they have that amazing motorcycle race. He says the accidents are horrific and this year, he and his family are retreating to Iceland for a vacation during the race

Motorcycle track in the Isle of man is very complex, as I recall. Unless TT were not transferred from there to the UK?

[Izzy]

I was a diving instructor & advanced diver in sports diving with the BS-AC a few years back and also dived a Drager semi closed circuit rebreather, which required a technical head to dive, it's easy but you need to be on the ball.
I was Part of the BS-AC rebreather team, giving try dives at dive shows. We had a young lad about 22 just leant to dive with PADI beginner to dive master in 12 weeks job, he was very eager and keen to try it saying he had read all about them, The head instructor gave me a little nod as I was in the pool with him standing up doing the brief, telling him about the basics of the unit and getting him used to breathing through the loop, (at the surface it takes alittle effort, but below 10m it's very easy due to the pressures) as I was talking to him I had one eye on the oxygen guage, after a few minutes I said he better spit the mouth piece out as he was about to loose consciousness. I explained that unlike normal open circuit sub Aqua diving, if you take a breath from the demand valve without opening the cylinder valve you immediately know as you get nothing.
On a rebreather you have about 5liters of oxygen enriched air in the breathing loop, if you haven't turned on the cylinder you gradually consume the oxygen in the loop untill you gradually loose consciousness fall asleep and then die.
A rebreather diver will take longer to kit up and will spend about 5 minutes breathing on the unit to warm it all up and check that everything is functional and that the various (at least 2) computers are analysing the breathing mix and reporting the correct readings that you have previously calculated and have the right gas mix.
After explaining this to him he was a lot more sober and serious about his try dive on the rebreather and gained a healthy respect for it. If your testing a rebreather it could kill you sitting in the living room if you don't know what you are doing.
Having said that it was a great unit for diving much better than normal open circuit diving.

[nilrog]

Thingiverse is full with useful stuff. How could I have lived without this adapter before?
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:551238

[Neotko]

This might sound like auto promotion but it isnt. I'm closing down my itunes games, (that I designed internally and made all the graphics, sounds effects... well everything except the programing) and since I won't renew the next months the apple developer license I changed all the prices of the games to free, so now my games are 100% free (unlock modes specially, so the advertising can be removed fast).

So if anyone want to play them it's now or never, in a few months they will banish from itunes

https://itunes.apple.com/app/numberone- ... 34818?mt=8
https://itunes.apple.com/app/graviton-b ... 37563?mt=8

Have fun! I'm particularly proud of Graviton Block, it's a very weird game that not many people get into, but when you do, it's quite fun =)

Edit: I did changed all the unlocks to free but seems it' takes a few hours to propagate the change, so don't pay a cent for the unlocks please!

[LePaul]

How hard is app making?
The reason i ask is the Adafruit Bluetooth program is a bit of a mess to work with. I am trying to use my iPad (or even old iPhone) to remotely activate servos and motors in R2. As you can see in their app the options for movement are limited. I think they offer the source on their site....but again, not knowing how to code apps...

[nilrog]

It depends how much programming background you have. It's harder than Arduino programming, but simpler than many other development environments. But the "tough" part is mastering all the SDKs that you need to use. But they are well documented. And Big Nerd Ranch (Aaron Hillegass) have a lot of good books that goes from almost n00b to experienced programmers.

And these days you are allowed to install apps on your own iPhone without paying for developer license.

[nilrog]

@neotko
Cool, downloaded them (thanks) and I'm going to give them a spin later

[Neotko]

The games where coded by an external company, but in the end I had to learn how to edit the code to save cash on the small updates. It wasn't really hard. Specially since most of the game was made using cocos2d. It's a lot like javascript.

thanks @nilrog !

[nilrog]

Once in a while interesting things drops into my inbox...many of those things are LEGO ideas. I'm so amazed by what some people can create with bare hands and plastic bricks

This one is soo awesome...I wish I had the time and bricks to play with myself
https://ideas.lego.com/projects/144406

[Izzy]

There are some fantastic Lego modellers out there.
There are a a few things on thingiverse about filament length counters, I was thinking about making something using a Lego Mindstorm.

[nilrog]

Now that would be something

[LePaul]

...everyone must be on vacation....it's quiet here!

[nilrog]

So true

[Izzy]

Just testing some filaments, from rigid ink, PLA & PLA+.
Don't think much to the PLA, only likes low print speed, but the PLA+ seems nice, I don't have as much as I would like to test but will see what I can get out of it.

[Dim3nsioneer]

...everyone must be on vacation....it's quiet here!

Hmmm... a few of us were in the Netherlands recently...