My First Printed Circuit Board

Update: My first printed circuit board doesn’t work – to see how it all when wrong look here. My first printed circuit board has just been designed. I’ve been creating a couple of circuits now on a breadboard, but each time I wanted to try something else I would either have to dismantle the circuit to reuse the breadboard, or buy another breadboard (I have 3 now). Sure I can always put the circuit on a prototype board or strip board, but I find they tend to get a little messy and they aren’t as neat....

November 25, 2014 · 3 min · Phil Howlett

Arduino Adventures.. The beginning

This month I thought I would try something different and explore the Arduino that everyone is talking about. I purchased an Arduino UNO starter kit from Australian Robotics and with a few electronic components I’ve collected over the past few years (plus a few extras that I’ve gotten recently) I’m starting my Arduino Adventures. I had played around with electronics in the past (like when I was about 10, my uncle bought me a “Dick Smith’s Funway into Electronics”) but most of it was just following along some diagrams and plans....

May 27, 2014 · 3 min · Phil Howlett

16 Year Old Me

Dear 16 year old me, As part of my quest of porting over your old Microbee computer game Adventureworld that you wrote back in 1990, I’ve been studying the code and trying to work out what the 16 year old me was thinking at the time. I realise that that you believed that this was your first real big ‘awesome’ application, but seriously you really need to learn some standards NOW before you get yourself into real trouble....

May 4, 2014 · 2 min · Phil Howlett

Tileset and Maps

Today I have completed a little milestone and that is converting over Adventureworld’s tileset and maps into a format that can be easily read by lua. The current map game data is in a format like this: DATA "CMMMBBBDDDBBLLLLMMMCCCLLLMMMC.. I’ve decided to use the application Tiled to build up the tileset and maps which will make it much easier to visualize and adjust each screen. It also automatically generates some nice lua tables which will make it easier to import into the game as well....

April 25, 2014 · 2 min · Phil Howlett

Back From Hibernation

I’m now back from hibernation after a long break from updating my blog. I’ve also spent a bit of time away from pioneer space sim. I kind of got a little bit overwhelmed with the detail that pioneer space sim required. I just simply couldn’t keep up with the fast pace of some of the current developers, and it was becoming a chore. It just wasn’t “fun” anymore, so I decided to take a bit of a break from it for a while....

April 23, 2014 · 2 min · Phil Howlett