Kerbal Space Program - The Ultimate Game for Makers!

Many of you may have heard of Kerbal Space Program (KSP) – the best unfinished game since minecraft.

KSP is a space program simulator using an approximation of real physics and the very minimum of auto pilots. There are no goals in the game but those that you set yourself - it’s a sandbox. (This may change when the game is finished.)

Most people’s first goal is to achieve orbit. You have to construct a rocket using a number of parts stored in the vehicle assembly building. Your first effort will undoubtedly fail and maybe even your tenth. Your rocket may explode on the launch pad or go into a three axis spin. When things go wrong the resulting accident will be spectacular – I promise.

There are many so-called space stimulators that chuck out any notion of real physics as being too hard for gamers to understand - its rocket science! I always thought I was too stupid to understand orbital mechanics, but it turns out to be a lot easier than astronaut training would have you believe.

I felt a real surge of pride when I finally put a Kerbal in orbit and when I put one on the Moon, beating my brother there in the process, I felt even happier. This is a hard game and hundreds of Kerbals have died trying to prove they have the right stuff.

This game has a large following, with hundreds of mods that can be downloaded off the Kerbal Spaceport website. Mods include auto pilots, extra parts to fully assembled spacecraft for the lazy and lots more. There are also many people that have created videos to help people, and to brag, on Youtube. You will need to watch some of these videos to get anywhere in this game without great frustration as the help section of the game has not been finished yet.

I am currently building a low Kerbin orbit space station which currently has four modules and room for four kerbonauts. It is bound to get a lot larger.

My heavy lift vehicle with habitation module attached.

My space station in low Kerbin orbit.

Kerbal Space Program is a great game, I give it five stars.

Is Technology the Answer?

As somebody who relies on technology to live I’m probably a bit biased, so I believe the answer is yes. For those who don’t know - my brother and I have Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, this is a muscle wasting disease with larger muscles being affected more than small. We stopped walking at 10 and rely on electric wheelchairs to get around. We have continued to get weaker, but progress of the disease has greatly slowed as we get older. At around the age of 20 we started using mechanical ventilation as our breathing had become more difficult. Initially we used them overnight and in the last two years we have used them 24/7.

Technology allows me to get around and has greatly extended my life and that of my friend who have MD. Only a few years before I received my ventilator they were not prescribed as readily with deadly consequences. I still continue to lose friends, but ventilation gives me the hope that the majority of us will live to see better treatments.

Some people blame technology for the ills of the world, but it is really us humans that are to blame. We had the audacity to wish that all our children would live to reach adulthood. That we could stay healthy longer and actually live to retirement. Freedom from horrible diseases like smallpox and polio. That we could travel to see relatives on the other side of the world. That we could communicate with anybody wherever we were in the world.

Technology has been the answer; the world is a far better place than it was 100 years ago. The problem is the unintended consequences of answering our sometimes desperate needs. Technology was the answer in the past and continues to be so.

Our need for energy is what is destroying this world, but we will continue to be unwilling to give up the amazing things that technology has given us. There are many alternative forms of energy such as solar power that are becoming increasingly cheaper. One day soon it will be normal to have solar panels on your roof. Wind power is also rolling out across the country.

The latest technology has also allowed houses to be many times more efficient. It is possible for a house to be quite liveable only being heated by the body heat of the people living in that house. Yes it is more expensive to build a house like that, but the immense energy savings would pay for it in no time. With energy prices going up more people will be choosing to make their houses more efficient.

Our society could be made more efficient. For example all our food waste could be fed into bioreactors generating methane which can then be burnt in a power station next door. Technology will also solve future problems such as the looming demographic crisis with there being too many retired elderly people for our economies to support. The answer to this is of course an army of robotic carers. This is not a pie in the sky idea, but something that is necessary for human life to continue as we know it. This crisis is already hitting in Japan. China cannot save us this time with their own demographic crisis on the horizon. If we do not wish to introduce compulsory euthanasia and we do not find a cure for old age - robots will be the answer.

So to sum it all up - technology is the answer.

All Hail Our New Robot Overlord!

We are all one step closer to being ruled by robots, with Nick finally getting his new robot design driving.

Robot with connect attached.

It uses Robot Operating System (ROS) installed on an old laptop. Nick uses another laptop to control the machine remotely. Nick originally wanted to control the robot from his desktop, but we are currently having network issues due to a Telstra screwup. It was easier to set up a makeshift wireless network. It does not yet have a camera mounted so we have to do drive it blind. A Wi-Fi camera will make it a lot more useful - we can answer the door and freak out passers-by on the footpath.

The chassis is a simple design using laser cut Perspex and 3-D printed parts. Nick used his old front wheel drive electric wheelchair as an inspiration for the design.

Sexy wheels.

The electronic guts of the machine is equally simple with an Arduino Mega 2560 R3 with a Two Axis Encoder Counter Mega Shield Version 2, a Pololu Dual VNH5019 Motor Driver Shield for Arduino and two Electric motors with 131:1 ratio gearbox with in built 64 CPR Encoders.

In the future the robot will use a Microsoft connect to give it vision and we will use a Wi-Fi range extender to vastly extend its reach.

This robot is a prototype and Nick has plans to eventually sell kits cheaper than other similar ROS robots. We will also release all the files so anyone can build one from scratch. We are still yet to name the robot, but the Widow Maker and the deceptively innocent sounding Maplebot are in the shortlist.

Freeing Up Diskspace On Windows 7 For Your SDD

Disk space isn't really a problem anymore with cheap one terabyte hard drives commonplace. I have upgraded my computer to use a solid-state disk they are not cheap nor are they large, but a computer now loads at half the time.

Of course I also like games to load as fast as possible, so I put them all onto the solid-state drive. I filled up the 223 gigabytes in about a week. I couldn't be bothered to uninstall them and reinstall them all to my terabyte drive F.

It can be a bit of a pain to determine what is taking up space with Windows 7 so I download a program called Tree Size Free. There is a professional version that you can pay for but it is not needed.

This will scan your computer and show you what is taking up all the space. It was mostly videos and pictures. I moved all these files to my F drive, but my F drive has quite a lot of directories and it can be a pain to find the video or picture I want. Windows 7 has this library function. With documents, pictures, music and videos all having their own libraries. I thought this was a waste of time where I first saw it, but it can save you time.

Click computer, this will bring up a window to the left see libraries click videos. Where it says video library at the top, underneath you'll see a link includes 1 location, click on 1 location. This brings up the change how your library gathers its contents window. On the right you will see add and delete buttons, click add, browse to your movie folder - can be on any drive - click include folder. Now your video folder is three clicks away. All the other libraries work in a similar manner.

So now I have enough space to install Bioshock Infinite - no I don't. I see these two files taking up huge amounts of space on my C drive hiberfil.sys. This important sounding file was 6 GB. Hiberfil.sys is used by the hibernate function to take a snapshot of all the data that is in your RAM at the time your computer goes into hibernation. It is always the same size as your RAM.

If like me you never use the hibernate function it can be removed using an overcomplicated process. Click Start open the Control Panel, if your Control Panel items are categorised click System and security then click Power options, otherwise just click Power options. This has a number of preferred plans. Next to whatever plan you use is a link change plan setting – click it. There are two drop-down boxes at the bottom are two links, click the one that says Change advanced power settings. Click the plus button next to sleep, click allow hybrid sleep, click on and select off. Click apply then ok. The hiberfil.sys file should have disappeared.

You can also go to the command line and type “powercfg.exe -h off” (without quotes). The command line window can be found by clicking Start, All programs, Accessories, Command prompt or by typing cmd into the start menu search bar.

I saw that the Windows directory was also taking up a lot of space particularly one directory called winsxs. I clicked on this directory and it looked like it was full of a lot of junk. There is a way to greatly reduce the size of this directory. Winsxs stores all the backup files from when service packs are installed.

Go to the command line and type “dism /online /cleanup-image /spsuperseded /hidesp” . Running this greatly reduced the size of my winsxs directory.

This works fine on my computer, but in my experience Windows machines can be a bit flaky. Something that works fine on one machine can seriously screw with another - so follow this at your own risk.

Bioshock Infinite is a great game by the way.

TED - 10 Top Tech Tips

TED is one of my favorite websites it always has something cool / educational / funny / exciting or all of the above to watch. In top 10 time-saving the tech tips David Pogue shares with us some things that we all should know. I am ashamed to say there are some that even I didn't know - how do you learn if nobody tells you? That's my excuse anyway.

If you have never been to TED have a look around. There is lots of great stuff on the site with talks ranging from education, science, technology, design, economics and almost everything else. What you won't find are talks promoting pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, religious zealotry or “new age fluff”. TED is a way to share good ideas with potentially millions of people.

In Defence of the Desktop Computer

I believe the invention of the desktop computer to be one of the greatest things to happen last century. Of course it was miniaturisation that allowed for computers small enough to fit on a desk. This meant that everyone who could afford a computer could have one.

Over the years they have become an amazing multimedia platform. The sum total of humanity's knowledge is now at your fingertips. The number of things desktop computers can do is so limitless I couldn't hope to list them all here.

Now that same miniaturisation has created incredibly powerful handheld computers the mobile phone and the tablet PC. Some media commentators have been so bold as to label the desktop computer as obsolete.

Despite what some people say the desktop is not obsolete nor is it an endangered species. I do not believe it will be an endangered species for many many years. The mobile phone or the tablet will never replace the desktop computer - simply because they can't. Mobile phones are too small - creating anything larger than a text message will lead to sore thumbs. Trying to type on a tablet faces similar difficulties. Even laptops can be difficult to use over long periods of time. The best computing experience comes from sitting in front of a desktop computer. I can't imagine playing the game Bioshock Infinite on anything other than my desktop PC. The large high-resolution screen and the mouse are a must with some games. Game consoles come a close second in my opinion.

Some people plug their laptops into external screens, mouses and keyboards. You are also starting to see mobile phones and tablets that do a similar thing. I believe this will be the future with your everyday device transforming into a desktop.

I also believe the desktop computer we know and love will exist for many years. The PC is endlessly modifiable and upgradeable. It is great being able to insert extra hard disks or a new graphics card when something faster or better becomes available.

Announcing the death or obsolescence of the desktop PC flies in the face of technological history. The car did not result in the extinction of the horse. The phone did not replace the letter (although e-mail did). Video did not kill the radio or the movie cinema.

This is because they are different, if related, technologies. Mobile phones make great phones, are great to play small games on or take photos quickly and they fit in your pocket. Tablets are great for surfing the Internet or for reading while curled up on a beanbag. But if you want to do some serious computing don't go past the desktop computer.

pcDuino Mini PC + Arduino

A few guys on the hacker space forum were talking about the pcDuino, I had never heard of it so I looked it up. A pcDuino, surprise surprise, is the bastard child of a PC and an Arduino. Its a mini PC that runs Ubuntu linux or Android. It has 2 usb ports, ethernet port, HDMI and has the same pin arrangement as an Arduino making it compatible with Arduino shields. Looks very fun to play around with.