Here’s a few things I know about Baotou (包头). Most of it is true, I think: It’s an industrial city of two million people in Inner Mongolia, a region of China. In the 1950s, the newly communist China’s central planning committee chose to turn it into a city, in order…

What would happen if you lost your phone today? If you laptop hard drive crashed? If your USB-drive became unreadable? Every few months, I see a post on Facebook where someone has lost their phone, and thus all their photos and contacts. It’s 2017 people. …

In my mind, there’s definitely a spectrum of when it’s OK for one culture to borrow from another. This ranges from “definitely not OK” (whatever the fuck The Color Run is), through “not so sure” (white people and dreadlocks) to “almost certainly fine” (non-Hindu people doing Yoga). What’s the driving…

Scaling up and getting fancy — This is the second of a two part series on technology available around addressable LEDs. Part one, covered different types of LEDs avaliable, microcontrollers and associated libraries There are few limits to what you can do with a microcontroller and some LEDs. However, as you grow to a larger scale…

Recently, I took part in my second Comrades Marathon. It was incredible to experience the race again, sharing the 89km route with almost twenty thousand runners. A highlight was the supporters. They lined the route, from the pre-dawn start in Pietermaritzburg, through the midday heat in the rolling hills right…

So, you want to play with addressable LEDs! Whether it’s for home decor, wearables, a hula hoop, making a video wall or winning Burning Man, they are great fun. However, once you know what you want to do with them, you need to decide what hardware and software to do…