Every so often, something comes along that manages to be both entertaining and genuinely enriching - and the Royal Mint Treasure Hunt was exactly that.

At first glance, it might have seemed like a simple collectible coin initiative. But it turned out to be something far more ambitious. Centered around the life and legacy of Sir Isaac Newton - who notably served as Master of the Mint - the experience wove together history, science, and cryptic problem-solving into a surprisingly immersive challenge.

Since my wheels are an ex armed police car, this came with several pros and cons. While it has been very well maintained and has a number of upgrades like air suspension and a sporty engine map, downsides are that it has no entertainment system and holes in the roof where the antennas and lights were mounted. The holes have been covered with some trusty duct tape for the last couple of years, but I figured that while we are in lockdown, and I don’t need to drive daily, it was about time to fix them properly.

The lockdown has put real world racing on hold but a number of world class drivers from F1, touring cars, rally and more have embraced sim driving. Along with some half decent commentary it makes for some fun racing with the mix of styles and lots of action.

Recently I have been watching the Formula E motor racing championship. It has some exciting street track racing helped by interesting features like attack mode and fanboost, showing off electric technology and you will recognise some of the drivers from F1 or DTM.

Tada. I’m happy to unveil my all new revamped blog built using the Hugo static site generator. Hopefully this will be the start of a flurry of new posts, but just as likely see you in a year or so for the next post. ;)

Star Wars has hit the news recently having been bought up by Disney. Nerfherders around the galaxy are trembling in fear at the prospect of the ressurection of Darth Vader or worse still Jar Jar Binks. Seriously though if they raise Vader from the dead then I am boycotting the thing entirely.

“Narrator: little did he know they would raise Emperor Palpatine instead”

We recently did some team-building at work featuring off road segways, rekindling my desires to get/make one. The offical ones are a bit too pricey at £4k last time I looked!

This DIY Segway shows that they can be put together for a lot less though and although this one is more suited to the tarmac it is some good inspiration.

My UAV needs to be quite big to stabley carry a payload of 1-2Kg. This thing weighs 8-10Kg and can carry another 4-6Kg!

So I’ve had a very busy run of weekends, not leaving much time for hackery. Looks like Ben Heck has beaten me to the punch in modding a carousel. He connected his to an xbox 360. As well as spurring me on this has given me some good tips of how to do it.

One summer day at Uni, Schwar turned up with a rocket with a camera in it. We had a great time launching it a few times (and subsequently trying to find and get to where it landed).

Unfortunately we never got any decent pictures from it but I like to think it would have looked something like this…