The Rusty Rocket

If you look back through this blog and through the videos on my YouTube channel, you'll come across many projects involving my interest in pirate radio and hacking little FM transmitters . My favourite project being this one here , that involves the BBC Microbit and got featured in a Microbit magazine. These were all purely for experimental purposes, you understand. Since those posts were written, I've also been looking at creating an online radio station and experiemented a bit with Number Station  in the past, where every Sunday I would hop online and scan the airwaves for shortwave transmissions and overlay them on top of an ambient backing track. This taught me a great deal about the process of getting a station online. I started looking around for software that would allow me to schedule shows but everything came at a price and the free solutions out there were either too complicated for my needs or didn't have what I wanted. So I'm writing my own. This project is...

I have been upgrading my Ziggy handheld prop from Quantum leap . This time I've been using ChatGPT to allow my to have a conversation with Ziggy. In my previous post here , (you can still download the free files to 3D print your own by the way) I got the prop lighting up and I then went on to use Amazon Alexa Blueprints to build trigger words and phrases to allow the handheld to respond. It worked but it wasn't the best. I've been trying to integrate ChatGPT into the project to allow me to communicate with Ziggy's handlink in a better way. Through the use of a cheap mini mixing desk thingy I got free from Wish years agao (after collecting enough points), I've also been able to recreate Ziggy's floaty, echoey voice too. Take a look at the video below to see it in action and to learn more about the build. The video also features another of my older builds. A few years ago now I worked on building my own telephone network that repurposed decommissioned BT publ...

I recently attended a talk on the cracking of the Enigma code, in which we were able to get hands on with one of the machines as well as learn more about its history from a presentation given by Dr Mark Baldwin.  It got me thinking about the many unsolved cipher mysteries out there and I was amazed to learn that I have a coded mystery right on my doorstep here in Salisbury. I don't think I'm clever enough to solve it though. The story goes, that in the short period after the Second World War, an army truck was driving through the Cathedral Close here in Salisbury where it struck the stone archway of St. Ann's Gate, one of the entrances into the Close. There's actually a picture of the damage at the time. When the damaged stone underneath the window had to be removed, it apparently revealed a hidden cavity within the arch. Tucked inside was a weathered piece of parchment comprising of a page of indecipherable letters. I could only find part of the Salisbury cipher code o...

A few years ago I built a six foot Zoltar fortune teller cabinet that had a coin-operated animatronic mannequin of Zoltar himself. I've been to a number of comic cons with the cabinet and run school group showing how he's programmed, but he's getting a little tired and worn out. This is an update video on how I'm trying to build a virtual version of the fortune teller to allow more people access to his words of wisdom. The virtual Zoltar makes use of a cloud messaging platform called Ably which allows the fortune teller to 'see' all the questions coming in from anyone accessing the sight. If you watch him long enough, you will start to see these requests coming in and being answered. Be careful what you wish for, it might just come true! .

I really enjoyed making my first 3d printed solo game ( You can see it here ), it was a space-themed game that could be played solo but also it allowed two boards to be connected together and played asa two player game. I wanted to dive deeper into making solo games, so I began developing ideas for a dice-based dungeon crawler. Honestly, the first prototype didn’t turn out very well. My original concept was to create a game you could play entirely on a Post-It note, using stencils for each level. The idea was that the player would pick a stencil, draw out the dungeon rooms, and gradually piece together a complete map of the dungeon as they advanced through the game. I still like this idea, but I think it would work better as a multiplayer co-op game since there would probably be too many parts for a single player to manage. I prefer to play solo games that are simple in set up. So how might a two-player version work? Players could team up to fight their way through the dungeon, collect...

I recently came across something fascinating in a house clearance warehouse last week. It appears to be a trophy or commemorative gift, featuring an old 1980s Astro Wars console mounted on a wooden base with an engraved dedication. It's quite old and solidly built, which likely explains why it has remained in such good condition. There's something about it that gives off this vibe, as if it once held some sort of special meaning. The engraved plaque reads: "TO THE WORLDS GREATEST 'HACKER' FROM YOUR MUTUAL APPRECIATION SOCIETY" In an effort to learn more about it, I shared some photos on Reddit, posting to a few subreddits where I thought it might be a good fit. Unfortunately, all the posts were removed for apparently violating community guidelines. However, before one of them was taken down, a few people had commented and suggested I look into the famous hacker Kevin Mitnick. Often referred to as the "World's Greatest Hacker," Kevin Mitnick has a...