Wireless Waffle loves a good action or science-fiction movie. James Bond, Star Trek, Jason Bourne, The Matrix, the dozens of Marvel universe films and, of course, Mission:Impossible. And so it was with great expectation and anticipation that a ticket to see the new M:I movie (Dead Reckoning, Part One) was purchased, premium seating no less. After 10 minutes of trailers for forthcoming movies (none of which seemed as interesting as M:I), and an advert for the local curry house, the film began.

How was it? The simple answer is 'dumbed down'. Replete with the usual car chases, fights on moving trains, clinging onto flying aircraft, sword and knife fights, lots of shooting and other action movie staples, it was the dialogue that let the movie down. The following actual discourse taken from the script of the movie itself, for example (warning: no spoiler alert)...

Highly Paid US Computer Nerd: "We created this digital software thing that was meant to work for us and do anything digital that we wanted but it has gone rogue."
US Security Bod: "So you mean that this thing can take control of any digital system anywhere in the world, at any time?"
Highly Paid US Computer Nerd: "Yes, it could take over banks, the electricity grid, traffic systems, military hardware, anything that is digital and we would not be able to stop it because it's digital."
US Security Bod: "Are you saying to me that this thing could take over the world, by controlling anything that has a computer in it, such as iPads, washing machines, nuclear weapons and other digital things?"
Highly Paid US Computer Nerd: "Yes sir. Anything that is digital and has a computer in it could be taken over by this thing, and we wouldn't be able to stop it, because it's digital and, you know, that makes it dangerous what with artificial intelligence and that."
US Security Bod: "This thing is an intelligent electronic organism that could take over the world if it wanted to, because the whole world is connected digitally and it is a digital organism that understands digital and electronic things better than humans do?"
Highly Paid US Computer Nerd: "And it could also control water and oil pipelines, power stations, central heating thermostats and fridges because they are electronic and also digital."
US Security Bod: "How do we stop this electronic digital thing from taking over all things that are connected digitally in the world?"
Highly Paid US Computer Nerd: "We can't because it's a digital organism that understands electronic and digital things that are connected digitally and we are powerless to stop it, that's kind of the point of it."

And so forth...

It felt a lot like watching a modern TV documentary where, after each commercial break, the announcer provides a synopsis of what happened before the advertisements in case you had somehow forgotten inbetween times. In previous movies, it has been left to the viewer to interpret a little of what is happening and putting your personal spin on what you watched makes things, it could be argued, more enjoyable. Having every last nuance explained takes away the mystery and also added at least 30 unnecessary minutes to the movie.

If you like action movies, go and see it, it's still a lot of fun. But if you haven't slept for 27 hours, have drunk a bottle of whisky and don't know your arse from your elbow, don't worry. It will all be explained to you.

It's the time of year to remember that the Wireless Waffle list of 100 Halloween Hits is an ideal list of tracks for any spooky party playlist. The list now extends to over 130 songs and includes many chilling classics, as well as some sinister songs you may have never heard of before on topics such as witches, angels, ghosts, nightmares, devils, monsters, freaks, creeps and more.

If you've never noticed that this eerie little trick or treat is hidden away on the web-site, now is the time that you take a look, but be aware, its ghoulish nature may shiver your timbers to their core. So get out your rosary beads, dress up in a torn white blood-curdling bed sheet, smear your face in terrifying tomato ketchup, and hollow out a panicked pumpkin and put a candle in it and go to the local bar and join the others who are similarly attired.

It's been a while since anything new was added to Wireless Waffle which is for no other reason than a shift in focus to things more practical. During the Covid lock-ups time has been spent re-igniting an age-old passion for electronic construction projects.

As part of those projects, it became necessary to be reminded of how the resistor colour code scheme worked, especially for those odd 1% tolerance resistors and their extra bar of complexity. To assist, the Wireless Waffle Resistor Colour Code Calculator or WiWaReCoCo for short, has been developed.

Just click on the link above (or in the links box alongside) and be taken to a mysterious world in which things such as '3.3K' or '4M7' are miraculously translated into different colours. While away those long winter hours seeing if you can work out what to enter to get a fully banana coloured resistor (hint, '4' is yellow), or how to get the stripes of your favourite football team (try 969M for starters).

Fun has never been so mundane!

An ultra-geeky and totally un-wireless-related post today...

You may be aware that as well as running the Wireless Waffle web-site, we also run the Short-Wave.Info web-site. Amazingly, the short-wave site has now had over 27 million visitors. The software is updated from time-to-time to improve the performance or, in the most recent update, to make the map look nicer!

As a result of updating the map software routine, the question of the font used to print the details along the bottom of the image raised itself. For a while this had used a font called 'DejaVu Sans'. However, it seemed more fun if the font could be more interesting and the question arose as to whether it might be possible to use the font that was originally deployed in the ZX Spectrum.

The original ZX Spectrum font uses 8 by 8 pixel blocks (as shown on the right) and isn't that pretty by today's standards, most likely as it is monospace, and as for the majority of characters (apart from the copyright sign) the grid of pixels actually used is only 6 wide by 6 high. This leaves a lot of whitespace around the pixels.

The Short-Wave.Info web-site is written in php, in which there is a function called 'imagestring'. This writes a string of text onto an image and as well as using internal fonts, can also use 'GD' fonts. If the ZX Spectrum character set existed as a GD font file, it would be possible to write text using it and this function.

After some time conducting a web-search, no evidence of a GD version of the Spectrum fonts appeared and so we created one of our own! The image below is now how the bottom of the maps on the Short-Wave.Info web-site looks.



Look at the shiny ZX Spectrum font letters! If you are equally geeky, and also increasingly driven to doing mad things by the current global pandemic lockdown, Wireless Waffle is happy to make the font available for anyone who wants it. Simply download the ZX Spectrum GD font and using 'imageloadfont' you are on your way.

Join us next time on Wireless Waffle, when we share some equally lockdown crazy ideas such as:

• how to make wholesome lard-free bread using old £20 notes and a nail file,
• simulating a Spanish beach holiday with a wet towel and some curdled milk, and
• exciting methods for igniting 5G base stations that are emitting coronavirus.