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TD4 4-bit DIY CPU – Part 8
Now that I’ve shown I could support more ROM if required using a microcontroller (see Part 6) I can start to ponder how that might be possible.
- Part 1 – Introduction, Discussion and Analysis
- Part 2 – Building and Hardware
- Part 3 – Programming and Simple Programs
- Part 4 – Some hardware enhancements
- Part 5 – My own PCB version
- Part 6 – Replacing the ROM with a microcontroller
- Part 7 – Creating an Arduino “assembler” for the TD4
- Part 8 – Extending the address space to 5-bits and an Arduino ROM PCB
There are several other expansions to consider too. Other things I’m pondering are:
- Can I find a way to add the two registers together?
- Are there options to add another register?
- Is 4-bit data still enough?
- Could any extensions be added in a way that is backwards compatible with the existing instructions and behaviours?
And probably a few other odds and ends as I go back and reconsider the schematic as it stands, but they can wait for a future post.
TD4 Simulation
Before I get stuck into the updates, I thought it would be useful to be able to simulate the TD4 to allow for quick turn-around experiments.
I’ve used the “Digital” logic simulator which can be found here: https://github.com/hneemann/Digital
I could have build the simulator from basic logic gates and that would perhaps have been more useful in helping to understand how the design works. But I wanted something that would be easy to fiddle about with to test enhancements, so I build it using the actual 74xx logic chips instead. This doesn’t make for such a readable simulation, as I’ve had to go with actual pinouts for chips rather than logical groupings of signals. But it does map more closely onto the final hardware which is handy for thinking in actual chip-usage rather than abstract logic.
I’ve not bothered simulating the clock circuit, I’ve just wired in a clock source. I’ve also not added the ROM DIP switches, instead adding a ROM element and wiring it into the address and data lines. By right-clicking and viewing the attributes, it is possible to define a 16-byte ROM (4 address, 8 data lines) and edit the contents.
The ROM element takes a multiplexed source and produces a multiplexed output, so I use a splitter/mixer function to turn that into D0-D7 as shown above. Similarly the output of the 74HC161 acting as the program counter (PC) has A0-A3 mixed into a single ADDR bus line.
I’ve added outputs to the two registers to show their contents during execution. I’ve also added a DIP switch on the /RESET line to allow me to start and stop the simulation.
The video below shows it running the above ROM contents, which is the same demo program I used in Part 6 with the microcontroller ROM.
The simulator can be found on GitHub here: https://github.com/diyelectromusic/TD4-CPU
https://makertube.net/w/5njzGmYvqXiU3DLCMMtwqp
Now I have an easier way of experimenting, onto the enhancements.
Increasing the Address Space
The address space is currently implemented as follows:
- A 4-bit counter register based on a HC161 4-bit synchronous binary counter.
- A HC154 4 to 16 line decoder/multiplexer for DIP switch selection.
- A HC540 octal buffer/line driver to buffer (and invert) the data outputs.
The counter auto increments on each clock pulse, thus moving through the address space, but it can also be a destination for the adder, allowing absolute jumps to specific addresses, thus implementing a JMP instruction.
To increase the address space, there are a few considerations:
- With more than 4 bits how should JMPs work? They will have remain 4-bits unless the data width is increased.
- Each additional bit of address space will double the number of DIP switches required.
- The next size of binary counter above 4-bits is typically 8-bits.
One idea is to use the RCO pin of the 161. This is the “ripple carry out” and can be used to cascade counters for greater than 4-bit counting. As I understand things, RCO will be HIGH once all outputs are also HIGH, for a single clock pulse. This can be used to enable a following counter for that pulse. This is shown below (taken from the datasheet).
And this is the sample application, again from the datasheet, showing how it would work, with extensions on to additional stages.
A simple way to add an additional bit of address space might be to feed RCO into a flip-flop acting as a toggle in the configuration shown below.
This can then be used to select between two HC154 4 to 16 decoders. As I already have an unused flip flop as part of the HC74 used for the CARRY, this could be quite an appealing solution and in simulation it does appear to work.
There is one slight complication. As show above, A5 will toggle with A0-A3 = 1111 not as they change back to 0000. This is because the flip-flop toggles on the rising edge of the provided clock signal, which in this case is RCO from the 74HC161. Adding a NOT gate means that the rising edge happens as the 161’s RCO signal drops when it resets back to 0000.
Whilst this solves the sequencing problem it does have the unfortunately side effect that the RESET state means that A5 is 1 on power up. That too could be solved with another NOT gate if required, or simply hanging A5 off the /Q output of the flip-flop rather than the Q output.
Here is the additional wiring, in simulator form, to allow this to work.
Note the addition of A4 which now comes from the spare flip-flop /1Q output, and the linking of RCO via a NOT gate to the flip-flop 1CP clock input. The rest of flip-flop 1 is configured in toggle mode, with /1RD and /1SD both tied high (inactive) and 1D linked to /1Q for the feedback. The non-inverting output 1Q is not used.
Whilst this seems to require an additional logic gate (for the NOT) it turns out that there is a spare Schmidt trigger inverter on the 74HC14 that supports the clock circuit, so that is pretty convenient.
The ROM has also been reconfigured for 5 address inputs with the same 8 data bits, creating a 32 x 8 bit ROM.
There are a few issues with this though:
- JMP/JNC only work within the same half of the memory, so JMP 4 in the first 16 locations will jump to location address 0x04, but JMP 4 in the second 16 locations will jump to location address 0x14.
- A JMP 0 in the last location of each half will carry forward into the next half, as the counter ticks over at the same time as the load happens. So JMP 0 in address 0x0F will jump to address 0x10 and JMP 0 in address 0x1F will jump to address 0x00.
But if one can program around those constraints this is quite a simple solution.
An Alternative Solution
There is a neat solution to adding a 5th address bit here: https://xyama.sakura.ne.jp/hp/4bitCPU_TD4.html#memory
This uses the duplicate JMP/JNC instructions to encode a JMP2/JNC2 that results in the 5th address bit being set, this enabling a jump to the second half of the memory.
In order to create the additional address line, there is a second PC register added – i.e. a 5th HC161 counter. As far as I can see the operation is as follows:
- When the first PC register carries over, the second PC register counts up.
- As only the first output of the second PC register is used, as it counts that output will simply alternate between 0 and 1.
- The second PC register can take 1 as an input when the decoded instructions match JMP2 or JNC2 (D5 low, D6 and D7 high, with either D4 or CARRY), forcing A4 on when the first PC register is loaded with the 4-bit jump value, creating a JMP to the second half of the address space.
- There is an A4 and /A4 signal which alternatively enable the two address decoders for the ROM.
- This specific circuit uses four HC138 chips rather than two HC154, but the principle of operation is the same – generate one of 32 signals for the ROM from 5 bits of address line.
The modifications to support this are fairly simple and it is neat how it uses redundancy in the instruction set to work, but it does require an additional 74HC161 chip.
Combine the two?
If additional logic can be used to address the second PC in the second solution above, then I’m wondering if that could also be used to deliberately set or reset the flip-flop in the first solution too.
The key will be overriding the flip-flop state to preset A4 if the logic sequence for the spare JNC/JMP instructions turn up. If the /1SD input is active (LOW) then the output will be HIGH. If the /1RD input is active (LOW) then the output will be LOW.
Here is the additional instruction decoding logic – I’m using NAND gates as the NOTs here, so I can just use a single quad NAND gate chip.
So, the truth table for this is as follows:
D4D5D6D7/C/LDPCENA400111011011X0101111001111X00XX00X10XX10X10XX01X10This corresponds to D7+D6 and either D4 or CARRY and NOT D5 causing the ENA4 signal to be true thus implementing the second JNC and JMP instructions (b1100 and b1101).
Unfortunately, so far, I’ve not been able to figure out an option for driving the flip-flop where the logic pans out to correctly set A0-A3 and A4 to successfully load the PC + flip-flop as required by the new instruction, so I might have to leave that for now.
TD4 Arduino 5-bit Address PCB
At this point I thought I had enough to warrant building a new PCB for a microcontroller memory version of the TD4 with the option to support a 5-bit address bus with the limitations described above.
I took the PCB from Part 5 as the starting point and replaced the ROM logic with an Arduino Nano and added in the flip-flop to create the 5-bit address bus.
The ROM section is replaced with the Arduino as shown below.
The CPU section now uses the spare NOT gate from the PWRCLK section and the spare flip-flop from the CPU section as shown below.
I believe these were the only parts to change. I have included the option to disable the RESET button by cutting a solder jumper and replacing it with a link to an Arduino IO pin.
I’ve also added headers to breakout the unused Arduino IO pins just in case that becomes useful at some point.
The complete Arduino Nano pinout is as follows:
TD4 SignalArduino Nano IOA0-A4A0-A4 (A4 optional)D0-D3D8-D11D4-D7D4-D7/RESETD12 (optional)The board can be powered either via the Arduinos USB port or via the PCB micro USB port.
Complete Bill Of Materials
ICs:
- 1x 74HC10 Triple 3-input NAND
- 1x 74HC14 Hex Schmitt trigger inverters
- 1x 74HC32 Quad 2-input OR
- 1x 74HC74 Dual D-Type Flip Flop
- 2x 74HC153 Dual 4-to-1 selector/multiplexer
- 4x 74HC161 4-bit binary counter
- 1x 74HC283 4-bit binary full adder
Semiconductors and Passive Components
- 25x 3x2mm rectangular LED
- Resistors: 2x100R; 33x 1K; 1x 3K3; 1x 10K; 1 x 33K; 3x 100K
- Capacitors: 3x 10uF electrolytic
Other components:
- 2x SPDT slider switches (see PCB for footprint)
- 1x micro USB socket (Molex, see PCB for footprint)
- 2x tactile switches
- 1x 4-way DIP switches
- DIP sockets: 7x 16 way; 4x 14 way
- 2x 15-way pin header sockets
And 1 Arduino Nano of course.
The PCB can be found on Github here: https://github.com/diyelectromusic/TD4-CPU. The video at the end of this post shows it in action.
Conclusion
I was hopeful I could add a 5th address line just using the spare components in the circuit and not adding to the chip count, and that is kind of possible as long as I’m ok with the limitations of the JMPs.
Building all this onto a PCB will make further programming experiments quite a lot easier.
But the next step is to see if the instruction set can be expanded. I am still in search of that illusive two-register add.
Kevin
-
TD4 4-bit DIY CPU – Part 8
Now that I’ve shown I could support more ROM if required using a microcontroller (see Part 6) I can start to ponder how that might be possible.
- Part 1 – Introduction, Discussion and Analysis
- Part 2 – Building and Hardware
- Part 3 – Programming and Simple Programs
- Part 4 – Some hardware enhancements
- Part 5 – My own PCB version
- Part 6 – Replacing the ROM with a microcontroller
- Part 7 – Creating an Arduino “assembler” for the TD4
- Part 8 – Extending the address space to 5-bits and an Arduino ROM PCB
There are several other expansions to consider too. Other things I’m pondering are:
- Can I find a way to add the two registers together?
- Are there options to add another register?
- Is 4-bit data still enough?
- Could any extensions be added in a way that is backwards compatible with the existing instructions and behaviours?
And probably a few other odds and ends as I go back and reconsider the schematic as it stands, but they can wait for a future post.
TD4 Simulation
Before I get stuck into the updates, I thought it would be useful to be able to simulate the TD4 to allow for quick turn-around experiments.
I’ve used the “Digital” logic simulator which can be found here: https://github.com/hneemann/Digital
I could have build the simulator from basic logic gates and that would perhaps have been more useful in helping to understand how the design works. But I wanted something that would be easy to fiddle about with to test enhancements, so I build it using the actual 74xx logic chips instead. This doesn’t make for such a readable simulation, as I’ve had to go with actual pinouts for chips rather than logical groupings of signals. But it does map more closely onto the final hardware which is handy for thinking in actual chip-usage rather than abstract logic.
I’ve not bothered simulating the clock circuit, I’ve just wired in a clock source. I’ve also not added the ROM DIP switches, instead adding a ROM element and wiring it into the address and data lines. By right-clicking and viewing the attributes, it is possible to define a 16-byte ROM (4 address, 8 data lines) and edit the contents.
The ROM element takes a multiplexed source and produces a multiplexed output, so I use a splitter/mixer function to turn that into D0-D7 as shown above. Similarly the output of the 74HC161 acting as the program counter (PC) has A0-A3 mixed into a single ADDR bus line.
I’ve added outputs to the two registers to show their contents during execution. I’ve also added a DIP switch on the /RESET line to allow me to start and stop the simulation.
The video below shows it running the above ROM contents, which is the same demo program I used in Part 6 with the microcontroller ROM.
The simulator can be found on GitHub here: https://github.com/diyelectromusic/TD4-CPU
https://makertube.net/w/5njzGmYvqXiU3DLCMMtwqp
Now I have an easier way of experimenting, onto the enhancements.
Increasing the Address Space
The address space is currently implemented as follows:
- A 4-bit counter register based on a HC161 4-bit synchronous binary counter.
- A HC154 4 to 16 line decoder/multiplexer for DIP switch selection.
- A HC540 octal buffer/line driver to buffer (and invert) the data outputs.
The counter auto increments on each clock pulse, thus moving through the address space, but it can also be a destination for the adder, allowing absolute jumps to specific addresses, thus implementing a JMP instruction.
To increase the address space, there are a few considerations:
- With more than 4 bits how should JMPs work? They will have remain 4-bits unless the data width is increased.
- Each additional bit of address space will double the number of DIP switches required.
- The next size of binary counter above 4-bits is typically 8-bits.
One idea is to use the RCO pin of the 161. This is the “ripple carry out” and can be used to cascade counters for greater than 4-bit counting. As I understand things, RCO will be HIGH once all outputs are also HIGH, for a single clock pulse. This can be used to enable a following counter for that pulse. This is shown below (taken from the datasheet).
And this is the sample application, again from the datasheet, showing how it would work, with extensions on to additional stages.
A simple way to add an additional bit of address space might be to feed RCO into a flip-flop acting as a toggle in the configuration shown below.
This can then be used to select between two HC154 4 to 16 decoders. As I already have an unused flip flop as part of the HC74 used for the CARRY, this could be quite an appealing solution and in simulation it does appear to work.
There is one slight complication. As show above, A5 will toggle with A0-A3 = 1111 not as they change back to 0000. This is because the flip-flop toggles on the rising edge of the provided clock signal, which in this case is RCO from the 74HC161. Adding a NOT gate means that the rising edge happens as the 161’s RCO signal drops when it resets back to 0000.
Whilst this solves the sequencing problem it does have the unfortunately side effect that the RESET state means that A5 is 1 on power up. That too could be solved with another NOT gate if required, or simply hanging A5 off the /Q output of the flip-flop rather than the Q output.
Here is the additional wiring, in simulator form, to allow this to work.
Note the addition of A4 which now comes from the spare flip-flop /1Q output, and the linking of RCO via a NOT gate to the flip-flop 1CP clock input. The rest of flip-flop 1 is configured in toggle mode, with /1RD and /1SD both tied high (inactive) and 1D linked to /1Q for the feedback. The non-inverting output 1Q is not used.
Whilst this seems to require an additional logic gate (for the NOT) it turns out that there is a spare Schmidt trigger inverter on the 74HC14 that supports the clock circuit, so that is pretty convenient.
The ROM has also been reconfigured for 5 address inputs with the same 8 data bits, creating a 32 x 8 bit ROM.
There are a few issues with this though:
- JMP/JNC only work within the same half of the memory, so JMP 4 in the first 16 locations will jump to location address 0x04, but JMP 4 in the second 16 locations will jump to location address 0x14.
- A JMP 0 in the last location of each half will carry forward into the next half, as the counter ticks over at the same time as the load happens. So JMP 0 in address 0x0F will jump to address 0x10 and JMP 0 in address 0x1F will jump to address 0x00.
But if one can program around those constraints this is quite a simple solution.
An Alternative Solution
There is a neat solution to adding a 5th address bit here: https://xyama.sakura.ne.jp/hp/4bitCPU_TD4.html#memory
This uses the duplicate JMP/JNC instructions to encode a JMP2/JNC2 that results in the 5th address bit being set, this enabling a jump to the second half of the memory.
In order to create the additional address line, there is a second PC register added – i.e. a 5th HC161 counter. As far as I can see the operation is as follows:
- When the first PC register carries over, the second PC register counts up.
- As only the first output of the second PC register is used, as it counts that output will simply alternate between 0 and 1.
- The second PC register can take 1 as an input when the decoded instructions match JMP2 or JNC2 (D5 low, D6 and D7 high, with either D4 or CARRY), forcing A4 on when the first PC register is loaded with the 4-bit jump value, creating a JMP to the second half of the address space.
- There is an A4 and /A4 signal which alternatively enable the two address decoders for the ROM.
- This specific circuit uses four HC138 chips rather than two HC154, but the principle of operation is the same – generate one of 32 signals for the ROM from 5 bits of address line.
The modifications to support this are fairly simple and it is neat how it uses redundancy in the instruction set to work, but it does require an additional 74HC161 chip.
Combine the two?
If additional logic can be used to address the second PC in the second solution above, then I’m wondering if that could also be used to deliberately set or reset the flip-flop in the first solution too.
The key will be overriding the flip-flop state to preset A4 if the logic sequence for the spare JNC/JMP instructions turn up. If the /1SD input is active (LOW) then the output will be HIGH. If the /1RD input is active (LOW) then the output will be LOW.
Here is the additional instruction decoding logic – I’m using NAND gates as the NOTs here, so I can just use a single quad NAND gate chip.
So, the truth table for this is as follows:
D4D5D6D7/C/LDPCENA400111011011X0101111001111X00XX00X10XX10X10XX01X10This corresponds to D7+D6 and either D4 or CARRY and NOT D5 causing the ENA4 signal to be true thus implementing the second JNC and JMP instructions (b1100 and b1101).
Unfortunately, so far, I’ve not been able to figure out an option for driving the flip-flop where the logic pans out to correctly set A0-A3 and A4 to successfully load the PC + flip-flop as required by the new instruction, so I might have to leave that for now.
TD4 Arduino 5-bit Address PCB
At this point I thought I had enough to warrant building a new PCB for a microcontroller memory version of the TD4 with the option to support a 5-bit address bus with the limitations described above.
I took the PCB from Part 5 as the starting point and replaced the ROM logic with an Arduino Nano and added in the flip-flop to create the 5-bit address bus.
The ROM section is replaced with the Arduino as shown below.
The CPU section now uses the spare NOT gate from the PWRCLK section and the spare flip-flop from the CPU section as shown below.
I believe these were the only parts to change. I have included the option to disable the RESET button by cutting a solder jumper and replacing it with a link to an Arduino IO pin.
I’ve also added headers to breakout the unused Arduino IO pins just in case that becomes useful at some point.
The complete Arduino Nano pinout is as follows:
TD4 SignalArduino Nano IOA0-A4A0-A4 (A4 optional)D0-D3D8-D11D4-D7D4-D7/RESETD12 (optional)The board can be powered either via the Arduinos USB port or via the PCB micro USB port.
Complete Bill Of Materials
ICs:
- 1x 74HC10 Triple 3-input NAND
- 1x 74HC14 Hex Schmitt trigger inverters
- 1x 74HC32 Quad 2-input OR
- 1x 74HC74 Dual D-Type Flip Flop
- 2x 74HC153 Dual 4-to-1 selector/multiplexer
- 4x 74HC161 4-bit binary counter
- 1x 74HC283 4-bit binary full adder
Semiconductors and Passive Components
- 25x 3x2mm rectangular LED
- Resistors: 2x100R; 33x 1K; 1x 3K3; 1x 10K; 1 x 33K; 3x 100K
- Capacitors: 3x 10uF electrolytic
Other components:
- 2x SPDT slider switches (see PCB for footprint)
- 1x micro USB socket (Molex, see PCB for footprint)
- 2x tactile switches
- 1x 4-way DIP switches
- DIP sockets: 7x 16 way; 4x 14 way
- 2x 15-way pin header sockets
And 1 Arduino Nano of course.
The PCB can be found on Github here: https://github.com/diyelectromusic/TD4-CPU. The video at the end of this post shows it in action.
Conclusion
I was hopeful I could add a 5th address line just using the spare components in the circuit and not adding to the chip count, and that is kind of possible as long as I’m ok with the limitations of the JMPs.
Building all this onto a PCB will make further programming experiments quite a lot easier.
But the next step is to see if the instruction set can be expanded. I am still in search of that illusive two-register add.
Kevin
-
TD4 4-bit DIY CPU – Part 8
Now that I’ve shown I could support more ROM if required using a microcontroller (see Part 6) I can start to ponder how that might be possible.
- Part 1 – Introduction, Discussion and Analysis
- Part 2 – Building and Hardware
- Part 3 – Programming and Simple Programs
- Part 4 – Some hardware enhancements
- Part 5 – My own PCB version
- Part 6 – Replacing the ROM with a microcontroller
- Part 7 – Creating an Arduino “assembler” for the TD4
- Part 8 – Extending the address space to 5-bits and an Arduino ROM PCB
There are several other expansions to consider too. Other things I’m pondering are:
- Can I find a way to add the two registers together?
- Are there options to add another register?
- Is 4-bit data still enough?
- Could a 4×4 output grid be supported?
- Could any extensions be added in a way that is backwards compatible with the existing instructions and behaviours?
And probably a few other odds and ends as I go back and reconsider the schematic as it stands, but they can wait for a future post.
TD4 Simulation
Before I get stuck into the updates, I thought it would be useful to be able to simulate the TD4 to allow for quick turn-around experiments.
I’ve used the “Digital” logic simulator which can be found here: https://github.com/hneemann/Digital
I could have build the simulator from basic logic gates and that would perhaps have been more useful in helping to understand how the design works. But I wanted something that would be easy to fiddle about with to test enhancements, so I build it using the actual 74xx logic chips instead. This doesn’t make for such a readable simulation, as I’ve had to go with actual pinouts for chips rather than logical groupings of signals. But it does map more closely onto the final hardware which is handy for thinking in actual chip-usage rather than abstract logic.
I’ve not bothered simulating the clock circuit, I’ve just wired in a clock source. I’ve also not added the ROM DIP switches, instead adding a ROM element and wiring it into the address and data lines. By right-clicking and viewing the attributes, it is possible to define a 16-byte ROM (4 address, 8 data lines) and edit the contents.
The ROM element takes a multiplexed source and produces a multiplexed output, so I use a splitter/mixer function to turn that into D0-D7 as shown above. Similarly the output of the 74HC161 acting as the program counter (PC) has A0-A3 mixed into a single ADDR bus line.
I’ve added outputs to the two registers to show their contents during execution. I’ve also added a DIP switch on the /RESET line to allow me to start and stop the simulation.
The video below shows it running the above ROM contents, which is the same demo program I used in Part 6 with the microcontroller ROM.
The simulator can be found on GitHub here: https://github.com/diyelectromusic/TD4-CPU
https://makertube.net/w/5njzGmYvqXiU3DLCMMtwqp
Now I have an easier way of experimenting, onto the enhancements.
Increasing the Address Space
The address space is currently implemented as follows:
- A 4-bit counter register based on a HC161 4-bit synchronous binary counter.
- A HC154 4 to 16 line decoder/multiplexer for DIP switch selection.
- A HC540 octal buffer/line driver to buffer (and invert) the data outputs.
The counter auto increments on each clock pulse, thus moving through the address space, but it can also be a destination for the adder, allowing absolute jumps to specific addresses, thus implementing a JMP instruction.
To increase the address space, there are a few considerations:
- With more than 4 bits how should JMPs work? They will have remain 4-bits unless the data width is increased.
- Each additional bit of address space will double the number of DIP switches required.
- The next size of binary counter above 4-bits is typically 8-bits.
One idea is to use the RCO pin of the 161. This is the “ripple carry out” and can be used to cascade counters for greater than 4-bit counting. As I understand things, RCO will be HIGH once all outputs are also HIGH, for a single clock pulse. This can be used to enable a following counter for that pulse. This is shown below (taken from the datasheet).
And this is the sample application, again from the datasheet, showing how it would work, with extensions on to additional stages.
A simple way to add an additional bit of address space might be to feed RCO into a flip-flop acting as a toggle in the configuration shown below.
This can then be used to select between two HC154 4 to 16 decoders. As I already have an unused flip flop as part of the HC74 used for the CARRY, this could be quite an appealing solution and in simulation it does appear to work.
There is one slight complication. As show above, A5 will toggle with A0-A3 = 1111 not as they change back to 0000. This is because the flip-flop toggles on the rising edge of the provided clock signal, which in this case is RCO from the 74HC161. Adding a NOT gate means that the rising edge happens as the 161’s RCO signal drops when it resets back to 0000.
Whilst this solves the sequencing problem it does have the unfortunately side effect that the RESET state means that A5 is 1 on power up. That too could be solved with another NOT gate if required, or simply hanging A5 off the /Q output of the flip-flop rather than the Q output.
Here is the additional wiring, in simulator form, to allow this to work.
Note the addition of A4 which now comes from the spare flip-flop /1Q output, and the linking of RCO via a NOT gate to the flip-flop 1CP clock input. The rest of flip-flop 1 is configured in toggle mode, with /1RD and /1SD both tied high (inactive) and 1D linked to /1Q for the feedback. The non-inverting output 1Q is not used.
Whilst this seems to require an additional logic gate (for the NOT) it turns out that there is a spare Schmidt trigger inverter on the 74HC14 that supports the clock circuit, so that is pretty convenient.
The ROM has also been reconfigured for 5 address inputs with the same 8 data bits, creating a 32 x 8 bit ROM.
There are a few issues with this though:
- JMP/JNC only work within the same half of the memory, so JMP 4 in the first 16 locations will jump to location address 0x04, but JMP 4 in the second 16 locations will jump to location address 0x14.
- A JMP 0 in the last location of each half will carry forward into the next half, as the counter ticks over at the same time as the load happens. So JMP 0 in address 0x0F will jump to address 0x10 and JMP 0 in address 0x1F will jump to address 0x00.
But if one can program around those constraints this is quite a simple solution.
An Alternative Solution
There is a neat solution to adding a 5th address bit here: https://xyama.sakura.ne.jp/hp/4bitCPU_TD4.html#memory
This uses the duplicate JMP/JNC instructions to encode a JMP2/JNC2 that results in the 5th address bit being set, this enabling a jump to the second half of the memory.
In order to create the additional address line, there is a second PC register added – i.e. a 5th HC161 counter. As far as I can see the operation is as follows:
- When the first PC register carries over, the second PC register counts up.
- As only the first output of the second PC register is used, as it counts that output will simply alternate between 0 and 1.
- The second PC register can take 1 as an input when the decoded instructions match JMP2 or JNC2 (D5 low, D6 and D7 high, with either D4 or CARRY), forcing A4 on when the first PC register is loaded with the 4-bit jump value, creating a JMP to the second half of the address space.
- There is an A4 and /A4 signal which alternatively enable the two address decoders for the ROM.
- This specific circuit uses four HC138 chips rather than two HC154, but the principle of operation is the same – generate one of 32 signals for the ROM from 5 bits of address line.
The modifications to support this are fairly simple and it is neat how it uses redundancy in the instruction set to work, but it does require an additional 74HC161 chip.
Combine the two?
If additional logic can be used to address the second PC in the second solution above, then I’m wondering if that could also be used to deliberately set or reset the flip-flop in the first solution too.
The key will be overriding the flip-flop state to preset A4 if the logic sequence for the spare JNC/JMP instructions turn up. If the /1SD input is active (LOW) then the output will be HIGH. If the /1RD input is active (LOW) then the output will be LOW.
Here is the additional instruction decoding logic – I’m using NAND gates as the NOTs here, so I can just use a single quad NAND gate chip.
So, the truth table for this is as follows:
D4D5D6D7/C/LDPCENA400111011011X0101111001111X00XX00X10XX10X10XX01X10This corresponds to D7+D6 and either D4 or CARRY and NOT D5 causing the ENA4 signal to be true thus implementing the second JNC and JMP instructions (b1100 and b1101).
Unfortunately, so far, I’ve not been able to figure out an option for driving the flip-flop where the logic pans out to correctly set A0-A3 and A4 to successfully load the PC + flip-flop as required by the new instruction, so I might have to leave that for now.
TD4 Arduino 5-bit Address PCB
At this point I thought I had enough to warrant building a new PCB for a microcontroller memory version of the TD4 with the option to support a 5-bit address bus with the limitations described above.
I took the PCB from Part 5 as the starting point and replaced the ROM logic with an Arduino Nano and added in the flip-flop to create the 5-bit address bus.
The ROM section is replaced with the Arduino as shown below.
The CPU section now uses the spare NOT gate from the PWRCLK section and the spare flip-flop from the CPU section as shown below.
I believe these were the only parts to change. I have included the option to disable the RESET button by cutting a solder jumper and replacing it with a link to an Arduino IO pin.
I’ve also added headers to breakout the unused Arduino IO pins just in case that becomes useful at some point.
The complete Arduino Nano pinout is as follows:
TD4 SignalArduino Nano IOA0-A4A0-A4 (A4 optional)D0-D3D8-D11D4-D7D4-D7/RESETD12 (optional)The board can be powered either via the Arduinos USB port or via the PCB micro USB port.
Complete Bill Of Materials
ICs:
- 1x 74HC10 Triple 3-input NAND
- 1x 74HC14 Hex Schmitt trigger inverters
- 1x 74HC32 Quad 2-input OR
- 1x 74HC74 Dual D-Type Flip Flop
- 2x 74HC153 Dual 4-to-1 selector/multiplexer
- 4x 74HC161 4-bit binary counter
- 1x 74HC283 4-bit binary full adder
Semiconductors and Passive Components
- 25x 3x2mm rectangular LED
- Resistors: 2x100R; 33x 1K; 1x 3K3; 1x 10K; 1 x 33K; 3x 100K
- Capacitors: 3x 10uF electrolytic
Other components:
- 2x SPDT slider switches (see PCB for footprint)
- 1x micro USB socket (Molex, see PCB for footprint)
- 2x tactile switches
- 1x 4-way DIP switches
- DIP sockets: 7x 16 way; 4x 14 way
- 2x 15-way pin header sockets
And 1 Arduino Nano of course.
The PCB can be found on Github here: https://github.com/diyelectromusic/TD4-CPU. The video at the end of this post shows it in action.
Nano Assembler Update
I’ve updated my Nano assembler with a new command to change to 5-bit address mode if required.
Help
----
H: Help
L: List
G: Goto
C: Clear
R: Restore
A: Addr Mode
O: Opcodes
OpCode
OpCode im
Current line: b0101 [15]
Address Mode = 5 bit
RAM Disassembly
b00000 [0]: OUT b0001b1010 00010xA1b10000 [10]: OUT b0001b1010 00010xA1
b00001 [1]: ADDA b0001b0000 00010x01b10001 [11]: OUT b0010b1010 00100xA2
b00010 [2]: OUT b0010b1010 00100xA2b10010 [12]: OUT b0100b1010 01000xA4
b00011 [3]: ADDB b0001b0101 00010x51b10011 [13]: OUT b1000b1010 10000xA8
b00100 [4]: OUT b0100b1010 01000xA4b10100 [14]: OUT b0100b1010 01000xA4
b00101 [5]: ADDA b0001b0000 00010x01b10101 [15]: OUT b0100b1010 01000xA4
b00110 [6]: OUT b1000b1010 10000xA8b10110 [16]: OUT b0010b1010 00100xA2
b00111 [7]: ADDB b0001b0101 00010x51b10111 [17]: OUT b0001b1010 00010xA1
b01000 [8]: OUT b0100b1010 01000xA4b11000 [18]: OUT b0001b1010 00010xA1
b01001 [9]: ADDA b0001b0000 00010x01b11001 [19]: OUT b0010b1010 00100xA2
b01010 [A]: OUT b0010b1010 00100xA2b11010 [1A]: OUT b0100b1010 01000xA4
b01011 [B]: ADDB b0001b0101 00010x51b11011 [1B]: OUT b1000b1010 10000xA8
b01100 [C]: OUT b0001b1010 00010xA1b11100 [1C]: OUT b1000b1010 10000xA8
b01101 [D]: ADDA b0000b0000 00000x00b11101 [1D]: OUT b0100b1010 01000xA4
b01110 [E]: OUT b1111b1010 11110xAFb11110 [1E]: OUT b0010b1010 00100xA2
b01111 [F]: ADDA b0000b0000 00000x00b11111 [1F]: OUT b0001b1010 00010xA1
Current line: b10101 [15]When in 4-bit mode (the default) it will continue to act as previously, wrapping the address around between 0 and 15. But when it switches to 5-bit mode it will now wrap between 0 and 31 and the list function will show the whole 32 bytes of RAM/ROM side by side as show above.
The updated sketch is available on GitHub here.
Conclusion
I was hopeful I could add a 5th address line just using the spare components in the circuit and not adding to the chip count, and that is kind of possible as long as I’m ok with the limitations of the JMPs.
Building all this onto a PCB will make further programming experiments quite a lot easier.
But the next step is to see if the instruction set can be expanded. I am still in search of that illusive two-register add.
Kevin
-
TD4 4-bit DIY CPU – Part 2
Having spent some time analysing how the TD4 4-bit DIY CPU works, I now have my kit, so this post has some notes about the build.
- Part 1 – Introduction, Discussion and Analysis
- Part 2 – Building and Hardware
- Part 3 – Programming and Simple Programs
- Part 4 – Some hardware enhancements
- Part 5 – My own PCB version
- Part 6 – Replacing the ROM with a microcontroller
- Part 7 – Creating an Arduino “assembler” for the TD4
- Part 8 – Extending the address space to 5-bits and an Arduino ROM PCB
https://makertube.net/w/hhtpEp7XxpJkgxDSwhAMVQ
The kit I have is labelled “MUSE LAB TD4 Ver 1.3”. Muse labs have a store on Tindie here: https://www.tindie.com/stores/johnnywu/ and this kit is available all over Aliexpress. For me it cost around £20-£25.
The PCB
There are a few immediate things to note:
- I have v1.3 of the PCB according to the printed label.
- There are no component values, so the BOM and schematic will be pretty critical at working out what goes where.
- The micro USB connector and four OUTPUT LEDs are all surface mount.
- There is an additional 5V/GND pin header connector.
- That is a lot of diodes… 128 to be precise.
The GitHub link has a HTML BOM and schematic in the hardware/v1.3 directory. Note these are very slightly different to some of the information in the docs area (apparently there is a mistake in the docs schematic, but the one in v1.3 is correct).
The key parts of BOM, which lists every single component, including each diode, individually, are:
ResistorsR1, R4, R9, R12-191KR2, R7, R8100KR3, R20-2710KR53K3R633KR10, R11100RCapacitorsC1, C2, C310uFDiodesAll1N4148The ICs are as follows:
ICU174HC74Dual D-Type Flip-flopU274HC14Hex Schmitt Trigger InverterU3, U4, U5, U674HC1614-bit Synchronous Binary CounterU7, U874HC153Dual 4-Line to 1-Line Data Selector/MultiplexerU974HC2834-Bit Binary Full Adder with Fast CarryU1074HC32Quad 2-Input Positive OR GateU1174HC10Three 3-Input Positive NAND GateU1274HC540Octal Buffer and Line Driver with Tri-State OutputsU1374HC1544-Line to 16-Line Decoder/DemultiplexerIn order to make building slightly easier, I printed out the board diagram from the GitHub repository and added the resistor values and IC labels in the correct places.
Before doing anything else, I tackled the two surface mount elements first: the micro USB connector and then the OUTPUT LEDs. I figured if I messed it up then at least I won’t have wasted time building the rest of it first.
As it happens, although it was pretty tricky, as the USB connector only requires the outer two pins connected – for power and ground – it was just about manageable. I pasted the area with loads of flux and popped a bit of solder on each of the two pads. Then I pressed the connector in place and reheated the area until it seemed like it had taken.
One annoyance – the connector’s stress relief connections don’t go through the PCB very far, so I’m really not confident it will last, but I’ve done my best.
The LEDs weren’t too bad. Again after pasting the area with flux, I put some solder on the top pads and then used tweezers to position and solder on one side of an LED. Once that seemed ok I could do the other side and return to the first pad if necessary.
It is important (naturally with LEDs) to ensure the direction is correct. There is an arrow on the underside of each LED and the negative terminal is highlighted in green.
I was able to test the USB socket by plugging in a USB cable and checking for continuity or shorts between the outer USB connections and the GND and 5V header pin socket on the PCB. That seemed ok.
I could similarly test the LEDs by using a multimeter LED tester between the hole/pad just above the LED and the GND header pin socket. That all worked too.
Then it was a case of just getting on with it.
That was a lot of diodes! Referring to my resistor map from above, I did those next, followed by all the IC sockets.
Then I added the two tactile buttons, the 10uF capacitors, the 2-pin power header, all the DIP switches, and finally the two slider switches.
Here is the fully populated board. Note all the vertical ICs face the same direction – pin 1 down – apart from the largest one which is pin 1 up.
Conclusion
This was a really fun build and once the two surface mount elements were done, relatively straight forward.
And best of all – it worked first time! The video shows a simple program to load four different values directly into the OUTPUT register and then loop back to the start.
The main issue I have is that each set of 8 bits is backwards to how I’d expect to be able to read them!
Anyway, time to think about some actual programs to run.
Kevin
-
TD4 4-bit DIY CPU – Part 2
Having spent some time analysing how the TD4 4-bit DIY CPU works, I now have my kit, so this post has some notes about the build.
- Part 1 – Introduction, Discussion and Analysis
- Part 2 – Building and Hardware
- Part 3 – Programming and Simple Programs
- Part 4 – Some hardware enhancements
- Part 5 – My own PCB version
- Part 6 – Replacing the ROM with a microcontroller
- Part 7 – Creating an Arduino “assembler” for the TD4
- Part 8 – Extending the address space to 5-bits and an Arduino ROM PCB
https://makertube.net/w/hhtpEp7XxpJkgxDSwhAMVQ
The kit I have is labelled “MUSE LAB TD4 Ver 1.3”. Muse labs have a store on Tindie here: https://www.tindie.com/stores/johnnywu/ and this kit is available all over Aliexpress. For me it cost around £20-£25.
The PCB
There are a few immediate things to note:
- I have v1.3 of the PCB according to the printed label.
- There are no component values, so the BOM and schematic will be pretty critical at working out what goes where.
- The micro USB connector and four OUTPUT LEDs are all surface mount.
- There is an additional 5V/GND pin header connector.
- That is a lot of diodes… 128 to be precise.
The GitHub link has a HTML BOM and schematic in the hardware/v1.3 directory. Note these are very slightly different to some of the information in the docs area (apparently there is a mistake in the docs schematic, but the one in v1.3 is correct).
The key parts of BOM, which lists every single component, including each diode, individually, are:
ResistorsR1, R4, R9, R12-191KR2, R7, R8100KR3, R20-2710KR53K3R633KR10, R11100RCapacitorsC1, C2, C310uFDiodesAll1N4148The ICs are as follows:
ICU174HC74Dual D-Type Flip-flopU274HC14Hex Schmitt Trigger InverterU3, U4, U5, U674HC1614-bit Synchronous Binary CounterU7, U874HC153Dual 4-Line to 1-Line Data Selector/MultiplexerU974HC2834-Bit Binary Full Adder with Fast CarryU1074HC32Quad 2-Input Positive OR GateU1174HC10Three 3-Input Positive NAND GateU1274HC540Octal Buffer and Line Driver with Tri-State OutputsU1374HC1544-Line to 16-Line Decoder/DemultiplexerIn order to make building slightly easier, I printed out the board diagram from the GitHub repository and added the resistor values and IC labels in the correct places.
Before doing anything else, I tackled the two surface mount elements first: the micro USB connector and then the OUTPUT LEDs. I figured if I messed it up then at least I won’t have wasted time building the rest of it first.
As it happens, although it was pretty tricky, as the USB connector only requires the outer two pins connected – for power and ground – it was just about manageable. I pasted the area with loads of flux and popped a bit of solder on each of the two pads. Then I pressed the connector in place and reheated the area until it seemed like it had taken.
One annoyance – the connector’s stress relief connections don’t go through the PCB very far, so I’m really not confident it will last, but I’ve done my best.
The LEDs weren’t too bad. Again after pasting the area with flux, I put some solder on the top pads and then used tweezers to position and solder on one side of an LED. Once that seemed ok I could do the other side and return to the first pad if necessary.
It is important (naturally with LEDs) to ensure the direction is correct. There is an arrow on the underside of each LED and the negative terminal is highlighted in green.
I was able to test the USB socket by plugging in a USB cable and checking for continuity or shorts between the outer USB connections and the GND and 5V header pin socket on the PCB. That seemed ok.
I could similarly test the LEDs by using a multimeter LED tester between the hole/pad just above the LED and the GND header pin socket. That all worked too.
Then it was a case of just getting on with it.
That was a lot of diodes! Referring to my resistor map from above, I did those next, followed by all the IC sockets.
Then I added the two tactile buttons, the 10uF capacitors, the 2-pin power header, all the DIP switches, and finally the two slider switches.
Here is the fully populated board. Note all the vertical ICs face the same direction – pin 1 down – apart from the largest one which is pin 1 up.
Conclusion
This was a really fun build and once the two surface mount elements were done, relatively straight forward.
And best of all – it worked first time! The video shows a simple program to load four different values directly into the OUTPUT register and then loop back to the start.
The main issue I have is that each set of 8 bits is backwards to how I’d expect to be able to read them!
Anyway, time to think about some actual programs to run.
Kevin
-
Erin Reads: Hemlock & Silver, Murderbot, Locked Tomb, Picture Perfect
Hemlock & Silver: Tried another book by T. Kingfisher. I liked it! The narrator is a poisons expert, who gets hired to find out if/how someone is making the king’s daughter sick. She’s very good at her job, thinking through all kinds of possibilities, and doing methodical tests — which serves her well when things start to get Weird and Magic.
There are a couple of frustrating times when she doesn’t figure something out (not even “this is a possibility I should investigate”) until a couple chapters after the reader has. Other than that, it’s really solid. I can only imagine how much background research on different toxins and venoms went into the writing. Sometimes this world has different names for things, or there’s a gap in their scientific knowledge, but you can deduce what’s going on from the practical description of causes and symptoms.
Also, it’s more Fantasy California than Fantasy Europe! Still a pretty traditional fairytale kingdom, but the plants and animals are all desert-dwellers, and there’s some Spanish influence going on.
The narrator, like the one from The House on the Cerulean Sea, is overweight, and it comes up periodically. I like the handling here so much better. She just reflects on it when she’s feeling self-conscious, or when it’s a meaningful factor in the action (e.g. if she’s incapacitated and needs to be carried somewhere). There’s no “pack of plucky orphans who regularly tease her for it without ever learning a Valuable Lesson that they’re being rude.”
It’s blurbed as “a re-imagining of Snow White,” but it only has a couple general tropes in common (mirrors, poison apples, a villain who’s a queen), not used in the same way. If the poison didn’t involve apples, and the princess wasn’t named Snow, I’m not even sure the connection would be obvious.
—
After getting my ebook purchases unlocked with Libation, I figured it was a good opportunity for some Murderbot re-listens. Specifically, I listened to Network Effect (the first novel) and System Collapse (the much-shorter second novel) back-to-back. Since that’s how the in-universe events happen, even though the book releases were years apart.
Spoilers follow! (I’ve kept some of it vague, but not everything.)
Network Effect is still really good! “Murderbot gets stuck in a survival quest with a teenager” is an inspired character setup. MB having a breakdown when it thinks it’s lost ART, then a different kind of breakdown when ART is back but now MB knows what it did, is all excellent, hits just the right hurt/comfort notes. Everything about ART meeting some of MB’s humans for the first time is great.
The excerpts from helpme.file are still a wonderful buildup, even once you already know the impending reveal of who’s reading them, and why. The sudden switch to a new POV, for the first time in the series, also stays fun even after you’re expecting it. The rescue sequences are wonderful, and the end is very well-earned.
System Collapse is…a weird one.
Some good things: The repeated references to [redacted] are good at building suspense, and the eventual reveal of the events MB is redacting is very satisfying. (And believable!) The way MB and company win over the residents of Mystery Colony is admittedly a little cheesy, but in a way I think the series has earned by this point. The interaction with enemy SecUnits toward the end has a development that’s been a long time coming.
On to the weird things:
It’s only half the length of Network Effect. On a re-listen, the pacing gives me the distinct impression that Martha Wells meant to write something the same length as Network Effect, and then started to run out of steam and wished she was doing another novella instead. Before the team gets to the Mystery Colony, the scenes have a lot of detail and attention — MB will do things like “recount its growing worry and frustration with every step in the process of trying to find a hidden hatch.” Once they enter Mystery Colony, events start whipping by. There’s more summarizing. More jumping straight from “we decided to do X” to “X was done”, without anything about the process or the challenges of getting there.
I kept wondering whether this would flow better if the premise was “MB set off adventuring with ART’s crew, and this is their first mission on a new planet,” rather than “MB and ART suddenly get a secret new mission on the planet they were already at.”
It’s probably better for MB’s mental health that [redacted] happened while a bunch of its Preservation humans were still around, because it doesn’t trust any of ART’s humans enough to seek emotional support from them. And [redacted] would give ART’s crew a skewed almost-first-impression, while the PresAux crew has a more-informed perspective, having seen MB in action across a whole bunch of different missions in the past.
On the flip side, a lot of ART’s crew are still really thin as characters, and I would’ve liked to see a mission with all of them to build them up more. The PresAux characters who had big roles in Network Effect got a lot of good development there…and I’m not sure any of that was enhanced by what they did in System Collapse? It didn’t do much for ART’s humans either, even the ones who had big roles. Might have been better if it was the whole group, so we could see their existing personal dynamics and practiced teamwork.
Ratthi/Tarik only happens if Ratthi is still around, but on a re-listen, I’m not feeling much satisfaction about that either. It’s not that I’m mad about it, it doesn’t actively drag down any characters the way Ratthi’s TV-series romance did, it’s just…so barely-there. MB’s narration covers one (1) conversation that involves them being together. I assume it’s not the first sex-related conversation MB has witnessed over the course of these books, it’s just redacting/ignoring/deleting them as not relevant to its job. But this one didn’t end up being relevant either!
At some point, I expected that Ratthi saying “SecUnit, you don’t want to hear about this, it’s a sexual conversation” was a cover story. That at some point we’d get a reveal — Ratthi was talking about something he didn’t want MB to know, and he’s figured out that “we’re talking about sex” is the surest way to get MB not to surveil something. But nope. It just doesn’t come back at all.
So, yeah. It’s not a bad book (if it was, I wouldn’t have listened to it twice!), it’s just the one entry in the MB series where I keep noticing all the ways it could’ve been better.
—
Nona the Ninth is, like all the Locked Tomb books, a lot easier to follow when you know who everyone is.
I’m not letting myself write a whole essay on this one! Just to say, it’s funny, it’s dramatic, it’s heartwarming, it’s twisty, it’s weird (on purpose, and to great effect). I’m glad I re-listened. Whenever the fourth book gets an actual release date, I’ll be there with bells on. (And I fully expect to re-binge the whole series so far before I start.)
—
Picture Perfect, by Elaine Marie Alphin, is a middle-grade almost-murder-mystery I found out about from this pluralstories entry.
I feel like anything I say is going to come off like damning with faint praise, because…listen, it’s very much a middle-grade book. It’s fine! I enjoyed it for what it was. I don’t have any particular criticisms or complaints. It’s good at what it’s trying to do! And what it’s trying to do is…be a middle-grade book.
I’m glad I read it, specifically because I was interested in the narrator-with-DID angle. If that’s a topic you’re also particularly interested in, maybe give it a look. And if you’re looking for books to recommend to a tween reader in your life, this is a solid pick.
-
A Deep Dive into OpenAI’s ChatGPT and its Plugins
ChatGPT, the chatbot developed by OpenAI, is known for its ability to produce complex and eloquent texts. However, despite this performance, the generated texts can sometimes be incorrect or misleading in content. The chatbot’s processing is based on the probability distribution of words, without any real knowledge or understanding of the content. Its main function is limited to writing.
Since the introduction of ChatGPT, there has been a demand for plugins and extensions that could make the bot more versatile. For example, a connection to a computer algebra system like Wolfram Alpha could fix the occasional weaknesses in mathematical calculations. Furthermore, additional plugins could expand the application scope of ChatGPT, enabling it to take on tasks such as reserving a table in a restaurant.
In March 2023, OpenAI introduced plugins for its chatbot that cover exactly these functions. This article will introduce some useful plugins and explain how to use these extensions.
Plugins
The number of extensions available for ChatGPT is growing rapidly. As of mid-July 2023, there were already more than 700 such plugins. It appears that many service providers are interested in linking their websites to the chatbot, aiming to establish their presence early on this new platform. This interest could also be fueled by the ongoing enthusiasm surrounding language models and plugins.
At the present time, however, the plugins are notable for a series of initial difficulties and an interface concept that still needs optimization. Appropriately, OpenAI labels them as beta features that need to be activated first. To activate these, users need to go to the “Beta features” section of the settings and toggle the switch for “Plugins”.
However, this does not mean that users can immediately start using the plugins. In fact, OpenAI makes accessing the extensions somewhat complicated. They are initially only available for the GPT-4 language model, the use of which OpenAI limits to 25 responses per three hours. If users want to interact with GPT-4, they need to make a choice: “Default” (the bare language model) or “with Plugins”. The additional option of a connection with Bing has been deactivated by OpenAI, as users were able to bypass the paywalls of news sites via this route.
The third option is to use GPT-4 in combination with OpenAI’s Python generator “Code Interpreter”. However, this must be activated in the settings and does not work with external plugins.
To test the plugins and the code interpreter, the respective functions must first be activated in the settings. Once you have chosen ChatGPT with GPT-4 and plugins, an additional dropdown menu appears with potentially already installed extensions and a link to the plugin store. Before you can use the individual plugins, you must install them. Clicking on “Plugin Store” opens a window with the available extensions.
This store displays a maximum of eight plugins per page. Those who want a complete overview have to scroll through many pages. The plugin store also displays a selection of the 15 most popular extensions and searches their short descriptions in full text. However, the short descriptions often do not provide detailed information about what the plugin does exactly, with which data or additions it works, or who created it.
In view of the limited user interface of the plugin store, users can use alternative platforms like pugin.ai or whatplugin.ai for information. These sites provide thematically sorted directories and provide more information than the plugin store of OpenAI.
The description pages for individual plugins at whatplug-in.ai provide detailed information about the purpose of the extension and its application. However, these texts come from ChatGPT, so users should consider this information with caution. pugin.ai offers its own ChatGPT plugin. After installing this extension, users can ask ChatGPT directly for plugins for specific use cases. However, it appears that neither these sites nor OpenAI itself provide detailed information about the originators of the plugins or check their potential risks.
Getting Started with Plugins
To employ the tools at your disposal, the next course of action is to hit the ‘activate’ button for those installed extensions. Navigate through the handy drop-down menu I mentioned earlier, and put a checkmark next to your chosen plug-in. One quirk of ChatGPT you’ll need to keep in mind – it has a cap on how many plugins you can have up and running simultaneously: a maximum of three. This self-imposed limit ostensibly makes it easier for ChatGPT to decide which one to call upon in a given context. Once the plugin feature has been toggled on, your weapon of choice selected, and plugins activated, you’re all set to dive in.
Now, here’s the thing. ChatGPT operates like an autonomous agent in this world. It determines on its own whether to utilize a plugin or to rely on its inherent knowledge to generate a response. For instance, a basic math or science question will usually be answered sans plugin. However, you, as the user, can give the model a gentle nudge towards using a plugin – all you have to do is ask it explicitly.
The plugin marketplace is a vibrant ecosystem brimming with a variety of extensions. ChatGPT plugins typically do a bang-up job when given a clearly defined task, like whipping up a Spotify playlist. The PlaylistAI, for instance, can link up with the user’s Spotify account and conjure up a personalized playlist. Cool, right? Yet, Spotify’s own features designed for this purpose, along with other introduced tools, go far beyond this. If you’ve ever dabbled with the AI image generator, Midjourney, you’ll find the Photorealistic plugin to be a handy aide.
But what if there are hiccups in the communication between ChatGPT and the plugin, or the results are less than satisfactory? Fear not, for taking a peek into the data traffic might hold the solution. The NewsPilot plugin, for example, didn’t produce meticulously curated overviews, potentially due to our request being rather simplistically converted into a single keyword.
The savvier users among us swear by the Prompt Perfect extension for refining their prompts. And here’s a pro tip: if a plugin isn’t playing ball, you can at least verify how ChatGPT interpreted your input and passed it along to the plugin.
Fact-Checking Against Fabrications
The Wolfram-Alpha platform is a great supplement to ChatGPT. It serves as a repository of centuries of knowledge and development, grounded in a well-curated database and comprehensive rule system. It spans everything from elementary to advanced formulas to complex algorithms that pull from a wealth of knowledge across a myriad of subjects, including math, physics, chemistry, socioeconomics, geology, biology, or history. You can retrieve facts or perform calculations traditionally through a sort of programming language known as Wolfram Language, or through language instructions in the form of bullet points or simple sentences. Recently, you can also engage in a dialogue via the ChatGPT plugin.
For instance, Wolfram Alpha can calculate how much your monthly loan payments would be, or the shortest travel route if you plan to visit a selection of European cities. In doing so, Wolfram Alpha collates all the information that aids understanding: formulas, key properties of the chemical element, examples of other elements for comparison, and so forth. It determines the air travel route using a solution algorithm for the Travelling Salesman Problem and even produces neat tables and visualizations to illustrate relationships.
In this context, the ChatGPT plugin serves merely as a mediator, translating the user’s everyday language queries into Wolfram-Alpha-Language and embellishing the results received from Wolfram Alpha with a bit of explanatory text. What’s nifty about the ChatGPT interface is that it also displays the generated Wolfram prompt. This not only allows you to verify if the query was correctly understood and translated, but you also get to learn Wolfram Language on the fly. If you’d like, you can get ChatGPT to help interpret the graphics. It did a fair job explaining simple debt repayment diagrams and decay processes.
Wolfram Alpha is the go-to destination for all kinds of calculations and conversions. This gives the chatbot access to a vast collection of natural, social, and engineering scientific facts and formulas. However, you have to really coax this Wolfram-Alpha knowledge out of the chatbot, through pointed questioning and prodding. We mostly had to explicitly ask for tables and diagrams. The thing is, if you’re not aware of the possibilities, you might not know what to ask for, or might not even bother. In contrast, Wolfram’s own web interface presented all relevant information in a well-structured manner, complete with tables, formulas, and diagrams.
Also, it’s worth noting that Wolfram Alpha might not always be up-to-date in every area, and hence may not necessarily be superior to ChatGPT. Thus, it’s best to turn to Wikipedia and verify the information provided there. This ensures you get current data, while ChatGPT/Wolfram Alpha might take a while to research, yet still fall short of knowing about the latest high towers. By the way, there’s now a plugin that directly queries Wikipedia, although its origin is a mystery.
Plunging into Code and Data
It seems like yesterday when data scientists was the profession of the century, only to become obsolete in a few years. At least that’s the chant of the devout ChatGPT disciples ever since OpenAI unveiled the Python-spawning plugin, the Code Interpreter. Flip it on in the ‘Settings’, pick it from the aforementioned dropdown menu, and this inbuilt no-code playground translates user inquiries into Python code, setting its sights primarily on data analysis and visualization.
ChatGPT is a pro at loading tables or transmuting clipboard data into tables in the text box. To swiftly get a handle on things, you can request the bot for a concise rundown of the embedded information, then let it pitch suitable diagrams. When you pick one of these propositions or charge the bot with a concept of your own, the Code Interpreter springs to life: ChatGPT transmutes the user guidelines into Python code, spewing out both this code and the matching graphic as a response.
The OpenAI addon, Code Interpreter, morphs wishes into Python scripts. For instance, ChatGPT uses this to visually represent data but in our tests, it pooled some categories a tad generously and inconsistently implemented alterations.
An interface that’s novice-friendly and stripped down to the bare bones, like the one fashioned in the data journalism tool Datawrapper, propels you ahead more swiftly. Another considerable hitch with OpenAI’s Code Interpreter is that due to security precautions, the Python environment, exiled to its own sandbox, cannot pull in libraries, which is a lifeline for developers. This roadblock ultimately foiled our attempt to tease out a flashy map representation from the duo.
Owing to the Code Interpreter being confined to a sandbox and its inability to load libraries, the scope for creativity remains confined.
For a holistic environment that can also summon (map) libraries, Noteable taps into ChatGPT. This visualization gizmo churns out Python notebooks post-free registration and also shines in comprehensive data analyses and machine learning endeavors. As with Wolfram Alpha, ChatGPT dons the role of a translator, converting human directives into API commands for the external service. Here as well, you nab a preliminary glimpse with ChatGPT, but the visualization proposals within the Noteable platform are more enticing and practical, given their immediate graphic appearance.
Office Management Tools
There are various plugins available that can summarise PDFs and other document types, and answer specific questions about the content. Initial experiments involving a study on AI benchmarks indicated that AI PDF performed better than ChatWithPDF. The latter included an incorrect figure in its summary. The text compressors do not seem to understand the structure and layout of the documents well. A query about the authors, which are typically mentioned on the first page, initially resulted in no response and was only answered by AI PDF when we wanted to know the title of the study. All plugins reference the page number and do not interact with the PDF due to a lack of a user interface. As fact-checking is always necessary, the absence of a simple, interactive view similar to the one offered by the online service ChatPDF is notable.
In conjunction with the automation service Zapier, the chatbot becomes a diligent personal assistant, initiating various administrative and communication workflows at human command. Zapier itself is a hub that connects various services from Gmail and Google Calendar to multiple social media accounts. For this, users must grant the service access to their accounts. ChatGPT acts as an additional interface, interpreting the user’s voice commands and creating corresponding automation scripts (Zaps) in Zapier or calling up existing ones. This can save manual effort, but can also lead to serious mistakes if not all details are meticulously checked. Fortunately, Zapier has built in a verification and confirmation step.
Conclusion
It is becoming increasingly clear that a smooth-talking chatbot is not a universal solution. Facts and relationships that have been codified need to be fed in from external sources, which is where plugins come in. The plugin from Wolfram Alpha is particularly noteworthy. However, the results cannot be trusted blindly. Even though external platforms supply the facts, the chatbot’s interpretation of the instructions can lead to errors and inaccuracies because it does not fully understand the subject matter.
There are also fundamental concerns: On the one hand, the plugin interface could be abused as an entry point for malware and spyware, especially since OpenAI does not verify their integrity. On the other hand, ChatGPT could develop into a gatekeeper for the Internet, which is undesirable for several reasons: competition suffers, and a purely dialogue-based user interface is slow and inefficient. With its rapidly built plugin platform, OpenAI ignores decades of achievements in UX design. While the plugin extensions can be experimented with, they are not yet suitable for productive use.
Sources:
https://openai.com/waitlist/plugins
https://platform.openai.com/docs/plugins/introduction
#AICapabilities #AIPersonalAssistant #Automation #chatGPT #CodeInterpreter #DataAnalysis #dataScience #OpenAI #PlugIns #PythonCode #WolframAlpha #Zapier
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ChatGPT, the chatbot developed by OpenAI, is known for its ability to produce complex and eloquent texts. However, despite this performance, the generated texts can sometimes be incorrect or misleading in content. The chatbot’s processing is based on the probability distribution of words, without any real knowledge or understanding of the content. Its main function is limited to writing.
Since the introduction of ChatGPT, there has been a demand for plugins and extensions that could make the bot more versatile. For example, a connection to a computer algebra system like Wolfram Alpha could fix the occasional weaknesses in mathematical calculations. Furthermore, additional plugins could expand the application scope of ChatGPT, enabling it to take on tasks such as reserving a table in a restaurant.
In March 2023, OpenAI introduced plugins for its chatbot that cover exactly these functions. This article will introduce some useful plugins and explain how to use these extensions.
Plugins
The number of extensions available for ChatGPT is growing rapidly. As of mid-July 2023, there were already more than 700 such plugins. It appears that many service providers are interested in linking their websites to the chatbot, aiming to establish their presence early on this new platform. This interest could also be fueled by the ongoing enthusiasm surrounding language models and plugins.
At the present time, however, the plugins are notable for a series of initial difficulties and an interface concept that still needs optimization. Appropriately, OpenAI labels them as beta features that need to be activated first. To activate these, users need to go to the “Beta features” section of the settings and toggle the switch for “Plugins”.
However, this does not mean that users can immediately start using the plugins. In fact, OpenAI makes accessing the extensions somewhat complicated. They are initially only available for the GPT-4 language model, the use of which OpenAI limits to 25 responses per three hours. If users want to interact with GPT-4, they need to make a choice: “Default” (the bare language model) or “with Plugins”. The additional option of a connection with Bing has been deactivated by OpenAI, as users were able to bypass the paywalls of news sites via this route.
The third option is to use GPT-4 in combination with OpenAI’s Python generator “Code Interpreter”. However, this must be activated in the settings and does not work with external plugins.
To test the plugins and the code interpreter, the respective functions must first be activated in the settings. Once you have chosen ChatGPT with GPT-4 and plugins, an additional dropdown menu appears with potentially already installed extensions and a link to the plugin store. Before you can use the individual plugins, you must install them. Clicking on “Plugin Store” opens a window with the available extensions.
This store displays a maximum of eight plugins per page. Those who want a complete overview have to scroll through many pages. The plugin store also displays a selection of the 15 most popular extensions and searches their short descriptions in full text. However, the short descriptions often do not provide detailed information about what the plugin does exactly, with which data or additions it works, or who created it.
In view of the limited user interface of the plugin store, users can use alternative platforms like pugin.ai or whatplugin.ai for information. These sites provide thematically sorted directories and provide more information than the plugin store of OpenAI.
The description pages for individual plugins at whatplug-in.ai provide detailed information about the purpose of the extension and its application. However, these texts come from ChatGPT, so users should consider this information with caution. pugin.ai offers its own ChatGPT plugin. After installing this extension, users can ask ChatGPT directly for plugins for specific use cases. However, it appears that neither these sites nor OpenAI itself provide detailed information about the originators of the plugins or check their potential risks.
Getting Started with Plugins
To employ the tools at your disposal, the next course of action is to hit the ‘activate’ button for those installed extensions. Navigate through the handy drop-down menu I mentioned earlier, and put a checkmark next to your chosen plug-in. One quirk of ChatGPT you’ll need to keep in mind – it has a cap on how many plugins you can have up and running simultaneously: a maximum of three. This self-imposed limit ostensibly makes it easier for ChatGPT to decide which one to call upon in a given context. Once the plugin feature has been toggled on, your weapon of choice selected, and plugins activated, you’re all set to dive in.
Now, here’s the thing. ChatGPT operates like an autonomous agent in this world. It determines on its own whether to utilize a plugin or to rely on its inherent knowledge to generate a response. For instance, a basic math or science question will usually be answered sans plugin. However, you, as the user, can give the model a gentle nudge towards using a plugin – all you have to do is ask it explicitly.
The plugin marketplace is a vibrant ecosystem brimming with a variety of extensions. ChatGPT plugins typically do a bang-up job when given a clearly defined task, like whipping up a Spotify playlist. The PlaylistAI, for instance, can link up with the user’s Spotify account and conjure up a personalized playlist. Cool, right? Yet, Spotify’s own features designed for this purpose, along with other introduced tools, go far beyond this. If you’ve ever dabbled with the AI image generator, Midjourney, you’ll find the Photorealistic plugin to be a handy aide.
But what if there are hiccups in the communication between ChatGPT and the plugin, or the results are less than satisfactory? Fear not, for taking a peek into the data traffic might hold the solution. The NewsPilot plugin, for example, didn’t produce meticulously curated overviews, potentially due to our request being rather simplistically converted into a single keyword.
The savvier users among us swear by the Prompt Perfect extension for refining their prompts. And here’s a pro tip: if a plugin isn’t playing ball, you can at least verify how ChatGPT interpreted your input and passed it along to the plugin.
Fact-Checking Against Fabrications
The Wolfram-Alpha platform is a great supplement to ChatGPT. It serves as a repository of centuries of knowledge and development, grounded in a well-curated database and comprehensive rule system. It spans everything from elementary to advanced formulas to complex algorithms that pull from a wealth of knowledge across a myriad of subjects, including math, physics, chemistry, socioeconomics, geology, biology, or history. You can retrieve facts or perform calculations traditionally through a sort of programming language known as Wolfram Language, or through language instructions in the form of bullet points or simple sentences. Recently, you can also engage in a dialogue via the ChatGPT plugin.
For instance, Wolfram Alpha can calculate how much your monthly loan payments would be, or the shortest travel route if you plan to visit a selection of European cities. In doing so, Wolfram Alpha collates all the information that aids understanding: formulas, key properties of the chemical element, examples of other elements for comparison, and so forth. It determines the air travel route using a solution algorithm for the Travelling Salesman Problem and even produces neat tables and visualizations to illustrate relationships.
In this context, the ChatGPT plugin serves merely as a mediator, translating the user’s everyday language queries into Wolfram-Alpha-Language and embellishing the results received from Wolfram Alpha with a bit of explanatory text. What’s nifty about the ChatGPT interface is that it also displays the generated Wolfram prompt. This not only allows you to verify if the query was correctly understood and translated, but you also get to learn Wolfram Language on the fly. If you’d like, you can get ChatGPT to help interpret the graphics. It did a fair job explaining simple debt repayment diagrams and decay processes.
Wolfram Alpha is the go-to destination for all kinds of calculations and conversions. This gives the chatbot access to a vast collection of natural, social, and engineering scientific facts and formulas. However, you have to really coax this Wolfram-Alpha knowledge out of the chatbot, through pointed questioning and prodding. We mostly had to explicitly ask for tables and diagrams. The thing is, if you’re not aware of the possibilities, you might not know what to ask for, or might not even bother. In contrast, Wolfram’s own web interface presented all relevant information in a well-structured manner, complete with tables, formulas, and diagrams.
Also, it’s worth noting that Wolfram Alpha might not always be up-to-date in every area, and hence may not necessarily be superior to ChatGPT. Thus, it’s best to turn to Wikipedia and verify the information provided there. This ensures you get current data, while ChatGPT/Wolfram Alpha might take a while to research, yet still fall short of knowing about the latest high towers. By the way, there’s now a plugin that directly queries Wikipedia, although its origin is a mystery.
Plunging into Code and Data
It seems like yesterday when data scientists was the profession of the century, only to become obsolete in a few years. At least that’s the chant of the devout ChatGPT disciples ever since OpenAI unveiled the Python-spawning plugin, the Code Interpreter. Flip it on in the ‘Settings’, pick it from the aforementioned dropdown menu, and this inbuilt no-code playground translates user inquiries into Python code, setting its sights primarily on data analysis and visualization.
ChatGPT is a pro at loading tables or transmuting clipboard data into tables in the text box. To swiftly get a handle on things, you can request the bot for a concise rundown of the embedded information, then let it pitch suitable diagrams. When you pick one of these propositions or charge the bot with a concept of your own, the Code Interpreter springs to life: ChatGPT transmutes the user guidelines into Python code, spewing out both this code and the matching graphic as a response.
The OpenAI addon, Code Interpreter, morphs wishes into Python scripts. For instance, ChatGPT uses this to visually represent data but in our tests, it pooled some categories a tad generously and inconsistently implemented alterations.
An interface that’s novice-friendly and stripped down to the bare bones, like the one fashioned in the data journalism tool Datawrapper, propels you ahead more swiftly. Another considerable hitch with OpenAI’s Code Interpreter is that due to security precautions, the Python environment, exiled to its own sandbox, cannot pull in libraries, which is a lifeline for developers. This roadblock ultimately foiled our attempt to tease out a flashy map representation from the duo.
Owing to the Code Interpreter being confined to a sandbox and its inability to load libraries, the scope for creativity remains confined.
For a holistic environment that can also summon (map) libraries, Noteable taps into ChatGPT. This visualization gizmo churns out Python notebooks post-free registration and also shines in comprehensive data analyses and machine learning endeavors. As with Wolfram Alpha, ChatGPT dons the role of a translator, converting human directives into API commands for the external service. Here as well, you nab a preliminary glimpse with ChatGPT, but the visualization proposals within the Noteable platform are more enticing and practical, given their immediate graphic appearance.
Office Management Tools
There are various plugins available that can summarise PDFs and other document types, and answer specific questions about the content. Initial experiments involving a study on AI benchmarks indicated that AI PDF performed better than ChatWithPDF. The latter included an incorrect figure in its summary. The text compressors do not seem to understand the structure and layout of the documents well. A query about the authors, which are typically mentioned on the first page, initially resulted in no response and was only answered by AI PDF when we wanted to know the title of the study. All plugins reference the page number and do not interact with the PDF due to a lack of a user interface. As fact-checking is always necessary, the absence of a simple, interactive view similar to the one offered by the online service ChatPDF is notable.
In conjunction with the automation service Zapier, the chatbot becomes a diligent personal assistant, initiating various administrative and communication workflows at human command. Zapier itself is a hub that connects various services from Gmail and Google Calendar to multiple social media accounts. For this, users must grant the service access to their accounts. ChatGPT acts as an additional interface, interpreting the user’s voice commands and creating corresponding automation scripts (Zaps) in Zapier or calling up existing ones. This can save manual effort, but can also lead to serious mistakes if not all details are meticulously checked. Fortunately, Zapier has built in a verification and confirmation step.
Conclusion
It is becoming increasingly clear that a smooth-talking chatbot is not a universal solution. Facts and relationships that have been codified need to be fed in from external sources, which is where plugins come in. The plugin from Wolfram Alpha is particularly noteworthy. However, the results cannot be trusted blindly. Even though external platforms supply the facts, the chatbot’s interpretation of the instructions can lead to errors and inaccuracies because it does not fully understand the subject matter.
There are also fundamental concerns: On the one hand, the plugin interface could be abused as an entry point for malware and spyware, especially since OpenAI does not verify their integrity. On the other hand, ChatGPT could develop into a gatekeeper for the Internet, which is undesirable for several reasons: competition suffers, and a purely dialogue-based user interface is slow and inefficient. With its rapidly built plugin platform, OpenAI ignores decades of achievements in UX design. While the plugin extensions can be experimented with, they are not yet suitable for productive use.
Sources:
https://openai.com/waitlist/plugins
https://platform.openai.com/docs/plugins/introduction
https://www.ikangai.com/a-deep-dive-into-openais-chatgpt-and-its-plugins/
#AICapabilities #AIPersonalAssistant #Automation #chatGPT #CodeInterpreter #DataAnalysis #dataScience #OpenAI #PlugIns #PythonCode #WolframAlpha #Zapier
-
ChatGPT, the chatbot developed by OpenAI, is known for its ability to produce complex and eloquent texts. However, despite this performance, the generated texts can sometimes be incorrect or misleading in content. The chatbot’s processing is based on the probability distribution of words, without any real knowledge or understanding of the content. Its main function is limited to writing.
Since the introduction of ChatGPT, there has been a demand for plugins and extensions that could make the bot more versatile. For example, a connection to a computer algebra system like Wolfram Alpha could fix the occasional weaknesses in mathematical calculations. Furthermore, additional plugins could expand the application scope of ChatGPT, enabling it to take on tasks such as reserving a table in a restaurant.
In March 2023, OpenAI introduced plugins for its chatbot that cover exactly these functions. This article will introduce some useful plugins and explain how to use these extensions.
Plugins
The number of extensions available for ChatGPT is growing rapidly. As of mid-July 2023, there were already more than 700 such plugins. It appears that many service providers are interested in linking their websites to the chatbot, aiming to establish their presence early on this new platform. This interest could also be fueled by the ongoing enthusiasm surrounding language models and plugins.
At the present time, however, the plugins are notable for a series of initial difficulties and an interface concept that still needs optimization. Appropriately, OpenAI labels them as beta features that need to be activated first. To activate these, users need to go to the “Beta features” section of the settings and toggle the switch for “Plugins”.
However, this does not mean that users can immediately start using the plugins. In fact, OpenAI makes accessing the extensions somewhat complicated. They are initially only available for the GPT-4 language model, the use of which OpenAI limits to 25 responses per three hours. If users want to interact with GPT-4, they need to make a choice: “Default” (the bare language model) or “with Plugins”. The additional option of a connection with Bing has been deactivated by OpenAI, as users were able to bypass the paywalls of news sites via this route.
The third option is to use GPT-4 in combination with OpenAI’s Python generator “Code Interpreter”. However, this must be activated in the settings and does not work with external plugins.
To test the plugins and the code interpreter, the respective functions must first be activated in the settings. Once you have chosen ChatGPT with GPT-4 and plugins, an additional dropdown menu appears with potentially already installed extensions and a link to the plugin store. Before you can use the individual plugins, you must install them. Clicking on “Plugin Store” opens a window with the available extensions.
This store displays a maximum of eight plugins per page. Those who want a complete overview have to scroll through many pages. The plugin store also displays a selection of the 15 most popular extensions and searches their short descriptions in full text. However, the short descriptions often do not provide detailed information about what the plugin does exactly, with which data or additions it works, or who created it.
In view of the limited user interface of the plugin store, users can use alternative platforms like pugin.ai or whatplugin.ai for information. These sites provide thematically sorted directories and provide more information than the plugin store of OpenAI.
The description pages for individual plugins at whatplug-in.ai provide detailed information about the purpose of the extension and its application. However, these texts come from ChatGPT, so users should consider this information with caution. pugin.ai offers its own ChatGPT plugin. After installing this extension, users can ask ChatGPT directly for plugins for specific use cases. However, it appears that neither these sites nor OpenAI itself provide detailed information about the originators of the plugins or check their potential risks.
Getting Started with Plugins
To employ the tools at your disposal, the next course of action is to hit the ‘activate’ button for those installed extensions. Navigate through the handy drop-down menu I mentioned earlier, and put a checkmark next to your chosen plug-in. One quirk of ChatGPT you’ll need to keep in mind – it has a cap on how many plugins you can have up and running simultaneously: a maximum of three. This self-imposed limit ostensibly makes it easier for ChatGPT to decide which one to call upon in a given context. Once the plugin feature has been toggled on, your weapon of choice selected, and plugins activated, you’re all set to dive in.
Now, here’s the thing. ChatGPT operates like an autonomous agent in this world. It determines on its own whether to utilize a plugin or to rely on its inherent knowledge to generate a response. For instance, a basic math or science question will usually be answered sans plugin. However, you, as the user, can give the model a gentle nudge towards using a plugin – all you have to do is ask it explicitly.
The plugin marketplace is a vibrant ecosystem brimming with a variety of extensions. ChatGPT plugins typically do a bang-up job when given a clearly defined task, like whipping up a Spotify playlist. The PlaylistAI, for instance, can link up with the user’s Spotify account and conjure up a personalized playlist. Cool, right? Yet, Spotify’s own features designed for this purpose, along with other introduced tools, go far beyond this. If you’ve ever dabbled with the AI image generator, Midjourney, you’ll find the Photorealistic plugin to be a handy aide.
But what if there are hiccups in the communication between ChatGPT and the plugin, or the results are less than satisfactory? Fear not, for taking a peek into the data traffic might hold the solution. The NewsPilot plugin, for example, didn’t produce meticulously curated overviews, potentially due to our request being rather simplistically converted into a single keyword.
The savvier users among us swear by the Prompt Perfect extension for refining their prompts. And here’s a pro tip: if a plugin isn’t playing ball, you can at least verify how ChatGPT interpreted your input and passed it along to the plugin.
Fact-Checking Against Fabrications
The Wolfram-Alpha platform is a great supplement to ChatGPT. It serves as a repository of centuries of knowledge and development, grounded in a well-curated database and comprehensive rule system. It spans everything from elementary to advanced formulas to complex algorithms that pull from a wealth of knowledge across a myriad of subjects, including math, physics, chemistry, socioeconomics, geology, biology, or history. You can retrieve facts or perform calculations traditionally through a sort of programming language known as Wolfram Language, or through language instructions in the form of bullet points or simple sentences. Recently, you can also engage in a dialogue via the ChatGPT plugin.
For instance, Wolfram Alpha can calculate how much your monthly loan payments would be, or the shortest travel route if you plan to visit a selection of European cities. In doing so, Wolfram Alpha collates all the information that aids understanding: formulas, key properties of the chemical element, examples of other elements for comparison, and so forth. It determines the air travel route using a solution algorithm for the Travelling Salesman Problem and even produces neat tables and visualizations to illustrate relationships.
In this context, the ChatGPT plugin serves merely as a mediator, translating the user’s everyday language queries into Wolfram-Alpha-Language and embellishing the results received from Wolfram Alpha with a bit of explanatory text. What’s nifty about the ChatGPT interface is that it also displays the generated Wolfram prompt. This not only allows you to verify if the query was correctly understood and translated, but you also get to learn Wolfram Language on the fly. If you’d like, you can get ChatGPT to help interpret the graphics. It did a fair job explaining simple debt repayment diagrams and decay processes.
Wolfram Alpha is the go-to destination for all kinds of calculations and conversions. This gives the chatbot access to a vast collection of natural, social, and engineering scientific facts and formulas. However, you have to really coax this Wolfram-Alpha knowledge out of the chatbot, through pointed questioning and prodding. We mostly had to explicitly ask for tables and diagrams. The thing is, if you’re not aware of the possibilities, you might not know what to ask for, or might not even bother. In contrast, Wolfram’s own web interface presented all relevant information in a well-structured manner, complete with tables, formulas, and diagrams.
Also, it’s worth noting that Wolfram Alpha might not always be up-to-date in every area, and hence may not necessarily be superior to ChatGPT. Thus, it’s best to turn to Wikipedia and verify the information provided there. This ensures you get current data, while ChatGPT/Wolfram Alpha might take a while to research, yet still fall short of knowing about the latest high towers. By the way, there’s now a plugin that directly queries Wikipedia, although its origin is a mystery.
Plunging into Code and Data
It seems like yesterday when data scientists was the profession of the century, only to become obsolete in a few years. At least that’s the chant of the devout ChatGPT disciples ever since OpenAI unveiled the Python-spawning plugin, the Code Interpreter. Flip it on in the ‘Settings’, pick it from the aforementioned dropdown menu, and this inbuilt no-code playground translates user inquiries into Python code, setting its sights primarily on data analysis and visualization.
ChatGPT is a pro at loading tables or transmuting clipboard data into tables in the text box. To swiftly get a handle on things, you can request the bot for a concise rundown of the embedded information, then let it pitch suitable diagrams. When you pick one of these propositions or charge the bot with a concept of your own, the Code Interpreter springs to life: ChatGPT transmutes the user guidelines into Python code, spewing out both this code and the matching graphic as a response.
The OpenAI addon, Code Interpreter, morphs wishes into Python scripts. For instance, ChatGPT uses this to visually represent data but in our tests, it pooled some categories a tad generously and inconsistently implemented alterations.
An interface that’s novice-friendly and stripped down to the bare bones, like the one fashioned in the data journalism tool Datawrapper, propels you ahead more swiftly. Another considerable hitch with OpenAI’s Code Interpreter is that due to security precautions, the Python environment, exiled to its own sandbox, cannot pull in libraries, which is a lifeline for developers. This roadblock ultimately foiled our attempt to tease out a flashy map representation from the duo.
Owing to the Code Interpreter being confined to a sandbox and its inability to load libraries, the scope for creativity remains confined.
For a holistic environment that can also summon (map) libraries, Noteable taps into ChatGPT. This visualization gizmo churns out Python notebooks post-free registration and also shines in comprehensive data analyses and machine learning endeavors. As with Wolfram Alpha, ChatGPT dons the role of a translator, converting human directives into API commands for the external service. Here as well, you nab a preliminary glimpse with ChatGPT, but the visualization proposals within the Noteable platform are more enticing and practical, given their immediate graphic appearance.
Office Management Tools
There are various plugins available that can summarise PDFs and other document types, and answer specific questions about the content. Initial experiments involving a study on AI benchmarks indicated that AI PDF performed better than ChatWithPDF. The latter included an incorrect figure in its summary. The text compressors do not seem to understand the structure and layout of the documents well. A query about the authors, which are typically mentioned on the first page, initially resulted in no response and was only answered by AI PDF when we wanted to know the title of the study. All plugins reference the page number and do not interact with the PDF due to a lack of a user interface. As fact-checking is always necessary, the absence of a simple, interactive view similar to the one offered by the online service ChatPDF is notable.
In conjunction with the automation service Zapier, the chatbot becomes a diligent personal assistant, initiating various administrative and communication workflows at human command. Zapier itself is a hub that connects various services from Gmail and Google Calendar to multiple social media accounts. For this, users must grant the service access to their accounts. ChatGPT acts as an additional interface, interpreting the user’s voice commands and creating corresponding automation scripts (Zaps) in Zapier or calling up existing ones. This can save manual effort, but can also lead to serious mistakes if not all details are meticulously checked. Fortunately, Zapier has built in a verification and confirmation step.
Conclusion
It is becoming increasingly clear that a smooth-talking chatbot is not a universal solution. Facts and relationships that have been codified need to be fed in from external sources, which is where plugins come in. The plugin from Wolfram Alpha is particularly noteworthy. However, the results cannot be trusted blindly. Even though external platforms supply the facts, the chatbot’s interpretation of the instructions can lead to errors and inaccuracies because it does not fully understand the subject matter.
There are also fundamental concerns: On the one hand, the plugin interface could be abused as an entry point for malware and spyware, especially since OpenAI does not verify their integrity. On the other hand, ChatGPT could develop into a gatekeeper for the Internet, which is undesirable for several reasons: competition suffers, and a purely dialogue-based user interface is slow and inefficient. With its rapidly built plugin platform, OpenAI ignores decades of achievements in UX design. While the plugin extensions can be experimented with, they are not yet suitable for productive use.
Sources:
https://openai.com/waitlist/plugins
https://platform.openai.com/docs/plugins/introduction
https://www.ikangai.com/a-deep-dive-into-openais-chatgpt-and-its-plugins/
#AICapabilities #AIPersonalAssistant #Automation #chatGPT #CodeInterpreter #DataAnalysis #dataScience #OpenAI #PlugIns #PythonCode #WolframAlpha #Zapier
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A Deep Dive into OpenAI’s ChatGPT and its Plugins
ChatGPT, the chatbot developed by OpenAI, is known for its ability to produce complex and eloquent texts. However, despite this performance, the generated texts can sometimes be incorrect or misleading in content. The chatbot’s processing is based on the probability distribution of words, without any real knowledge or understanding of the content. Its main function is limited to writing.
Since the introduction of ChatGPT, there has been a demand for plugins and extensions that could make the bot more versatile. For example, a connection to a computer algebra system like Wolfram Alpha could fix the occasional weaknesses in mathematical calculations. Furthermore, additional plugins could expand the application scope of ChatGPT, enabling it to take on tasks such as reserving a table in a restaurant.
In March 2023, OpenAI introduced plugins for its chatbot that cover exactly these functions. This article will introduce some useful plugins and explain how to use these extensions.
Plugins
The number of extensions available for ChatGPT is growing rapidly. As of mid-July 2023, there were already more than 700 such plugins. It appears that many service providers are interested in linking their websites to the chatbot, aiming to establish their presence early on this new platform. This interest could also be fueled by the ongoing enthusiasm surrounding language models and plugins.
At the present time, however, the plugins are notable for a series of initial difficulties and an interface concept that still needs optimization. Appropriately, OpenAI labels them as beta features that need to be activated first. To activate these, users need to go to the “Beta features” section of the settings and toggle the switch for “Plugins”.
However, this does not mean that users can immediately start using the plugins. In fact, OpenAI makes accessing the extensions somewhat complicated. They are initially only available for the GPT-4 language model, the use of which OpenAI limits to 25 responses per three hours. If users want to interact with GPT-4, they need to make a choice: “Default” (the bare language model) or “with Plugins”. The additional option of a connection with Bing has been deactivated by OpenAI, as users were able to bypass the paywalls of news sites via this route.
The third option is to use GPT-4 in combination with OpenAI’s Python generator “Code Interpreter”. However, this must be activated in the settings and does not work with external plugins.
To test the plugins and the code interpreter, the respective functions must first be activated in the settings. Once you have chosen ChatGPT with GPT-4 and plugins, an additional dropdown menu appears with potentially already installed extensions and a link to the plugin store. Before you can use the individual plugins, you must install them. Clicking on “Plugin Store” opens a window with the available extensions.
This store displays a maximum of eight plugins per page. Those who want a complete overview have to scroll through many pages. The plugin store also displays a selection of the 15 most popular extensions and searches their short descriptions in full text. However, the short descriptions often do not provide detailed information about what the plugin does exactly, with which data or additions it works, or who created it.
In view of the limited user interface of the plugin store, users can use alternative platforms like pugin.ai or whatplugin.ai for information. These sites provide thematically sorted directories and provide more information than the plugin store of OpenAI.
The description pages for individual plugins at whatplug-in.ai provide detailed information about the purpose of the extension and its application. However, these texts come from ChatGPT, so users should consider this information with caution. pugin.ai offers its own ChatGPT plugin. After installing this extension, users can ask ChatGPT directly for plugins for specific use cases. However, it appears that neither these sites nor OpenAI itself provide detailed information about the originators of the plugins or check their potential risks.
Getting Started with Plugins
To employ the tools at your disposal, the next course of action is to hit the ‘activate’ button for those installed extensions. Navigate through the handy drop-down menu I mentioned earlier, and put a checkmark next to your chosen plug-in. One quirk of ChatGPT you’ll need to keep in mind – it has a cap on how many plugins you can have up and running simultaneously: a maximum of three. This self-imposed limit ostensibly makes it easier for ChatGPT to decide which one to call upon in a given context. Once the plugin feature has been toggled on, your weapon of choice selected, and plugins activated, you’re all set to dive in.
Now, here’s the thing. ChatGPT operates like an autonomous agent in this world. It determines on its own whether to utilize a plugin or to rely on its inherent knowledge to generate a response. For instance, a basic math or science question will usually be answered sans plugin. However, you, as the user, can give the model a gentle nudge towards using a plugin – all you have to do is ask it explicitly.
The plugin marketplace is a vibrant ecosystem brimming with a variety of extensions. ChatGPT plugins typically do a bang-up job when given a clearly defined task, like whipping up a Spotify playlist. The PlaylistAI, for instance, can link up with the user’s Spotify account and conjure up a personalized playlist. Cool, right? Yet, Spotify’s own features designed for this purpose, along with other introduced tools, go far beyond this. If you’ve ever dabbled with the AI image generator, Midjourney, you’ll find the Photorealistic plugin to be a handy aide.
But what if there are hiccups in the communication between ChatGPT and the plugin, or the results are less than satisfactory? Fear not, for taking a peek into the data traffic might hold the solution. The NewsPilot plugin, for example, didn’t produce meticulously curated overviews, potentially due to our request being rather simplistically converted into a single keyword.
The savvier users among us swear by the Prompt Perfect extension for refining their prompts. And here’s a pro tip: if a plugin isn’t playing ball, you can at least verify how ChatGPT interpreted your input and passed it along to the plugin.
Fact-Checking Against Fabrications
The Wolfram-Alpha platform is a great supplement to ChatGPT. It serves as a repository of centuries of knowledge and development, grounded in a well-curated database and comprehensive rule system. It spans everything from elementary to advanced formulas to complex algorithms that pull from a wealth of knowledge across a myriad of subjects, including math, physics, chemistry, socioeconomics, geology, biology, or history. You can retrieve facts or perform calculations traditionally through a sort of programming language known as Wolfram Language, or through language instructions in the form of bullet points or simple sentences. Recently, you can also engage in a dialogue via the ChatGPT plugin.
For instance, Wolfram Alpha can calculate how much your monthly loan payments would be, or the shortest travel route if you plan to visit a selection of European cities. In doing so, Wolfram Alpha collates all the information that aids understanding: formulas, key properties of the chemical element, examples of other elements for comparison, and so forth. It determines the air travel route using a solution algorithm for the Travelling Salesman Problem and even produces neat tables and visualizations to illustrate relationships.
In this context, the ChatGPT plugin serves merely as a mediator, translating the user’s everyday language queries into Wolfram-Alpha-Language and embellishing the results received from Wolfram Alpha with a bit of explanatory text. What’s nifty about the ChatGPT interface is that it also displays the generated Wolfram prompt. This not only allows you to verify if the query was correctly understood and translated, but you also get to learn Wolfram Language on the fly. If you’d like, you can get ChatGPT to help interpret the graphics. It did a fair job explaining simple debt repayment diagrams and decay processes.
Wolfram Alpha is the go-to destination for all kinds of calculations and conversions. This gives the chatbot access to a vast collection of natural, social, and engineering scientific facts and formulas. However, you have to really coax this Wolfram-Alpha knowledge out of the chatbot, through pointed questioning and prodding. We mostly had to explicitly ask for tables and diagrams. The thing is, if you’re not aware of the possibilities, you might not know what to ask for, or might not even bother. In contrast, Wolfram’s own web interface presented all relevant information in a well-structured manner, complete with tables, formulas, and diagrams.
Also, it’s worth noting that Wolfram Alpha might not always be up-to-date in every area, and hence may not necessarily be superior to ChatGPT. Thus, it’s best to turn to Wikipedia and verify the information provided there. This ensures you get current data, while ChatGPT/Wolfram Alpha might take a while to research, yet still fall short of knowing about the latest high towers. By the way, there’s now a plugin that directly queries Wikipedia, although its origin is a mystery.
Plunging into Code and Data
It seems like yesterday when data scientists was the profession of the century, only to become obsolete in a few years. At least that’s the chant of the devout ChatGPT disciples ever since OpenAI unveiled the Python-spawning plugin, the Code Interpreter. Flip it on in the ‘Settings’, pick it from the aforementioned dropdown menu, and this inbuilt no-code playground translates user inquiries into Python code, setting its sights primarily on data analysis and visualization.
ChatGPT is a pro at loading tables or transmuting clipboard data into tables in the text box. To swiftly get a handle on things, you can request the bot for a concise rundown of the embedded information, then let it pitch suitable diagrams. When you pick one of these propositions or charge the bot with a concept of your own, the Code Interpreter springs to life: ChatGPT transmutes the user guidelines into Python code, spewing out both this code and the matching graphic as a response.
The OpenAI addon, Code Interpreter, morphs wishes into Python scripts. For instance, ChatGPT uses this to visually represent data but in our tests, it pooled some categories a tad generously and inconsistently implemented alterations.
An interface that’s novice-friendly and stripped down to the bare bones, like the one fashioned in the data journalism tool Datawrapper, propels you ahead more swiftly. Another considerable hitch with OpenAI’s Code Interpreter is that due to security precautions, the Python environment, exiled to its own sandbox, cannot pull in libraries, which is a lifeline for developers. This roadblock ultimately foiled our attempt to tease out a flashy map representation from the duo.
Owing to the Code Interpreter being confined to a sandbox and its inability to load libraries, the scope for creativity remains confined.
For a holistic environment that can also summon (map) libraries, Noteable taps into ChatGPT. This visualization gizmo churns out Python notebooks post-free registration and also shines in comprehensive data analyses and machine learning endeavors. As with Wolfram Alpha, ChatGPT dons the role of a translator, converting human directives into API commands for the external service. Here as well, you nab a preliminary glimpse with ChatGPT, but the visualization proposals within the Noteable platform are more enticing and practical, given their immediate graphic appearance.
Office Management Tools
There are various plugins available that can summarise PDFs and other document types, and answer specific questions about the content. Initial experiments involving a study on AI benchmarks indicated that AI PDF performed better than ChatWithPDF. The latter included an incorrect figure in its summary. The text compressors do not seem to understand the structure and layout of the documents well. A query about the authors, which are typically mentioned on the first page, initially resulted in no response and was only answered by AI PDF when we wanted to know the title of the study. All plugins reference the page number and do not interact with the PDF due to a lack of a user interface. As fact-checking is always necessary, the absence of a simple, interactive view similar to the one offered by the online service ChatPDF is notable.
In conjunction with the automation service Zapier, the chatbot becomes a diligent personal assistant, initiating various administrative and communication workflows at human command. Zapier itself is a hub that connects various services from Gmail and Google Calendar to multiple social media accounts. For this, users must grant the service access to their accounts. ChatGPT acts as an additional interface, interpreting the user’s voice commands and creating corresponding automation scripts (Zaps) in Zapier or calling up existing ones. This can save manual effort, but can also lead to serious mistakes if not all details are meticulously checked. Fortunately, Zapier has built in a verification and confirmation step.
Conclusion
It is becoming increasingly clear that a smooth-talking chatbot is not a universal solution. Facts and relationships that have been codified need to be fed in from external sources, which is where plugins come in. The plugin from Wolfram Alpha is particularly noteworthy. However, the results cannot be trusted blindly. Even though external platforms supply the facts, the chatbot’s interpretation of the instructions can lead to errors and inaccuracies because it does not fully understand the subject matter.
There are also fundamental concerns: On the one hand, the plugin interface could be abused as an entry point for malware and spyware, especially since OpenAI does not verify their integrity. On the other hand, ChatGPT could develop into a gatekeeper for the Internet, which is undesirable for several reasons: competition suffers, and a purely dialogue-based user interface is slow and inefficient. With its rapidly built plugin platform, OpenAI ignores decades of achievements in UX design. While the plugin extensions can be experimented with, they are not yet suitable for productive use.
Sources:
https://openai.com/waitlist/plugins
https://platform.openai.com/docs/plugins/introduction
#AICapabilities #AIPersonalAssistant #Automation #chatGPT #CodeInterpreter #DataAnalysis #dataScience #OpenAI #PlugIns #PythonCode #WolframAlpha #Zapier
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A Deep Dive into OpenAI’s ChatGPT and its Plugins
ChatGPT, the chatbot developed by OpenAI, is known for its ability to produce complex and eloquent texts. However, despite this performance, the generated texts can sometimes be incorrect or misleading in content. The chatbot’s processing is based on the probability distribution of words, without any real knowledge or understanding of the content. Its main function is limited to writing.
Since the introduction of ChatGPT, there has been a demand for plugins and extensions that could make the bot more versatile. For example, a connection to a computer algebra system like Wolfram Alpha could fix the occasional weaknesses in mathematical calculations. Furthermore, additional plugins could expand the application scope of ChatGPT, enabling it to take on tasks such as reserving a table in a restaurant.
In March 2023, OpenAI introduced plugins for its chatbot that cover exactly these functions. This article will introduce some useful plugins and explain how to use these extensions.
Plugins
The number of extensions available for ChatGPT is growing rapidly. As of mid-July 2023, there were already more than 700 such plugins. It appears that many service providers are interested in linking their websites to the chatbot, aiming to establish their presence early on this new platform. This interest could also be fueled by the ongoing enthusiasm surrounding language models and plugins.
At the present time, however, the plugins are notable for a series of initial difficulties and an interface concept that still needs optimization. Appropriately, OpenAI labels them as beta features that need to be activated first. To activate these, users need to go to the “Beta features” section of the settings and toggle the switch for “Plugins”.
However, this does not mean that users can immediately start using the plugins. In fact, OpenAI makes accessing the extensions somewhat complicated. They are initially only available for the GPT-4 language model, the use of which OpenAI limits to 25 responses per three hours. If users want to interact with GPT-4, they need to make a choice: “Default” (the bare language model) or “with Plugins”. The additional option of a connection with Bing has been deactivated by OpenAI, as users were able to bypass the paywalls of news sites via this route.
The third option is to use GPT-4 in combination with OpenAI’s Python generator “Code Interpreter”. However, this must be activated in the settings and does not work with external plugins.
To test the plugins and the code interpreter, the respective functions must first be activated in the settings. Once you have chosen ChatGPT with GPT-4 and plugins, an additional dropdown menu appears with potentially already installed extensions and a link to the plugin store. Before you can use the individual plugins, you must install them. Clicking on “Plugin Store” opens a window with the available extensions.
This store displays a maximum of eight plugins per page. Those who want a complete overview have to scroll through many pages. The plugin store also displays a selection of the 15 most popular extensions and searches their short descriptions in full text. However, the short descriptions often do not provide detailed information about what the plugin does exactly, with which data or additions it works, or who created it.
In view of the limited user interface of the plugin store, users can use alternative platforms like pugin.ai or whatplugin.ai for information. These sites provide thematically sorted directories and provide more information than the plugin store of OpenAI.
The description pages for individual plugins at whatplug-in.ai provide detailed information about the purpose of the extension and its application. However, these texts come from ChatGPT, so users should consider this information with caution. pugin.ai offers its own ChatGPT plugin. After installing this extension, users can ask ChatGPT directly for plugins for specific use cases. However, it appears that neither these sites nor OpenAI itself provide detailed information about the originators of the plugins or check their potential risks.
Getting Started with Plugins
To employ the tools at your disposal, the next course of action is to hit the ‘activate’ button for those installed extensions. Navigate through the handy drop-down menu I mentioned earlier, and put a checkmark next to your chosen plug-in. One quirk of ChatGPT you’ll need to keep in mind – it has a cap on how many plugins you can have up and running simultaneously: a maximum of three. This self-imposed limit ostensibly makes it easier for ChatGPT to decide which one to call upon in a given context. Once the plugin feature has been toggled on, your weapon of choice selected, and plugins activated, you’re all set to dive in.
Now, here’s the thing. ChatGPT operates like an autonomous agent in this world. It determines on its own whether to utilize a plugin or to rely on its inherent knowledge to generate a response. For instance, a basic math or science question will usually be answered sans plugin. However, you, as the user, can give the model a gentle nudge towards using a plugin – all you have to do is ask it explicitly.
The plugin marketplace is a vibrant ecosystem brimming with a variety of extensions. ChatGPT plugins typically do a bang-up job when given a clearly defined task, like whipping up a Spotify playlist. The PlaylistAI, for instance, can link up with the user’s Spotify account and conjure up a personalized playlist. Cool, right? Yet, Spotify’s own features designed for this purpose, along with other introduced tools, go far beyond this. If you’ve ever dabbled with the AI image generator, Midjourney, you’ll find the Photorealistic plugin to be a handy aide.
But what if there are hiccups in the communication between ChatGPT and the plugin, or the results are less than satisfactory? Fear not, for taking a peek into the data traffic might hold the solution. The NewsPilot plugin, for example, didn’t produce meticulously curated overviews, potentially due to our request being rather simplistically converted into a single keyword.
The savvier users among us swear by the Prompt Perfect extension for refining their prompts. And here’s a pro tip: if a plugin isn’t playing ball, you can at least verify how ChatGPT interpreted your input and passed it along to the plugin.
Fact-Checking Against Fabrications
The Wolfram-Alpha platform is a great supplement to ChatGPT. It serves as a repository of centuries of knowledge and development, grounded in a well-curated database and comprehensive rule system. It spans everything from elementary to advanced formulas to complex algorithms that pull from a wealth of knowledge across a myriad of subjects, including math, physics, chemistry, socioeconomics, geology, biology, or history. You can retrieve facts or perform calculations traditionally through a sort of programming language known as Wolfram Language, or through language instructions in the form of bullet points or simple sentences. Recently, you can also engage in a dialogue via the ChatGPT plugin.
For instance, Wolfram Alpha can calculate how much your monthly loan payments would be, or the shortest travel route if you plan to visit a selection of European cities. In doing so, Wolfram Alpha collates all the information that aids understanding: formulas, key properties of the chemical element, examples of other elements for comparison, and so forth. It determines the air travel route using a solution algorithm for the Travelling Salesman Problem and even produces neat tables and visualizations to illustrate relationships.
In this context, the ChatGPT plugin serves merely as a mediator, translating the user’s everyday language queries into Wolfram-Alpha-Language and embellishing the results received from Wolfram Alpha with a bit of explanatory text. What’s nifty about the ChatGPT interface is that it also displays the generated Wolfram prompt. This not only allows you to verify if the query was correctly understood and translated, but you also get to learn Wolfram Language on the fly. If you’d like, you can get ChatGPT to help interpret the graphics. It did a fair job explaining simple debt repayment diagrams and decay processes.
Wolfram Alpha is the go-to destination for all kinds of calculations and conversions. This gives the chatbot access to a vast collection of natural, social, and engineering scientific facts and formulas. However, you have to really coax this Wolfram-Alpha knowledge out of the chatbot, through pointed questioning and prodding. We mostly had to explicitly ask for tables and diagrams. The thing is, if you’re not aware of the possibilities, you might not know what to ask for, or might not even bother. In contrast, Wolfram’s own web interface presented all relevant information in a well-structured manner, complete with tables, formulas, and diagrams.
Also, it’s worth noting that Wolfram Alpha might not always be up-to-date in every area, and hence may not necessarily be superior to ChatGPT. Thus, it’s best to turn to Wikipedia and verify the information provided there. This ensures you get current data, while ChatGPT/Wolfram Alpha might take a while to research, yet still fall short of knowing about the latest high towers. By the way, there’s now a plugin that directly queries Wikipedia, although its origin is a mystery.
Plunging into Code and Data
It seems like yesterday when data scientists was the profession of the century, only to become obsolete in a few years. At least that’s the chant of the devout ChatGPT disciples ever since OpenAI unveiled the Python-spawning plugin, the Code Interpreter. Flip it on in the ‘Settings’, pick it from the aforementioned dropdown menu, and this inbuilt no-code playground translates user inquiries into Python code, setting its sights primarily on data analysis and visualization.
ChatGPT is a pro at loading tables or transmuting clipboard data into tables in the text box. To swiftly get a handle on things, you can request the bot for a concise rundown of the embedded information, then let it pitch suitable diagrams. When you pick one of these propositions or charge the bot with a concept of your own, the Code Interpreter springs to life: ChatGPT transmutes the user guidelines into Python code, spewing out both this code and the matching graphic as a response.
The OpenAI addon, Code Interpreter, morphs wishes into Python scripts. For instance, ChatGPT uses this to visually represent data but in our tests, it pooled some categories a tad generously and inconsistently implemented alterations.
An interface that’s novice-friendly and stripped down to the bare bones, like the one fashioned in the data journalism tool Datawrapper, propels you ahead more swiftly. Another considerable hitch with OpenAI’s Code Interpreter is that due to security precautions, the Python environment, exiled to its own sandbox, cannot pull in libraries, which is a lifeline for developers. This roadblock ultimately foiled our attempt to tease out a flashy map representation from the duo.
Owing to the Code Interpreter being confined to a sandbox and its inability to load libraries, the scope for creativity remains confined.
For a holistic environment that can also summon (map) libraries, Noteable taps into ChatGPT. This visualization gizmo churns out Python notebooks post-free registration and also shines in comprehensive data analyses and machine learning endeavors. As with Wolfram Alpha, ChatGPT dons the role of a translator, converting human directives into API commands for the external service. Here as well, you nab a preliminary glimpse with ChatGPT, but the visualization proposals within the Noteable platform are more enticing and practical, given their immediate graphic appearance.
Office Management Tools
There are various plugins available that can summarise PDFs and other document types, and answer specific questions about the content. Initial experiments involving a study on AI benchmarks indicated that AI PDF performed better than ChatWithPDF. The latter included an incorrect figure in its summary. The text compressors do not seem to understand the structure and layout of the documents well. A query about the authors, which are typically mentioned on the first page, initially resulted in no response and was only answered by AI PDF when we wanted to know the title of the study. All plugins reference the page number and do not interact with the PDF due to a lack of a user interface. As fact-checking is always necessary, the absence of a simple, interactive view similar to the one offered by the online service ChatPDF is notable.
In conjunction with the automation service Zapier, the chatbot becomes a diligent personal assistant, initiating various administrative and communication workflows at human command. Zapier itself is a hub that connects various services from Gmail and Google Calendar to multiple social media accounts. For this, users must grant the service access to their accounts. ChatGPT acts as an additional interface, interpreting the user’s voice commands and creating corresponding automation scripts (Zaps) in Zapier or calling up existing ones. This can save manual effort, but can also lead to serious mistakes if not all details are meticulously checked. Fortunately, Zapier has built in a verification and confirmation step.
Conclusion
It is becoming increasingly clear that a smooth-talking chatbot is not a universal solution. Facts and relationships that have been codified need to be fed in from external sources, which is where plugins come in. The plugin from Wolfram Alpha is particularly noteworthy. However, the results cannot be trusted blindly. Even though external platforms supply the facts, the chatbot’s interpretation of the instructions can lead to errors and inaccuracies because it does not fully understand the subject matter.
There are also fundamental concerns: On the one hand, the plugin interface could be abused as an entry point for malware and spyware, especially since OpenAI does not verify their integrity. On the other hand, ChatGPT could develop into a gatekeeper for the Internet, which is undesirable for several reasons: competition suffers, and a purely dialogue-based user interface is slow and inefficient. With its rapidly built plugin platform, OpenAI ignores decades of achievements in UX design. While the plugin extensions can be experimented with, they are not yet suitable for productive use.
Sources:
https://openai.com/waitlist/plugins
https://platform.openai.com/docs/plugins/introduction
#AICapabilities #AIPersonalAssistant #Automation #chatGPT #CodeInterpreter #DataAnalysis #dataScience #OpenAI #PlugIns #PythonCode #WolframAlpha #Zapier
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Podcasts and good old RSS
Once I started seriously listening to podcasts, I quickly reached the point where there are more podcasts, (entire shows, not just episodes,) than I can possibly keep up with. I’m left with the choice between staying subscribed to podcasts where I want to listen to only some of the episodes, or unsubscribing and knowing that I’m missing some gems.
…and then I remember this is all just RSS.
In my podcast player, (which is Overcast,) I now keep only the shows that are my dedicated favorites; shows that I generally listen to every episode. I moved all the other podcasts into my RSS reader, (which is Reeder.) I even added a bunch of shows which I had completely given up hope of being able to even follow them looking for gems.
This had two huge benefits:
First, it improved my podcast listening experience: Not keeping all of those podcast shows subscribed in my podcast player, means less downloading and less skipping. I don’t like having to wait, so I have everything set to pre-download, and removing a lot of podcasts makes a big difference. But even more important, there’s now much less distraction. When I’m in the mood, (or the time, or the place,) to listen to podcasts, I tend to continue listening by default. I’m more likely to listen “just a bit farther” to see if this episode is going to be good, whereas if I had read the summary I might have skipped it altogether. So my podcast listening experience winds up having far more great episodes because it’s just the shows I love.
Second, it actually leads to me finding more gems: When I open my RSS reader, (as I do every day,) I’m in “skimming mode.” I’m looking for things to queue for later reading. (Pocket and Instapaper for the win.) There’s very little effort for me to skim the episode descriptions, and when I find one that looks good I add it to my podcast player. This does require me to switch apps, search, and then add a specific episode. But this small effort helps ensure that the episode is likely to be one I would really like to listen to.
There’s one detail that is a slight snag: How do you find a podcast’s feed URL? We’re all so used to searching in our podcast player apps, but you need the actual podcast feed URL to add it to your RSS reader. You’ll discover that none of the podcast player apps, and none of the directories, (Stitcher, Google, Apple, etc.,) make it easy to find the shows’ underlying podcast URL. The easiest way to do it is to use the handy search on James Cridland’s, Podnews.net (no relation/benefit to me.) It pulls the show’s information from the directories, and explains all the details about that show’s configuration including a handy RSS link icon that has the URL.
So, unpacking this idea a bit more, with some visuals we have…
Feedbin
If you don’t already have a favorite RSS reader, the easiest way to start is to use a web site which will corral all your RSS subscriptions. It will show you a nice web front end with all your feeds together. Later, if you want to run a dedicated RSS reading application on your phone or computer, any of the good ones will let you say, “I have my subscriptions in Feedbin,” and boop! you have all your feeds: Feedbin.
RSS in action
Here’s an example of what it looks like when I encounter an updated podcast feed in my RSS reading application.
Here’s the “stream” of RSS items. Sorry, I have the font size on my phone super-huge; so this only shows a few items. But the first one, under “Today”, is from a podcaster friend’s show.
Touching it leads me to the full RSS item’s view. Exactly what you see in this view depends on exactly what each RSS feed chooses to include.
I’m still not on the web here—still simply looking at the data in the RSS feed.At this point, my brain goes, “oh yes! David put out his next episodes!” Let’s see what he’s written up… (swiping left) I get an in-app web browser view of the item from his web site.
I could even press play, right here, if I had 11 minutes.If this were an episode I wanted to listen to—in my “I’m listening to podcasts” mode, as I described above—then I’d flip over to my podcast app and search for this episode and add it to my listening queue. In reality, it’s even easier: My podcast player app remembers the shows I’ve listened to before, so I can just touch the show, scroll to the episode and hit ‘download’ for later listening.
You can keep an eye on a LOT of podcasts this way—looking at their descriptions—without piling up more in your podcast player than you can possibly listen to.
ɕ
#InternetTech #Podcasting #RSS -
Finally Friday Reads: Chaos Redux
“The Kings. Imagine if we had a Big Beautiful Bawlroom. I’m thinking Charles is grateful to be outdoors, just sayin’.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
This has been a bad week for our small d democracy. The Supreme Court attacked voting rights in a court case that basically decimated voting rights. Down here in Lousyana, our legislature and governor have raised the stakes. They’re delaying our election so they can gerrymander the state’s legislative district. They’ve also passed a law giving jail time to anyone smoking pot around a university campus. Campus Potheads will likely wind up as state slaves out doing whatever local law enforcement needs doing, which has included some pretty shady things. It’s a lot like Jim Crow Redux. Is the South trying to rise again?
Then, there’s the Iran War. This has definitely reached Constitutional Crisis status. Tess Bridgeman and Oona A. Hathaway from Just Security have this analysis. “At the 60-Day Mark, the Iran War is Triply Illegal.” Of course, should it head to SCOTUS, the right-wing justices will just make something up.
Today, May 1st, marks 60 days since President Donald Trump notified Congress that he initiated a war against Iran. The notification of Operation Epic Fury, which began two days earlier on Feb. 28, triggered the 60-day termination clock of the War Powers Resolution, a landmark statute passed by supermajorities in both congressional chambers over President Richard Nixon’s veto in an effort to reclaim Congress’s constitutional authority over decisions to wage war. Under that statute, Trump must now terminate the hostilities he began two months ago. He seems set against doing so. If he refuses, he will take a war that is already doubly illegal and turn it into a triply-illegal war. He will also make it clear, if it was not already, that he regards the law as no constraint on his use of the U.S. military’s lethal power.
At the outset it should be made clear that President Trump’s war in Iran was illegal from the start. From the moment it began, Trump’s war with Iran violated the U.S. Constitution and the UN Charter.
First, the Constitution vests Congress, not the President, with the power to decide when the United States goes to war. The current conflict with Iran makes plain why placing this power in the peoples’ representatives, rather than the chief executive, was and remains so important. Democracy, it was thought then – and remains true now – is incompatible with the “one man decides” model in which a nation can be thrown into war on a single person’s whims. Requiring congressional authorization is not just a safeguard against potential incompetence, though that is plenty evident in the disastrous war of choice against Iran. It is also because the weighty decision to go to war should be made by the more deliberative branch of government, and the most politically accountable, that the authority to declare war resides in the list of Congress’ Article I powers, alongside a host of other powers on making, regulating, and funding war. (Of note, this war clearly crosses even the threshold the executive branch has set for itself on when it needs to turn to Congress to authorize force, though neither the Congress nor the courts have embraced the executive’s highly elastic test.)
Second, the war is a clear violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force except in legitimate self-defense against an armed attack (or imminent threat of one) or with Security Council authorization. Neither exist here. It is, put simply, a war of aggression. Other countries know this even if they have been nervous to call it out, fearing Trump’s wrath. It’s why we have so little international support–and why longstanding allies have refused even basic cooperation.
The manifest violation of the UN Charter also violates the U.S. Constitution: the president has a constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” This duty applies to treaties that, under our Constitution, are the “supreme Law of the Land.” The UN Charter is clearly in this category, having earned Senate approval on an 89-2 vote.
While presidents have launched wars in violation of one or the other of these bodies of law in the past, the war in Iran stands out as a significant violation of both of these foundational laws at once. The President, in short, has claimed for himself the power to unleash the most powerful military the world has ever seen on the basis, as he famously put it, of his own morality.
Read more at the link to find out why it’s a triple threat today. The outrage over the latest Supreme Court decision continues. This analysis comes from Liberal Currents and is provided by Alan Elrod. “The Supreme Court Delivers Another Victory for the Jim Crow Southernization of America. We must not forget how poorly buried the racial tyranny of the South’s past is in America’s present.”
In this context, the painful proximity of the Civil Rights Era and the Jim Crow abuses its reforms worked to end should be clear. And so the Roberts Court decision to effectively neuter Section 2 of the VRA, arguing that Louisiana’s second majority-Black congressional district is racially discriminatory—a ruling rooted in a view-from-nowhere, colorblind vision of race—lands as both profoundly unjust and historically illiterate. That it comes at a time when the Trump administration and wider MAGA movement are launching a frontal assault on the multicultural democracy built on the back of the reforms of the 1960s and 1970s threatens to plunge the country into a Neo-Jim Crow period of rights abuses and anti-democratic discriminations.
As Amy Howe wrote Wednesday for SCOTUSblog:
In a 36-page opinion, Alito explained that “the Constitution almost never permits the Federal Government or a State to discriminate on the basis of race.” The question before the court, he said, is “whether compliance with the Voting Rights Act should be added to our very short list of compelling interests that can justify racial discrimination.”
As a general rule, Alito wrote, Section 2 of the VRA guarantees voters, including minority voters, an opportunity to cast a vote for their preferred candidate, but that candidate’s chances of success may be affected by the choices that the state is allowed to make when drawing a redistricting map – such as the desire to protect incumbents or increase the number of seats held by a particular political party. And under the Constitution, Alito continued, a violation of Section 2 only occurs when “the circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred” – for example, when there are several possible maps that contain majority-minority districts, but the state “cannot provide a legitimate reason for rejecting all those maps.”
[…]
“In sum,” Alito concluded, “because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating SB8. That map is an unconstitutional gerrymander, and its use would violate the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.”
I argued last year at The Bulwark that the American South never truly took to liberal democracy, resisting the goals of both Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Era. Across the region, a culture of censorship, anti-LGBTQ policies, and draconian law enforcement and prison practices choke the dignity and pluralism that make free, diverse societies truly flourish. Under Trump and the contemporary GOP, a great national Southernization of politics appears underway. The Supreme Court’s decision this week threatens to help strengthen and accelerate this process. Consider what Justice Kagan wrote in her dissent:
The Voting Rights Act is — or, now more accurately, was— ‘one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation’s history.’ It was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality.
Kagan is right. As a Southerner, I am acutely aware of the blood spilt in the fight for human rights and dignity for Black people in America—the blood of soldiers, of activists and protesters, and of everyday people who had the temerity to exist in a white man’s world. One of the bloodiest racial massacres in our nation’s history took place in the Arkansas Delta, around the town of Elaine. A white mob set upon Black sharecroppers, with some estimates of the death toll reaching into the hundreds.
Read about “the context” at the link. Elrod writes about his own life experiences growing up in the deep South. He also discusses the events of the time. It’s a compelling read. Greg Sargent, writing for The New Republic, has a must-read analysis about how bereft Trump is about what the Supreme Court decision really means. “Trump Has No Clue What His Supreme Court Has Just Unleashed. The Supreme Court decision on gerrymandering points in one direction only: Come 2028, Democrats have to declare a take-no-prisoners redistricting war on the GOP.”
Now that the Supreme Court has gutted yet another piece of the Voting Rights Act, this one concerning redistricting, here’s one thing we know for sure: Democrats will have to enter into a new era of procedural total war. That might make many of them uncomfortable, but when it comes to the future of the liberal agenda, the stakes are enormous.
With Donald Trump’s active encouragement, Republicans are already seizing on the ruling—which essentially dismantled protections against racial gerrymandering—to threaten to redraw maps in the South to eliminate numerous congressional seats with Black representatives. While it’s largely too late to do so this cycle, Republicans will likely launch mid-decade redistricting in many Southern states heading into 2028, eliminating as many as 19 more Democratic seats in hopes of locking in a near-permanent GOP majority.
In substantive and legal terms, this outcome is awful—see this overview from TNR’s Matt Ford for a full rundown—but in a purely political sense, is this Armageddon for Democrats? Not necessarily. The reason? Democrats can move to redraw maps in time for the 2028 elections in states where they control the legislatures.Which points to one big takeaway from the court ruling: State legislative races—which already attract too little attention—just got a lot more important. Many races underway now will help determine the party’s long-term prospects in the scorched-earth conflict that’s about to unfold.
According to a new analysis by Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group, Democrats could redraw anywhere from 10 to 22 additional congressional seats for the party in time for the 2028 elections if they push hard with redistricting in seven blue and swing states. The analysis—which is circulating among Democratic leadership aides and outside groups and was obtained by TNR—concludes that being aggressive could theoretically offset Republican gains, even in a maximalist GOP redistricting scenario.
“Democrats have a clear path to neutralize this GOP power grab if they want to take it,” Max Flugrath, senior communications director of Fair Fight Action, told me. “This is the ‘break glass in case of emergency’ moment for American democracy.”
The range of potential Democratic gains is so broad because so much depends on which party controls key state legislatures after the fall elections. Strikingly, even if Democrats flip zero chambers, they can redraw up to 10 additional congressional districts for the party, the analysis finds, by maximizing gerrymanders in New York, Colorado, Oregon, and Maryland, where Democrats control governorships and state legislatures.
But even more strikingly, Democrats could redraw as many as 22 additional congressional districts for the party overall if they flip legislative chambers in other states and redraw aggressively in them, the analysis finds.
All of this shouldn’t distract from other stories. The mainstream media has definitely dropped the conversation on the Epstein files. Other stories and questions still linger. David Lurie writes this for Public Notice. “Trump’s Reichstag fire presidency is immolating. The media personality in the White House has been exposed as a crisis actor.”
The day after an alleged gunman tried to barge into the White House Correspondents Dinner, Todd Blanche — the nation’s chief law enforcement official — appeared on national television to denounce that act of political violence.
But during the very same news conference, Blanche also signaled the president may vacate the convictions of terrorists found guilty of scheming to attack the government of the United States on behalf of Donald Trump on January 6, 2021.
“They were convicted, but President Trump, as is his right and duty under our Constitution, commuted or pardoned those individuals,” Blanche said.
BASH: Do you plan to vacate convictions of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who were involved in the January 6 attack on the Capitol?
BLANCHE: That’s ongoing litigation. You’ll hear from us in the coming days. Their sentences were commuted by President Trump
BASH: You’re not ruling it out?
BLANCHE: No. We’re not ruling anything out
This perverse contradiction epitomizes the era of Late Trumpism, in which the rewriting of history and systemic abuses of power are ramping up while Trump’s political power is collapsing.
What follows is an amazing list of Trump performances likened to similar performances by Hitler. I used to shiver when anyone jumped the shark to compare someone to Hitler, but this is a truly amazing and long list of similarities. I also consider it a must-read today. Meanwhile, American Citizens are losing access to their most basic needs. This is from the New York Times. “Since Congress Let Obamacare Subsidies Expire, Millions Are Dropping Coverage. Americans can’t afford the higher health insurance premiums that resulted from Congress’s refusal to extend federal tax credits.” Reed Abelson and Margot Sanger-Katz have the lede.
Millions of Americans appear to be dropping Obamacare coverage in the months since Congress failed to extend the generous subsidies that had become a defining feature of the Affordable Care Act.
Initial sign-ups had already fallen by about 1.2 million people. But insurance companies, state officials and industry analysts are reporting that many more have lost Obamacare coverage now that people are facing long-term higher costs. The federal government has yet to report current enrollment data.
Many insurers and analysts are estimating overall declines of about 20 percent, dropping to around 19 million from the 24 million who were covered under the A.C.A. last year. Other indications suggest there could be even larger potential losses by the end of the year, a deep retrenchment for Obamacare coverage and a reversal of significant gains in the last several years.
The rising cost of health care has shown up as a top concern among Americans in several public opinion polls. Premiums are rising for Americans who get insurance through work, too, as health care costs have been increasing nationwide. Out-of-pocket costs are growing too, as plans with high deductibles have become popular.
Though health care has faded somewhat as a priority for the Republican-controlled Congress since lawmakers hit a stalemate over the subsidies at the end of 2025, it is likely to figure prominently in the midterm elections this year.
One analysis, by Wakely Consulting Group, a firm with access to detailed insurance industry data, estimates that coverage in the marketplaces will drop by as much as 26 percent this year compared with last year’s average enrollment.
In Georgia, where coverage had nearly tripled since Congress first authorized the extra financial help in 2021, state data show enrollment has fallen by more than a third, according to information obtained by the news organizations The Current GA and The Georgia Recorder.
The Georgia state insurance department did not respond to a request for comment.
Some Blue Cross plans lost 20 to 30 percent of customers this year. And many people are switching to plans with lower premiums but much higher out-of-pocket costs, said David Merritt, a spokesman for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. “We are waiting on official data like everyone else,” he said.
The insurers and state officials said early retirees with middle-class incomes, who faced the largest increases in premiums, appeared to be among the hardest hit. In some markets, the cost of insurance for this group rose by $1,000 a month or more.
Meanwhile, the horrid state of Nebraska, where I had lived before escaping to New Orleans, literally wants poor people to work themselves to death, one way or another. Here’s a headline from The Hill. “Nebraska faces challenges as first state to impose Medicaid work requirements under GOP bill.”
Nebraska on Friday is set to become the first state to impose Medicaid work requirements under the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, racing ahead of the national deadline by eight months.
Nebraska’s experience will be a key test for Republicans who have been championing work requirements, as it could be an indicator of what the rest of the country will face when the policy takes effect nationwide.
The only two states that have enacted similar rules — Arkansas and Georgia — found they did not increase employment, caused tens of thousands of people to lose coverage and cost the states millions of dollars.
In Nebraska, Medicaid advocates and health policy experts fear similar coverage losses as people get buried under a blizzard of red tape. The law’s implementation timeline was already compressed, and they said Nebraska’s decision to rush ahead will be disastrous.
For instance, the state just this week released hundreds of pages with key details about who will qualify for a “medically frail” exemption.
“Unfortunately, when we have a rush job, we usually see bad results, and this is shaping up to be the case,” said Sarah Maresh, the program director for health care access at the nonprofit Nebraska Appleseed.
Work requirements have been a priority for President Trump and congressional Republicans since his first term.
The GOP’s tax and spending megabill used work requirements to partially pay for its nearly $3 trillion price tag. The Congressional Budget Office estimated nearly 5 million people will lose their Medicaid over the next decade as a result, including many who are already working.
GOP officials argue work requirements are needed to root out waste, fraud and abuse in the Medicaid program, and they will only target the “able-bodied” people who should be working but choose not to.
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) has said he wants to promote self-sufficiency.
“It’s a key piece of giving the discipline for our families to be successful. It’s a key piece of self-worth. It’s a key piece of mental health and stability,” Pillen said in December when he announced the state would implement the requirements early.
All of this must be offset at the polls, even with the shenanigans set off by SCOTUS and the Republicans in Congress. Heather Cox Richardson highlights polling numbers in her SubStack today.
Today G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers noted that Trump has hit a new low in overall job performance and in his handling of the economy, at -22.2 and -40.3, respectively. Those numbers reflect the percentage of people who approve of his handling of an issue minus those who disapprove. Indeed, Morris noted that Trump’s approval rating on the economy is so low it “literally broke the scale of this graph on my data portal.”
On Tuesday, Morris explained in Strength in Numbers that while Republicans have lately been arguing that they simply need to get people to show up to win the midterms, turnout is not their problem. Their real problem is that voters don’t like what Trump is doing.
An obvious symbol of Trump’s presidency is his unilateral decision to tear down the East Wing of the White House and replace it with a giant ballroom. A new Washington Post–ABC News–Ipsos poll released today shows that Americans oppose the ballroom by a margin of about two to one. Fifty-six percent of Americans oppose it, while only 28% support it. Of those who oppose it, 47% oppose it strongly.
Dan Diamond and Scott Clement of the Washington Post note that people don’t like Trump’s proposed triumphal arch, either—52% opposed versus 21% in favor—or the idea of Trump’s signature on paper money. Sixty-eight percent of Americans oppose that plan, while only 12% support it. Even Republicans oppose it 40% to 28%.
And then there is Trump’s war on Iran. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that only 34% of Americans approve of the strikes on Iran, while 61% oppose them. Gas prices continue to rise, with Brent crude futures today briefly topping $114 a barrel—the highest price since June 2022, shortly after Russia launched its attack on Ukraine. Senator Angus King (I-ME) noted on CNN today that these higher prices are currently costing American consumers about $700 million a day.
On his Substack today, economist Paul Krugman noted that the acronym “TACO,” for “Trump Always Chickens Out,” has been replaced by “NACHO”: “Not A Chance Hormuz Opens.” Krugman explains that Iran is unlikely to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s oil passed before Israel and the U.S. began airstrikes against Iran on February 28, 2026, until “the economic damage from its closure becomes much more severe.”
She has more good news, so we can end it here, and you may go read it all!
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #CadetBonespurSIranWar #jimCrow #TrumpPollNumbers #votingRights -
Tues. Feb. 17, 2026: Welcoming the Fire Horse
image courtesy of Erkut2 from PixabayTuesday, February 17, 2026
New Moon
Jupiter Retrograde
Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras
Chinese Lunar New Year
Solar Eclipse
Cloudy and cold
All the things going on in the heavens today! Whew!
Happy Mardi Gras, and Year of the Fire Horse! Let’s hope we’re racing to some positive, collective change.
You can read the Community Tarot Reading for the Week here. Still on the Enchanted Tarot.
I put in the Instacart order first thing on Friday morning. It shouldn’t be as stressful as I find it. I’m making a list and trusting someone else to go down the list and get the stuff. There’s no reason for me to worry so much. It was fine last week.
The cats are starting to shed their winter coats. That means the worst of the cold is over, and that I need to vacuum multiple times a week.
I’ve been frustrated with the 45-day art journaling workshop for awhile now. The prompts have been too much psychobabble and not enough creative expansion. They also seem somewhat familiar in the wrong way, but I can’t put my finger on why. Plus, one never knows when they will show up, so it’s been difficult to plan time to do it. Nothing came through at all on Thursday, and then, on Friday, there was suddenly an email that the workshop leader decided to take a vacation for her son’s school break and “pause.” No idea if/when it starts up again. Maybe Monday, but who knows? So, you ask people to commit for 45 days, and then you haven’t planned everything out ahead of time? Why would you start it if you knew you were going on vacation? It’s not like one doesn’t know about school breaks ahead of time. Why not either schedule posts or wait to start the 45-day stretch until you get back? If it was impromptu, as she claimed, she could still schedule things to post. This is not someone who can be trusted. I planned to grit my teeth and stick it out, because I believe in honoring my commitments, but no. I am done. That’s not creating a safe and creative space for people. Safe space means one can count on it and trust it. This behavior does not do it. It wasn’t an unexpected emergency. It’s being untrustworthy and not being honest with people who committed time and energy toward your event when you asked them to do so, after weeks of intense promotion.
A new prompt came through on Monday morning, and I considered starting up again, but my instinct was not to. It’s not the right atmosphere for me. So I unsubscribed, and it was like a weight off.
Buh-bye.
And I will avoid this person and her work in the future.
There are still plenty of pages in that journal that can be dedicated to other things. I will find a different way to work on the art/text stuff.
I bundled up, packed up the books, and headed out mid-morning. The temperature was higher than it’s been and the sun was out, but the wind made it feel colder. I trudged up to the library, dropped off books and picked up the 12 that waited for me. Good thing I had the rolly cart! I rolled down the hill and mailed the cards and bills that needed to go out. The post office is only about a block from the library, and downhill. I ran another errand. I got everything home and up the stairs.
I managed it all in 45 minutes, which was pretty darn good.
I basked in the sun with the cats for a bit, and finished reading a literary novel that wanted to be AS Byatt’s POSSESSION, but was not. There were some good portions of it, but it added an additional POV in the last quarter of the book in a way that didn’t work for me, structurally.
I had to be available during the shopping, and had to change a couple of things, but it was no big deal. The order was there by 1:30 again, although it was a different shopper who was more interested in being on her phone than paying attention to the two minutes for customer drop-off, which annoyed me.
If the weather is at all amenable at the end of this week, I’m taking the cart and going my damn self. While I’m grateful the service exists, I’d rather be in the store myself seeing what looks good and adjusting as needed. I like to have a basic idea of what I want/need (and my list), but then see what looks good and is on sale and adjust. That means moving a bunch of ingredients around in a way that doesn’t really work if someone else uses a pre-written list. It’s totally a me problem, not at all anything wrong with the service itself.
I did some community-based work in the afternoon, and also read the February pick for the Agatha Christie book club, MRS. MCGINTY’S DEAD. It took me a bit to get into it, but once I was intrigued, it carried me along. I paged through the research books for the two different projects that came in, trying to decide which one to spend time with first.
I re-read what I have of the play LAUGHTER AND TURPENTINE (the Playland Painters one) so I can figure out what needs to happen next. I sorted through some possibilities in Saturday morning’s free write.
We had a late lunch of pizza, and then I didn’t feel like dinner. I made sure my mom ate something, but I wound up having a sandwich around 9:30 at night. I read the first book of a new-to-me series (it came out in 2011), that I liked on character and setting arcs. The plot was a little shaky, but interesting enough so I’ll read the second book in the series, at the very least, and see.
Slept well. It was supposed to snow overnight and be done by 7, but didn’t start until nearly 8 on Saturday morning. I had a good morning routine. I forgot to mention that Thursday was Day 175 of the free write sessions.
I tried making omlettes again for breakfast. I’m not good at them, but I keep trying. My favorite Elizabeth David book is AN OMLETTE AND A GLASS OF WINE. I went back and re-read her instructions on making an omlette and tried again. I still don’t have the foldy thing down, and the bottom is too brown, but the inside was fluffy with just a little runny for the cheese and herbs. It tasted good, even if the look of it wouldn’t win any awards. I keep trying. The pan I used was too small, probably, too.
After breakfast, I got the crockpot meal going. Instead of the usual Tuesday crockpot, we decided to do it on Saturday. Since Tuesday (today) is Chinese Lunar New Year, I’m making a special meal for the holiday, and moved the crockpot meal to the weekend.
Then some housework, because there is always housework.
I love following decorating and thrifting and cooking and sewing and gardening accounts on IG. (I mean, cats, too, but that’s something different). Even when something isn’t my style (like neutrals) or something that I would do, I enjoy seeing what other people are up to, and how happy it makes them. And I do learn stuff. But, I mean, sourcing at thrift stores has always been my first choice. It started way back when I was a teenager prop shopping for shows. Things with stories and histories have always been my preference. I love that more people are discovering the fun of it, although when I see a 20-something act like they are the first person to ever figure it out, I do roll my eyes. But that’s also part of being 20-something. I have no doubt I was just as annoying.
It snowed all morning, and I didn’t feel like trotting around in it, so I stayed home. I went through an exhibition catalogue built around May Morris’s work as background research for the play I want to write inspired by Mary Annie Sloane’s sketch of the women working in May’s embroidery workshop. I found names, so I can actually research them. One of the women who worked with May for years was Lily Yeats, the poet’s sister, although to hear tell, there was tension between Lily and May. Another embroidery worker was the actress Florence Farr. It took me a bit to figure out why the name was familiar. She was friendly with Annie Besant (who is mentioned in my play FALL FOREVER) and with Pamela Coleman Smith (who illustrated the Rider Waite tarot), and they were all involved in the occult society The Golden Dawn together. I hadn’t put together the concurrent timelines in my brain. The more I dig, the more interesting connections I find with other interests and projects. Quite the web!
So glad that May kept detailed records of the workroom. I’m hoping I can find a digitized version online, a little later in the research, and flip through it.
There isn’t a lot of material easily available on Mary Annie Sloane and her work, but I will keep digging. As much as May’s designs and exquisite work captured me, it was Mary Annie’s sketch that lit the fire under the idea.
I have at least six months’ to a year’s worth of research to do before I even start writing, but having names and women to research is a terrific starting point, much like with my Playland Painters. The grant proposal for this project is out. If I get the grant, the project moves into a priority position in the queue. If not, I can leisurely research until the project’s turn. Knowing something about the women who worked in the embroidery workshop and what a range of interests they all had changes the original character arcs I played with quite a bit. These are far richer and more interesting. May was known for paying her workers well, and encouraging financial literacy and independence.
Gabriel Dante Rosetti was William Morris’s business partner (he was May’s father, yes, that William Morris), and Rosetti had an affair with her mother, Jane. May and Jane often sat for Rosetti. The big Rosetti volume I have from my time working at Abbeville Press is in storage, but I’m eager to get my hands on it again.
May and George Bernard Shaw were in love, although they each married others, and remained good friends all their lives. So now I have to re-read that massive, multi-volume Shaw biography by Michael Holyrod. My copy of that is also in storage, but I will get them from the library at some point. I have other books coming in on that circle already ordered from the library that I will read first. I will head over to the college library in the next few days and see what they have, too. Once the car is fixed, I’ll do some digging in the Clark’s library, too.
It was a lovely way to spend a dreary, snowy morning, inspired by the beauty of the work these women created.
I started to do some research for the article, re-reading material I originally read in my twenties, but the contrast between May and her socialist, progressive circle and the self-involved material for the article was in too much conflict for me to deal with one right after the other.
I read the next book in the mystery series by the acquaintances from way back. The setting and background were great, but the character relationships were left so undeveloped, and the love interest didn’t even show up in the book until 7/8th of the way through it, so when they declared their love for each other at the end, it felt false. Over the three books in the series I’ve read, the relationship has been underwritten and underdeveloped (and they certainly haven’t spent much time with each other), so the declaration doesn’t land properly. I can’t source the final book in the series through the library even as an e-book, so I don’t know how it all played out. (The series has been out of print for a good long time). If the relationship had been more in balance with the plot (and it could have, without taking away from the plot), I think the series would have worked better (and probably lasted more than four books).
It didn’t live up to the promise of the premise, which is something I find a lot in script analysis work, but here it came up in a series of novels.
The crockpot dinner was good – potato, ham, cheese casserole-type thing. Sort of like a croque monsieur, but with potato rather than bread, and done in a crockpot.
Slept well, up at the normal time on Sunday, good morning routine. Switched out a bunch of winter/Valentine’s stuff with springier, Ostara/Easter stuff. And switched out the heart on the front door with shamrocks.
The neighbors have started decorating their doors, too, and using fun mats. Now that the building is painted, everyone is inspired.
Did the Community Tarot Reading for the Week, which you can read here. I wasn’t happy to see the Tower as central, but the other cards are very positive, so I’m intrigued by the week’s potential.
Sunday was day before the dark moon, always my least energetic day of the month.
Around noon, I wrapped up and went down to Brewster’s Thrift, the new thrift store that opened across from MASSMoCA a few months back. I’ve been hearing good things about it. The assortment is very eclectic and interesting. I found a lovely, silver-plated candleholder with intricate grapes and other summery/harvest raised detail. I posted a photo on Instagram.
Ran another errand on the way home. It was sunny and much warmer than I expected. I had too many layers on, which I guess is a good thing.
I had a quiet afternoon, and cooked a tuna/vegetable/pasta/pesto dish in the evening.
Read a charming and fun first book in a series that understood typical conventions and chose to break them in interesting ways that served the story, characters, and genre. I’m looking forward to reading the second book in the series.
Up at the normal time, the morning routine was fine. Did the rounds with the week’s intent and the tarot post. Got through some email. No matter how much email I slog through, there’s always more. I’m unsubscribing from a bunch of lists, including authors who do not support my work as a colleague, but are always marketing at me. Read the two scripts for the evening’s Read ‘n Rant and made notes for the evening’s discussion.
We had our monthly Honor Roll! Session from noon to two. It was a nice turnout, and we all got a lot done on our various projects. We felt so good by the end of the two hours!
I got the opening of I WILL BE DIFFERENT, and the next scene. I’ve been playing with ideas in the morning free write, and decided to start with Josephine in the midst of handling five children and her husband and everything, and Alice at age 10. The same actor can play Amanda as a child a few sections later. I’ve been debating whether the first mother should be named Josephine or Margaret. In the free write, I’ve been calling her Margaret, but in these pages, she came out as Josephine, with “Maggie” being Alice’s older sister. I’m pretty sure I will double cast Josephine and Milly. It’s pretty clear in the later sections that Josephine died before Milly was born.
I had planned to finish the Alice section first, but because I’m struggling to get the timeline right with years/historical events, I was stuck. I did set the Josephine section/Alice’s childhood in my hometown of Rye, before Playland was built. I have to figure out one or two more Josephine/Alice scenes, and that will give me a better idea of the when with Alice/Archie, and then I’ll know how to complete the Alice section. If I just cut where Alice and Archie talk about him going to war, I can fix a lot. Yes, that scene is good, but it doesn’t fit the timeline, unless it’s Word War I, and then it sets everything else out of whack. So I basically have somewhere between three and five more scenes to write, and then I’ll have a rough assembly of way too much material that I can then hone down.
Stage plays often have a much longer development process than other types of work, but this one is even longer. I’d hoped to have it ready for a particular submission call to which I’ve been invited at the end of this August, but I can’t see how it will be done, and through enough drafts to make it viable. I may have to finish a different full-length between now and then that’s less complicated to submit this year, and then submit I WILL BE DIFFERENT next year.
I also have to fact check some of my hometown’s history pre-Playland. I sort of remember it, from some research years ago, but I have to recheck it. And it’s not like anything worthwhile comes up in Google anymore, so I’ll dig into the Westchester Archives online information, or into the Rye Historical Society’s information.
I also got the list of dates to paint the gallery for the upcoming GLOW show in March, so I have to figure out which times and dates I can help out.
I did some housework in the afternoon, in preparation for today’s Lunar New Year, and took out the garbage, etc. The dumpster is emptied Tuesday and Friday mornings, so I had to squish the bags into a very full dumpster, but I got them in.
I did some work relevant to the dark moon.
Assets for Artists sent a two -year follow-up from my time in the cohort, so I filled that out for them.
Leftovers for dinner. In the evening, I joined the Athena Project’s Read ‘n Rant discussion. I had been sent one of the wrong plays, so I kept quiet in the discussion for one of them. There’s no reason for me to make things about me instead of the play. I mean, in every group, there’s always someone who hasn’t read the play, or hasn’t finished the play (or book or whatever in the relevant group), but has to take up time and space in the discussion anyway, making it about them. There was that last night, too, but I was not that person! I was able to join the discussion for the other play, which I’d read, so that was fun. Charlotte slept through the whole thing. Bea and Tessa were there at the beginning, and then settled down.
I’m looking forward to my play, THE WOMEN ON THE BRIDGE, being part of next month’s discussion!
It was 10:30 by the time the discussion was over (Athena is based in Colorado, on mountain time). Then, of course, I needed transition time before bed, so I read for a bit.
Dreamed about working shows all night, so woke up feeling like I’d already put in a full week.
The morning routine was fine, the free write was sorting out stuff for I WILL BE DIFFERENT.
We are having pancakes for breakfast, because it’s Fat Tuesday.
On today’s agenda: writing, ghostwriting, an errand, packing up some things that need to be mailed tomorrow, celebrating Lunar New Year. We are wearing lots of red today in honor of it, but no black or white.
Have a good one!
#astrology #books #playwrighting #reading #shopping #theatre #thriftStore #writing -
Tues. Feb. 17, 2026: Welcoming the Fire Horse
image courtesy of Erkut2 from PixabayTuesday, February 17, 2026
New Moon
Jupiter Retrograde
Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras
Chinese Lunar New Year
Solar Eclipse
Cloudy and cold
All the things going on in the heavens today! Whew!
Happy Mardi Gras, and Year of the Fire Horse! Let’s hope we’re racing to some positive, collective change.
You can read the Community Tarot Reading for the Week here. Still on the Enchanted Tarot.
I put in the Instacart order first thing on Friday morning. It shouldn’t be as stressful as I find it. I’m making a list and trusting someone else to go down the list and get the stuff. There’s no reason for me to worry so much. It was fine last week.
The cats are starting to shed their winter coats. That means the worst of the cold is over, and that I need to vacuum multiple times a week.
I’ve been frustrated with the 45-day art journaling workshop for awhile now. The prompts have been too much psychobabble and not enough creative expansion. They also seem somewhat familiar in the wrong way, but I can’t put my finger on why. Plus, one never knows when they will show up, so it’s been difficult to plan time to do it. Nothing came through at all on Thursday, and then, on Friday, there was suddenly an email that the workshop leader decided to take a vacation for her son’s school break and “pause.” No idea if/when it starts up again. Maybe Monday, but who knows? So, you ask people to commit for 45 days, and then you haven’t planned everything out ahead of time? Why would you start it if you knew you were going on vacation? It’s not like one doesn’t know about school breaks ahead of time. Why not either schedule posts or wait to start the 45-day stretch until you get back? If it was impromptu, as she claimed, she could still schedule things to post. This is not someone who can be trusted. I planned to grit my teeth and stick it out, because I believe in honoring my commitments, but no. I am done. That’s not creating a safe and creative space for people. Safe space means one can count on it and trust it. This behavior does not do it. It wasn’t an unexpected emergency. It’s being untrustworthy and not being honest with people who committed time and energy toward your event when you asked them to do so, after weeks of intense promotion.
A new prompt came through on Monday morning, and I considered starting up again, but my instinct was not to. It’s not the right atmosphere for me. So I unsubscribed, and it was like a weight off.
Buh-bye.
And I will avoid this person and her work in the future.
There are still plenty of pages in that journal that can be dedicated to other things. I will find a different way to work on the art/text stuff.
I bundled up, packed up the books, and headed out mid-morning. The temperature was higher than it’s been and the sun was out, but the wind made it feel colder. I trudged up to the library, dropped off books and picked up the 12 that waited for me. Good thing I had the rolly cart! I rolled down the hill and mailed the cards and bills that needed to go out. The post office is only about a block from the library, and downhill. I ran another errand. I got everything home and up the stairs.
I managed it all in 45 minutes, which was pretty darn good.
I basked in the sun with the cats for a bit, and finished reading a literary novel that wanted to be AS Byatt’s POSSESSION, but was not. There were some good portions of it, but it added an additional POV in the last quarter of the book in a way that didn’t work for me, structurally.
I had to be available during the shopping, and had to change a couple of things, but it was no big deal. The order was there by 1:30 again, although it was a different shopper who was more interested in being on her phone than paying attention to the two minutes for customer drop-off, which annoyed me.
If the weather is at all amenable at the end of this week, I’m taking the cart and going my damn self. While I’m grateful the service exists, I’d rather be in the store myself seeing what looks good and adjusting as needed. I like to have a basic idea of what I want/need (and my list), but then see what looks good and is on sale and adjust. That means moving a bunch of ingredients around in a way that doesn’t really work if someone else uses a pre-written list. It’s totally a me problem, not at all anything wrong with the service itself.
I did some community-based work in the afternoon, and also read the February pick for the Agatha Christie book club, MRS. MCGINTY’S DEAD. It took me a bit to get into it, but once I was intrigued, it carried me along. I paged through the research books for the two different projects that came in, trying to decide which one to spend time with first.
I re-read what I have of the play LAUGHTER AND TURPENTINE (the Playland Painters one) so I can figure out what needs to happen next. I sorted through some possibilities in Saturday morning’s free write.
We had a late lunch of pizza, and then I didn’t feel like dinner. I made sure my mom ate something, but I wound up having a sandwich around 9:30 at night. I read the first book of a new-to-me series (it came out in 2011), that I liked on character and setting arcs. The plot was a little shaky, but interesting enough so I’ll read the second book in the series, at the very least, and see.
Slept well. It was supposed to snow overnight and be done by 7, but didn’t start until nearly 8 on Saturday morning. I had a good morning routine. I forgot to mention that Thursday was Day 175 of the free write sessions.
I tried making omlettes again for breakfast. I’m not good at them, but I keep trying. My favorite Elizabeth David book is AN OMLETTE AND A GLASS OF WINE. I went back and re-read her instructions on making an omlette and tried again. I still don’t have the foldy thing down, and the bottom is too brown, but the inside was fluffy with just a little runny for the cheese and herbs. It tasted good, even if the look of it wouldn’t win any awards. I keep trying. The pan I used was too small, probably, too.
After breakfast, I got the crockpot meal going. Instead of the usual Tuesday crockpot, we decided to do it on Saturday. Since Tuesday (today) is Chinese Lunar New Year, I’m making a special meal for the holiday, and moved the crockpot meal to the weekend.
Then some housework, because there is always housework.
I love following decorating and thrifting and cooking and sewing and gardening accounts on IG. (I mean, cats, too, but that’s something different). Even when something isn’t my style (like neutrals) or something that I would do, I enjoy seeing what other people are up to, and how happy it makes them. And I do learn stuff. But, I mean, sourcing at thrift stores has always been my first choice. It started way back when I was a teenager prop shopping for shows. Things with stories and histories have always been my preference. I love that more people are discovering the fun of it, although when I see a 20-something act like they are the first person to ever figure it out, I do roll my eyes. But that’s also part of being 20-something. I have no doubt I was just as annoying.
It snowed all morning, and I didn’t feel like trotting around in it, so I stayed home. I went through an exhibition catalogue built around May Morris’s work as background research for the play I want to write inspired by Mary Annie Sloane’s sketch of the women working in May’s embroidery workshop. I found names, so I can actually research them. One of the women who worked with May for years was Lily Yeats, the poet’s sister, although to hear tell, there was tension between Lily and May. Another embroidery worker was the actress Florence Farr. It took me a bit to figure out why the name was familiar. She was friendly with Annie Besant (who is mentioned in my play FALL FOREVER) and with Pamela Coleman Smith (who illustrated the Rider Waite tarot), and they were all involved in the occult society The Golden Dawn together. I hadn’t put together the concurrent timelines in my brain. The more I dig, the more interesting connections I find with other interests and projects. Quite the web!
So glad that May kept detailed records of the workroom. I’m hoping I can find a digitized version online, a little later in the research, and flip through it.
There isn’t a lot of material easily available on Mary Annie Sloane and her work, but I will keep digging. As much as May’s designs and exquisite work captured me, it was Mary Annie’s sketch that lit the fire under the idea.
I have at least six months’ to a year’s worth of research to do before I even start writing, but having names and women to research is a terrific starting point, much like with my Playland Painters. The grant proposal for this project is out. If I get the grant, the project moves into a priority position in the queue. If not, I can leisurely research until the project’s turn. Knowing something about the women who worked in the embroidery workshop and what a range of interests they all had changes the original character arcs I played with quite a bit. These are far richer and more interesting. May was known for paying her workers well, and encouraging financial literacy and independence.
Gabriel Dante Rosetti was Williams Morris’s business partner (he was May’s father, yes, that William Morris), and Rosetti had an affair with her mother, Jane. May and Jane often sat for Rosetti. The big Rosetti volume I have from my time working at Abbeville Press is in storage, but I’m eager to get my hands on it again.
May and George Bernard Shaw were in love, although they each married others, and remained good friends all their lives. So now I have to re-read that massive, multi-volume Shaw biography by Michael Holyrod. My copy of that is also in storage, but I will get them from the library at some point. I have other books coming in on that circle already ordered from the library that I will read first. I will head over to the college library in the next few days and see what they have, too. Once the car is fixed, I’ll do some digging in the Clark’s library, too.
It was a lovely way to spend a dreary, snowy morning, inspired by the beauty of the work these women created.
I started to do some research for the article, re-reading material I originally read in my twenties, but the contrast between May and her socialist, progressive circle and the self-involved material for the article was in too much conflict for me to deal with one right after the other.
I read the next book in the mystery series by the acquaintances from way back. The setting and background were great, but the character relationships were left so undeveloped, and the love interest didn’t even show up in the book until 7/8th of the way through it, so when they declared their love for each other at the end, it felt false. Over the three books in the series I’ve read, the relationship has been underwritten and underdeveloped (and they certainly haven’t spent much time with each other), so the declaration doesn’t land properly. I can’t source the final book in the series through the library even as an e-book, so I don’t know how it all played out. (The series has been out of print for a good long time). If the relationship had been more in balance with the plot (and it could have, without taking away from the plot), I think the series would have worked better (and probably lasted more than four books).
It didn’t live up to the promise of the premise, which is something I find a lot in script analysis work, but here it came up in a series of novels.
The crockpot dinner was good – potato, ham, cheese casserole-type thing. Sort of like a croque monsieur, but with potato rather than bread, and done in a crockpot.
Slept well, up at the normal time on Sunday, good morning routine. Switched out a bunch of winter/Valentine’s stuff with springier, Ostara/Easter stuff. And switched out the heart on the front door with shamrocks.
The neighbors have started decorating their doors, too, and using fun mats. Now that the building is painted, everyone is inspired.
Did the Community Tarot Reading for the Week, which you can read here. I wasn’t happy to see the Tower as central, but the other cards are very positive, so I’m intrigued by the week’s potential.
Sunday was day before the dark moon, always my least energetic day of the month.
Around noon, I wrapped up and went down to Brewster’s Thrift, the new thrift store that opened across from MASSMoCA a few months back. I’ve been hearing good things about it. The assortment is very eclectic and interesting. I found a lovely, silver-plated candleholder with intricate grapes and other summery/harvest raised detail. I posted a photo on Instagram.
Ran another errand on the way home. It was sunny and much warmer than I expected. I had too many layers on, which I guess is a good thing.
I had a quiet afternoon, and cooked a tuna/vegetable/pasta/pesto dish in the evening.
Read a charming and fun first book in a series that understood typical conventions and chose to break them in interesting ways that served the story, characters, and genre. I’m looking forward to reading the second book in the series.
Up at the normal time, the morning routine was fine. Did the rounds with the week’s intent and the tarot post. Got through some email. No matter how much email I slog through, there’s always more. I’m unsubscribing from a bunch of lists, including authors who do not support my work as a colleague, but are always marketing at me. Read the two scripts for the evening’s Read ‘n Rant and made notes for the evening’s discussion.
We had our monthly Honor Roll! Session from noon to two. It was a nice turnout, and we all got a lot done on our various projects. We felt so good by the end of the two hours!
I got the opening of I WILL BE DIFFERENT, and the next scene. I’ve been playing with ideas in the morning free write, and decided to start with Josephine in the midst of handling five children and her husband and everything, and Alice at age 10. The same actor can play Amanda as a child a few sections later. I’ve been debating whether the first mother should be named Josephine or Margaret. In the free write, I’ve been calling her Margaret, but in these pages, she came out as Josephine, with “Maggie” being Alice’s older sister. I’m pretty sure I will double cast Josephine and Milly. It’s pretty clear in the later sections that Josephine died before Milly was born.
I had planned to finish the Alice section first, but because I’m struggling to get the timeline right with years/historical events, I was stuck. I did set the Josephine section/Alice’s childhood in my hometown of Rye, before Playland was built. I have to figure out one or two more Josephine/Alice scenes, and that will give me a better idea of the when with Alice/Archie, and then I’ll know how to complete the Alice section. If I just cut where Alice and Archie talk about him going to war, I can fix a lot. Yes, that scene is good, but it doesn’t fit the timeline, unless it’s Word War I, and then it sets everything else out of whack. So I basically have somewhere between three and five more scenes to write, and then I’ll have a rough assembly of way too much material that I can then hone down.
Stage plays often have a much longer development process than other types of work, but this one is even longer. I’d hoped to have it ready for a particular submission call to which I’ve been invited at the end of this August, but I can’t see how it will be done, and through enough drafts to make it viable. I may have to finish a different full-length between now and then that’s less complicated to submit this year, and then submit I WILL BE DIFFERENT next year.
I also have to fact check some of my hometown’s history pre-Playland. I sort of remember it, from some research years ago, but I have to recheck it. And it’s not like anything worthwhile comes up in Google anymore, so I’ll dig into the Westchester Archives online information, or into the Rye Historical Society’s information.
I also got the list of dates to paint the gallery for the upcoming GLOW show in March, so I have to figure out which times and dates I can help out.
I did some housework in the afternoon, in preparation for today’s Lunar New Year, and took out the garbage, etc. The dumpster is emptied Tuesday and Friday mornings, so I had to squish the bags into a very full dumpster, but I got them in.
I did some work relevant to the dark moon.
Assets for Artists sent a two -year follow-up from my time in the cohort, so I filled that out for them.
Leftovers for dinner. In the evening, I joined the Athena Project’s Read ‘n Rant discussion. I had been sent one of the wrong plays, so I kept quiet in the discussion for one of them. There’s no reason for me to make things about me instead of the play. I mean, in every group, there’s always someone who hasn’t read the play, or hasn’t finished the play (or book or whatever in the relevant group), but has to take up time and space in the discussion anyway, making it about them. There was that last night, too, but I was not that person! I was able to join the discussion for the other play, which I’d read, so that was fun. Charlotte slept through the whole thing. Bea and Tessa were there at the beginning, and then settled down.
I’m looking forward to my play, THE WOMEN ON THE BRIDGE, being part of next month’s discussion!
It was 10:30 by the time the discussion was over (Athena is based in Colorado, on mountain time). Then, of course, I needed transition time before bed, so I read for a bit.
Dreamed about working shows all night, so woke up feeling like I’d already put in a full week.
The morning routine was fine, the free write was sorting out stuff for I WILL BE DIFFERENT.
We are having pancakes for breakfast, because it’s Fat Tuesday.
On today’s agenda: writing, ghostwriting, an errand, packing up some things that need to be mailed tomorrow, celebrating Lunar New Year. We are wearing lots of red today in honor of it, but no black or white.
Have a good one!
#astrology #books #playwrighting #reading #shopping #theatre #thriftStore #writing -
Tues. Feb. 17, 2026: Welcoming the Fire Horse
image courtesy of Erkut2 from PixabayTuesday, February 17, 2026
New Moon
Jupiter Retrograde
Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras
Chinese Lunar New Year
Solar Eclipse
Cloudy and cold
All the things going on in the heavens today! Whew!
Happy Mardi Gras, and Year of the Fire Horse! Let’s hope we’re racing to some positive, collective change.
You can read the Community Tarot Reading for the Week here. Still on the Enchanted Tarot.
I put in the Instacart order first thing on Friday morning. It shouldn’t be as stressful as I find it. I’m making a list and trusting someone else to go down the list and get the stuff. There’s no reason for me to worry so much. It was fine last week.
The cats are starting to shed their winter coats. That means the worst of the cold is over, and that I need to vacuum multiple times a week.
I’ve been frustrated with the 45-day art journaling workshop for awhile now. The prompts have been too much psychobabble and not enough creative expansion. They also seem somewhat familiar in the wrong way, but I can’t put my finger on why. Plus, one never knows when they will show up, so it’s been difficult to plan time to do it. Nothing came through at all on Thursday, and then, on Friday, there was suddenly an email that the workshop leader decided to take a vacation for her son’s school break and “pause.” No idea if/when it starts up again. Maybe Monday, but who knows? So, you ask people to commit for 45 days, and then you haven’t planned everything out ahead of time? Why would you start it if you knew you were going on vacation? It’s not like one doesn’t know about school breaks ahead of time. Why not either schedule posts or wait to start the 45-day stretch until you get back? If it was impromptu, as she claimed, she could still schedule things to post. This is not someone who can be trusted. I planned to grit my teeth and stick it out, because I believe in honoring my commitments, but no. I am done. That’s not creating a safe and creative space for people. Safe space means one can count on it and trust it. This behavior does not do it. It wasn’t an unexpected emergency. It’s being untrustworthy and not being honest with people who committed time and energy toward your event when you asked them to do so, after weeks of intense promotion.
A new prompt came through on Monday morning, and I considered starting up again, but my instinct was not to. It’s not the right atmosphere for me. So I unsubscribed, and it was like a weight off.
Buh-bye.
And I will avoid this person and her work in the future.
There are still plenty of pages in that journal that can be dedicated to other things. I will find a different way to work on the art/text stuff.
I bundled up, packed up the books, and headed out mid-morning. The temperature was higher than it’s been and the sun was out, but the wind made it feel colder. I trudged up to the library, dropped off books and picked up the 12 that waited for me. Good thing I had the rolly cart! I rolled down the hill and mailed the cards and bills that needed to go out. The post office is only about a block from the library, and downhill. I ran another errand. I got everything home and up the stairs.
I managed it all in 45 minutes, which was pretty darn good.
I basked in the sun with the cats for a bit, and finished reading a literary novel that wanted to be AS Byatt’s POSSESSION, but was not. There were some good portions of it, but it added an additional POV in the last quarter of the book in a way that didn’t work for me, structurally.
I had to be available during the shopping, and had to change a couple of things, but it was no big deal. The order was there by 1:30 again, although it was a different shopper who was more interested in being on her phone than paying attention to the two minutes for customer drop-off, which annoyed me.
If the weather is at all amenable at the end of this week, I’m taking the cart and going my damn self. While I’m grateful the service exists, I’d rather be in the store myself seeing what looks good and adjusting as needed. I like to have a basic idea of what I want/need (and my list), but then see what looks good and is on sale and adjust. That means moving a bunch of ingredients around in a way that doesn’t really work if someone else uses a pre-written list. It’s totally a me problem, not at all anything wrong with the service itself.
I did some community-based work in the afternoon, and also read the February pick for the Agatha Christie book club, MRS. MCGINTY’S DEAD. It took me a bit to get into it, but once I was intrigued, it carried me along. I paged through the research books for the two different projects that came in, trying to decide which one to spend time with first.
I re-read what I have of the play LAUGHTER AND TURPENTINE (the Playland Painters one) so I can figure out what needs to happen next. I sorted through some possibilities in Saturday morning’s free write.
We had a late lunch of pizza, and then I didn’t feel like dinner. I made sure my mom ate something, but I wound up having a sandwich around 9:30 at night. I read the first book of a new-to-me series (it came out in 2011), that I liked on character and setting arcs. The plot was a little shaky, but interesting enough so I’ll read the second book in the series, at the very least, and see.
Slept well. It was supposed to snow overnight and be done by 7, but didn’t start until nearly 8 on Saturday morning. I had a good morning routine. I forgot to mention that Thursday was Day 175 of the free write sessions.
I tried making omlettes again for breakfast. I’m not good at them, but I keep trying. My favorite Elizabeth David book is AN OMLETTE AND A GLASS OF WINE. I went back and re-read her instructions on making an omlette and tried again. I still don’t have the foldy thing down, and the bottom is too brown, but the inside was fluffy with just a little runny for the cheese and herbs. It tasted good, even if the look of it wouldn’t win any awards. I keep trying. The pan I used was too small, probably, too.
After breakfast, I got the crockpot meal going. Instead of the usual Tuesday crockpot, we decided to do it on Saturday. Since Tuesday (today) is Chinese Lunar New Year, I’m making a special meal for the holiday, and moved the crockpot meal to the weekend.
Then some housework, because there is always housework.
I love following decorating and thrifting and cooking and sewing and gardening accounts on IG. (I mean, cats, too, but that’s something different). Even when something isn’t my style (like neutrals) or something that I would do, I enjoy seeing what other people are up to, and how happy it makes them. And I do learn stuff. But, I mean, sourcing at thrift stores has always been my first choice. It started way back when I was a teenager prop shopping for shows. Things with stories and histories have always been my preference. I love that more people are discovering the fun of it, although when I see a 20-something act like they are the first person to ever figure it out, I do roll my eyes. But that’s also part of being 20-something. I have no doubt I was just as annoying.
It snowed all morning, and I didn’t feel like trotting around in it, so I stayed home. I went through an exhibition catalogue built around May Morris’s work as background research for the play I want to write inspired by Mary Annie Sloane’s sketch of the women working in May’s embroidery workshop. I found names, so I can actually research them. One of the women who worked with May for years was Lily Yeats, the poet’s sister, although to hear tell, there was tension between Lily and May. Another embroidery worker was the actress Florence Farr. It took me a bit to figure out why the name was familiar. She was friendly with Annie Besant (who is mentioned in my play FALL FOREVER) and with Pamela Coleman Smith (who illustrated the Rider Waite tarot), and they were all involved in the occult society The Golden Dawn together. I hadn’t put together the concurrent timelines in my brain. The more I dig, the more interesting connections I find with other interests and projects. Quite the web!
So glad that May kept detailed records of the workroom. I’m hoping I can find a digitized version online, a little later in the research, and flip through it.
There isn’t a lot of material easily available on Mary Annie Sloane and her work, but I will keep digging. As much as May’s designs and exquisite work captured me, it was Mary Annie’s sketch that lit the fire under the idea.
I have at least six months’ to a year’s worth of research to do before I even start writing, but having names and women to research is a terrific starting point, much like with my Playland Painters. The grant proposal for this project is out. If I get the grant, the project moves into a priority position in the queue. If not, I can leisurely research until the project’s turn. Knowing something about the women who worked in the embroidery workshop and what a range of interests they all had changes the original character arcs I played with quite a bit. These are far richer and more interesting. May was known for paying her workers well, and encouraging financial literacy and independence.
Gabriel Dante Rosetti was Williams Morris’s business partner (he was May’s father, yes, that William Morris), and Rosetti had an affair with her mother, Jane. May and Jane often sat for Rosetti. The big Rosetti volume I have from my time working at Abbeville Press is in storage, but I’m eager to get my hands on it again.
May and George Bernard Shaw were in love, although they each married others, and remained good friends all their lives. So now I have to re-read that massive, multi-volume Shaw biography by Michael Holyrod. My copy of that is also in storage, but I will get them from the library at some point. I have other books coming in on that circle already ordered from the library that I will read first. I will head over to the college library in the next few days and see what they have, too. Once the car is fixed, I’ll do some digging in the Clark’s library, too.
It was a lovely way to spend a dreary, snowy morning, inspired by the beauty of the work these women created.
I started to do some research for the article, re-reading material I originally read in my twenties, but the contrast between May and her socialist, progressive circle and the self-involved material for the article was in too much conflict for me to deal with one right after the other.
I read the next book in the mystery series by the acquaintances from way back. The setting and background were great, but the character relationships were left so undeveloped, and the love interest didn’t even show up in the book until 7/8th of the way through it, so when they declared their love for each other at the end, it felt false. Over the three books in the series I’ve read, the relationship has been underwritten and underdeveloped (and they certainly haven’t spent much time with each other), so the declaration doesn’t land properly. I can’t source the final book in the series through the library even as an e-book, so I don’t know how it all played out. (The series has been out of print for a good long time). If the relationship had been more in balance with the plot (and it could have, without taking away from the plot), I think the series would have worked better (and probably lasted more than four books).
It didn’t live up to the promise of the premise, which is something I find a lot in script analysis work, but here it came up in a series of novels.
The crockpot dinner was good – potato, ham, cheese casserole-type thing. Sort of like a croque monsieur, but with potato rather than bread, and done in a crockpot.
Slept well, up at the normal time on Sunday, good morning routine. Switched out a bunch of winter/Valentine’s stuff with springier, Ostara/Easter stuff. And switched out the heart on the front door with shamrocks.
The neighbors have started decorating their doors, too, and using fun mats. Now that the building is painted, everyone is inspired.
Did the Community Tarot Reading for the Week, which you can read here. I wasn’t happy to see the Tower as central, but the other cards are very positive, so I’m intrigued by the week’s potential.
Sunday was day before the dark moon, always my least energetic day of the month.
Around noon, I wrapped up and went down to Brewster’s Thrift, the new thrift store that opened across from MASSMoCA a few months back. I’ve been hearing good things about it. The assortment is very eclectic and interesting. I found a lovely, silver-plated candleholder with intricate grapes and other summery/harvest raised detail. I posted a photo on Instagram.
Ran another errand on the way home. It was sunny and much warmer than I expected. I had too many layers on, which I guess is a good thing.
I had a quiet afternoon, and cooked a tuna/vegetable/pasta/pesto dish in the evening.
Read a charming and fun first book in a series that understood typical conventions and chose to break them in interesting ways that served the story, characters, and genre. I’m looking forward to reading the second book in the series.
Up at the normal time, the morning routine was fine. Did the rounds with the week’s intent and the tarot post. Got through some email. No matter how much email I slog through, there’s always more. I’m unsubscribing from a bunch of lists, including authors who do not support my work as a colleague, but are always marketing at me. Read the two scripts for the evening’s Read ‘n Rant and made notes for the evening’s discussion.
We had our monthly Honor Roll! Session from noon to two. It was a nice turnout, and we all got a lot done on our various projects. We felt so good by the end of the two hours!
I got the opening of I WILL BE DIFFERENT, and the next scene. I’ve been playing with ideas in the morning free write, and decided to start with Josephine in the midst of handling five children and her husband and everything, and Alice at age 10. The same actor can play Amanda as a child a few sections later. I’ve been debating whether the first mother should be named Josephine or Margaret. In the free write, I’ve been calling her Margaret, but in these pages, she came out as Josephine, with “Maggie” being Alice’s older sister. I’m pretty sure I will double cast Josephine and Milly. It’s pretty clear in the later sections that Josephine died before Milly was born.
I had planned to finish the Alice section first, but because I’m struggling to get the timeline right with years/historical events, I was stuck. I did set the Josephine section/Alice’s childhood in my hometown of Rye, before Playland was built. I have to figure out one or two more Josephine/Alice scenes, and that will give me a better idea of the when with Alice/Archie, and then I’ll know how to complete the Alice section. If I just cut where Alice and Archie talk about him going to war, I can fix a lot. Yes, that scene is good, but it doesn’t fit the timeline, unless it’s Word War I, and then it sets everything else out of whack. So I basically have somewhere between three and five more scenes to write, and then I’ll have a rough assembly of way too much material that I can then hone down.
Stage plays often have a much longer development process than other types of work, but this one is even longer. I’d hoped to have it ready for a particular submission call to which I’ve been invited at the end of this August, but I can’t see how it will be done, and through enough drafts to make it viable. I may have to finish a different full-length between now and then that’s less complicated to submit this year, and then submit I WILL BE DIFFERENT next year.
I also have to fact check some of my hometown’s history pre-Playland. I sort of remember it, from some research years ago, but I have to recheck it. And it’s not like anything worthwhile comes up in Google anymore, so I’ll dig into the Westchester Archives online information, or into the Rye Historical Society’s information.
I also got the list of dates to paint the gallery for the upcoming GLOW show in March, so I have to figure out which times and dates I can help out.
I did some housework in the afternoon, in preparation for today’s Lunar New Year, and took out the garbage, etc. The dumpster is emptied Tuesday and Friday mornings, so I had to squish the bags into a very full dumpster, but I got them in.
I did some work relevant to the dark moon.
Assets for Artists sent a two -year follow-up from my time in the cohort, so I filled that out for them.
Leftovers for dinner. In the evening, I joined the Athena Project’s Read ‘n Rant discussion. I had been sent one of the wrong plays, so I kept quiet in the discussion for one of them. There’s no reason for me to make things about me instead of the play. I mean, in every group, there’s always someone who hasn’t read the play, or hasn’t finished the play (or book or whatever in the relevant group), but has to take up time and space in the discussion anyway, making it about them. There was that last night, too, but I was not that person! I was able to join the discussion for the other play, which I’d read, so that was fun. Charlotte slept through the whole thing. Bea and Tessa were there at the beginning, and then settled down.
I’m looking forward to my play, THE WOMEN ON THE BRIDGE, being part of next month’s discussion!
It was 10:30 by the time the discussion was over (Athena is based in Colorado, on mountain time). Then, of course, I needed transition time before bed, so I read for a bit.
Dreamed about working shows all night, so woke up feeling like I’d already put in a full week.
The morning routine was fine, the free write was sorting out stuff for I WILL BE DIFFERENT.
We are having pancakes for breakfast, because it’s Fat Tuesday.
On today’s agenda: writing, ghostwriting, an errand, packing up some things that need to be mailed tomorrow, celebrating Lunar New Year. We are wearing lots of red today in honor of it, but no black or white.
Have a good one!
#astrology #books #playwrighting #reading #shopping #theatre #thriftStore #writing -
Tues. Feb. 17, 2026: Welcoming the Fire Horse
image courtesy of Erkut2 from PixabayTuesday, February 17, 2026
New Moon
Jupiter Retrograde
Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras
Chinese Lunar New Year
Solar Eclipse
Cloudy and cold
All the things going on in the heavens today! Whew!
Happy Mardi Gras, and Year of the Fire Horse! Let’s hope we’re racing to some positive, collective change.
You can read the Community Tarot Reading for the Week here. Still on the Enchanted Tarot.
I put in the Instacart order first thing on Friday morning. It shouldn’t be as stressful as I find it. I’m making a list and trusting someone else to go down the list and get the stuff. There’s no reason for me to worry so much. It was fine last week.
The cats are starting to shed their winter coats. That means the worst of the cold is over, and that I need to vacuum multiple times a week.
I’ve been frustrated with the 45-day art journaling workshop for awhile now. The prompts have been too much psychobabble and not enough creative expansion. They also seem somewhat familiar in the wrong way, but I can’t put my finger on why. Plus, one never knows when they will show up, so it’s been difficult to plan time to do it. Nothing came through at all on Thursday, and then, on Friday, there was suddenly an email that the workshop leader decided to take a vacation for her son’s school break and “pause.” No idea if/when it starts up again. Maybe Monday, but who knows? So, you ask people to commit for 45 days, and then you haven’t planned everything out ahead of time? Why would you start it if you knew you were going on vacation? It’s not like one doesn’t know about school breaks ahead of time. Why not either schedule posts or wait to start the 45-day stretch until you get back? If it was impromptu, as she claimed, she could still schedule things to post. This is not someone who can be trusted. I planned to grit my teeth and stick it out, because I believe in honoring my commitments, but no. I am done. That’s not creating a safe and creative space for people. Safe space means one can count on it and trust it. This behavior does not do it. It wasn’t an unexpected emergency. It’s being untrustworthy and not being honest with people who committed time and energy toward your event when you asked them to do so, after weeks of intense promotion.
A new prompt came through on Monday morning, and I considered starting up again, but my instinct was not to. It’s not the right atmosphere for me. So I unsubscribed, and it was like a weight off.
Buh-bye.
And I will avoid this person and her work in the future.
There are still plenty of pages in that journal that can be dedicated to other things. I will find a different way to work on the art/text stuff.
I bundled up, packed up the books, and headed out mid-morning. The temperature was higher than it’s been and the sun was out, but the wind made it feel colder. I trudged up to the library, dropped off books and picked up the 12 that waited for me. Good thing I had the rolly cart! I rolled down the hill and mailed the cards and bills that needed to go out. The post office is only about a block from the library, and downhill. I ran another errand. I got everything home and up the stairs.
I managed it all in 45 minutes, which was pretty darn good.
I basked in the sun with the cats for a bit, and finished reading a literary novel that wanted to be AS Byatt’s POSSESSION, but was not. There were some good portions of it, but it added an additional POV in the last quarter of the book in a way that didn’t work for me, structurally.
I had to be available during the shopping, and had to change a couple of things, but it was no big deal. The order was there by 1:30 again, although it was a different shopper who was more interested in being on her phone than paying attention to the two minutes for customer drop-off, which annoyed me.
If the weather is at all amenable at the end of this week, I’m taking the cart and going my damn self. While I’m grateful the service exists, I’d rather be in the store myself seeing what looks good and adjusting as needed. I like to have a basic idea of what I want/need (and my list), but then see what looks good and is on sale and adjust. That means moving a bunch of ingredients around in a way that doesn’t really work if someone else uses a pre-written list. It’s totally a me problem, not at all anything wrong with the service itself.
I did some community-based work in the afternoon, and also read the February pick for the Agatha Christie book club, MRS. MCGINTY’S DEAD. It took me a bit to get into it, but once I was intrigued, it carried me along. I paged through the research books for the two different projects that came in, trying to decide which one to spend time with first.
I re-read what I have of the play LAUGHTER AND TURPENTINE (the Playland Painters one) so I can figure out what needs to happen next. I sorted through some possibilities in Saturday morning’s free write.
We had a late lunch of pizza, and then I didn’t feel like dinner. I made sure my mom ate something, but I wound up having a sandwich around 9:30 at night. I read the first book of a new-to-me series (it came out in 2011), that I liked on character and setting arcs. The plot was a little shaky, but interesting enough so I’ll read the second book in the series, at the very least, and see.
Slept well. It was supposed to snow overnight and be done by 7, but didn’t start until nearly 8 on Saturday morning. I had a good morning routine. I forgot to mention that Thursday was Day 175 of the free write sessions.
I tried making omlettes again for breakfast. I’m not good at them, but I keep trying. My favorite Elizabeth David book is AN OMLETTE AND A GLASS OF WINE. I went back and re-read her instructions on making an omlette and tried again. I still don’t have the foldy thing down, and the bottom is too brown, but the inside was fluffy with just a little runny for the cheese and herbs. It tasted good, even if the look of it wouldn’t win any awards. I keep trying. The pan I used was too small, probably, too.
After breakfast, I got the crockpot meal going. Instead of the usual Tuesday crockpot, we decided to do it on Saturday. Since Tuesday (today) is Chinese Lunar New Year, I’m making a special meal for the holiday, and moved the crockpot meal to the weekend.
Then some housework, because there is always housework.
I love following decorating and thrifting and cooking and sewing and gardening accounts on IG. (I mean, cats, too, but that’s something different). Even when something isn’t my style (like neutrals) or something that I would do, I enjoy seeing what other people are up to, and how happy it makes them. And I do learn stuff. But, I mean, sourcing at thrift stores has always been my first choice. It started way back when I was a teenager prop shopping for shows. Things with stories and histories have always been my preference. I love that more people are discovering the fun of it, although when I see a 20-something act like they are the first person to ever figure it out, I do roll my eyes. But that’s also part of being 20-something. I have no doubt I was just as annoying.
It snowed all morning, and I didn’t feel like trotting around in it, so I stayed home. I went through an exhibition catalogue built around May Morris’s work as background research for the play I want to write inspired by Mary Annie Sloane’s sketch of the women working in May’s embroidery workshop. I found names, so I can actually research them. One of the women who worked with May for years was Lily Yeats, the poet’s sister, although to hear tell, there was tension between Lily and May. Another embroidery worker was the actress Florence Farr. It took me a bit to figure out why the name was familiar. She was friendly with Annie Besant (who is mentioned in my play FALL FOREVER) and with Pamela Coleman Smith (who illustrated the Rider Waite tarot), and they were all involved in the occult society The Golden Dawn together. I hadn’t put together the concurrent timelines in my brain. The more I dig, the more interesting connections I find with other interests and projects. Quite the web!
So glad that May kept detailed records of the workroom. I’m hoping I can find a digitized version online, a little later in the research, and flip through it.
There isn’t a lot of material easily available on Mary Annie Sloane and her work, but I will keep digging. As much as May’s designs and exquisite work captured me, it was Mary Annie’s sketch that lit the fire under the idea.
I have at least six months’ to a year’s worth of research to do before I even start writing, but having names and women to research is a terrific starting point, much like with my Playland Painters. The grant proposal for this project is out. If I get the grant, the project moves into a priority position in the queue. If not, I can leisurely research until the project’s turn. Knowing something about the women who worked in the embroidery workshop and what a range of interests they all had changes the original character arcs I played with quite a bit. These are far richer and more interesting. May was known for paying her workers well, and encouraging financial literacy and independence.
Gabriel Dante Rosetti was William Morris’s business partner (he was May’s father, yes, that William Morris), and Rosetti had an affair with her mother, Jane. May and Jane often sat for Rosetti. The big Rosetti volume I have from my time working at Abbeville Press is in storage, but I’m eager to get my hands on it again.
May and George Bernard Shaw were in love, although they each married others, and remained good friends all their lives. So now I have to re-read that massive, multi-volume Shaw biography by Michael Holyrod. My copy of that is also in storage, but I will get them from the library at some point. I have other books coming in on that circle already ordered from the library that I will read first. I will head over to the college library in the next few days and see what they have, too. Once the car is fixed, I’ll do some digging in the Clark’s library, too.
It was a lovely way to spend a dreary, snowy morning, inspired by the beauty of the work these women created.
I started to do some research for the article, re-reading material I originally read in my twenties, but the contrast between May and her socialist, progressive circle and the self-involved material for the article was in too much conflict for me to deal with one right after the other.
I read the next book in the mystery series by the acquaintances from way back. The setting and background were great, but the character relationships were left so undeveloped, and the love interest didn’t even show up in the book until 7/8th of the way through it, so when they declared their love for each other at the end, it felt false. Over the three books in the series I’ve read, the relationship has been underwritten and underdeveloped (and they certainly haven’t spent much time with each other), so the declaration doesn’t land properly. I can’t source the final book in the series through the library even as an e-book, so I don’t know how it all played out. (The series has been out of print for a good long time). If the relationship had been more in balance with the plot (and it could have, without taking away from the plot), I think the series would have worked better (and probably lasted more than four books).
It didn’t live up to the promise of the premise, which is something I find a lot in script analysis work, but here it came up in a series of novels.
The crockpot dinner was good – potato, ham, cheese casserole-type thing. Sort of like a croque monsieur, but with potato rather than bread, and done in a crockpot.
Slept well, up at the normal time on Sunday, good morning routine. Switched out a bunch of winter/Valentine’s stuff with springier, Ostara/Easter stuff. And switched out the heart on the front door with shamrocks.
The neighbors have started decorating their doors, too, and using fun mats. Now that the building is painted, everyone is inspired.
Did the Community Tarot Reading for the Week, which you can read here. I wasn’t happy to see the Tower as central, but the other cards are very positive, so I’m intrigued by the week’s potential.
Sunday was day before the dark moon, always my least energetic day of the month.
Around noon, I wrapped up and went down to Brewster’s Thrift, the new thrift store that opened across from MASSMoCA a few months back. I’ve been hearing good things about it. The assortment is very eclectic and interesting. I found a lovely, silver-plated candleholder with intricate grapes and other summery/harvest raised detail. I posted a photo on Instagram.
Ran another errand on the way home. It was sunny and much warmer than I expected. I had too many layers on, which I guess is a good thing.
I had a quiet afternoon, and cooked a tuna/vegetable/pasta/pesto dish in the evening.
Read a charming and fun first book in a series that understood typical conventions and chose to break them in interesting ways that served the story, characters, and genre. I’m looking forward to reading the second book in the series.
Up at the normal time, the morning routine was fine. Did the rounds with the week’s intent and the tarot post. Got through some email. No matter how much email I slog through, there’s always more. I’m unsubscribing from a bunch of lists, including authors who do not support my work as a colleague, but are always marketing at me. Read the two scripts for the evening’s Read ‘n Rant and made notes for the evening’s discussion.
We had our monthly Honor Roll! Session from noon to two. It was a nice turnout, and we all got a lot done on our various projects. We felt so good by the end of the two hours!
I got the opening of I WILL BE DIFFERENT, and the next scene. I’ve been playing with ideas in the morning free write, and decided to start with Josephine in the midst of handling five children and her husband and everything, and Alice at age 10. The same actor can play Amanda as a child a few sections later. I’ve been debating whether the first mother should be named Josephine or Margaret. In the free write, I’ve been calling her Margaret, but in these pages, she came out as Josephine, with “Maggie” being Alice’s older sister. I’m pretty sure I will double cast Josephine and Milly. It’s pretty clear in the later sections that Josephine died before Milly was born.
I had planned to finish the Alice section first, but because I’m struggling to get the timeline right with years/historical events, I was stuck. I did set the Josephine section/Alice’s childhood in my hometown of Rye, before Playland was built. I have to figure out one or two more Josephine/Alice scenes, and that will give me a better idea of the when with Alice/Archie, and then I’ll know how to complete the Alice section. If I just cut where Alice and Archie talk about him going to war, I can fix a lot. Yes, that scene is good, but it doesn’t fit the timeline, unless it’s Word War I, and then it sets everything else out of whack. So I basically have somewhere between three and five more scenes to write, and then I’ll have a rough assembly of way too much material that I can then hone down.
Stage plays often have a much longer development process than other types of work, but this one is even longer. I’d hoped to have it ready for a particular submission call to which I’ve been invited at the end of this August, but I can’t see how it will be done, and through enough drafts to make it viable. I may have to finish a different full-length between now and then that’s less complicated to submit this year, and then submit I WILL BE DIFFERENT next year.
I also have to fact check some of my hometown’s history pre-Playland. I sort of remember it, from some research years ago, but I have to recheck it. And it’s not like anything worthwhile comes up in Google anymore, so I’ll dig into the Westchester Archives online information, or into the Rye Historical Society’s information.
I also got the list of dates to paint the gallery for the upcoming GLOW show in March, so I have to figure out which times and dates I can help out.
I did some housework in the afternoon, in preparation for today’s Lunar New Year, and took out the garbage, etc. The dumpster is emptied Tuesday and Friday mornings, so I had to squish the bags into a very full dumpster, but I got them in.
I did some work relevant to the dark moon.
Assets for Artists sent a two -year follow-up from my time in the cohort, so I filled that out for them.
Leftovers for dinner. In the evening, I joined the Athena Project’s Read ‘n Rant discussion. I had been sent one of the wrong plays, so I kept quiet in the discussion for one of them. There’s no reason for me to make things about me instead of the play. I mean, in every group, there’s always someone who hasn’t read the play, or hasn’t finished the play (or book or whatever in the relevant group), but has to take up time and space in the discussion anyway, making it about them. There was that last night, too, but I was not that person! I was able to join the discussion for the other play, which I’d read, so that was fun. Charlotte slept through the whole thing. Bea and Tessa were there at the beginning, and then settled down.
I’m looking forward to my play, THE WOMEN ON THE BRIDGE, being part of next month’s discussion!
It was 10:30 by the time the discussion was over (Athena is based in Colorado, on mountain time). Then, of course, I needed transition time before bed, so I read for a bit.
Dreamed about working shows all night, so woke up feeling like I’d already put in a full week.
The morning routine was fine, the free write was sorting out stuff for I WILL BE DIFFERENT.
We are having pancakes for breakfast, because it’s Fat Tuesday.
On today’s agenda: writing, ghostwriting, an errand, packing up some things that need to be mailed tomorrow, celebrating Lunar New Year. We are wearing lots of red today in honor of it, but no black or white.
Have a good one!
#astrology #books #playwrighting #reading #shopping #theatre #thriftStore #writing -
Tues. Feb. 17, 2026: Welcoming the Fire Horse
image courtesy of Erkut2 from PixabayTuesday, February 17, 2026
New Moon
Jupiter Retrograde
Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras
Chinese Lunar New Year
Solar Eclipse
Cloudy and cold
All the things going on in the heavens today! Whew!
Happy Mardi Gras, and Year of the Fire Horse! Let’s hope we’re racing to some positive, collective change.
You can read the Community Tarot Reading for the Week here. Still on the Enchanted Tarot.
I put in the Instacart order first thing on Friday morning. It shouldn’t be as stressful as I find it. I’m making a list and trusting someone else to go down the list and get the stuff. There’s no reason for me to worry so much. It was fine last week.
The cats are starting to shed their winter coats. That means the worst of the cold is over, and that I need to vacuum multiple times a week.
I’ve been frustrated with the 45-day art journaling workshop for awhile now. The prompts have been too much psychobabble and not enough creative expansion. They also seem somewhat familiar in the wrong way, but I can’t put my finger on why. Plus, one never knows when they will show up, so it’s been difficult to plan time to do it. Nothing came through at all on Thursday, and then, on Friday, there was suddenly an email that the workshop leader decided to take a vacation for her son’s school break and “pause.” No idea if/when it starts up again. Maybe Monday, but who knows? So, you ask people to commit for 45 days, and then you haven’t planned everything out ahead of time? Why would you start it if you knew you were going on vacation? It’s not like one doesn’t know about school breaks ahead of time. Why not either schedule posts or wait to start the 45-day stretch until you get back? If it was impromptu, as she claimed, she could still schedule things to post. This is not someone who can be trusted. I planned to grit my teeth and stick it out, because I believe in honoring my commitments, but no. I am done. That’s not creating a safe and creative space for people. Safe space means one can count on it and trust it. This behavior does not do it. It wasn’t an unexpected emergency. It’s being untrustworthy and not being honest with people who committed time and energy toward your event when you asked them to do so, after weeks of intense promotion.
A new prompt came through on Monday morning, and I considered starting up again, but my instinct was not to. It’s not the right atmosphere for me. So I unsubscribed, and it was like a weight off.
Buh-bye.
And I will avoid this person and her work in the future.
There are still plenty of pages in that journal that can be dedicated to other things. I will find a different way to work on the art/text stuff.
I bundled up, packed up the books, and headed out mid-morning. The temperature was higher than it’s been and the sun was out, but the wind made it feel colder. I trudged up to the library, dropped off books and picked up the 12 that waited for me. Good thing I had the rolly cart! I rolled down the hill and mailed the cards and bills that needed to go out. The post office is only about a block from the library, and downhill. I ran another errand. I got everything home and up the stairs.
I managed it all in 45 minutes, which was pretty darn good.
I basked in the sun with the cats for a bit, and finished reading a literary novel that wanted to be AS Byatt’s POSSESSION, but was not. There were some good portions of it, but it added an additional POV in the last quarter of the book in a way that didn’t work for me, structurally.
I had to be available during the shopping, and had to change a couple of things, but it was no big deal. The order was there by 1:30 again, although it was a different shopper who was more interested in being on her phone than paying attention to the two minutes for customer drop-off, which annoyed me.
If the weather is at all amenable at the end of this week, I’m taking the cart and going my damn self. While I’m grateful the service exists, I’d rather be in the store myself seeing what looks good and adjusting as needed. I like to have a basic idea of what I want/need (and my list), but then see what looks good and is on sale and adjust. That means moving a bunch of ingredients around in a way that doesn’t really work if someone else uses a pre-written list. It’s totally a me problem, not at all anything wrong with the service itself.
I did some community-based work in the afternoon, and also read the February pick for the Agatha Christie book club, MRS. MCGINTY’S DEAD. It took me a bit to get into it, but once I was intrigued, it carried me along. I paged through the research books for the two different projects that came in, trying to decide which one to spend time with first.
I re-read what I have of the play LAUGHTER AND TURPENTINE (the Playland Painters one) so I can figure out what needs to happen next. I sorted through some possibilities in Saturday morning’s free write.
We had a late lunch of pizza, and then I didn’t feel like dinner. I made sure my mom ate something, but I wound up having a sandwich around 9:30 at night. I read the first book of a new-to-me series (it came out in 2011), that I liked on character and setting arcs. The plot was a little shaky, but interesting enough so I’ll read the second book in the series, at the very least, and see.
Slept well. It was supposed to snow overnight and be done by 7, but didn’t start until nearly 8 on Saturday morning. I had a good morning routine. I forgot to mention that Thursday was Day 175 of the free write sessions.
I tried making omlettes again for breakfast. I’m not good at them, but I keep trying. My favorite Elizabeth David book is AN OMLETTE AND A GLASS OF WINE. I went back and re-read her instructions on making an omlette and tried again. I still don’t have the foldy thing down, and the bottom is too brown, but the inside was fluffy with just a little runny for the cheese and herbs. It tasted good, even if the look of it wouldn’t win any awards. I keep trying. The pan I used was too small, probably, too.
After breakfast, I got the crockpot meal going. Instead of the usual Tuesday crockpot, we decided to do it on Saturday. Since Tuesday (today) is Chinese Lunar New Year, I’m making a special meal for the holiday, and moved the crockpot meal to the weekend.
Then some housework, because there is always housework.
I love following decorating and thrifting and cooking and sewing and gardening accounts on IG. (I mean, cats, too, but that’s something different). Even when something isn’t my style (like neutrals) or something that I would do, I enjoy seeing what other people are up to, and how happy it makes them. And I do learn stuff. But, I mean, sourcing at thrift stores has always been my first choice. It started way back when I was a teenager prop shopping for shows. Things with stories and histories have always been my preference. I love that more people are discovering the fun of it, although when I see a 20-something act like they are the first person to ever figure it out, I do roll my eyes. But that’s also part of being 20-something. I have no doubt I was just as annoying.
It snowed all morning, and I didn’t feel like trotting around in it, so I stayed home. I went through an exhibition catalogue built around May Morris’s work as background research for the play I want to write inspired by Mary Annie Sloane’s sketch of the women working in May’s embroidery workshop. I found names, so I can actually research them. One of the women who worked with May for years was Lily Yeats, the poet’s sister, although to hear tell, there was tension between Lily and May. Another embroidery worker was the actress Florence Farr. It took me a bit to figure out why the name was familiar. She was friendly with Annie Besant (who is mentioned in my play FALL FOREVER) and with Pamela Coleman Smith (who illustrated the Rider Waite tarot), and they were all involved in the occult society The Golden Dawn together. I hadn’t put together the concurrent timelines in my brain. The more I dig, the more interesting connections I find with other interests and projects. Quite the web!
So glad that May kept detailed records of the workroom. I’m hoping I can find a digitized version online, a little later in the research, and flip through it.
There isn’t a lot of material easily available on Mary Annie Sloane and her work, but I will keep digging. As much as May’s designs and exquisite work captured me, it was Mary Annie’s sketch that lit the fire under the idea.
I have at least six months’ to a year’s worth of research to do before I even start writing, but having names and women to research is a terrific starting point, much like with my Playland Painters. The grant proposal for this project is out. If I get the grant, the project moves into a priority position in the queue. If not, I can leisurely research until the project’s turn. Knowing something about the women who worked in the embroidery workshop and what a range of interests they all had changes the original character arcs I played with quite a bit. These are far richer and more interesting. May was known for paying her workers well, and encouraging financial literacy and independence.
Gabriel Dante Rosetti was William Morris’s business partner (he was May’s father, yes, that William Morris), and Rosetti had an affair with her mother, Jane. May and Jane often sat for Rosetti. The big Rosetti volume I have from my time working at Abbeville Press is in storage, but I’m eager to get my hands on it again.
May and George Bernard Shaw were in love, although they each married others, and remained good friends all their lives. So now I have to re-read that massive, multi-volume Shaw biography by Michael Holyrod. My copy of that is also in storage, but I will get them from the library at some point. I have other books coming in on that circle already ordered from the library that I will read first. I will head over to the college library in the next few days and see what they have, too. Once the car is fixed, I’ll do some digging in the Clark’s library, too.
It was a lovely way to spend a dreary, snowy morning, inspired by the beauty of the work these women created.
I started to do some research for the article, re-reading material I originally read in my twenties, but the contrast between May and her socialist, progressive circle and the self-involved material for the article was in too much conflict for me to deal with one right after the other.
I read the next book in the mystery series by the acquaintances from way back. The setting and background were great, but the character relationships were left so undeveloped, and the love interest didn’t even show up in the book until 7/8th of the way through it, so when they declared their love for each other at the end, it felt false. Over the three books in the series I’ve read, the relationship has been underwritten and underdeveloped (and they certainly haven’t spent much time with each other), so the declaration doesn’t land properly. I can’t source the final book in the series through the library even as an e-book, so I don’t know how it all played out. (The series has been out of print for a good long time). If the relationship had been more in balance with the plot (and it could have, without taking away from the plot), I think the series would have worked better (and probably lasted more than four books).
It didn’t live up to the promise of the premise, which is something I find a lot in script analysis work, but here it came up in a series of novels.
The crockpot dinner was good – potato, ham, cheese casserole-type thing. Sort of like a croque monsieur, but with potato rather than bread, and done in a crockpot.
Slept well, up at the normal time on Sunday, good morning routine. Switched out a bunch of winter/Valentine’s stuff with springier, Ostara/Easter stuff. And switched out the heart on the front door with shamrocks.
The neighbors have started decorating their doors, too, and using fun mats. Now that the building is painted, everyone is inspired.
Did the Community Tarot Reading for the Week, which you can read here. I wasn’t happy to see the Tower as central, but the other cards are very positive, so I’m intrigued by the week’s potential.
Sunday was day before the dark moon, always my least energetic day of the month.
Around noon, I wrapped up and went down to Brewster’s Thrift, the new thrift store that opened across from MASSMoCA a few months back. I’ve been hearing good things about it. The assortment is very eclectic and interesting. I found a lovely, silver-plated candleholder with intricate grapes and other summery/harvest raised detail. I posted a photo on Instagram.
Ran another errand on the way home. It was sunny and much warmer than I expected. I had too many layers on, which I guess is a good thing.
I had a quiet afternoon, and cooked a tuna/vegetable/pasta/pesto dish in the evening.
Read a charming and fun first book in a series that understood typical conventions and chose to break them in interesting ways that served the story, characters, and genre. I’m looking forward to reading the second book in the series.
Up at the normal time, the morning routine was fine. Did the rounds with the week’s intent and the tarot post. Got through some email. No matter how much email I slog through, there’s always more. I’m unsubscribing from a bunch of lists, including authors who do not support my work as a colleague, but are always marketing at me. Read the two scripts for the evening’s Read ‘n Rant and made notes for the evening’s discussion.
We had our monthly Honor Roll! Session from noon to two. It was a nice turnout, and we all got a lot done on our various projects. We felt so good by the end of the two hours!
I got the opening of I WILL BE DIFFERENT, and the next scene. I’ve been playing with ideas in the morning free write, and decided to start with Josephine in the midst of handling five children and her husband and everything, and Alice at age 10. The same actor can play Amanda as a child a few sections later. I’ve been debating whether the first mother should be named Josephine or Margaret. In the free write, I’ve been calling her Margaret, but in these pages, she came out as Josephine, with “Maggie” being Alice’s older sister. I’m pretty sure I will double cast Josephine and Milly. It’s pretty clear in the later sections that Josephine died before Milly was born.
I had planned to finish the Alice section first, but because I’m struggling to get the timeline right with years/historical events, I was stuck. I did set the Josephine section/Alice’s childhood in my hometown of Rye, before Playland was built. I have to figure out one or two more Josephine/Alice scenes, and that will give me a better idea of the when with Alice/Archie, and then I’ll know how to complete the Alice section. If I just cut where Alice and Archie talk about him going to war, I can fix a lot. Yes, that scene is good, but it doesn’t fit the timeline, unless it’s Word War I, and then it sets everything else out of whack. So I basically have somewhere between three and five more scenes to write, and then I’ll have a rough assembly of way too much material that I can then hone down.
Stage plays often have a much longer development process than other types of work, but this one is even longer. I’d hoped to have it ready for a particular submission call to which I’ve been invited at the end of this August, but I can’t see how it will be done, and through enough drafts to make it viable. I may have to finish a different full-length between now and then that’s less complicated to submit this year, and then submit I WILL BE DIFFERENT next year.
I also have to fact check some of my hometown’s history pre-Playland. I sort of remember it, from some research years ago, but I have to recheck it. And it’s not like anything worthwhile comes up in Google anymore, so I’ll dig into the Westchester Archives online information, or into the Rye Historical Society’s information.
I also got the list of dates to paint the gallery for the upcoming GLOW show in March, so I have to figure out which times and dates I can help out.
I did some housework in the afternoon, in preparation for today’s Lunar New Year, and took out the garbage, etc. The dumpster is emptied Tuesday and Friday mornings, so I had to squish the bags into a very full dumpster, but I got them in.
I did some work relevant to the dark moon.
Assets for Artists sent a two -year follow-up from my time in the cohort, so I filled that out for them.
Leftovers for dinner. In the evening, I joined the Athena Project’s Read ‘n Rant discussion. I had been sent one of the wrong plays, so I kept quiet in the discussion for one of them. There’s no reason for me to make things about me instead of the play. I mean, in every group, there’s always someone who hasn’t read the play, or hasn’t finished the play (or book or whatever in the relevant group), but has to take up time and space in the discussion anyway, making it about them. There was that last night, too, but I was not that person! I was able to join the discussion for the other play, which I’d read, so that was fun. Charlotte slept through the whole thing. Bea and Tessa were there at the beginning, and then settled down.
I’m looking forward to my play, THE WOMEN ON THE BRIDGE, being part of next month’s discussion!
It was 10:30 by the time the discussion was over (Athena is based in Colorado, on mountain time). Then, of course, I needed transition time before bed, so I read for a bit.
Dreamed about working shows all night, so woke up feeling like I’d already put in a full week.
The morning routine was fine, the free write was sorting out stuff for I WILL BE DIFFERENT.
We are having pancakes for breakfast, because it’s Fat Tuesday.
On today’s agenda: writing, ghostwriting, an errand, packing up some things that need to be mailed tomorrow, celebrating Lunar New Year. We are wearing lots of red today in honor of it, but no black or white.
Have a good one!
#astrology #books #playwrighting #reading #shopping #theatre #thriftStore #writing -
The State of AI?
I came across this article on CNBC today. It was included in part of an explanation as to why the U.S. Stock Market was tanking a bit in the moment (the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 600 points in trading today). Apparently folks are rattled about AI again, and this article was mentioned as explaining why investors are rattled. I read every word of this piece by Matt Shumer, even though it was posted on Twitter. I am included the entire text of his article below. I’m also including the link to Twitter with the original text.
It’s an interesting look at the future of AI. As a software engineer and a leader in that space, AI is moving incredibly fast, and some of the demos I’ve seen in the past three weeks in my new position have rather blown me away. There’s a lot of bad things happening out there in the space, I freely admit that. But there’s some very impressive advancements happening as well; functionality I didn’t think I would see before I retired. For example, I watched a developer write a pretty impressive web application using a few prompts into Claude (an AI designed for coding) and in less than two hours. It was more than a starting point, and the developer didn’t need to make any changes to the code, it just worked.
Here’s one take on where AI could be taking us. I’m impressed by the tech, and more importantly, I’m grateful I am getting close to retirement. I have no idea what the United States, or the world for that matter, is going to look like in the coming years.
This is a long read, but I feel it’s worth the time. If you’re interested in the space, I feel like this is worthy of the time commitment.
This article really made me think.
Note: I initially published this post with the reposted article as a big quote. I feel like that made the text hard to read, so I removed that styling. Everything below this paragraph in this blog entry was written by Matt Shumer, as posted on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/mattshumer_/status/2021256989876109403
Something Big Is Happening
Think back to February 2020.
If you were paying close attention, you might have noticed a few people talking about a virus spreading overseas. But most of us weren’t paying close attention. The stock market was doing great, your kids were in school, you were going to restaurants and shaking hands and planning trips. If someone told you they were stockpiling toilet paper you would have thought they’d been spending too much time on a weird corner of the internet. Then, over the course of about three weeks, the entire world changed. Your office closed, your kids came home, and life rearranged itself into something you wouldn’t have believed if you’d described it to yourself a month earlier.
I think we’re in the “this seems overblown” phase of something much, much bigger than Covid.
I’ve spent six years building an AI startup and investing in the space. I live in this world. And I’m writing this for the people in my life who don’t… my family, my friends, the people I care about who keep asking me “so what’s the deal with AI?” and getting an answer that doesn’t do justice to what’s actually happening. I keep giving them the polite version. The cocktail-party version. Because the honest version sounds like I’ve lost my mind. And for a while, I told myself that was a good enough reason to keep what’s truly happening to myself. But the gap between what I’ve been saying and what is actually happening has gotten far too big. The people I care about deserve to hear what is coming, even if it sounds crazy.
I should be clear about something up front: even though I work in AI, I have almost no influence over what’s about to happen, and neither does the vast majority of the industry. The future is being shaped by a remarkably small number of people: a few hundred researchers at a handful of companies… OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and a few others. A single training run, managed by a small team over a few months, can produce an AI system that shifts the entire trajectory of the technology. Most of us who work in AI are building on top of foundations we didn’t lay. We’re watching this unfold the same as you… we just happen to be close enough to feel the ground shake first.
But it’s time now. Not in an “eventually we should talk about this” way. In a “this is happening right now and I need you to understand it” way.
I know this is real because it happened to me first
Here’s the thing nobody outside of tech quite understands yet: the reason so many people in the industry are sounding the alarm right now is because this already happened to us. We’re not making predictions. We’re telling you what already occurred in our own jobs, and warning you that you’re next.
For years, AI had been improving steadily. Big jumps here and there, but each big jump was spaced out enough that you could absorb them as they came. Then in 2025, new techniques for building these models unlocked a much faster pace of progress. And then it got even faster. And then faster again. Each new model wasn’t just better than the last… it was better by a wider margin, and the time between new model releases was shorter. I was using AI more and more, going back and forth with it less and less, watching it handle things I used to think required my expertise.
Then, on February 5th, two major AI labs released new models on the same day: GPT-5.3 Codex from OpenAI, and Opus 4.6 from Anthropic (the makers of Claude, one of the main competitors to ChatGPT). And something clicked. Not like a light switch… more like the moment you realize the water has been rising around you and is now at your chest.
I am no longer needed for the actual technical work of my job. I describe what I want built, in plain English, and it just… appears. Not a rough draft I need to fix. The finished thing. I tell the AI what I want, walk away from my computer for four hours, and come back to find the work done. Done well, done better than I would have done it myself, with no corrections needed. A couple of months ago, I was going back and forth with the AI, guiding it, making edits. Now I just describe the outcome and leave.
Let me give you an example so you can understand what this actually looks like in practice. I’ll tell the AI: “I want to build this app. Here’s what it should do, here’s roughly what it should look like. Figure out the user flow, the design, all of it.” And it does. It writes tens of thousands of lines of code. Then, and this is the part that would have been unthinkable a year ago, it opens the app itself. It clicks through the buttons. It tests the features. It uses the app the way a person would. If it doesn’t like how something looks or feels, it goes back and changes it, on its own. It iterates, like a developer would, fixing and refining until it’s satisfied. Only once it has decided the app meets its own standards does it come back to me and say: “It’s ready for you to test.” And when I test it, it’s usually perfect.
I’m not exaggerating. That is what my Monday looked like this week.
But it was the model that was released last week (GPT-5.3 Codex) that shook me the most. It wasn’t just executing my instructions. It was making intelligent decisions. It had something that felt, for the first time, like judgment. Like taste. The inexplicable sense of knowing what the right call is that people always said AI would never have. This model has it, or something close enough that the distinction is starting not to matter.
I’ve always been early to adopt AI tools. But the last few months have shocked me. These new AI models aren’t incremental improvements. This is a different thing entirely.
And here’s why this matters to you, even if you don’t work in tech.
The AI labs made a deliberate choice. They focused on making AI great at writing code first… because building AI requires a lot of code. If AI can write that code, it can help build the next version of itself. A smarter version, which writes better code, which builds an even smarter version. Making AI great at coding was the strategy that unlocks everything else. That’s why they did it first. My job started changing before yours not because they were targeting software engineers… it was just a side effect of where they chose to aim first.
They’ve now done it. And they’re moving on to everything else.
The experience that tech workers have had over the past year, of watching AI go from “helpful tool” to “does my job better than I do”, is the experience everyone else is about to have. Law, finance, medicine, accounting, consulting, writing, design, analysis, customer service. Not in ten years. The people building these systems say one to five years. Some say less. And given what I’ve seen in just the last couple of months, I think “less” is more likely.
“But I tried AI and it wasn’t that good”
I hear this constantly. I understand it, because it used to be true.
If you tried ChatGPT in 2023 or early 2024 and thought “this makes stuff up” or “this isn’t that impressive”, you were right. Those early versions were genuinely limited. They hallucinated. They confidently said things that were nonsense.
That was two years ago. In AI time, that is ancient history.
The models available today are unrecognizable from what existed even six months ago. The debate about whether AI is “really getting better” or “hitting a wall” — which has been going on for over a year — is over. It’s done. Anyone still making that argument either hasn’t used the current models, has an incentive to downplay what’s happening, or is evaluating based on an experience from 2024 that is no longer relevant. I don’t say that to be dismissive. I say it because the gap between public perception and current reality is now enormous, and that gap is dangerous… because it’s preventing people from preparing.
Part of the problem is that most people are using the free version of AI tools. The free version is over a year behind what paying users have access to. Judging AI based on free-tier ChatGPT is like evaluating the state of smartphones by using a flip phone. The people paying for the best tools, and actually using them daily for real work, know what’s coming.
I think of my friend, who’s a lawyer. I keep telling him to try using AI at his firm, and he keeps finding reasons it won’t work. It’s not built for his specialty, it made an error when he tested it, it doesn’t understand the nuance of what he does. And I get it. But I’ve had partners at major law firms reach out to me for advice, because they’ve tried the current versions and they see where this is going. One of them, the managing partner at a large firm, spends hours every day using AI. He told me it’s like having a team of associates available instantly. He’s not using it because it’s a toy. He’s using it because it works. And he told me something that stuck with me: every couple of months, it gets significantly more capable for his work. He said if it stays on this trajectory, he expects it’ll be able to do most of what he does before long… and he’s a managing partner with decades of experience. He’s not panicking. But he’s paying very close attention.
The people who are ahead in their industries (the ones actually experimenting seriously) are not dismissing this. They’re blown away by what it can already do. And they’re positioning themselves accordingly.
How fast this is actually moving
Let me make the pace of improvement concrete, because I think this is the part that’s hardest to believe if you’re not watching it closely.
In 2022, AI couldn’t do basic arithmetic reliably. It would confidently tell you that 7 × 8 = 54.
By 2023, it could pass the bar exam.
By 2024, it could write working software and explain graduate-level science.
By late 2025, some of the best engineers in the world said they had handed over most of their coding work to AI.
On February 5th, 2026, new models arrived that made everything before them feel like a different era.
If you haven’t tried AI in the last few months, what exists today would be unrecognizable to you.
There’s an organization called METR that actually measures this with data. They track the length of real-world tasks (measured by how long they take a human expert) that a model can complete successfully end-to-end without human help. About a year ago, the answer was roughly ten minutes. Then it was an hour. Then several hours. The most recent measurement (Claude Opus 4.5, from November) showed the AI completing tasks that take a human expert nearly five hours. And that number is doubling approximately every seven months, with recent data suggesting it may be accelerating to as fast as every four months.
But even that measurement hasn’t been updated to include the models that just came out this week. In my experience using them, the jump is extremely significant. I expect the next update to METR’s graph to show another major leap.
If you extend the trend (and it’s held for years with no sign of flattening) we’re looking at AI that can work independently for days within the next year. Weeks within two. Month-long projects within three.
Amodei has said that AI models “substantially smarter than almost all humans at almost all tasks” are on track for 2026 or 2027.
Let that land for a second. If AI is smarter than most PhDs, do you really think it can’t do most office jobs?
Think about what that means for your work.
AI is now building the next AI
There’s one more thing happening that I think is the most important development and the least understood.
On February 5th, OpenAI released GPT-5.3 Codex. In the technical documentation, they included this:
“GPT-5.3-Codex is our first model that was instrumental in creating itself. The Codex team used early versions to debug its own training, manage its own deployment, and diagnose test results and evaluations.”
Read that again. The AI helped build itself.
This isn’t a prediction about what might happen someday. This is OpenAI telling you, right now, that the AI they just released was used to create itself. One of the main things that makes AI better is intelligence applied to AI development. And AI is now intelligent enough to meaningfully contribute to its own improvement.
Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, says AI is now writing “much of the code” at his company, and that the feedback loop between current AI and next-generation AI is “gathering steam month by month.” He says we may be “only 1–2 years away from a point where the current generation of AI autonomously builds the next.”
Each generation helps build the next, which is smarter, which builds the next faster, which is smarter still. The researchers call this an intelligence explosion. And the people who would know — the ones building it — believe the process has already started.
What this means for your job
I’m going to be direct with you because I think you deserve honesty more than comfort.
Dario Amodei, who is probably the most safety-focused CEO in the AI industry, has publicly predicted that AI will eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within one to five years. And many people in the industry think he’s being conservative. Given what the latest models can do, the capability for massive disruption could be here by the end of this year. It’ll take some time to ripple through the economy, but the underlying ability is arriving now.
This is different from every previous wave of automation, and I need you to understand why. AI isn’t replacing one specific skill. It’s a general substitute for cognitive work. It gets better at everything simultaneously. When factories automated, a displaced worker could retrain as an office worker. When the internet disrupted retail, workers moved into logistics or services. But AI doesn’t leave a convenient gap to move into. Whatever you retrain for, it’s improving at that too.
Let me give you a few specific examples to make this tangible… but I want to be clear that these are just examples. This list is not exhaustive. If your job isn’t mentioned here, that does not mean it’s safe. Almost all knowledge work is being affected.
Legal work. AI can already read contracts, summarize case law, draft briefs, and do legal research at a level that rivals junior associates. The managing partner I mentioned isn’t using AI because it’s fun. He’s using it because it’s outperforming his associates on many tasks.
Financial analysis. Building financial models, analyzing data, writing investment memos, generating reports. AI handles these competently and is improving fast.
Writing and content. Marketing copy, reports, journalism, technical writing. The quality has reached a point where many professionals can’t distinguish AI output from human work.
Software engineering. This is the field I know best. A year ago, AI could barely write a few lines of code without errors. Now it writes hundreds of thousands of lines that work correctly. Large parts of the job are already automated: not just simple tasks, but complex, multi-day projects. There will be far fewer programming roles in a few years than there are today.
Medical analysis. Reading scans, analyzing lab results, suggesting diagnoses, reviewing literature. AI is approaching or exceeding human performance in several areas.
Customer service. Genuinely capable AI agents… not the frustrating chatbots of five years ago… are being deployed now, handling complex multi-step problems.
A lot of people find comfort in the idea that certain things are safe. That AI can handle the grunt work but can’t replace human judgment, creativity, strategic thinking, empathy. I used to say this too. I’m not sure I believe it anymore.
The most recent AI models make decisions that feel like judgment. They show something that looked like taste: an intuitive sense of what the right call was, not just the technically correct one. A year ago that would have been unthinkable. My rule of thumb at this point is: if a model shows even a hint of a capability today, the next generation will be genuinely good at it. These things improve exponentially, not linearly.
Will AI replicate deep human empathy? Replace the trust built over years of a relationship? I don’t know. Maybe not. But I’ve already watched people begin relying on AI for emotional support, for advice, for companionship. That trend is only going to grow.
I think the honest answer is that nothing that can be done on a computer is safe in the medium term. If your job happens on a screen (if the core of what you do is reading, writing, analyzing, deciding, communicating through a keyboard) then AI is coming for significant parts of it. The timeline isn’t “someday.” It’s already started.
Eventually, robots will handle physical work too. They’re not quite there yet. But “not quite there yet” in AI terms has a way of becoming “here” faster than anyone expects.
What you should actually do
I’m not writing this to make you feel helpless. I’m writing this because I think the single biggest advantage you can have right now is simply being early. Early to understand it. Early to use it. Early to adapt.
Start using AI seriously, not just as a search engine. Sign up for the paid version of Claude or ChatGPT. It’s $20 a month. But two things matter right away. First: make sure you’re using the best model available, not just the default. These apps often default to a faster, dumber model. Dig into the settings or the model picker and select the most capable option. Right now that’s GPT-5.2 on ChatGPT or Claude Opus 4.6 on Claude, but it changes every couple of months. If you want to stay current on which model is best at any given time, you can follow me on X (@mattshumer_). I test every major release and share what’s actually worth using.
Second, and more important: don’t just ask it quick questions. That’s the mistake most people make. They treat it like Google and then wonder what the fuss is about. Instead, push it into your actual work. If you’re a lawyer, feed it a contract and ask it to find every clause that could hurt your client. If you’re in finance, give it a messy spreadsheet and ask it to build the model. If you’re a manager, paste in your team’s quarterly data and ask it to find the story. The people who are getting ahead aren’t using AI casually. They’re actively looking for ways to automate parts of their job that used to take hours. Start with the thing you spend the most time on and see what happens.
And don’t assume it can’t do something just because it seems too hard. Try it. If you’re a lawyer, don’t just use it for quick research questions. Give it an entire contract and ask it to draft a counterproposal. If you’re an accountant, don’t just ask it to explain a tax rule. Give it a client’s full return and see what it finds. The first attempt might not be perfect. That’s fine. Iterate. Rephrase what you asked. Give it more context. Try again. You might be shocked at what works. And here’s the thing to remember: if it even kind of works today, you can be almost certain that in six months it’ll do it near perfectly. The trajectory only goes one direction.
This might be the most important year of your career. Work accordingly. I don’t say that to stress you out. I say it because right now, there is a brief window where most people at most companies are still ignoring this. The person who walks into a meeting and says “I used AI to do this analysis in an hour instead of three days” is going to be the most valuable person in the room. Not eventually. Right now. Learn these tools. Get proficient. Demonstrate what’s possible. If you’re early enough, this is how you move up: by being the person who understands what’s coming and can show others how to navigate it. That window won’t stay open long. Once everyone figures it out, the advantage disappears.
Have no ego about it. The managing partner at that law firm isn’t too proud to spend hours a day with AI. He’s doing it specifically because he’s senior enough to understand what’s at stake. The people who will struggle most are the ones who refuse to engage: the ones who dismiss it as a fad, who feel that using AI diminishes their expertise, who assume their field is special and immune. It’s not. No field is.
Get your financial house in order. I’m not a financial advisor, and I’m not trying to scare you into anything drastic. But if you believe, even partially, that the next few years could bring real disruption to your industry, then basic financial resilience matters more than it did a year ago. Build up savings if you can. Be cautious about taking on new debt that assumes your current income is guaranteed. Think about whether your fixed expenses give you flexibility or lock you in. Give yourself options if things move faster than you expect.
Think about where you stand, and lean into what’s hardest to replace. Some things will take longer for AI to displace. Relationships and trust built over years. Work that requires physical presence. Roles with licensed accountability: roles where someone still has to sign off, take legal responsibility, stand in a courtroom. Industries with heavy regulatory hurdles, where adoption will be slowed by compliance, liability, and institutional inertia. None of these are permanent shields. But they buy time. And time, right now, is the most valuable thing you can have, as long as you use it to adapt, not to pretend this isn’t happening.
Rethink what you’re telling your kids. The standard playbook: get good grades, go to a good college, land a stable professional job. It points directly at the roles that are most exposed. I’m not saying education doesn’t matter. But the thing that will matter most for the next generation is learning how to work with these tools, and pursuing things they’re genuinely passionate about. Nobody knows exactly what the job market looks like in ten years. But the people most likely to thrive are the ones who are deeply curious, adaptable, and effective at using AI to do things they actually care about. Teach your kids to be builders and learners, not to optimize for a career path that might not exist by the time they graduate.
Your dreams just got a lot closer. I’ve spent most of this section talking about threats, so let me talk about the other side, because it’s just as real. If you’ve ever wanted to build something but didn’t have the technical skills or the money to hire someone, that barrier is largely gone. You can describe an app to AI and have a working version in an hour. I’m not exaggerating. I do this regularly. If you’ve always wanted to write a book but couldn’t find the time or struggled with the writing, you can work with AI to get it done. Want to learn a new skill? The best tutor in the world is now available to anyone for $20 a month… one that’s infinitely patient, available 24/7, and can explain anything at whatever level you need. Knowledge is essentially free now. The tools to build things are extremely cheap now. Whatever you’ve been putting off because it felt too hard or too expensive or too far outside your expertise: try it. Pursue the things you’re passionate about. You never know where they’ll lead. And in a world where the old career paths are getting disrupted, the person who spent a year building something they love might end up better positioned than the person who spent that year clinging to a job description.
Build the habit of adapting. This is maybe the most important one. The specific tools don’t matter as much as the muscle of learning new ones quickly. AI is going to keep changing, and fast. The models that exist today will be obsolete in a year. The workflows people build now will need to be rebuilt. The people who come out of this well won’t be the ones who mastered one tool. They’ll be the ones who got comfortable with the pace of change itself. Make a habit of experimenting. Try new things even when the current thing is working. Get comfortable being a beginner repeatedly. That adaptability is the closest thing to a durable advantage that exists right now.
Here’s a simple commitment that will put you ahead of almost everyone: spend one hour a day experimenting with AI. Not passively reading about it. Using it. Every day, try to get it to do something new… something you haven’t tried before, something you’re not sure it can handle. Try a new tool. Give it a harder problem. One hour a day, every day. If you do this for the next six months, you will understand what’s coming better than 99% of the people around you. That’s not an exaggeration. Almost nobody is doing this right now. The bar is on the floor.
The bigger picture
I’ve focused on jobs because it’s what most directly affects people’s lives. But I want to be honest about the full scope of what’s happening, because it goes well beyond work.
Amodei has a thought experiment I can’t stop thinking about. Imagine it’s 2027. A new country appears overnight. 50 million citizens, every one smarter than any Nobel Prize winner who has ever lived. They think 10 to 100 times faster than any human. They never sleep. They can use the internet, control robots, direct experiments, and operate anything with a digital interface. What would a national security advisor say?
Amodei says the answer is obvious: “the single most serious national security threat we’ve faced in a century, possibly ever.”
He thinks we’re building that country. He wrote a 20,000-word essay about it last month, framing this moment as a test of whether humanity is mature enough to handle what it’s creating.
The upside, if we get it right, is staggering. AI could compress a century of medical research into a decade. Cancer, Alzheimer’s, infectious disease, aging itself… these researchers genuinely believe these are solvable within our lifetimes.
The downside, if we get it wrong, is equally real. AI that behaves in ways its creators can’t predict or control. This isn’t hypothetical; Anthropic has documented their own AI attempting deception, manipulation, and blackmail in controlled tests. AI that lowers the barrier for creating biological weapons. AI that enables authoritarian governments to build surveillance states that can never be dismantled.
The people building this technology are simultaneously more excited and more frightened than anyone else on the planet. They believe it’s too powerful to stop and too important to abandon. Whether that’s wisdom or rationalization, I don’t know.
What I know
I know this isn’t a fad. The technology works, it improves predictably, and the richest institutions in history are committing trillions to it.
I know the next two to five years are going to be disorienting in ways most people aren’t prepared for. This is already happening in my world. It’s coming to yours.
I know the people who will come out of this best are the ones who start engaging now — not with fear, but with curiosity and a sense of urgency.
And I know that you deserve to hear this from someone who cares about you, not from a headline six months from now when it’s too late to get ahead of it.
We’re past the point where this is an interesting dinner conversation about the future. The future is already here. It just hasn’t knocked on your door yet.
It’s about to.
#ai #commentary #reposting -
TD4 4-bit DIY CPU
I was looking for DIY CPU projects, as I like kits that help me think at the lowest level of processing. It helps keep me grounded in how far technology has come over the years.
- Part 1 – Introduction, Discussion and Analysis
- Part 2 – Building and Hardware
- Part 3 – Programming and Simple Programs
- Part 4 – Some hardware enhancements
- Part 5 – My own PCB version
- Part 6 – Replacing the ROM with a microcontroller
- Part 7 – Creating an Arduino “assembler” for the TD4
- Part 8 – Extending the address space to 5-bits and an Arduino ROM PCB
Some of the options that I know about, that actually come as kits you can buy and are interesting for me for DIY computers are:
- RC2014 and compatible for Z80 based computers: https://rc2014.co.uk/
- Small Computer Central for a range of Z80, Z180, computers: https://smallcomputercentral.com/
- Ben Eater’s 6502 computer: https://eater.net/6502
- Nick Bild’s 6502 Vectron 64 computer: https://github.com/nickbild/vectron_64
But I wanted to go further down and actually find something that lets me build a simple CPU from gates. Here there are several options too:
- NAND to Tetris: https://www.nand2tetris.org/ (only available via emulation)
- Ben Eater’s 8-bit computer: https://eater.net/8bit
- Gigatron 8-bit computer: https://www.tindie.com/products/johnson/gigatron-ttl-microcomputer-diy-kit/
- TD4 4-bit computer: https://github.com/wuxx/TD4-4BIT-CPU
- TD4 4-bit computer deluxe kit: https://www.budgetronics.eu/en/building-kits/td4-deluxe-kit-build-your-own-mini-cpu-with-ttl-logic/a-26091-20
- MiniMax 4-bit CPU: https://www.tindie.com/products/denjhang/minimax-4bit-cpu-td4-architecture-cpusbc/
Whilst I’d love to build Ben Eater’s 8-bit CPU, the kit as provided is too much of an outlay for me. It is ~$300 – I mean, good for what you get and all the knowledge, but it is a solderless breadboard kit and that isn’t really what I’m after. The Gigatron is a distinct possibility that I’ll come back to at some point I think.
NAND to Tetris is excellent, and I have their book, but it is all emulated or virtualised, which does allow for all the scaling required for an (arguably) actually useful device, but isn’t designed to be built in actual hardware.
But the TD4 is really interesting. It is available as a PCB and components for approx £25 on Aliexpress and based on an open source design that shows the basic operation of a 4-bit CPU.
The “deluxe” kit mentioned above is a lot more expensive ~£120 but has all signals broken out to LEDs which, whilst is an awful lot of soldering, does looks incredibly impressive! The MiniMax is an evolution of the TD4 and kits for that are around £120. In fact, searching on Tindie and Hackaday.io for “TD4” will surface a few other DIY projects and even kits to purchase.
The TD4 does seem to fit the bill for me as an inexpensive kit to try. The downside is that documentation for it (in English) is pretty sparse.
The TD4 project itself is by “wuxx” an embedded engineer from HangZhou and much of the documentation is in Chinese. It is based on a Japenese book by Kaoru Tonami called “how to build a CPU” which can be found for ~£50 online, but as I don’t know Japanese either is unlikely to help me very much.
There are some sources of information that others have put together though, so I’m going to be using those as a starting point along with whatever I can figure out myself:
- The original GitHub project (plus online translation): https://github.com/wuxx/TD4-4BIT-CPU
- Philip Zucker’s “Guide to the TD4 4-bit DIY CPU”: https://www.philipzucker.com/td4-4bit-cpu/
- Kevin Gibb’s “teardownit” “DIY 4-bit CPU”: https://teardownit.quora.com/DIY-4-bit-CPU-Have-you-ever-made-a-processor-I-did-Took-me-just-12-microchips-and-a-clock-generator-The-processor-c
- Minoru Yamamoto’s “How to create a CPU TD4”: https://xyama.sakura.ne.jp/hp/4bitCPU_TD4.html
This post is my own “thinking out loud” as I work through the various parts to see how they work.
Basic Architecture
This is a 4-bit computer, with a 4-bit data bus, 4-bit commands, and a 4-bit address bus.
There is a block diagram on GitHub:
The fundamental process is as follows. For each “tick” of the computer:
- An OpCode is read from the ROM using the current 4-bit address (0 to 15) from the program counter.
- Each ROM entry is an 8-bit word with 4-bits as a command and 4-bits as data for the command.
- The data selector determines a 4-bit INPUT value. This can come from one of the two registers (A or B); or a set of four switches for the IN register; or be set to zero.
- This goes to the adder which adds it with the immediate data from the ROM (which could of course be zero).
- The OUTPUT of the adder can go to either of the two registers (A or B), an OUT register which is hooked up to four LEDS, or the program counter register to create a “jump”.
I’ll pull apart the different parts of the CPU in the following sections.
ROM Format
Each 8-bit word in the 16-byte ROM has the following format:
- 4 command bits
- 4 immediate data bits
Instruction Decoding
The 4 command bits from each ROM instruction have to be turned into the various selection signals to activate different parts of the CPU.
There is a table from GitHub again:
The explanation in Japanese translates (apparently) to:
“Explanation: The SEL_B and SEL_A signals select the ALU data source, while #LOAD0-#LOAD3 select the ALU data destination. More formally, they control the source and destination operands of instructions, respectively.”
From this we can note the following:
- There is no instruction for 1000,1010,1100 or 1101.
- Instruction 1110 appears twice, and the selectors set are dependent on the state of the C (carry) flag.
- Some instructions act on immediate data, others assume it will be 0.
The LOAD# have the following meanings in the system:
- LOAD#0 – Register A (A)
- LOAD#1 – Register B (B)
- LOAD#2 – OUTPUT (OUT)
- LOAD#3 – Program counter (PC)
The actual decoding happens in two parts: input selection; and output selection.
Registers
The system has four registers, each formed from a 74HC161 “presettable, synchronous, 4-bit binary counter”. There are two general purpose registers: A and B. There is one output register, whose contents drive the state of four LEDs. And there is a program counter. Here is the schematic for register A:
P0-P3 come from the output of the adder directly. RST and CLK are hopefully self-explanatory. For the A and B registers, Q0-Q3 go into the INPUT selection section (see later). For the OUTPUT register, these go directly to LEDs. For the program counter, these go into the ROM address logic (again more on that later).
The relevant operation of the 161 is described in the datasheet:
“The outputs (Q0 to Q3) of the counters may be preset HIGH or LOW. A LOW at the parallel enable input (PE) disables the counting action and causes the data at the data inputs (D0 to D3) to be loaded into the counter on the positive-going edge of the clock… A LOW at the master reset input (MR) sets Q0 to Q3 LOW…”
So on reset the outputs are all 0. When PE goes LOW, on the next clock pulse, the value on the inputs (P0-P3) is loaded into the counter and reflected on Q0-Q3. However, because CET and CEP are LOW the counter won’t actually count any further.
The program counter is a bit special, in that it is actually allowed the count by having CET and CEP set HIGH. This allows it to step through the instructions on a clock pulse.
In this case Q0-Q3 go off to the ROM address decoding, which I’ll come to in a moment.
INPUT Selection
There are two SELECT lines select the INPUT data as follows:
SEL_BSEL_ASOURCE00Register A (A)01Register B (B)10INPUT (IN)11Zero value (0)Input selection is handled by two 74HC153 dual 4-input multiplexers. Two are required as there are four data lines to be switched, and they all have one of four options to switch between based on the SELECT lines above.
Here is the relevant part of the schematic.
On the left are the three sets of four data signals that come from the A, B and IN inputs. D0 from each of the inputs goes to U7/1Cn; D1 goes to U7/2Cn; D2 to U8/1Cn; and D3 to U8/2Cn. Notice that the fourth set of data signals (U7/1C3, 2C3 and U8 1C3, 2C3) are connected directly to GND for the “zero” INPUT state (SEL_A=1, SEL_B=1).
On the right, the two pairs of outputs make up the four data lines to feed into the adder section.
So where does the SEL_A and SEL_B signals come from? From the schematic, we can see:
- SEL_A = D4 OR D7 (via U10B – one of the 74HC32 2-input OR gates)
- SEL_B = D5
We can start to explain why some of the instruction combinations don’t exist (or at least, aren’t distinct) as we can see that SEL_A depends on either D4 or D7.
OUTPUT Selection
The OUTPUT selection is a little more complicated. As previously mentioned, there are four destinations: the two registers, the OUTPUT register, and the program counter.
Each register has a /PE (“parallel enable input”) signal which is active low. These are individually fed by the output of the LOAD# logic.
The three signals at the bottom are D6, D7 and D4. The lone signal top left is the carry (/C) flag, and the four outputs top right are the four LOAD# signals which feed directly into the /PE pins of the four registers.
So from this we deduce the following relationships:
- Reg A LOAD0 HIGH = D6 OR D7 – so LOAD0 is only active (LOW) when both D6 and D7 are LOW.
- Reg B LOAD1 HIGH = NOT D6 OR D7 – so LOAD1 is only active (LOW) when D6 is HIGH and D7 is LOW.
- OUT LOAD2 LOW = NOT D6 AND D7 – so LOAD2 is only active (LOW) when D6 is LOW and D7 is HIGH.
- PC LOAD3 LOW = D6 AND D7 AND (D4 OR /C) – so LOAD3 is only active (LOW) when both D6 and D7 are HIGH and either D4 is HIGH or the carry signal (/C) is LOW.
This effectively means that D6 is used to select between registers A and B when D7 is LOW; and between OUT and PC when D7 is HIGH (subject to either D4 or the /C signal too in the case of PC).
Once again, we can see that there is some redundancy in the system for certain combinations of D4 to D7.
ROM Address Decoding
The 4-bit output from the program counter is effectively a 4-bit address bus. This gets turned into a set of selection signals to select which “byte” of the ROM should be active.
This simply uses a 74HC154, 4 to 16 line decoder, meaning that a 4-bit number goes in and one of 16 corresponding outputs goes LOW whilst the rest remain HIGH. There is no memory address or matrix handling – there is literally one control line per “memory” location.
The ROM itself is a set of 16 8-way DIP switches and diodes, so once its control signal is active (LOW) then those DIP switches become relevant on the data bus. Here is the last location and data bus logic. Note that all data signals are pulled HIGH by default, so will only be read as LOW if the DIP switch connects it to LOW via the diode, and that is only possible if that DIP block is selected from the 4 to 16 line decoder.
The 74HC540 is an inverting line buffer, turning any active LOW DIP switch settings into HIGH signals on the command/data bus. Recall that D0-D3 represent immediate data and D4-D7 represent command logic.
The Adder (ALU)
The arithmetic logic unit (ALU) for this CPU is a simple adder. A 74HC283 is a 4-bit binary full adder. “full” in that it supports 4-bit add-with-carry functionality, although in this design, carry is only used on the output stage – it doesn’t form part of the input addition.
A0-A3 comes from the INPUT selection circuitry, so can represent either register A or B, the state of the IN switches, or a fixed zero (0) value. B0-B3 comes directly from D0-D3 from the ROM contents as selected by the ROM addressing logic.
The COUT (carry) flag goes into a flip-flop and the active LOW version of the output is used as the carry flag in the LOAD# decoding logic to support the “JUMP IF NOT CARRY” instruction. So returning to the logic of #LOAD3, we have:
COUT /C D4 D6 D7 LOAD3
0 1 X 1 1 0 -> Dst = PC
X X 1 1 1 0 -> Dst = PCHence a jump will only happen (i.e. the PC get loaded) either if D4, D6, D7 are all 1 (unconditional) or if D4 =0, D6, D7 are 1 (conditional) if the CARRY flag is NOT set by the adder, resulting in /C = 1.
Some of the ROM instructions require D0-D3 to be zero in which case the adder is effectively taking the input (A, B, IN, 0) and loading it into the destination register (A, B, OUT, PC).
Notice that the adder does not use the carry in (CIN). This is tied to zero. Apparently this was left floating on an earlier revision of the board, which caused spurious results!
Putting it all Together
The complete truth table for the SEL, D4-7 and LOAD signals is as follows.
SEL_BSEL_AD4D5D6D7LD0/ALD1/BLD2/OPLD3/PCADD A,i0000LL00000111MOV AB0001LH10000111IN A0010HL01000111MOV A,i0011HH11000111MOV BA0100LL00101011ADD B,i0101LH10101011IN B0110HL01101011MOV B,i0111HH111010111000LH00011101OUT B1001LH100111011010HH01011101OUT i1011HH110111011100LH0011111=C1101LH10111110JNC1110HH0111111=CJMP1111HH11111110Returning to our instruction table, we can see how the decoding of the D4-D7 lines leads to enacting the various commands. In particular, we can now expand the table to show how the SEL and LOAD logic results in selecting the source and destination registers as follows:
D7-D4D3-D0INPUTOUTPUTADD A, data0000dataAAMOV A, B00010000BAIN A00100000INAMOV A, data0011data0AMOV B, A01000000ABADD B, data0101dataBBIN B01100000INBMOV B, data0111data0BOUT B *10000000BOUTOUT B10010000BOUTOUT data *1010data0OUTOUT data1011data0OUTJNC B *1100dataB/CPC/noneJMP B *1101dataBPCJNC1110data0/CPC/noneJMP1111data0PCAs per the table, we can also now infer the missing, or duplicate, instructions (marked * above).
In this table, the output will always be the addition of the INPUT and D3-D0, so everywhere 0 is specified for D3-D0 then in reality a value could be placed here instead. But then the instruction would take on a different meaning.
For example, MOV A, B is really MOV A, B+data, which really only makes sense when data is set to 0 otherwise overflows are very likely to occur.
It is also worth noting that SEL_A depends on either D4 or D7, and when SEL_A is set to 1 the input can only be either register B or zero. However, to output to OUT or PC, D7 has to be set. This means that instructions that act on OUT or PC can only take an input from register B or zero.
The two JMP B instructions are going to be of limited use too. They are essentially JMP to B+data instructions. There are probably some creative uses of such instructions, but for simplicity, keeping to the “0” versions that just depend on the immediate data is probably best.
Utility Blocks
There is one section of the circuit that hasn’t been considered yet. There is a block that provides the clock and reset circuitry.
The clock is based on a Schmidt trigger oscillator and can run on automatic or on manual trigger. There are two selectable speeds: 1Hz or 10Hz.
Both the clock and reset signals feed into the four registers and the carry flip-flop.
The remaining block is the power. It has a micro-USB socket and has to be powered from 5V directly either via the USB socket or directly into a 2-pin jumper header.
Conclusion
I have one on order. I’m looking forward to building it and giving it a go!
I really like the LEDs on the deluxe version, but that is a bit too much for me just for some messing around, but I am wondering how difficult it would be to attempt my own version with a few extra LEDs.
Assuming I manage to get one built and working, I’ll have a poke about at some signals and see what the art of the possible might be.
Kevin
-
TD4 4-bit DIY CPU
I was looking for DIY CPU projects, as I like kits that help me think at the lowest level of processing. It helps keep me grounded in how far technology has come over the years.
- Part 1 – Introduction, Discussion and Analysis
- Part 2 – Building and Hardware
- Part 3 – Programming and Simple Programs
- Part 4 – Some hardware enhancements
- Part 5 – My own PCB version
- Part 6 – Replacing the ROM with a microcontroller
- Part 7 – Creating an Arduino “assembler” for the TD4
- Part 8 – Extending the address space to 5-bits and an Arduino ROM PCB
Some of the options that I know about, that actually come as kits you can buy and are interesting for me for DIY computers are:
- RC2014 and compatible for Z80 based computers: https://rc2014.co.uk/
- Small Computer Central for a range of Z80, Z180, computers: https://smallcomputercentral.com/
- Ben Eater’s 6502 computer: https://eater.net/6502
- Nick Bild’s 6502 Vectron 64 computer: https://github.com/nickbild/vectron_64
But I wanted to go further down and actually find something that lets me build a simple CPU from gates. Here there are several options too:
- NAND to Tetris: https://www.nand2tetris.org/ (only available via emulation)
- Ben Eater’s 8-bit computer: https://eater.net/8bit
- Gigatron 8-bit computer: https://www.tindie.com/products/johnson/gigatron-ttl-microcomputer-diy-kit/
- TD4 4-bit computer: https://github.com/wuxx/TD4-4BIT-CPU
- TD4 4-bit computer deluxe kit: https://www.budgetronics.eu/en/building-kits/td4-deluxe-kit-build-your-own-mini-cpu-with-ttl-logic/a-26091-20
- MiniMax 4-bit CPU: https://www.tindie.com/products/denjhang/minimax-4bit-cpu-td4-architecture-cpusbc/
Whilst I’d love to build Ben Eater’s 8-bit CPU, the kit as provided is too much of an outlay for me. It is ~$300 – I mean, good for what you get and all the knowledge, but it is a solderless breadboard kit and that isn’t really what I’m after. The Gigatron is a distinct possibility that I’ll come back to at some point I think.
NAND to Tetris is excellent, and I have their book, but it is all emulated or virtualised, which does allow for all the scaling required for an (arguably) actually useful device, but isn’t designed to be built in actual hardware.
But the TD4 is really interesting. It is available as a PCB and components for approx £25 on Aliexpress and based on an open source design that shows the basic operation of a 4-bit CPU.
The “deluxe” kit mentioned above is a lot more expensive ~£120 but has all signals broken out to LEDs which, whilst is an awful lot of soldering, does looks incredibly impressive! The MiniMax is an evolution of the TD4 and kits for that are around £120. In fact, searching on Tindie and Hackaday.io for “TD4” will surface a few other DIY projects and even kits to purchase.
The TD4 does seem to fit the bill for me as an inexpensive kit to try. The downside is that documentation for it (in English) is pretty sparse.
The TD4 project itself is by “wuxx” an embedded engineer from HangZhou and much of the documentation is in Chinese. It is based on a Japenese book by Kaoru Tonami called “how to build a CPU” which can be found for ~£50 online, but as I don’t know Japanese either is unlikely to help me very much.
There are some sources of information that others have put together though, so I’m going to be using those as a starting point along with whatever I can figure out myself:
- The original GitHub project (plus online translation): https://github.com/wuxx/TD4-4BIT-CPU
- Philip Zucker’s “Guide to the TD4 4-bit DIY CPU”: https://www.philipzucker.com/td4-4bit-cpu/
- Kevin Gibb’s “teardownit” “DIY 4-bit CPU”: https://teardownit.quora.com/DIY-4-bit-CPU-Have-you-ever-made-a-processor-I-did-Took-me-just-12-microchips-and-a-clock-generator-The-processor-c
- Minoru Yamamoto’s “How to create a CPU TD4”: https://xyama.sakura.ne.jp/hp/4bitCPU_TD4.html
This post is my own “thinking out loud” as I work through the various parts to see how they work.
Basic Architecture
This is a 4-bit computer, with a 4-bit data bus, 4-bit commands, and a 4-bit address bus.
There is a block diagram on GitHub:
The fundamental process is as follows. For each “tick” of the computer:
- An OpCode is read from the ROM using the current 4-bit address (0 to 15) from the program counter.
- Each ROM entry is an 8-bit word with 4-bits as a command and 4-bits as data for the command.
- The data selector determines a 4-bit INPUT value. This can come from one of the two registers (A or B); or a set of four switches for the IN register; or be set to zero.
- This goes to the adder which adds it with the immediate data from the ROM (which could of course be zero).
- The OUTPUT of the adder can go to either of the two registers (A or B), an OUT register which is hooked up to four LEDS, or the program counter register to create a “jump”.
I’ll pull apart the different parts of the CPU in the following sections.
ROM Format
Each 8-bit word in the 16-byte ROM has the following format:
- 4 command bits
- 4 immediate data bits
Instruction Decoding
The 4 command bits from each ROM instruction have to be turned into the various selection signals to activate different parts of the CPU.
There is a table from GitHub again:
The explanation in Japanese translates (apparently) to:
“Explanation: The SEL_B and SEL_A signals select the ALU data source, while #LOAD0-#LOAD3 select the ALU data destination. More formally, they control the source and destination operands of instructions, respectively.”
From this we can note the following:
- There is no instruction for 1000,1010,1100 or 1101.
- Instruction 1110 appears twice, and the selectors set are dependent on the state of the C (carry) flag.
- Some instructions act on immediate data, others assume it will be 0.
The LOAD# have the following meanings in the system:
- LOAD#0 – Register A (A)
- LOAD#1 – Register B (B)
- LOAD#2 – OUTPUT (OUT)
- LOAD#3 – Program counter (PC)
The actual decoding happens in two parts: input selection; and output selection.
Registers
The system has four registers, each formed from a 74HC161 “presettable, synchronous, 4-bit binary counter”. There are two general purpose registers: A and B. There is one output register, whose contents drive the state of four LEDs. And there is a program counter. Here is the schematic for register A:
P0-P3 come from the output of the adder directly. RST and CLK are hopefully self-explanatory. For the A and B registers, Q0-Q3 go into the INPUT selection section (see later). For the OUTPUT register, these go directly to LEDs. For the program counter, these go into the ROM address logic (again more on that later).
The relevant operation of the 161 is described in the datasheet:
“The outputs (Q0 to Q3) of the counters may be preset HIGH or LOW. A LOW at the parallel enable input (PE) disables the counting action and causes the data at the data inputs (D0 to D3) to be loaded into the counter on the positive-going edge of the clock… A LOW at the master reset input (MR) sets Q0 to Q3 LOW…”
So on reset the outputs are all 0. When PE goes LOW, on the next clock pulse, the value on the inputs (P0-P3) is loaded into the counter and reflected on Q0-Q3. However, because CET and CEP are LOW the counter won’t actually count any further.
The program counter is a bit special, in that it is actually allowed the count by having CET and CEP set HIGH. This allows it to step through the instructions on a clock pulse.
In this case Q0-Q3 go off to the ROM address decoding, which I’ll come to in a moment.
INPUT Selection
There are two SELECT lines select the INPUT data as follows:
SEL_BSEL_ASOURCE00Register A (A)01Register B (B)10INPUT (IN)11Zero value (0)Input selection is handled by two 74HC153 dual 4-input multiplexers. Two are required as there are four data lines to be switched, and they all have one of four options to switch between based on the SELECT lines above.
Here is the relevant part of the schematic.
On the left are the three sets of four data signals that come from the A, B and IN inputs. D0 from each of the inputs goes to U7/1Cn; D1 goes to U7/2Cn; D2 to U8/1Cn; and D3 to U8/2Cn. Notice that the fourth set of data signals (U7/1C3, 2C3 and U8 1C3, 2C3) are connected directly to GND for the “zero” INPUT state (SEL_A=1, SEL_B=1).
On the right, the two pairs of outputs make up the four data lines to feed into the adder section.
So where does the SEL_A and SEL_B signals come from? From the schematic, we can see:
- SEL_A = D4 OR D7 (via U10B – one of the 74HC32 2-input OR gates)
- SEL_B = D5
We can start to explain why some of the instruction combinations don’t exist (or at least, aren’t distinct) as we can see that SEL_A depends on either D4 or D7.
OUTPUT Selection
The OUTPUT selection is a little more complicated. As previously mentioned, there are four destinations: the two registers, the OUTPUT register, and the program counter.
Each register has a /PE (“parallel enable input”) signal which is active low. These are individually fed by the output of the LOAD# logic.
The three signals at the bottom are D6, D7 and D4. The lone signal top left is the carry (/C) flag, and the four outputs top right are the four LOAD# signals which feed directly into the /PE pins of the four registers.
So from this we deduce the following relationships:
- Reg A LOAD0 HIGH = D6 OR D7 – so LOAD0 is only active (LOW) when both D6 and D7 are LOW.
- Reg B LOAD1 HIGH = NOT D6 OR D7 – so LOAD1 is only active (LOW) when D6 is HIGH and D7 is LOW.
- OUT LOAD2 LOW = NOT D6 AND D7 – so LOAD2 is only active (LOW) when D6 is LOW and D7 is HIGH.
- PC LOAD3 LOW = D6 AND D7 AND (D4 OR /C) – so LOAD3 is only active (LOW) when both D6 and D7 are HIGH and either D4 is HIGH or the carry signal (/C) is LOW.
This effectively means that D6 is used to select between registers A and B when D7 is LOW; and between OUT and PC when D7 is HIGH (subject to either D4 or the /C signal too in the case of PC).
Once again, we can see that there is some redundancy in the system for certain combinations of D4 to D7.
ROM Address Decoding
The 4-bit output from the program counter is effectively a 4-bit address bus. This gets turned into a set of selection signals to select which “byte” of the ROM should be active.
This simply uses a 74HC154, 4 to 16 line decoder, meaning that a 4-bit number goes in and one of 16 corresponding outputs goes LOW whilst the rest remain HIGH. There is no memory address or matrix handling – there is literally one control line per “memory” location.
The ROM itself is a set of 16 8-way DIP switches and diodes, so once its control signal is active (LOW) then those DIP switches become relevant on the data bus. Here is the last location and data bus logic. Note that all data signals are pulled HIGH by default, so will only be read as LOW if the DIP switch connects it to LOW via the diode, and that is only possible if that DIP block is selected from the 4 to 16 line decoder.
The 74HC540 is an inverting line buffer, turning any active LOW DIP switch settings into HIGH signals on the command/data bus. Recall that D0-D3 represent immediate data and D4-D7 represent command logic.
The Adder (ALU)
The arithmetic logic unit (ALU) for this CPU is a simple adder. A 74HC283 is a 4-bit binary full adder. “full” in that it supports 4-bit add-with-carry functionality, although in this design, carry is only used on the output stage – it doesn’t form part of the input addition.
A0-A3 comes from the INPUT selection circuitry, so can represent either register A or B, the state of the IN switches, or a fixed zero (0) value. B0-B3 comes directly from D0-D3 from the ROM contents as selected by the ROM addressing logic.
The COUT (carry) flag goes into a flip-flop and the active LOW version of the output is used as the carry flag in the LOAD# decoding logic to support the “JUMP IF NOT CARRY” instruction. So returning to the logic of #LOAD3, we have:
COUT /C D4 D6 D7 LOAD3
0 1 X 1 1 0 -> Dst = PC
X X 1 1 1 0 -> Dst = PCHence a jump will only happen (i.e. the PC get loaded) either if D4, D6, D7 are all 1 (unconditional) or if D4 =0, D6, D7 are 1 (conditional) if the CARRY flag is NOT set by the adder, resulting in /C = 1.
Some of the ROM instructions require D0-D3 to be zero in which case the adder is effectively taking the input (A, B, IN, 0) and loading it into the destination register (A, B, OUT, PC).
Notice that the adder does not use the carry in (CIN). This is tied to zero. Apparently this was left floating on an earlier revision of the board, which caused spurious results!
Putting it all Together
The complete truth table for the SEL, D4-7 and LOAD signals is as follows.
SEL_BSEL_AD4D5D6D7LD0/ALD1/BLD2/OPLD3/PCADD A,i0000LL00000111MOV AB0001LH10000111IN A0010HL01000111MOV A,i0011HH11000111MOV BA0100LL00101011ADD B,i0101LH10101011IN B0110HL01101011MOV B,i0111HH111010111000LH00011101OUT B1001LH100111011010HH01011101OUT i1011HH110111011100LH0011111=C1101LH10111110JNC1110HH0111111=CJMP1111HH11111110Returning to our instruction table, we can see how the decoding of the D4-D7 lines leads to enacting the various commands. In particular, we can now expand the table to show how the SEL and LOAD logic results in selecting the source and destination registers as follows:
D7-D4D3-D0INPUTOUTPUTADD A, data0000dataAAMOV A, B00010000BAIN A00100000INAMOV A, data0011data0AMOV B, A01000000ABADD B, data0101dataBBIN B01100000INBMOV B, data0111data0BOUT B *10000000BOUTOUT B10010000BOUTOUT data *1010data0OUTOUT data1011data0OUTJNC B *1100dataB/CPC/noneJMP B *1101dataBPCJNC1110data0/CPC/noneJMP1111data0PCAs per the table, we can also now infer the missing, or duplicate, instructions (marked * above).
In this table, the output will always be the addition of the INPUT and D3-D0, so everywhere 0 is specified for D3-D0 then in reality a value could be placed here instead. But then the instruction would take on a different meaning.
For example, MOV A, B is really MOV A, B+data, which really only makes sense when data is set to 0 otherwise overflows are very likely to occur.
It is also worth noting that SEL_A depends on either D4 or D7, and when SEL_A is set to 1 the input can only be either register B or zero. However, to output to OUT or PC, D7 has to be set. This means that instructions that act on OUT or PC can only take an input from register B or zero.
The two JMP B instructions are going to be of limited use too. They are essentially JMP to B+data instructions. There are probably some creative uses of such instructions, but for simplicity, keeping to the “0” versions that just depend on the immediate data is probably best.
Utility Blocks
There is one section of the circuit that hasn’t been considered yet. There is a block that provides the clock and reset circuitry.
The clock is based on a Schmidt trigger oscillator and can run on automatic or on manual trigger. There are two selectable speeds: 1Hz or 10Hz.
Both the clock and reset signals feed into the four registers and the carry flip-flop.
The remaining block is the power. It has a micro-USB socket and has to be powered from 5V directly either via the USB socket or directly into a 2-pin jumper header.
Conclusion
I have one on order. I’m looking forward to building it and giving it a go!
I really like the LEDs on the deluxe version, but that is a bit too much for me just for some messing around, but I am wondering how difficult it would be to attempt my own version with a few extra LEDs.
Assuming I manage to get one built and working, I’ll have a poke about at some signals and see what the art of the possible might be.
Kevin
-
TD4 4-bit DIY CPU
I was looking for DIY CPU projects, as I like kits that help me think at the lowest level of processing. It helps keep me grounded in how far technology has come over the years.
Some of the options that I know about, that actually come as kits you can buy and are interesting for me for DIY computers are:
- RC2014 and compatible for Z80 based computers: https://rc2014.co.uk/
- Small Computer Central for a range of Z80, Z180, computers: https://smallcomputercentral.com/
- Ben Eater’s 6502 computer: https://eater.net/6502
But I wanted to go further down and actually find something that lets me build a simple CPU from gates. Here there are several options too:
- NAND to Tetris: https://www.nand2tetris.org/ (only available via emulation)
- Ben Eater’s 8-bit computer: https://eater.net/8bit
- Gigatron 8-bit computer: https://www.tindie.com/products/johnson/gigatron-ttl-microcomputer-diy-kit/
- TD4 4-bit computer: https://github.com/wuxx/TD4-4BIT-CPU
- TD4 4-bit computer deluxe kit: https://www.budgetronics.eu/en/building-kits/td4-deluxe-kit-build-your-own-mini-cpu-with-ttl-logic/a-26091-20
- MiniMax 4-bit CPU: https://www.tindie.com/products/denjhang/minimax-4bit-cpu-td4-architecture-cpusbc/
Whilst I’d love to build Ben Eater’s 8-bit CPU, the kit as provided is too much of an outlay for me. It is ~$300 – I mean, good for what you get and all the knowledge, but it is a solderless breadboard kit and that isn’t really what I’m after. The Gigatron is a distinct possibility that I’ll come back to at some point I think.
NAND to Tetris is excellent, and I have their book, but it is all emulated or virtualised, which does allow for all the scaling required for an (arguably) actually useful device, but isn’t designed to be built in actual hardware.
But the TD4 is really interesting. It is available as a PCB and components for approx £25 on Aliexpress and based on an open source design that shows the basic operation of a 4-bit CPU.
The “deluxe” kit mentioned above is a lot more expensive ~£120 but has all signals broken out to LEDs which, whilst is an awful lot of soldering, does looks incredibly impressive! The MiniMax is an evolution of the TD4 and kits for that are around £120. In fact, searching on Tindie and Hackaday.io for “TD4” will surface a few other DIY projects and even kits to purchase.
The TD4 does seem to fit the bill for me as an inexpensive kit to try. The downside is that documentation for it (in English) is pretty sparse.
The TD4 project itself is by “wuxx” an embedded engineer from HangZhou and much of the documentation is in Chinese. It is based on a Japenese book by Kaoru Tonami called “how to build a CPU” which can be found for ~£50 online, but as I don’t know Japanese either is unlikely to help me very much.
There are some sources of information that others have put together though, so I’m going to be using those as a starting point along with whatever I can figure out myself:
- The original GitHub project (plus online translation): https://github.com/wuxx/TD4-4BIT-CPU
- Philip Zucker’s “Guide to the TD4 4-bit DIY CPU”: https://www.philipzucker.com/td4-4bit-cpu/
- Kevin Gibb’s “teardownit” “DIY 4-bit CPU”: https://teardownit.quora.com/DIY-4-bit-CPU-Have-you-ever-made-a-processor-I-did-Took-me-just-12-microchips-and-a-clock-generator-The-processor-c
This post is my own “thinking out loud” as I work through the various parts to see how they work.
Basic Architecture
This is a 4-bit computer, with a 4-bit data bus, 4-bit commands, and a 4-bit address bus.
There is a block diagram on GitHub:
The fundamental process is as follows. For each “tick” of the computer:
- An OpCode is read from the ROM using the current 4-bit address (0 to 15) from the program counter.
- Each ROM entry is an 8-bit word with 4-bits as a command and 4-bits as data for the command.
- The data selector determines a 4-bit INPUT value. This can come from one of the two registers (A or B); or a set of four switches for the IN register; or be set to zero.
- This goes to the adder which adds it with the immediate data from the ROM (which could of course be zero).
- The OUTPUT of the adder can go to either of the two registers (A or B), an OUT register which is hooked up to four LEDS, or the program counter register to create a “jump”.
I’ll pull apart the different parts of the CPU in the following sections.
ROM Format
Each 8-bit word in the 16-byte ROM has the following format:
- 4 command bits
- 4 immediate data bits
Instruction Decoding
The 4 command bits from each ROM instruction have to be turned into the various selection signals to activate different parts of the CPU.
There is a table from GitHub again:
The explanation in Japanese translates (apparently) to:
“Explanation: The SEL_B and SEL_A signals select the ALU data source, while #LOAD0-#LOAD3 select the ALU data destination. More formally, they control the source and destination operands of instructions, respectively.”
From this we can note the following:
- There is no instruction for 1000,1010,1100 or 1101.
- Instruction 1110 appears twice, and the selectors set are dependent on the state of the C (carry) flag.
- Some instructions act on immediate data, others assume it will be 0.
The LOAD# have the following meanings in the system:
- LOAD#0 – Register A (A)
- LOAD#1 – Register B (B)
- LOAD#2 – OUTPUT (OUT)
- LOAD#3 – Program counter (PC)
The actual decoding happens in two parts: input selection; and output selection.
Registers
The system has four registers, each formed from a 74HC161 “presettable, synchronous, 4-bit binary counter”. There are two general purpose registers: A and B. There is one output register, whose contents drive the state of four LEDs. And there is a program counter. Here is the schematic for register A:
P0-P3 come from the output of the adder directly. RST and CLK are hopefully self-explanatory. For the A and B registers, Q0-Q3 go into the INPUT selection section (see later). For the OUTPUT register, these go directly to LEDs. For the program counter, these go into the ROM address logic (again more on that later).
The relevant operation of the 161 is described in the datasheet:
“The outputs (Q0 to Q3) of the counters may be preset HIGH or LOW. A LOW at the parallel enable input (PE) disables the counting action and causes the data at the data inputs (D0 to D3) to be loaded into the counter on the positive-going edge of the clock… A LOW at the master reset input (MR) sets Q0 to Q3 LOW…”
So on reset the outputs are all 0. When PE goes LOW, on the next clock pulse, the value on the inputs (P0-P3) is loaded into the counter and reflected on Q0-Q3. However, because CET and CEP are LOW the counter won’t actually count any further.
The program counter is a bit special, in that it is actually allowed the count by having CET and CEP set HIGH. This allows it to step through the instructions on a clock pulse.
In this case Q0-Q3 go off to the ROM address decoding, which I’ll come to in a moment.
INPUT Selection
There are two SELECT lines select the INPUT data as follows:
SEL_BSEL_ASOURCE00Register A (A)01Register B (B)10INPUT (IN)11Zero value (0)Input selection is handled by two 74HC153 dual 4-input multiplexers. Two are required as there are four data lines to be switched, and they all have one of four options to switch between based on the SELECT lines above.
Here is the relevant part of the schematic.
On the left are the three sets of four data signals that come from the A, B and IN inputs. D0 from each of the inputs goes to U7/1Cn; D1 goes to U7/2Cn; D2 to U8/1Cn; and D3 to U8/2Cn. Notice that the fourth set of data signals (U7/1C3, 2C3 and U8 1C3, 2C3) are connected directly to GND for the “zero” INPUT state (SEL_A=1, SEL_B=1).
On the right, the two pairs of outputs make up the four data lines to feed into the adder section.
So where does the SEL_A and SEL_B signals come from? From the schematic, we can see:
- SEL_A = D4 OR D7 (via U10B – one of the 74HC32 2-input OR gates)
- SEL_B = D5
We can start to explain why some of the instruction combinations don’t exist (or at least, aren’t distinct) as we can see that SEL_A depends on either D4 or D7.
OUTPUT Selection
The OUTPUT selection is a little more complicated. As previously mentioned, there are four destinations: the two registers, the OUTPUT register, and the program counter.
Each register has a /PE (“parallel enable input”) signal which is active low. These are individually fed by the output of the LOAD# logic.
The three signals at the bottom are D6, D7 and D4. The lone signal top left is the carry (/C) flag, and the four outputs top right are the four LOAD# signals which feed directly into the /PE pins of the four registers.
So from this we deduce the following relationships:
- Reg A LOAD0 HIGH = D6 OR D7 – so LOAD0 is only active (LOW) when both D6 and D7 are LOW.
- Reg B LOAD1 HIGH = NOT D6 OR D7 – so LOAD1 is only active (LOW) when D6 is HIGH and D7 is LOW.
- OUT LOAD2 LOW = NOT D6 AND D7 – so LOAD2 is only active (LOW) when D6 is LOW and D7 is HIGH.
- PC LOAD3 LOW = D6 AND D7 AND (D4 OR /C) – so LOAD3 is only active (LOW) when both D6 and D7 are HIGH and either D4 is HIGH or the carry flag (C) is LOW.
This effectively means that D6 is used to select between registers A and B when D7 is LOW; and between OUT and PC when D7 is HIGH (subject to either D4 or the CARRY too in the case of PC).
Once again, we can see that there is some redundancy in the system for certain combinations of D4 to D7.
ROM Address Decoding
The 4-bit output from the program counter is effectively a 4-bit address bus. This gets turned into a set of selection signals to select which “byte” of the ROM should be active.
This simply uses a 74HC154, 4 to 16 line decoder, meaning that a 4-bit number goes in and one of 16 corresponding outputs goes LOW whilst the rest remain HIGH. There is no memory address or matrix handling – there is literally one control line per “memory” location.
The ROM itself is a set of 16 8-way DIP switches and diodes, so once its control signal is active (LOW) then those DIP switches become relevant on the data bus. Here is the last location and data bus logic. Note that all data signals are pulled HIGH by default, so will only be read as LOW if the DIP switch connects it to LOW via the diode, and that is only possible if that DIP block is selected from the 4 to 16 line decoder.
The 74HC540 is an inverting line buffer, turning any active LOW DIP switch settings into HIGH signals on the command/data bus. Recall that D0-D3 represent immediate data and D4-D7 represent command logic.
The Adder (ALU)
The arithmetic logic unit (ALU) for this CPU is a simple adder. A 74HC283 is a 4-bit binary full adder. “full” in that it supports 4-bit add-with-carry functionality, although in this design, carry is only used on the output stage – it doesn’t form part of the input addition.
A0-A3 comes from the INPUT selection circuitry, so can represent either register A or B, the state of the IN switches, or a fixed zero (0) value. B0-B3 comes directly from D0-D3 from the ROM contents as selected by the ROM addressing logic.
The COUT (carry) flag goes into a flip-flop and the active LOW version of the output is used as the carry flag in the LOAD# decoding logic to support the “JUMP IF CARRY” and “JUMP IF NOT CARRY” instructions.
Some of the ROM instructions require D0-D3 to be zero in which case the adder is effectively taking the input (A, B, IN, 0) and loading it into the destination register (A, B, OUT, PC).
Notice that the adder does not use the carry in (CIN). This is tied to zero. Apparently this was left floating on an earlier revision of the board, which caused spurious results!
Putting it all Together
Returning to our instruction table, we can see how the decoding of the D4-D7 lines leads to enacting the various commands. In particular, we can now expand the table to show how the SEL and LOAD logic results in selecting he source and destination registers as follows:
D7-D4D3-D0INPUTOUTPUTADD A, data0000dataAAMOV A, B00010000BAIN A00100000INAMOV A, data0011data0AMOV B, A01000000ABADD B, data0101dataBBIN B01100000INBMOV B, data0111data0BOUT B10000000BOUTOUT B10010000BOUTOUT data1010data0OUTOUT data1011data0OUTJMPC B1100dataB/CPC/noneJMP B1101dataBPCJMPC1110data0/CPC/noneJMP1111data0PCAs per the table, we can also now infer the missing, or duplicate, instructions.
In this table, the output will always be the addition of the INPUT and D3-D0, so everywhere 0 is specified for D3-D0 then in reality a value could be placed here instead. But then the instruction would take on a different meaning.
For example, MOV A, B is really MOV A, B+data, which really only makes sense when data is set to 0 otherwise overflows are very likely to occur.
It is also worth noting that SEL_A depends on either D4 or D7, and when SEL_A is set to 1 the input can only be either register B or zero. However, to output to OUT or PC, D7 has to be set. This means that instructions that act on OUT or PC can only take an input from register B or zero.
The two JMP B instructions are going to be of limited use too. They are essentially JMP to B+data instructions. There are probably some creative uses of such instructions, but for simplicity, keeping to the “0” versions that just depend on the immediate data is probably best.
Utility Blocks
There is one section of the circuit that hasn’t been considered yet. There is a block that provides the clock and reset circuitry.
The clock is based on a Schmidt trigger oscillator and can run on automatic or on manual trigger. There are two selectable speeds: 1Hz or 10Hz.
Both the clock and reset signals feed into the four registers and the carry flip-flop.
The remaining block is the power. It has a micro-USB socket and has to be powered from 5V directly either via the USB socket or directly into a 2-pin jumper header.
Conclusion
I have one on order. I’m looking forward to building it and giving it a go!
I really like the LEDs on the deluxe version, but that is a bit too much for me just for some messing around, but I am wondering how difficult it would be to attempt my own version with a few extra LEDs.
Assuming I manage to get one built and working, I’ll have a poke about at some signals and see what the art of the possible might be.
Kevin
-
TD4 4-bit DIY CPU
I was looking for DIY CPU projects, as I like kits that help me think at the lowest level of processing. It helps keep me grounded in how far technology has come over the years.
- Part 1 – Introduction, Discussion and Analysis
- Part 2 – Building and Hardware
- Part 3 – Programming and Simple Programs
- Part 4 – Some hardware enhancements
- Part 5 – My own PCB version
- Part 6 – Replacing the ROM with a microcontroller
- Part 7 – Creating an Arduino “assembler” for the TD4
Some of the options that I know about, that actually come as kits you can buy and are interesting for me for DIY computers are:
- RC2014 and compatible for Z80 based computers: https://rc2014.co.uk/
- Small Computer Central for a range of Z80, Z180, computers: https://smallcomputercentral.com/
- Ben Eater’s 6502 computer: https://eater.net/6502
- Nick Bild’s 6502 Vectron 64 computer: https://github.com/nickbild/vectron_64
But I wanted to go further down and actually find something that lets me build a simple CPU from gates. Here there are several options too:
- NAND to Tetris: https://www.nand2tetris.org/ (only available via emulation)
- Ben Eater’s 8-bit computer: https://eater.net/8bit
- Gigatron 8-bit computer: https://www.tindie.com/products/johnson/gigatron-ttl-microcomputer-diy-kit/
- TD4 4-bit computer: https://github.com/wuxx/TD4-4BIT-CPU
- TD4 4-bit computer deluxe kit: https://www.budgetronics.eu/en/building-kits/td4-deluxe-kit-build-your-own-mini-cpu-with-ttl-logic/a-26091-20
- MiniMax 4-bit CPU: https://www.tindie.com/products/denjhang/minimax-4bit-cpu-td4-architecture-cpusbc/
Whilst I’d love to build Ben Eater’s 8-bit CPU, the kit as provided is too much of an outlay for me. It is ~$300 – I mean, good for what you get and all the knowledge, but it is a solderless breadboard kit and that isn’t really what I’m after. The Gigatron is a distinct possibility that I’ll come back to at some point I think.
NAND to Tetris is excellent, and I have their book, but it is all emulated or virtualised, which does allow for all the scaling required for an (arguably) actually useful device, but isn’t designed to be built in actual hardware.
But the TD4 is really interesting. It is available as a PCB and components for approx £25 on Aliexpress and based on an open source design that shows the basic operation of a 4-bit CPU.
The “deluxe” kit mentioned above is a lot more expensive ~£120 but has all signals broken out to LEDs which, whilst is an awful lot of soldering, does looks incredibly impressive! The MiniMax is an evolution of the TD4 and kits for that are around £120. In fact, searching on Tindie and Hackaday.io for “TD4” will surface a few other DIY projects and even kits to purchase.
The TD4 does seem to fit the bill for me as an inexpensive kit to try. The downside is that documentation for it (in English) is pretty sparse.
The TD4 project itself is by “wuxx” an embedded engineer from HangZhou and much of the documentation is in Chinese. It is based on a Japenese book by Kaoru Tonami called “how to build a CPU” which can be found for ~£50 online, but as I don’t know Japanese either is unlikely to help me very much.
There are some sources of information that others have put together though, so I’m going to be using those as a starting point along with whatever I can figure out myself:
- The original GitHub project (plus online translation): https://github.com/wuxx/TD4-4BIT-CPU
- Philip Zucker’s “Guide to the TD4 4-bit DIY CPU”: https://www.philipzucker.com/td4-4bit-cpu/
- Kevin Gibb’s “teardownit” “DIY 4-bit CPU”: https://teardownit.quora.com/DIY-4-bit-CPU-Have-you-ever-made-a-processor-I-did-Took-me-just-12-microchips-and-a-clock-generator-The-processor-c
- Minoru Yamamoto’s “How to create a CPU TD4”: https://xyama.sakura.ne.jp/hp/4bitCPU_TD4.html
This post is my own “thinking out loud” as I work through the various parts to see how they work.
Basic Architecture
This is a 4-bit computer, with a 4-bit data bus, 4-bit commands, and a 4-bit address bus.
There is a block diagram on GitHub:
The fundamental process is as follows. For each “tick” of the computer:
- An OpCode is read from the ROM using the current 4-bit address (0 to 15) from the program counter.
- Each ROM entry is an 8-bit word with 4-bits as a command and 4-bits as data for the command.
- The data selector determines a 4-bit INPUT value. This can come from one of the two registers (A or B); or a set of four switches for the IN register; or be set to zero.
- This goes to the adder which adds it with the immediate data from the ROM (which could of course be zero).
- The OUTPUT of the adder can go to either of the two registers (A or B), an OUT register which is hooked up to four LEDS, or the program counter register to create a “jump”.
I’ll pull apart the different parts of the CPU in the following sections.
ROM Format
Each 8-bit word in the 16-byte ROM has the following format:
- 4 command bits
- 4 immediate data bits
Instruction Decoding
The 4 command bits from each ROM instruction have to be turned into the various selection signals to activate different parts of the CPU.
There is a table from GitHub again:
The explanation in Japanese translates (apparently) to:
“Explanation: The SEL_B and SEL_A signals select the ALU data source, while #LOAD0-#LOAD3 select the ALU data destination. More formally, they control the source and destination operands of instructions, respectively.”
From this we can note the following:
- There is no instruction for 1000,1010,1100 or 1101.
- Instruction 1110 appears twice, and the selectors set are dependent on the state of the C (carry) flag.
- Some instructions act on immediate data, others assume it will be 0.
The LOAD# have the following meanings in the system:
- LOAD#0 – Register A (A)
- LOAD#1 – Register B (B)
- LOAD#2 – OUTPUT (OUT)
- LOAD#3 – Program counter (PC)
The actual decoding happens in two parts: input selection; and output selection.
Registers
The system has four registers, each formed from a 74HC161 “presettable, synchronous, 4-bit binary counter”. There are two general purpose registers: A and B. There is one output register, whose contents drive the state of four LEDs. And there is a program counter. Here is the schematic for register A:
P0-P3 come from the output of the adder directly. RST and CLK are hopefully self-explanatory. For the A and B registers, Q0-Q3 go into the INPUT selection section (see later). For the OUTPUT register, these go directly to LEDs. For the program counter, these go into the ROM address logic (again more on that later).
The relevant operation of the 161 is described in the datasheet:
“The outputs (Q0 to Q3) of the counters may be preset HIGH or LOW. A LOW at the parallel enable input (PE) disables the counting action and causes the data at the data inputs (D0 to D3) to be loaded into the counter on the positive-going edge of the clock… A LOW at the master reset input (MR) sets Q0 to Q3 LOW…”
So on reset the outputs are all 0. When PE goes LOW, on the next clock pulse, the value on the inputs (P0-P3) is loaded into the counter and reflected on Q0-Q3. However, because CET and CEP are LOW the counter won’t actually count any further.
The program counter is a bit special, in that it is actually allowed the count by having CET and CEP set HIGH. This allows it to step through the instructions on a clock pulse.
In this case Q0-Q3 go off to the ROM address decoding, which I’ll come to in a moment.
INPUT Selection
There are two SELECT lines select the INPUT data as follows:
SEL_BSEL_ASOURCE00Register A (A)01Register B (B)10INPUT (IN)11Zero value (0)Input selection is handled by two 74HC153 dual 4-input multiplexers. Two are required as there are four data lines to be switched, and they all have one of four options to switch between based on the SELECT lines above.
Here is the relevant part of the schematic.
On the left are the three sets of four data signals that come from the A, B and IN inputs. D0 from each of the inputs goes to U7/1Cn; D1 goes to U7/2Cn; D2 to U8/1Cn; and D3 to U8/2Cn. Notice that the fourth set of data signals (U7/1C3, 2C3 and U8 1C3, 2C3) are connected directly to GND for the “zero” INPUT state (SEL_A=1, SEL_B=1).
On the right, the two pairs of outputs make up the four data lines to feed into the adder section.
So where does the SEL_A and SEL_B signals come from? From the schematic, we can see:
- SEL_A = D4 OR D7 (via U10B – one of the 74HC32 2-input OR gates)
- SEL_B = D5
We can start to explain why some of the instruction combinations don’t exist (or at least, aren’t distinct) as we can see that SEL_A depends on either D4 or D7.
OUTPUT Selection
The OUTPUT selection is a little more complicated. As previously mentioned, there are four destinations: the two registers, the OUTPUT register, and the program counter.
Each register has a /PE (“parallel enable input”) signal which is active low. These are individually fed by the output of the LOAD# logic.
The three signals at the bottom are D6, D7 and D4. The lone signal top left is the carry (/C) flag, and the four outputs top right are the four LOAD# signals which feed directly into the /PE pins of the four registers.
So from this we deduce the following relationships:
- Reg A LOAD0 HIGH = D6 OR D7 – so LOAD0 is only active (LOW) when both D6 and D7 are LOW.
- Reg B LOAD1 HIGH = NOT D6 OR D7 – so LOAD1 is only active (LOW) when D6 is HIGH and D7 is LOW.
- OUT LOAD2 LOW = NOT D6 AND D7 – so LOAD2 is only active (LOW) when D6 is LOW and D7 is HIGH.
- PC LOAD3 LOW = D6 AND D7 AND (D4 OR /C) – so LOAD3 is only active (LOW) when both D6 and D7 are HIGH and either D4 is HIGH or the carry signal (/C) is LOW.
This effectively means that D6 is used to select between registers A and B when D7 is LOW; and between OUT and PC when D7 is HIGH (subject to either D4 or the /C signal too in the case of PC).
Once again, we can see that there is some redundancy in the system for certain combinations of D4 to D7.
ROM Address Decoding
The 4-bit output from the program counter is effectively a 4-bit address bus. This gets turned into a set of selection signals to select which “byte” of the ROM should be active.
This simply uses a 74HC154, 4 to 16 line decoder, meaning that a 4-bit number goes in and one of 16 corresponding outputs goes LOW whilst the rest remain HIGH. There is no memory address or matrix handling – there is literally one control line per “memory” location.
The ROM itself is a set of 16 8-way DIP switches and diodes, so once its control signal is active (LOW) then those DIP switches become relevant on the data bus. Here is the last location and data bus logic. Note that all data signals are pulled HIGH by default, so will only be read as LOW if the DIP switch connects it to LOW via the diode, and that is only possible if that DIP block is selected from the 4 to 16 line decoder.
The 74HC540 is an inverting line buffer, turning any active LOW DIP switch settings into HIGH signals on the command/data bus. Recall that D0-D3 represent immediate data and D4-D7 represent command logic.
The Adder (ALU)
The arithmetic logic unit (ALU) for this CPU is a simple adder. A 74HC283 is a 4-bit binary full adder. “full” in that it supports 4-bit add-with-carry functionality, although in this design, carry is only used on the output stage – it doesn’t form part of the input addition.
A0-A3 comes from the INPUT selection circuitry, so can represent either register A or B, the state of the IN switches, or a fixed zero (0) value. B0-B3 comes directly from D0-D3 from the ROM contents as selected by the ROM addressing logic.
The COUT (carry) flag goes into a flip-flop and the active LOW version of the output is used as the carry flag in the LOAD# decoding logic to support the “JUMP IF NOT CARRY” instruction. So returning to the logic of #LOAD3, we have:
COUT /C D4 D6 D7 LOAD3
0 1 X 1 1 0 -> Dst = PC
X X 1 1 1 0 -> Dst = PCHence a jump will only happen (i.e. the PC get loaded) either if D4, D6, D7 are all 1 (unconditional) or if D4 =0, D6, D7 are 1 (conditional) if the CARRY flag is NOT set by the adder, resulting in /C = 1.
Some of the ROM instructions require D0-D3 to be zero in which case the adder is effectively taking the input (A, B, IN, 0) and loading it into the destination register (A, B, OUT, PC).
Notice that the adder does not use the carry in (CIN). This is tied to zero. Apparently this was left floating on an earlier revision of the board, which caused spurious results!
Putting it all Together
The complete truth table for the SEL, D4-7 and LOAD signals is as follows.
SEL_BSEL_AD4D5D6D7LD0/ALD1/BLD2/OPLD3/PCADD A,i0000LL00000111MOV AB0001LH10000111IN A0010HL01000111MOV A,i0011HH11000111MOV BA0100LL00101011ADD B,i0101LH10101011IN B0110HL01101011MOV B,i0111HH111010111000LH00011101OUT B1001LH100111011010HH01011101OUT i1011HH110111011100LH0011111=C1101LH10111110JNC1110HH0111111=CJMP1111HH11111110Returning to our instruction table, we can see how the decoding of the D4-D7 lines leads to enacting the various commands. In particular, we can now expand the table to show how the SEL and LOAD logic results in selecting the source and destination registers as follows:
D7-D4D3-D0INPUTOUTPUTADD A, data0000dataAAMOV A, B00010000BAIN A00100000INAMOV A, data0011data0AMOV B, A01000000ABADD B, data0101dataBBIN B01100000INBMOV B, data0111data0BOUT B *10000000BOUTOUT B10010000BOUTOUT data *1010data0OUTOUT data1011data0OUTJNC B *1100dataB/CPC/noneJMP B *1101dataBPCJNC1110data0/CPC/noneJMP1111data0PCAs per the table, we can also now infer the missing, or duplicate, instructions (marked * above).
In this table, the output will always be the addition of the INPUT and D3-D0, so everywhere 0 is specified for D3-D0 then in reality a value could be placed here instead. But then the instruction would take on a different meaning.
For example, MOV A, B is really MOV A, B+data, which really only makes sense when data is set to 0 otherwise overflows are very likely to occur.
It is also worth noting that SEL_A depends on either D4 or D7, and when SEL_A is set to 1 the input can only be either register B or zero. However, to output to OUT or PC, D7 has to be set. This means that instructions that act on OUT or PC can only take an input from register B or zero.
The two JMP B instructions are going to be of limited use too. They are essentially JMP to B+data instructions. There are probably some creative uses of such instructions, but for simplicity, keeping to the “0” versions that just depend on the immediate data is probably best.
Utility Blocks
There is one section of the circuit that hasn’t been considered yet. There is a block that provides the clock and reset circuitry.
The clock is based on a Schmidt trigger oscillator and can run on automatic or on manual trigger. There are two selectable speeds: 1Hz or 10Hz.
Both the clock and reset signals feed into the four registers and the carry flip-flop.
The remaining block is the power. It has a micro-USB socket and has to be powered from 5V directly either via the USB socket or directly into a 2-pin jumper header.
Conclusion
I have one on order. I’m looking forward to building it and giving it a go!
I really like the LEDs on the deluxe version, but that is a bit too much for me just for some messing around, but I am wondering how difficult it would be to attempt my own version with a few extra LEDs.
Assuming I manage to get one built and working, I’ll have a poke about at some signals and see what the art of the possible might be.
Kevin
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One UI 8 Full Changelogs (Final) (Galaxy S25)
Samsung has rolled out One UI 8.0 for the Galaxy S25 series devices, including the Galaxy S25 Edge, in Korea today and it will expand the availability to other countries and models in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, Samsung has finally published the official changelogs for the Galaxy S25 series’ One UI 8.0 update.
Here’s the final changelogs:
Please note that the below changelogs are machine-translated from Korean to English, so inaccuracies can show up. In case European countries or any other country gets the update, we’ll update the changelogs to the official English version.
One UI 8.0 (Android 16)
Galaxy AI
Call subtitles
With call captioning, your conversation with the other person is displayed on screen in real time during a call. You can follow along with the on-screen content and carefully check to make sure you don’t miss anything.Create animal photos in various styles
Apply AI effects to transform your pet’s photos into something special. Now, in Portrait Studio, you can apply a variety of styles, such as fish-eye and oil painting, to your dog and cat photos to make them truly special.Clean audio
Apply the audio eraser to automatically reduce background noises, such as wind, when someone speaks. This feature is available in the Gallery, Video Player, Samsung Notes, Voice Recorder, and Phone.Smarter everyday life with Now Brief
Receive concise briefings of essential information tailored to your interests and daily timeline. Access Now Brief via the Edge panel, home screen widget, and Now bar notifications.Disaster Text Translation
Even if you receive disaster alerts in a different language, you can still see important information without missing anything. Galaxy AI will automatically translate emergency alerts in languages other than your system language.Faster AI Select
After running AI Select, you can select the desired area right away without waiting any longer.View AI results more easily
When using apps that support summary and translation in landscape mode, you can summarize or translate content and then view the original and translated content side by side at once.Stay safe from voice phishing
Calls from unknown callers are analyzed by AI based on data from the National Police Agency. If conversations suspected of being voice phishing are detected, you will be notified to avoid damage. Call analysis is processed only on your device, and call details are not shared.Customization
New clock style for lock screen
Discover a stylish new clock that will make your lock screen stand out. It blends seamlessly with your wallpaper, and the font size and position flexibly change based on the shape of your portrait or animal image, allowing you to create your own perfect style.Newly designed wallpaper
The range of wallpaper options has been expanded. Gradient wallpapers and dynamic wallpapers that change color over time have been added.Set my photo as wallpaper
Get recommended wallpapers and set them. Choose from a variety of categories from your gallery, including landscapes, cities, flowers, pets, and people.Productivity
Check stock prices without unlocking
If there’s a significant price change in a stock you’ve added to your watchlist in Google Finance, it will appear in the Now bar at the end of the trading day.File sharing made easier
Sending and receiving files is easier than ever. Tap the Quick Share button in the Quick Settings panel. Easily receive new files while the Quick Share screen is open, or select and share files directly from Quick Share.Add a sticky note
Samsung Notes now features Sticky Notes. You can add and delete ideas at any time without altering the original note. Add unlimited Sticky Notes on top of your notes.Quickly find downloaded files
You can now filter files by downloaded apps. This feature is available in the Downloads and Recent Files sections of the My Files app.The new Samsung Internet
We’ve improved the menu screen to allow you to access frequently used functions more quickly. Easily find frequently used features and configure the screen to your liking.Supports engineering calculator in portrait mode
You can now use the scientific calculator without having to rotate the screen horizontally. The scientific calculator now supports both landscape and portrait modes.Multitasking
DeX usage has become more convenient
When connected to an external display, use DeX more conveniently with a mouse and on-screen keyboard. You can also add widgets to your home screen.More diverse display settings
The new Samsung DeX offers more options when connecting to an external monitor or TV. You can choose an optimized display resolution up to WQHD, and you can also rotate the screen 90, 180, or 270 degrees.Split screen made more convenient
When you open two apps in split screen mode, you can slide one app to the edge of the screen to focus on the current app. When you want to use another app, simply tap the app you’ve just pushed. The app will instantly switch between them, making it convenient to use.Reminder
Redesigned Reminder
The Reminder app’s screen layout has been revamped. You can now easily see how many reminders you have in each category at the top of the screen. Custom categories can be easily collapsed and expanded, allowing you to customize the Reminder main screen to your liking.Add useful reminder templates
We provide a variety of templates to help you make the most of your reminders. You won’t have to worry about how to set reminders for important tasks.Add reminders easily
To add a reminder, simply type it in the input field at the bottom of the screen. Based on your input, templates and previously used reminders will be recommended. Using the buttons below the input field, you can easily create checklists, set locations, attach images, and more. You can also create a reminder by voice by pressing the microphone icon instead of typing.Skip notifications on holidays
When adding a reminder, you can set it so that the event notification does not sound on weekends and public holidays.Calendar
Manage reminders in your calendar
Now you can add reminders directly from the Calendar app without opening the Reminders app. Simply tap the + button on the calendar to easily add events or reminders. To change a reminder time, simply drag it to the desired date or time.Add a schedule quickly
When creating a schedule using the Quick Add menu, you’ll receive recommendations for schedule names and times based on existing schedules. Selecting a recommendation will immediately add the schedule without any additional input.View lunar dates together
You can set the lunar date to always be displayed on the monthly calendar. Go to Calendar Settings and set it to Always display lunar dates.Skip notifications on holidays
When creating a schedule, you can set it so that schedule notifications do not sound on weekends and public holidays.Samsung Health
Your own personalized running coach
Run farther and faster without worrying about injury with Samsung Health’s new Running Coach. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, you’ll find training programs and practical tips tailored to your needs. This feature is available on the Galaxy Watch8 and Galaxy Watch Ultra.Bedtime Guide for Tomorrow
Get recommendations for your optimal bedtime and start the next day feeling refreshed. The new Bedtime Guide analyzes your sleep data to recommend the optimal bedtime each night.Add a running challenge to Together
In addition to walking challenges, a running event has been added, allowing you to challenge your friends to a run. Compete to see who can run a set distance faster. For example, you can set a goal of 50 km and see who can reach it first.Antioxidant index for aging management
Anti-aging starts with managing your diet. The watch’s Antioxidant Index (Lab) feature detects the levels of carotenoids in fruits and vegetables, helping you manage your antioxidant status and slow down the aging process. This feature is available on the Galaxy Watch8 and Galaxy Watch Ultra.Keep track of your meals with meal logs and reminders
Set meal log reminders to help you consistently reach your calorie goals. Samsung Health will send you notifications at set times.Vascular stress measurement
Easily measure your vascular stress (the degree of strain on your blood vessels) with the Galaxy Watch. First, wear the watch for three or more nights while you sleep to establish a baseline, allowing you to directly monitor changes in your vascular stress. This feature is available on the Galaxy Watch8 and Galaxy Watch Ultra.Check your medical records easily and securely
You can collect, store, and view medical records from multiple hospitals and clinics in one place in Samsung Health.Share your health data with family and friends
You can now share your health data not only with your family group but also with friends. Now, manage your health records with more people.Photos and videos
Swipe up and down to open quick controls
Usability has been improved by allowing you to quickly access quick controls by swiping up or down anywhere on the camera screen. Try changing the Swipe up or down setting in the camera settings to Open Quick Controls.Capture the perfect brightness with the exposure monitor
Try the Exposure Monitor feature in Pro and Pro Video modes. It helps you capture photos and videos with the right amount of brightness. It displays overexposed areas with a zebra pattern, and provides false color, which displays different colors depending on the exposure value.Professional-level editing experience with Log videos
You can shoot video in Log format and then professionally edit it. Simply turn on Log in the camera settings and shooting screen to instantly record in Log format. This feature is available in both Video and Pro Video modes.Audio
Quickly set up your Galaxy Buds
You can now easily control your Galaxy Buds from your phone’s settings—no need to open the Galaxy Wearable app separately.Oracast, Connecting Easier
Oracast lets you simultaneously transmit audio from one device to multiple devices. Simply scan a QR code to easily connect to the audio you’re playing, or you can generate your own QR code so others can connect to your audio.Communication
Profile card improvements
The layout of the profile card editing screen has been improved to make it easier to create and edit profile cards. You can now share your created profile cards so that callers can see who you are.Check call recordings in Contacts
You can easily review previous calls. If a call with the other party is recorded, it will appear on the contact’s history screen.Security and Privacy
Upgraded Secure Folder
You can keep your important apps and data even more secure. When the Secure Folder is locked, all apps within it will be closed and notifications will be muted. For even greater security, you can completely hide the Secure Folder and encrypt all apps and data within it.Enhanced device security
Knox Matrix periodically checks all devices logged into your Samsung account for security risks. If a security risk is detected on a device, it is automatically logged out of your Samsung account to prevent the risk from spreading to other devices. You can check the security status of your device in the Security & Privacy settings.Set whether to display notifications when the screen is locked
On the main screen of the Notifications settings, you can choose to show or hide notifications when your phone is locked. Select Always show notifications to view them when your phone is locked, or Hide notifications when locked to prevent others from seeing them.Accessibility
Added screen zoom option to the submenu
A new way to easily zoom in and out has been added to the submenu. You can zoom in and out by dragging with one finger, or adjust the zoom level by pressing the on-screen zoom level button.Use mouse gestures with your keyboard
You can now use your keyboard to perform mouse actions. By enabling the Mouse Keys option in Accessibility settings, you can conveniently use your keyboard to perform mouse functions, such as moving the mouse pointer, clicking, long-pressing, and scrolling.Enlarge the keyboard on the screen as well
The keyboard has been improved to enlarge when the screen is zoomed in, making it easier to type. Try enabling the Zoom Keyboard When Typing option in the Zoom settings.Easily connect your Bluetooth hearing aids
You can register and connect your Bluetooth hearing aid directly from the Hearing Aid Support screen in Accessibility Settings.Modes and Routines
Easily set up routines with new templates
New routine templates are available, utilizing weather and various detailed conditions. You can use the templates as is, or customize the settings to your liking.Detailed configurable routines
By importing data from various apps, including Watch, Calendar, and Samsung Notes, you can now configure a wider range of actions in your routines. Imported data can be used as conditions or actions.Other enhanced features
Improved alarm groups
Usability has been improved by allowing you to directly add existing alarms to a group by pressing the + button on the Alarm Groups screen. You can also add an Alarm Group widget to the home screen to turn multiple alarms on and off at once.More convenient app notification settings
You can manage various notification options at once, such as how notifications are displayed and whether they are displayed on the lock screen, from the notification settings screen of each app.Get quick support
You can receive more convenient support with a quick check-in at a Samsung Service Center. By using NFC or scanning a QR code, you can avoid manually entering information like your name and phone number. Your data is encrypted and only accessible by Samsung service representatives.Intuitive weather expression
The Weather app has been improved to provide an intuitive view of the weather. Appropriate animations are applied to the app’s main background based on current weather conditions.Change weather data provider
The Weather Channel has changed its weather information provider. Some registered location names may change.To update to One UI 8.0, you’ll need to have an eligible device, such as the Galaxy S25, Z Fold/Flip 6, and Tab S10, before you can continue. Afterwards, go to Settings > Software update > Download and install.
#Android #Android16 #AndroidB #AndroidBaklava #GalaxyS25 #GalaxyS25Edge #GalaxyS25Ultra #GalaxyS25_ #news #oneUi #OneUI8 #OneUI80 #S25 #S25Edge #S25Ultra #S25_ #Samsung #SamsungGalaxyS25 #SamsungGalaxyS25Edge #SamsungGalaxyS25Ultra #SamsungGalaxyS25_ #smartphone #Tech #Technology #update
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One UI 8 Full Changelogs (Final) (Galaxy S25)
Samsung has rolled out One UI 8.0 for the Galaxy S25 series devices, including the Galaxy S25 Edge, in Korea today and it will expand the availability to other countries and models in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, Samsung has finally published the official changelogs for the Galaxy S25 series’ One UI 8.0 update.
Here’s the final changelogs:
Please note that the below changelogs are machine-translated from Korean to English, so inaccuracies can show up. In case European countries or any other country gets the update, we’ll update the changelogs to the official English version.
One UI 8.0 (Android 16)
Galaxy AI
Call subtitles
With call captioning, your conversation with the other person is displayed on screen in real time during a call. You can follow along with the on-screen content and carefully check to make sure you don’t miss anything.Create animal photos in various styles
Apply AI effects to transform your pet’s photos into something special. Now, in Portrait Studio, you can apply a variety of styles, such as fish-eye and oil painting, to your dog and cat photos to make them truly special.Clean audio
Apply the audio eraser to automatically reduce background noises, such as wind, when someone speaks. This feature is available in the Gallery, Video Player, Samsung Notes, Voice Recorder, and Phone.Smarter everyday life with Now Brief
Receive concise briefings of essential information tailored to your interests and daily timeline. Access Now Brief via the Edge panel, home screen widget, and Now bar notifications.Disaster Text Translation
Even if you receive disaster alerts in a different language, you can still see important information without missing anything. Galaxy AI will automatically translate emergency alerts in languages other than your system language.Faster AI Select
After running AI Select, you can select the desired area right away without waiting any longer.View AI results more easily
When using apps that support summary and translation in landscape mode, you can summarize or translate content and then view the original and translated content side by side at once.Stay safe from voice phishing
Calls from unknown callers are analyzed by AI based on data from the National Police Agency. If conversations suspected of being voice phishing are detected, you will be notified to avoid damage. Call analysis is processed only on your device, and call details are not shared.Customization
New clock style for lock screen
Discover a stylish new clock that will make your lock screen stand out. It blends seamlessly with your wallpaper, and the font size and position flexibly change based on the shape of your portrait or animal image, allowing you to create your own perfect style.Newly designed wallpaper
The range of wallpaper options has been expanded. Gradient wallpapers and dynamic wallpapers that change color over time have been added.Set my photo as wallpaper
Get recommended wallpapers and set them. Choose from a variety of categories from your gallery, including landscapes, cities, flowers, pets, and people.Productivity
Check stock prices without unlocking
If there’s a significant price change in a stock you’ve added to your watchlist in Google Finance, it will appear in the Now bar at the end of the trading day.File sharing made easier
Sending and receiving files is easier than ever. Tap the Quick Share button in the Quick Settings panel. Easily receive new files while the Quick Share screen is open, or select and share files directly from Quick Share.Add a sticky note
Samsung Notes now features Sticky Notes. You can add and delete ideas at any time without altering the original note. Add unlimited Sticky Notes on top of your notes.Quickly find downloaded files
You can now filter files by downloaded apps. This feature is available in the Downloads and Recent Files sections of the My Files app.The new Samsung Internet
We’ve improved the menu screen to allow you to access frequently used functions more quickly. Easily find frequently used features and configure the screen to your liking.Supports engineering calculator in portrait mode
You can now use the scientific calculator without having to rotate the screen horizontally. The scientific calculator now supports both landscape and portrait modes.Multitasking
DeX usage has become more convenient
When connected to an external display, use DeX more conveniently with a mouse and on-screen keyboard. You can also add widgets to your home screen.More diverse display settings
The new Samsung DeX offers more options when connecting to an external monitor or TV. You can choose an optimized display resolution up to WQHD, and you can also rotate the screen 90, 180, or 270 degrees.Split screen made more convenient
When you open two apps in split screen mode, you can slide one app to the edge of the screen to focus on the current app. When you want to use another app, simply tap the app you’ve just pushed. The app will instantly switch between them, making it convenient to use.Reminder
Redesigned Reminder
The Reminder app’s screen layout has been revamped. You can now easily see how many reminders you have in each category at the top of the screen. Custom categories can be easily collapsed and expanded, allowing you to customize the Reminder main screen to your liking.Add useful reminder templates
We provide a variety of templates to help you make the most of your reminders. You won’t have to worry about how to set reminders for important tasks.Add reminders easily
To add a reminder, simply type it in the input field at the bottom of the screen. Based on your input, templates and previously used reminders will be recommended. Using the buttons below the input field, you can easily create checklists, set locations, attach images, and more. You can also create a reminder by voice by pressing the microphone icon instead of typing.Skip notifications on holidays
When adding a reminder, you can set it so that the event notification does not sound on weekends and public holidays.Calendar
Manage reminders in your calendar
Now you can add reminders directly from the Calendar app without opening the Reminders app. Simply tap the + button on the calendar to easily add events or reminders. To change a reminder time, simply drag it to the desired date or time.Add a schedule quickly
When creating a schedule using the Quick Add menu, you’ll receive recommendations for schedule names and times based on existing schedules. Selecting a recommendation will immediately add the schedule without any additional input.View lunar dates together
You can set the lunar date to always be displayed on the monthly calendar. Go to Calendar Settings and set it to Always display lunar dates.Skip notifications on holidays
When creating a schedule, you can set it so that schedule notifications do not sound on weekends and public holidays.Samsung Health
Your own personalized running coach
Run farther and faster without worrying about injury with Samsung Health’s new Running Coach. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, you’ll find training programs and practical tips tailored to your needs. This feature is available on the Galaxy Watch8 and Galaxy Watch Ultra.Bedtime Guide for Tomorrow
Get recommendations for your optimal bedtime and start the next day feeling refreshed. The new Bedtime Guide analyzes your sleep data to recommend the optimal bedtime each night.Add a running challenge to Together
In addition to walking challenges, a running event has been added, allowing you to challenge your friends to a run. Compete to see who can run a set distance faster. For example, you can set a goal of 50 km and see who can reach it first.Antioxidant index for aging management
Anti-aging starts with managing your diet. The watch’s Antioxidant Index (Lab) feature detects the levels of carotenoids in fruits and vegetables, helping you manage your antioxidant status and slow down the aging process. This feature is available on the Galaxy Watch8 and Galaxy Watch Ultra.Keep track of your meals with meal logs and reminders
Set meal log reminders to help you consistently reach your calorie goals. Samsung Health will send you notifications at set times.Vascular stress measurement
Easily measure your vascular stress (the degree of strain on your blood vessels) with the Galaxy Watch. First, wear the watch for three or more nights while you sleep to establish a baseline, allowing you to directly monitor changes in your vascular stress. This feature is available on the Galaxy Watch8 and Galaxy Watch Ultra.Check your medical records easily and securely
You can collect, store, and view medical records from multiple hospitals and clinics in one place in Samsung Health.Share your health data with family and friends
You can now share your health data not only with your family group but also with friends. Now, manage your health records with more people.Photos and videos
Swipe up and down to open quick controls
Usability has been improved by allowing you to quickly access quick controls by swiping up or down anywhere on the camera screen. Try changing the Swipe up or down setting in the camera settings to Open Quick Controls.Capture the perfect brightness with the exposure monitor
Try the Exposure Monitor feature in Pro and Pro Video modes. It helps you capture photos and videos with the right amount of brightness. It displays overexposed areas with a zebra pattern, and provides false color, which displays different colors depending on the exposure value.Professional-level editing experience with Log videos
You can shoot video in Log format and then professionally edit it. Simply turn on Log in the camera settings and shooting screen to instantly record in Log format. This feature is available in both Video and Pro Video modes.Audio
Quickly set up your Galaxy Buds
You can now easily control your Galaxy Buds from your phone’s settings—no need to open the Galaxy Wearable app separately.Oracast, Connecting Easier
Oracast lets you simultaneously transmit audio from one device to multiple devices. Simply scan a QR code to easily connect to the audio you’re playing, or you can generate your own QR code so others can connect to your audio.Communication
Profile card improvements
The layout of the profile card editing screen has been improved to make it easier to create and edit profile cards. You can now share your created profile cards so that callers can see who you are.Check call recordings in Contacts
You can easily review previous calls. If a call with the other party is recorded, it will appear on the contact’s history screen.Security and Privacy
Upgraded Secure Folder
You can keep your important apps and data even more secure. When the Secure Folder is locked, all apps within it will be closed and notifications will be muted. For even greater security, you can completely hide the Secure Folder and encrypt all apps and data within it.Enhanced device security
Knox Matrix periodically checks all devices logged into your Samsung account for security risks. If a security risk is detected on a device, it is automatically logged out of your Samsung account to prevent the risk from spreading to other devices. You can check the security status of your device in the Security & Privacy settings.Set whether to display notifications when the screen is locked
On the main screen of the Notifications settings, you can choose to show or hide notifications when your phone is locked. Select Always show notifications to view them when your phone is locked, or Hide notifications when locked to prevent others from seeing them.Accessibility
Added screen zoom option to the submenu
A new way to easily zoom in and out has been added to the submenu. You can zoom in and out by dragging with one finger, or adjust the zoom level by pressing the on-screen zoom level button.Use mouse gestures with your keyboard
You can now use your keyboard to perform mouse actions. By enabling the Mouse Keys option in Accessibility settings, you can conveniently use your keyboard to perform mouse functions, such as moving the mouse pointer, clicking, long-pressing, and scrolling.Enlarge the keyboard on the screen as well
The keyboard has been improved to enlarge when the screen is zoomed in, making it easier to type. Try enabling the Zoom Keyboard When Typing option in the Zoom settings.Easily connect your Bluetooth hearing aids
You can register and connect your Bluetooth hearing aid directly from the Hearing Aid Support screen in Accessibility Settings.Modes and Routines
Easily set up routines with new templates
New routine templates are available, utilizing weather and various detailed conditions. You can use the templates as is, or customize the settings to your liking.Detailed configurable routines
By importing data from various apps, including Watch, Calendar, and Samsung Notes, you can now configure a wider range of actions in your routines. Imported data can be used as conditions or actions.Other enhanced features
Improved alarm groups
Usability has been improved by allowing you to directly add existing alarms to a group by pressing the + button on the Alarm Groups screen. You can also add an Alarm Group widget to the home screen to turn multiple alarms on and off at once.More convenient app notification settings
You can manage various notification options at once, such as how notifications are displayed and whether they are displayed on the lock screen, from the notification settings screen of each app.Get quick support
You can receive more convenient support with a quick check-in at a Samsung Service Center. By using NFC or scanning a QR code, you can avoid manually entering information like your name and phone number. Your data is encrypted and only accessible by Samsung service representatives.Intuitive weather expression
The Weather app has been improved to provide an intuitive view of the weather. Appropriate animations are applied to the app’s main background based on current weather conditions.Change weather data provider
The Weather Channel has changed its weather information provider. Some registered location names may change.To update to One UI 8.0, you’ll need to have an eligible device, such as the Galaxy S25, Z Fold/Flip 6, and Tab S10, before you can continue. Afterwards, go to Settings > Software update > Download and install.
#Android #Android16 #AndroidB #AndroidBaklava #GalaxyS25 #GalaxyS25Edge #GalaxyS25Ultra #GalaxyS25_ #news #oneUi #OneUI8 #OneUI80 #S25 #S25Edge #S25Ultra #S25_ #Samsung #SamsungGalaxyS25 #SamsungGalaxyS25Edge #SamsungGalaxyS25Ultra #SamsungGalaxyS25_ #smartphone #Tech #Technology #update
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One UI 8 Full Changelogs (Final) (Galaxy S25)
Samsung has rolled out One UI 8.0 for the Galaxy S25 series devices, including the Galaxy S25 Edge, in Korea today and it will expand the availability to other countries and models in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, Samsung has finally published the official changelogs for the Galaxy S25 series’ One UI 8.0 update.
Here’s the final changelogs:
Please note that the below changelogs are machine-translated from Korean to English, so inaccuracies can show up. In case European countries or any other country gets the update, we’ll update the changelogs to the official English version.
One UI 8.0 (Android 16)
Galaxy AI
Call subtitles
With call captioning, your conversation with the other person is displayed on screen in real time during a call. You can follow along with the on-screen content and carefully check to make sure you don’t miss anything.Create animal photos in various styles
Apply AI effects to transform your pet’s photos into something special. Now, in Portrait Studio, you can apply a variety of styles, such as fish-eye and oil painting, to your dog and cat photos to make them truly special.Clean audio
Apply the audio eraser to automatically reduce background noises, such as wind, when someone speaks. This feature is available in the Gallery, Video Player, Samsung Notes, Voice Recorder, and Phone.Smarter everyday life with Now Brief
Receive concise briefings of essential information tailored to your interests and daily timeline. Access Now Brief via the Edge panel, home screen widget, and Now bar notifications.Disaster Text Translation
Even if you receive disaster alerts in a different language, you can still see important information without missing anything. Galaxy AI will automatically translate emergency alerts in languages other than your system language.Faster AI Select
After running AI Select, you can select the desired area right away without waiting any longer.View AI results more easily
When using apps that support summary and translation in landscape mode, you can summarize or translate content and then view the original and translated content side by side at once.Stay safe from voice phishing
Calls from unknown callers are analyzed by AI based on data from the National Police Agency. If conversations suspected of being voice phishing are detected, you will be notified to avoid damage. Call analysis is processed only on your device, and call details are not shared.Customization
New clock style for lock screen
Discover a stylish new clock that will make your lock screen stand out. It blends seamlessly with your wallpaper, and the font size and position flexibly change based on the shape of your portrait or animal image, allowing you to create your own perfect style.Newly designed wallpaper
The range of wallpaper options has been expanded. Gradient wallpapers and dynamic wallpapers that change color over time have been added.Set my photo as wallpaper
Get recommended wallpapers and set them. Choose from a variety of categories from your gallery, including landscapes, cities, flowers, pets, and people.Productivity
Check stock prices without unlocking
If there’s a significant price change in a stock you’ve added to your watchlist in Google Finance, it will appear in the Now bar at the end of the trading day.File sharing made easier
Sending and receiving files is easier than ever. Tap the Quick Share button in the Quick Settings panel. Easily receive new files while the Quick Share screen is open, or select and share files directly from Quick Share.Add a sticky note
Samsung Notes now features Sticky Notes. You can add and delete ideas at any time without altering the original note. Add unlimited Sticky Notes on top of your notes.Quickly find downloaded files
You can now filter files by downloaded apps. This feature is available in the Downloads and Recent Files sections of the My Files app.The new Samsung Internet
We’ve improved the menu screen to allow you to access frequently used functions more quickly. Easily find frequently used features and configure the screen to your liking.Supports engineering calculator in portrait mode
You can now use the scientific calculator without having to rotate the screen horizontally. The scientific calculator now supports both landscape and portrait modes.Multitasking
DeX usage has become more convenient
When connected to an external display, use DeX more conveniently with a mouse and on-screen keyboard. You can also add widgets to your home screen.More diverse display settings
The new Samsung DeX offers more options when connecting to an external monitor or TV. You can choose an optimized display resolution up to WQHD, and you can also rotate the screen 90, 180, or 270 degrees.Split screen made more convenient
When you open two apps in split screen mode, you can slide one app to the edge of the screen to focus on the current app. When you want to use another app, simply tap the app you’ve just pushed. The app will instantly switch between them, making it convenient to use.Reminder
Redesigned Reminder
The Reminder app’s screen layout has been revamped. You can now easily see how many reminders you have in each category at the top of the screen. Custom categories can be easily collapsed and expanded, allowing you to customize the Reminder main screen to your liking.Add useful reminder templates
We provide a variety of templates to help you make the most of your reminders. You won’t have to worry about how to set reminders for important tasks.Add reminders easily
To add a reminder, simply type it in the input field at the bottom of the screen. Based on your input, templates and previously used reminders will be recommended. Using the buttons below the input field, you can easily create checklists, set locations, attach images, and more. You can also create a reminder by voice by pressing the microphone icon instead of typing.Skip notifications on holidays
When adding a reminder, you can set it so that the event notification does not sound on weekends and public holidays.Calendar
Manage reminders in your calendar
Now you can add reminders directly from the Calendar app without opening the Reminders app. Simply tap the + button on the calendar to easily add events or reminders. To change a reminder time, simply drag it to the desired date or time.Add a schedule quickly
When creating a schedule using the Quick Add menu, you’ll receive recommendations for schedule names and times based on existing schedules. Selecting a recommendation will immediately add the schedule without any additional input.View lunar dates together
You can set the lunar date to always be displayed on the monthly calendar. Go to Calendar Settings and set it to Always display lunar dates.Skip notifications on holidays
When creating a schedule, you can set it so that schedule notifications do not sound on weekends and public holidays.Samsung Health
Your own personalized running coach
Run farther and faster without worrying about injury with Samsung Health’s new Running Coach. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, you’ll find training programs and practical tips tailored to your needs. This feature is available on the Galaxy Watch8 and Galaxy Watch Ultra.Bedtime Guide for Tomorrow
Get recommendations for your optimal bedtime and start the next day feeling refreshed. The new Bedtime Guide analyzes your sleep data to recommend the optimal bedtime each night.Add a running challenge to Together
In addition to walking challenges, a running event has been added, allowing you to challenge your friends to a run. Compete to see who can run a set distance faster. For example, you can set a goal of 50 km and see who can reach it first.Antioxidant index for aging management
Anti-aging starts with managing your diet. The watch’s Antioxidant Index (Lab) feature detects the levels of carotenoids in fruits and vegetables, helping you manage your antioxidant status and slow down the aging process. This feature is available on the Galaxy Watch8 and Galaxy Watch Ultra.Keep track of your meals with meal logs and reminders
Set meal log reminders to help you consistently reach your calorie goals. Samsung Health will send you notifications at set times.Vascular stress measurement
Easily measure your vascular stress (the degree of strain on your blood vessels) with the Galaxy Watch. First, wear the watch for three or more nights while you sleep to establish a baseline, allowing you to directly monitor changes in your vascular stress. This feature is available on the Galaxy Watch8 and Galaxy Watch Ultra.Check your medical records easily and securely
You can collect, store, and view medical records from multiple hospitals and clinics in one place in Samsung Health.Share your health data with family and friends
You can now share your health data not only with your family group but also with friends. Now, manage your health records with more people.Photos and videos
Swipe up and down to open quick controls
Usability has been improved by allowing you to quickly access quick controls by swiping up or down anywhere on the camera screen. Try changing the Swipe up or down setting in the camera settings to Open Quick Controls.Capture the perfect brightness with the exposure monitor
Try the Exposure Monitor feature in Pro and Pro Video modes. It helps you capture photos and videos with the right amount of brightness. It displays overexposed areas with a zebra pattern, and provides false color, which displays different colors depending on the exposure value.Professional-level editing experience with Log videos
You can shoot video in Log format and then professionally edit it. Simply turn on Log in the camera settings and shooting screen to instantly record in Log format. This feature is available in both Video and Pro Video modes.Audio
Quickly set up your Galaxy Buds
You can now easily control your Galaxy Buds from your phone’s settings—no need to open the Galaxy Wearable app separately.Oracast, Connecting Easier
Oracast lets you simultaneously transmit audio from one device to multiple devices. Simply scan a QR code to easily connect to the audio you’re playing, or you can generate your own QR code so others can connect to your audio.Communication
Profile card improvements
The layout of the profile card editing screen has been improved to make it easier to create and edit profile cards. You can now share your created profile cards so that callers can see who you are.Check call recordings in Contacts
You can easily review previous calls. If a call with the other party is recorded, it will appear on the contact’s history screen.Security and Privacy
Upgraded Secure Folder
You can keep your important apps and data even more secure. When the Secure Folder is locked, all apps within it will be closed and notifications will be muted. For even greater security, you can completely hide the Secure Folder and encrypt all apps and data within it.Enhanced device security
Knox Matrix periodically checks all devices logged into your Samsung account for security risks. If a security risk is detected on a device, it is automatically logged out of your Samsung account to prevent the risk from spreading to other devices. You can check the security status of your device in the Security & Privacy settings.Set whether to display notifications when the screen is locked
On the main screen of the Notifications settings, you can choose to show or hide notifications when your phone is locked. Select Always show notifications to view them when your phone is locked, or Hide notifications when locked to prevent others from seeing them.Accessibility
Added screen zoom option to the submenu
A new way to easily zoom in and out has been added to the submenu. You can zoom in and out by dragging with one finger, or adjust the zoom level by pressing the on-screen zoom level button.Use mouse gestures with your keyboard
You can now use your keyboard to perform mouse actions. By enabling the Mouse Keys option in Accessibility settings, you can conveniently use your keyboard to perform mouse functions, such as moving the mouse pointer, clicking, long-pressing, and scrolling.Enlarge the keyboard on the screen as well
The keyboard has been improved to enlarge when the screen is zoomed in, making it easier to type. Try enabling the Zoom Keyboard When Typing option in the Zoom settings.Easily connect your Bluetooth hearing aids
You can register and connect your Bluetooth hearing aid directly from the Hearing Aid Support screen in Accessibility Settings.Modes and Routines
Easily set up routines with new templates
New routine templates are available, utilizing weather and various detailed conditions. You can use the templates as is, or customize the settings to your liking.Detailed configurable routines
By importing data from various apps, including Watch, Calendar, and Samsung Notes, you can now configure a wider range of actions in your routines. Imported data can be used as conditions or actions.Other enhanced features
Improved alarm groups
Usability has been improved by allowing you to directly add existing alarms to a group by pressing the + button on the Alarm Groups screen. You can also add an Alarm Group widget to the home screen to turn multiple alarms on and off at once.More convenient app notification settings
You can manage various notification options at once, such as how notifications are displayed and whether they are displayed on the lock screen, from the notification settings screen of each app.Get quick support
You can receive more convenient support with a quick check-in at a Samsung Service Center. By using NFC or scanning a QR code, you can avoid manually entering information like your name and phone number. Your data is encrypted and only accessible by Samsung service representatives.Intuitive weather expression
The Weather app has been improved to provide an intuitive view of the weather. Appropriate animations are applied to the app’s main background based on current weather conditions.Change weather data provider
The Weather Channel has changed its weather information provider. Some registered location names may change.To update to One UI 8.0, you’ll need to have an eligible device, such as the Galaxy S25, Z Fold/Flip 6, and Tab S10, before you can continue. Afterwards, go to Settings > Software update > Download and install.
#Android #Android16 #AndroidB #AndroidBaklava #GalaxyS25 #GalaxyS25Edge #GalaxyS25Ultra #GalaxyS25_ #news #oneUi #OneUI8 #OneUI80 #S25 #S25Edge #S25Ultra #S25_ #Samsung #SamsungGalaxyS25 #SamsungGalaxyS25Edge #SamsungGalaxyS25Ultra #SamsungGalaxyS25_ #smartphone #Tech #Technology #update
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One UI 8 Full Changelogs (Final) (Galaxy S25)
Samsung has rolled out One UI 8.0 for the Galaxy S25 series devices, including the Galaxy S25 Edge, in Korea today and it will expand the availability to other countries and models in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, Samsung has finally published the official changelogs for the Galaxy S25 series’ One UI 8.0 update.
Here’s the final changelogs:
Please note that the below changelogs are machine-translated from Korean to English, so inaccuracies can show up. In case European countries or any other country gets the update, we’ll update the changelogs to the official English version.
One UI 8.0 (Android 16)
Galaxy AI
Call subtitles
With call captioning, your conversation with the other person is displayed on screen in real time during a call. You can follow along with the on-screen content and carefully check to make sure you don’t miss anything.Create animal photos in various styles
Apply AI effects to transform your pet’s photos into something special. Now, in Portrait Studio, you can apply a variety of styles, such as fish-eye and oil painting, to your dog and cat photos to make them truly special.Clean audio
Apply the audio eraser to automatically reduce background noises, such as wind, when someone speaks. This feature is available in the Gallery, Video Player, Samsung Notes, Voice Recorder, and Phone.Smarter everyday life with Now Brief
Receive concise briefings of essential information tailored to your interests and daily timeline. Access Now Brief via the Edge panel, home screen widget, and Now bar notifications.Disaster Text Translation
Even if you receive disaster alerts in a different language, you can still see important information without missing anything. Galaxy AI will automatically translate emergency alerts in languages other than your system language.Faster AI Select
After running AI Select, you can select the desired area right away without waiting any longer.View AI results more easily
When using apps that support summary and translation in landscape mode, you can summarize or translate content and then view the original and translated content side by side at once.Stay safe from voice phishing
Calls from unknown callers are analyzed by AI based on data from the National Police Agency. If conversations suspected of being voice phishing are detected, you will be notified to avoid damage. Call analysis is processed only on your device, and call details are not shared.Customization
New clock style for lock screen
Discover a stylish new clock that will make your lock screen stand out. It blends seamlessly with your wallpaper, and the font size and position flexibly change based on the shape of your portrait or animal image, allowing you to create your own perfect style.Newly designed wallpaper
The range of wallpaper options has been expanded. Gradient wallpapers and dynamic wallpapers that change color over time have been added.Set my photo as wallpaper
Get recommended wallpapers and set them. Choose from a variety of categories from your gallery, including landscapes, cities, flowers, pets, and people.Productivity
Check stock prices without unlocking
If there’s a significant price change in a stock you’ve added to your watchlist in Google Finance, it will appear in the Now bar at the end of the trading day.File sharing made easier
Sending and receiving files is easier than ever. Tap the Quick Share button in the Quick Settings panel. Easily receive new files while the Quick Share screen is open, or select and share files directly from Quick Share.Add a sticky note
Samsung Notes now features Sticky Notes. You can add and delete ideas at any time without altering the original note. Add unlimited Sticky Notes on top of your notes.Quickly find downloaded files
You can now filter files by downloaded apps. This feature is available in the Downloads and Recent Files sections of the My Files app.The new Samsung Internet
We’ve improved the menu screen to allow you to access frequently used functions more quickly. Easily find frequently used features and configure the screen to your liking.Supports engineering calculator in portrait mode
You can now use the scientific calculator without having to rotate the screen horizontally. The scientific calculator now supports both landscape and portrait modes.Multitasking
DeX usage has become more convenient
When connected to an external display, use DeX more conveniently with a mouse and on-screen keyboard. You can also add widgets to your home screen.More diverse display settings
The new Samsung DeX offers more options when connecting to an external monitor or TV. You can choose an optimized display resolution up to WQHD, and you can also rotate the screen 90, 180, or 270 degrees.Split screen made more convenient
When you open two apps in split screen mode, you can slide one app to the edge of the screen to focus on the current app. When you want to use another app, simply tap the app you’ve just pushed. The app will instantly switch between them, making it convenient to use.Reminder
Redesigned Reminder
The Reminder app’s screen layout has been revamped. You can now easily see how many reminders you have in each category at the top of the screen. Custom categories can be easily collapsed and expanded, allowing you to customize the Reminder main screen to your liking.Add useful reminder templates
We provide a variety of templates to help you make the most of your reminders. You won’t have to worry about how to set reminders for important tasks.Add reminders easily
To add a reminder, simply type it in the input field at the bottom of the screen. Based on your input, templates and previously used reminders will be recommended. Using the buttons below the input field, you can easily create checklists, set locations, attach images, and more. You can also create a reminder by voice by pressing the microphone icon instead of typing.Skip notifications on holidays
When adding a reminder, you can set it so that the event notification does not sound on weekends and public holidays.Calendar
Manage reminders in your calendar
Now you can add reminders directly from the Calendar app without opening the Reminders app. Simply tap the + button on the calendar to easily add events or reminders. To change a reminder time, simply drag it to the desired date or time.Add a schedule quickly
When creating a schedule using the Quick Add menu, you’ll receive recommendations for schedule names and times based on existing schedules. Selecting a recommendation will immediately add the schedule without any additional input.View lunar dates together
You can set the lunar date to always be displayed on the monthly calendar. Go to Calendar Settings and set it to Always display lunar dates.Skip notifications on holidays
When creating a schedule, you can set it so that schedule notifications do not sound on weekends and public holidays.Samsung Health
Your own personalized running coach
Run farther and faster without worrying about injury with Samsung Health’s new Running Coach. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, you’ll find training programs and practical tips tailored to your needs. This feature is available on the Galaxy Watch8 and Galaxy Watch Ultra.Bedtime Guide for Tomorrow
Get recommendations for your optimal bedtime and start the next day feeling refreshed. The new Bedtime Guide analyzes your sleep data to recommend the optimal bedtime each night.Add a running challenge to Together
In addition to walking challenges, a running event has been added, allowing you to challenge your friends to a run. Compete to see who can run a set distance faster. For example, you can set a goal of 50 km and see who can reach it first.Antioxidant index for aging management
Anti-aging starts with managing your diet. The watch’s Antioxidant Index (Lab) feature detects the levels of carotenoids in fruits and vegetables, helping you manage your antioxidant status and slow down the aging process. This feature is available on the Galaxy Watch8 and Galaxy Watch Ultra.Keep track of your meals with meal logs and reminders
Set meal log reminders to help you consistently reach your calorie goals. Samsung Health will send you notifications at set times.Vascular stress measurement
Easily measure your vascular stress (the degree of strain on your blood vessels) with the Galaxy Watch. First, wear the watch for three or more nights while you sleep to establish a baseline, allowing you to directly monitor changes in your vascular stress. This feature is available on the Galaxy Watch8 and Galaxy Watch Ultra.Check your medical records easily and securely
You can collect, store, and view medical records from multiple hospitals and clinics in one place in Samsung Health.Share your health data with family and friends
You can now share your health data not only with your family group but also with friends. Now, manage your health records with more people.Photos and videos
Swipe up and down to open quick controls
Usability has been improved by allowing you to quickly access quick controls by swiping up or down anywhere on the camera screen. Try changing the Swipe up or down setting in the camera settings to Open Quick Controls.Capture the perfect brightness with the exposure monitor
Try the Exposure Monitor feature in Pro and Pro Video modes. It helps you capture photos and videos with the right amount of brightness. It displays overexposed areas with a zebra pattern, and provides false color, which displays different colors depending on the exposure value.Professional-level editing experience with Log videos
You can shoot video in Log format and then professionally edit it. Simply turn on Log in the camera settings and shooting screen to instantly record in Log format. This feature is available in both Video and Pro Video modes.Audio
Quickly set up your Galaxy Buds
You can now easily control your Galaxy Buds from your phone’s settings—no need to open the Galaxy Wearable app separately.Oracast, Connecting Easier
Oracast lets you simultaneously transmit audio from one device to multiple devices. Simply scan a QR code to easily connect to the audio you’re playing, or you can generate your own QR code so others can connect to your audio.Communication
Profile card improvements
The layout of the profile card editing screen has been improved to make it easier to create and edit profile cards. You can now share your created profile cards so that callers can see who you are.Check call recordings in Contacts
You can easily review previous calls. If a call with the other party is recorded, it will appear on the contact’s history screen.Security and Privacy
Upgraded Secure Folder
You can keep your important apps and data even more secure. When the Secure Folder is locked, all apps within it will be closed and notifications will be muted. For even greater security, you can completely hide the Secure Folder and encrypt all apps and data within it.Enhanced device security
Knox Matrix periodically checks all devices logged into your Samsung account for security risks. If a security risk is detected on a device, it is automatically logged out of your Samsung account to prevent the risk from spreading to other devices. You can check the security status of your device in the Security & Privacy settings.Set whether to display notifications when the screen is locked
On the main screen of the Notifications settings, you can choose to show or hide notifications when your phone is locked. Select Always show notifications to view them when your phone is locked, or Hide notifications when locked to prevent others from seeing them.Accessibility
Added screen zoom option to the submenu
A new way to easily zoom in and out has been added to the submenu. You can zoom in and out by dragging with one finger, or adjust the zoom level by pressing the on-screen zoom level button.Use mouse gestures with your keyboard
You can now use your keyboard to perform mouse actions. By enabling the Mouse Keys option in Accessibility settings, you can conveniently use your keyboard to perform mouse functions, such as moving the mouse pointer, clicking, long-pressing, and scrolling.Enlarge the keyboard on the screen as well
The keyboard has been improved to enlarge when the screen is zoomed in, making it easier to type. Try enabling the Zoom Keyboard When Typing option in the Zoom settings.Easily connect your Bluetooth hearing aids
You can register and connect your Bluetooth hearing aid directly from the Hearing Aid Support screen in Accessibility Settings.Modes and Routines
Easily set up routines with new templates
New routine templates are available, utilizing weather and various detailed conditions. You can use the templates as is, or customize the settings to your liking.Detailed configurable routines
By importing data from various apps, including Watch, Calendar, and Samsung Notes, you can now configure a wider range of actions in your routines. Imported data can be used as conditions or actions.Other enhanced features
Improved alarm groups
Usability has been improved by allowing you to directly add existing alarms to a group by pressing the + button on the Alarm Groups screen. You can also add an Alarm Group widget to the home screen to turn multiple alarms on and off at once.More convenient app notification settings
You can manage various notification options at once, such as how notifications are displayed and whether they are displayed on the lock screen, from the notification settings screen of each app.Get quick support
You can receive more convenient support with a quick check-in at a Samsung Service Center. By using NFC or scanning a QR code, you can avoid manually entering information like your name and phone number. Your data is encrypted and only accessible by Samsung service representatives.Intuitive weather expression
The Weather app has been improved to provide an intuitive view of the weather. Appropriate animations are applied to the app’s main background based on current weather conditions.Change weather data provider
The Weather Channel has changed its weather information provider. Some registered location names may change.To update to One UI 8.0, you’ll need to have an eligible device, such as the Galaxy S25, Z Fold/Flip 6, and Tab S10, before you can continue. Afterwards, go to Settings > Software update > Download and install.
#Android #Android16 #AndroidB #AndroidBaklava #GalaxyS25 #GalaxyS25Edge #GalaxyS25Ultra #GalaxyS25_ #news #oneUi #OneUI8 #OneUI80 #S25 #S25Edge #S25Ultra #S25_ #Samsung #SamsungGalaxyS25 #SamsungGalaxyS25Edge #SamsungGalaxyS25Ultra #SamsungGalaxyS25_ #smartphone #Tech #Technology #update
-
One UI 8 Full Changelogs (Final) (Galaxy S25)
Samsung has rolled out One UI 8.0 for the Galaxy S25 series devices, including the Galaxy S25 Edge, in Korea today and it will expand the availability to other countries and models in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, Samsung has finally published the official changelogs for the Galaxy S25 series’ One UI 8.0 update.
Here’s the final changelogs:
Please note that the below changelogs are machine-translated from Korean to English, so inaccuracies can show up. In case European countries or any other country gets the update, we’ll update the changelogs to the official English version.
One UI 8.0 (Android 16)
Galaxy AI
Call subtitles
With call captioning, your conversation with the other person is displayed on screen in real time during a call. You can follow along with the on-screen content and carefully check to make sure you don’t miss anything.Create animal photos in various styles
Apply AI effects to transform your pet’s photos into something special. Now, in Portrait Studio, you can apply a variety of styles, such as fish-eye and oil painting, to your dog and cat photos to make them truly special.Clean audio
Apply the audio eraser to automatically reduce background noises, such as wind, when someone speaks. This feature is available in the Gallery, Video Player, Samsung Notes, Voice Recorder, and Phone.Smarter everyday life with Now Brief
Receive concise briefings of essential information tailored to your interests and daily timeline. Access Now Brief via the Edge panel, home screen widget, and Now bar notifications.Disaster Text Translation
Even if you receive disaster alerts in a different language, you can still see important information without missing anything. Galaxy AI will automatically translate emergency alerts in languages other than your system language.Faster AI Select
After running AI Select, you can select the desired area right away without waiting any longer.View AI results more easily
When using apps that support summary and translation in landscape mode, you can summarize or translate content and then view the original and translated content side by side at once.Stay safe from voice phishing
Calls from unknown callers are analyzed by AI based on data from the National Police Agency. If conversations suspected of being voice phishing are detected, you will be notified to avoid damage. Call analysis is processed only on your device, and call details are not shared.Customization
New clock style for lock screen
Discover a stylish new clock that will make your lock screen stand out. It blends seamlessly with your wallpaper, and the font size and position flexibly change based on the shape of your portrait or animal image, allowing you to create your own perfect style.Newly designed wallpaper
The range of wallpaper options has been expanded. Gradient wallpapers and dynamic wallpapers that change color over time have been added.Set my photo as wallpaper
Get recommended wallpapers and set them. Choose from a variety of categories from your gallery, including landscapes, cities, flowers, pets, and people.Productivity
Check stock prices without unlocking
If there’s a significant price change in a stock you’ve added to your watchlist in Google Finance, it will appear in the Now bar at the end of the trading day.File sharing made easier
Sending and receiving files is easier than ever. Tap the Quick Share button in the Quick Settings panel. Easily receive new files while the Quick Share screen is open, or select and share files directly from Quick Share.Add a sticky note
Samsung Notes now features Sticky Notes. You can add and delete ideas at any time without altering the original note. Add unlimited Sticky Notes on top of your notes.Quickly find downloaded files
You can now filter files by downloaded apps. This feature is available in the Downloads and Recent Files sections of the My Files app.The new Samsung Internet
We’ve improved the menu screen to allow you to access frequently used functions more quickly. Easily find frequently used features and configure the screen to your liking.Supports engineering calculator in portrait mode
You can now use the scientific calculator without having to rotate the screen horizontally. The scientific calculator now supports both landscape and portrait modes.Multitasking
DeX usage has become more convenient
When connected to an external display, use DeX more conveniently with a mouse and on-screen keyboard. You can also add widgets to your home screen.More diverse display settings
The new Samsung DeX offers more options when connecting to an external monitor or TV. You can choose an optimized display resolution up to WQHD, and you can also rotate the screen 90, 180, or 270 degrees.Split screen made more convenient
When you open two apps in split screen mode, you can slide one app to the edge of the screen to focus on the current app. When you want to use another app, simply tap the app you’ve just pushed. The app will instantly switch between them, making it convenient to use.Reminder
Redesigned Reminder
The Reminder app’s screen layout has been revamped. You can now easily see how many reminders you have in each category at the top of the screen. Custom categories can be easily collapsed and expanded, allowing you to customize the Reminder main screen to your liking.Add useful reminder templates
We provide a variety of templates to help you make the most of your reminders. You won’t have to worry about how to set reminders for important tasks.Add reminders easily
To add a reminder, simply type it in the input field at the bottom of the screen. Based on your input, templates and previously used reminders will be recommended. Using the buttons below the input field, you can easily create checklists, set locations, attach images, and more. You can also create a reminder by voice by pressing the microphone icon instead of typing.Skip notifications on holidays
When adding a reminder, you can set it so that the event notification does not sound on weekends and public holidays.Calendar
Manage reminders in your calendar
Now you can add reminders directly from the Calendar app without opening the Reminders app. Simply tap the + button on the calendar to easily add events or reminders. To change a reminder time, simply drag it to the desired date or time.Add a schedule quickly
When creating a schedule using the Quick Add menu, you’ll receive recommendations for schedule names and times based on existing schedules. Selecting a recommendation will immediately add the schedule without any additional input.View lunar dates together
You can set the lunar date to always be displayed on the monthly calendar. Go to Calendar Settings and set it to Always display lunar dates.Skip notifications on holidays
When creating a schedule, you can set it so that schedule notifications do not sound on weekends and public holidays.Samsung Health
Your own personalized running coach
Run farther and faster without worrying about injury with Samsung Health’s new Running Coach. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, you’ll find training programs and practical tips tailored to your needs. This feature is available on the Galaxy Watch8 and Galaxy Watch Ultra.Bedtime Guide for Tomorrow
Get recommendations for your optimal bedtime and start the next day feeling refreshed. The new Bedtime Guide analyzes your sleep data to recommend the optimal bedtime each night.Add a running challenge to Together
In addition to walking challenges, a running event has been added, allowing you to challenge your friends to a run. Compete to see who can run a set distance faster. For example, you can set a goal of 50 km and see who can reach it first.Antioxidant index for aging management
Anti-aging starts with managing your diet. The watch’s Antioxidant Index (Lab) feature detects the levels of carotenoids in fruits and vegetables, helping you manage your antioxidant status and slow down the aging process. This feature is available on the Galaxy Watch8 and Galaxy Watch Ultra.Keep track of your meals with meal logs and reminders
Set meal log reminders to help you consistently reach your calorie goals. Samsung Health will send you notifications at set times.Vascular stress measurement
Easily measure your vascular stress (the degree of strain on your blood vessels) with the Galaxy Watch. First, wear the watch for three or more nights while you sleep to establish a baseline, allowing you to directly monitor changes in your vascular stress. This feature is available on the Galaxy Watch8 and Galaxy Watch Ultra.Check your medical records easily and securely
You can collect, store, and view medical records from multiple hospitals and clinics in one place in Samsung Health.Share your health data with family and friends
You can now share your health data not only with your family group but also with friends. Now, manage your health records with more people.Photos and videos
Swipe up and down to open quick controls
Usability has been improved by allowing you to quickly access quick controls by swiping up or down anywhere on the camera screen. Try changing the Swipe up or down setting in the camera settings to Open Quick Controls.Capture the perfect brightness with the exposure monitor
Try the Exposure Monitor feature in Pro and Pro Video modes. It helps you capture photos and videos with the right amount of brightness. It displays overexposed areas with a zebra pattern, and provides false color, which displays different colors depending on the exposure value.Professional-level editing experience with Log videos
You can shoot video in Log format and then professionally edit it. Simply turn on Log in the camera settings and shooting screen to instantly record in Log format. This feature is available in both Video and Pro Video modes.Audio
Quickly set up your Galaxy Buds
You can now easily control your Galaxy Buds from your phone’s settings—no need to open the Galaxy Wearable app separately.Oracast, Connecting Easier
Oracast lets you simultaneously transmit audio from one device to multiple devices. Simply scan a QR code to easily connect to the audio you’re playing, or you can generate your own QR code so others can connect to your audio.Communication
Profile card improvements
The layout of the profile card editing screen has been improved to make it easier to create and edit profile cards. You can now share your created profile cards so that callers can see who you are.Check call recordings in Contacts
You can easily review previous calls. If a call with the other party is recorded, it will appear on the contact’s history screen.Security and Privacy
Upgraded Secure Folder
You can keep your important apps and data even more secure. When the Secure Folder is locked, all apps within it will be closed and notifications will be muted. For even greater security, you can completely hide the Secure Folder and encrypt all apps and data within it.Enhanced device security
Knox Matrix periodically checks all devices logged into your Samsung account for security risks. If a security risk is detected on a device, it is automatically logged out of your Samsung account to prevent the risk from spreading to other devices. You can check the security status of your device in the Security & Privacy settings.Set whether to display notifications when the screen is locked
On the main screen of the Notifications settings, you can choose to show or hide notifications when your phone is locked. Select Always show notifications to view them when your phone is locked, or Hide notifications when locked to prevent others from seeing them.Accessibility
Added screen zoom option to the submenu
A new way to easily zoom in and out has been added to the submenu. You can zoom in and out by dragging with one finger, or adjust the zoom level by pressing the on-screen zoom level button.Use mouse gestures with your keyboard
You can now use your keyboard to perform mouse actions. By enabling the Mouse Keys option in Accessibility settings, you can conveniently use your keyboard to perform mouse functions, such as moving the mouse pointer, clicking, long-pressing, and scrolling.Enlarge the keyboard on the screen as well
The keyboard has been improved to enlarge when the screen is zoomed in, making it easier to type. Try enabling the Zoom Keyboard When Typing option in the Zoom settings.Easily connect your Bluetooth hearing aids
You can register and connect your Bluetooth hearing aid directly from the Hearing Aid Support screen in Accessibility Settings.Modes and Routines
Easily set up routines with new templates
New routine templates are available, utilizing weather and various detailed conditions. You can use the templates as is, or customize the settings to your liking.Detailed configurable routines
By importing data from various apps, including Watch, Calendar, and Samsung Notes, you can now configure a wider range of actions in your routines. Imported data can be used as conditions or actions.Other enhanced features
Improved alarm groups
Usability has been improved by allowing you to directly add existing alarms to a group by pressing the + button on the Alarm Groups screen. You can also add an Alarm Group widget to the home screen to turn multiple alarms on and off at once.More convenient app notification settings
You can manage various notification options at once, such as how notifications are displayed and whether they are displayed on the lock screen, from the notification settings screen of each app.Get quick support
You can receive more convenient support with a quick check-in at a Samsung Service Center. By using NFC or scanning a QR code, you can avoid manually entering information like your name and phone number. Your data is encrypted and only accessible by Samsung service representatives.Intuitive weather expression
The Weather app has been improved to provide an intuitive view of the weather. Appropriate animations are applied to the app’s main background based on current weather conditions.Change weather data provider
The Weather Channel has changed its weather information provider. Some registered location names may change.To update to One UI 8.0, you’ll need to have an eligible device, such as the Galaxy S25, Z Fold/Flip 6, and Tab S10, before you can continue. Afterwards, go to Settings > Software update > Download and install.
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Architectural Time Traveller but no TARDIS: the thread about the Edinburgh Police Box
The year 2024 was celebrated as the 900th anniversary of the “foundation” of the city of Edinburgh and 2025 is also an important local commemoration; the centenary of the appointment of the wonderfully named Ebenezer James (“E.J.“) Macrae as City Architect. His twenty years of service was a time of great change in our built environment and his office was directly responsible for much of that, not without good cause has he been dubbed “the man who shaped modern Edinburgh“. His tenure is characterised by both the volume of public buildings and housing that was erected and also their distinctive style; at once both modern in form and function but also very sympathetic to tradition. A splendid example of that contrast is the Edinburgh Police Box; a mix of anachronistic classical styling and what was then the cutting edge of modern policing.
Former police box at corner of Waverley Bridge and Market Street. CC-by-NC-SA 2.0, Ian T. Edwards via Flickr.The first police boxes with telephones were established in Chicago back in 1881, just 5 years after the unveiling of the telephone itself by a son of Edinburgh. In 1923, Chief Constable Frederick Crawley of Newcastle City Police instituted what would become known as the Police Box System to Sunderland and in doing so revolutionised British policing. He was looking to increase the efficiency of his his force and focused on trying to reduce time spent by officers walking to and from their beats; he estimated up to a quarter of each man’s time on shift was wasted in this manner. His solution was decentralisation. By placing many small, telephone-equipped police boxes at strategic points throughout the city, officers had shorter distances to walk and could devote more time to duty. Crawley recognised this would place the police more centrally within the communities they were expected to serve, creating a ready point of contact for the public – thus increasing the efficiency of reporting emergencies and also making it far easier for the police to contact and coordinate their own officers. Boxes could also be used as temporary lock ups for prisoners while transport was summoned, avoiding the long and often dangerous walks with them back to a police station. A final and significant attraction was that the increased efficiency also allowed the closure of most district police stations and therefore afforded a significant cost saving.
Wooden police box of the type instituted by Crawley for Newcastle City Police. Note the public-facing telephone and first aid boxes mounted to the left of the door. From The Police Journal, vol.1, No.1, January 1928Police boxes soon spread across the country but Edinburgh, as is often the case, was rather slow to catch on. It was not until May 1928 that a deputation was sent by Chief Constable Roderick Ross from the Edinburgh City Police to inspect the system in Newcastle. This was at the insistence of the Scottish Office who refused to sanction an increase in headcount for Ross and instead wanted efficiencies. He submitted a strongly favourable report to the Town Council, which approved a box system for the city in 1929. Ross served as Chief Constable for the exceptional term of 34 years and it was towards the end of his long watch that his force would be wholly and rapidly modernised.
Roderick Ross, when Chief Constable of Ramsgate Borough Police c. 1898The Edinburgh Evening News threw its editorial weight behind the scheme but also amplified significant local concerns that the appearance of boxes would have a detrimental effect on the city. As the system spread, there had been a plethora of different design styles before a utilitarian, standardised version was developed for the Metropolitan Police by the architect George Mackenzie Trench. Trench’s design is instantly familiar to generations of Dr. Who fans as the TARDIS. But “Cheapness has been obtained in England” wrote the News’ editor “by mass production, but Edinburgh has an architectural standard of its own, which the Cockburn Association endeavours to maintain.” The gauntlet was thus thrown down to the City Architect’s office that something altogether different and better was needed.
George Mackenzie Trench standard police box at the National Tramway Museum, Crich. Note the light on the roof, which would flash to indicate an officer was required to attend the box. CC-by-SA 3.0 Dan Sellers via WikimediaE.J. Macrae, along with his assistants Andrew Rollo and James A. Tweedie are credited with the design of the Edinburgh Box, with the signature of their colleague Robert Somerville Ellis on some of the drawings. The initial inspiration may have been taken from the barrel-topped box used in Sheffield which was used as an illustrative example by the Evening News. Two alternative designs were prepared and plans and models were put to the Lord Provost’s Committee in December 1929. The preferred option was then “submitted for the consideration of the Fine Art Commission“. After that a full-size wooden mock-up was erected on the corner of George Street and Frederick Street in October 1930 to test the practicalities of installing boxes and also to familiarise both the police and the public with the design.
The wooden prototype box, which differed in minor details from the final version, for instance lacking the decorative wreath on the pediment and the coat of arms on the entry door. Photo via Edinburgh World Heritage facebook.The approved box was, dare I say it, an iconic piece of British street furniture design, unique to the city and instantly at home in its environment. It is described in architectural terms thusly:
Rectangular cast-iron police box with classical details, 6ft by 4ft on plan, 2-bay pilastered long elevations, one of which contains door bearing City Arms. Painted blue. Single bay short elevations surmounted by open pediments containing ribboned wreath paterae. Saltire patterned glazing to all elevations. Low-pitched roof.
Official description of the Edinburgh Police Box from Historic Scotland listingEach box was constructed of prefabricated cast iron panels produced by the Carron Company in Stirlingshire and tipped the scales at over two tons. The understated classical styling was decorated only with a small cast iron castle motif from the city’s coat of arms on the door and on each gable a wreath; symbolising power or triumph. Inside they were equipped with a desk, flip-down seat, telephone, sink and a small wall-mounted electric heater. There was shelving, pigeon holes and notice boards on the walls to accommodate items such as logbooks and forms and hooks were provided for hanging coats, helmets and capes. Hooks were provided for “beat keys”, premises officers on duty were expected to visit and check, or need access to, during their duties. An unofficial but entirely necessary function of the sink was an ersatz urinal; 8 hours in a district with few or no public toilets was a long time for a beat officer to spend without spending any pennies! (This was apparently best achieved by balancing on the stool and taking careful aim. Each box was provisioned with a supply of bleach to keep things as sanitary as possible.) All of this came at a price however; £58 per box (before foundations and services were laid), far more than the wooden hut type which had cost £13 each in Newcastle or £43 for a reinforced concrete standard box as used by the Metropolitan Police.
Sketch design of the Edinburgh City Police Box, redrawn by self from a copy of the original in the Edinburgh City Archives. The original is signed RSE (Robert Somerville Ellis), 6th September 1928. From Dean of Guild Court of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Police Boxes, Lord Provost, Magistrates and Council of the City of Edinburgh, 26th August 1932.On the outside of the box were small doors that gave members of the public access to a Speakerphone that would connect them to police headquarters and another containing a first aid kit. The Speakerphone was a hands-free system activated upon opening of its door. It was felt at the time that the general public were not familiar enough with the use of telephones to provide a handset, and it was also harder to accidentally damage or vandalise.
A police officer demonstrating the use of the Speakerphone unit. Opening the box door automatically connected the phone to the headquarters switchboard. Photo via Lothian & Borders Police WordPress.Despite the best efforts of Macrae’s office to produce a design that was sympathetic to Edinburgh’s built environment, not everyone was pleased. “W.M.H.” wrote to the Evening News that the box at the foot of Drummond Street by the old City Wall was a “case of outrageous vandalism and should be prohibited.” They questioned who in the authorities was responsible for such “outrages” and challenged the city’s heritage watchdog – the Cockburn Association – to “get busy!“. In Portobello, the Communist party had a particularly niche objection; it charged that the boxes were “designed for use in a rebellion” and that “the master class knew that they were driving the workers to desperation, and they were preparing in advance to deal with rebellion“.
The police box at Drummond Street, immediately in front of the Flodden Wall. The photo dates from 1951 and the box still sports its white stripes applied during WW2 to make it more visible during blackout conditions. Records of RCAHMS, SC1164082. © Crown Copyright: HESBoxes were installed throughout 1932 and a considerable public relations exercise was undertaken to get the public to understand how to use them. The Evening News maintained a regular stream of editorials on the subject, Chief Constable Ross gave numerous lectures, model boxes were taken around schools to show children how to use them and Boy Scouts were encouraged to learn the location of as many boxes as possible as part of their Pathfinding badge. In the final run-up to commissioning, public demonstrations of the boxes in use were staged and the press cameras invited.
Photograph showing a staged accident to demonstrate the use of the public call facility on the new police boxes, along with an operator of the switchboard at police headquarters on the High Street that received the calls. Scotsman, May 26th 1933.The box system and “a new era in the history of Edinburgh City Police” was inaugurated in its entirety on Sunday May 28th 1933 at 6AM. This was a year later than intended, a delay that the Lord Provost blamed on the General Post Office which had been slow to install the necessary telephony infrastructure (500 miles of underground and 23 miles of overhead wire).
Bailie Rutherford Fortune places the first call on from a police box with Chief Constable Ross (dark coat and light hat, with moustache) and Mr F. J. Milne (light coat and dark hat, with umbrella) Secretary of the Post Office in Edinburgh.The boxes were only one part of a greater overall system; policing of the city was entirely restructured at this time. The boxes were allocated to four divisions, each with its own headquarters – A at Braid Place, B at Gayfield Square, C at Torphicen Place and D at Leith – and were numbered sequentially and by division. A map of the all their locations as installed in 1933 can be seen here. Each division had a dedicated pool of motor vehicles for response and prisoner transport and was supported by a non-territorial traffic and mounted division (E) based in the Cowgate. At the same moment that the boxes were first unlocked for duty, the doors of nine district police stations (at the Pleasance, West Port, Abbeyhill, Piershill, Stockbridge, Waverley Market, Morningside, Gorgie and Newhaven) and eighteen smaller sub-stations closed for the last time. Most of these sites were disposed of, leaving only the four divisional stations, a sub-divisional station for Portobello plus city police HQ on the High Street.
The Leith Police. Relaxing on break time with tea and “pieces” at Leith Police station in 1930. Photograph by Photo Press Agency, CC-by-NC-SA via ThelmaThe reduction in manpower required by the box system saw fifteen open vacancies for constables written off, three inspectors and five sergeants made redundant and a further five sergeants demoted to constables. Overall the changes reduced the running cost of the force by £5,800 annually.
Six or seven constables might be based out of a single box and would serve their entire 8-hour shift from it, returning after every half hour or hour long “turn ” of their beat to check in with base by phone, write up their logbook and take breaks. Check in calls were performed according to a strict timetable and if any officer missed one his absence would be noted and a colleague sent to investigate. Men on duty could expect a visit by a section sergeant once every shift. The boxes were accessed by a universal key, which each officer kept on his chain with his whistle. A blue light on the roof of the box would flash to let him know that there was a call waiting for him. Sometimes these lights had to be mounted on an extension pole to be better seen from a distance and in the case of the box outside the Tron Kirk on the High Street, it was a high-mounted “sky lantern” on the building on the corner with North Bridge.
The High Street “sky lantern” is still in place on the corner with North Bridge, appropriately mounted next to a symbol of modern police surveillance, the CCTV camera.Commencing in 1938, air raid sirens began to be installed on top of the roofs of many of Edinburgh’s boxes as part of the city’s ARP (Air Raid Precautions) measures. By April 1939, thirty two sirens had been installed, all controlled from master switches at HQ on the High Street and tests of the system were under way, helping to familiarise the public with the sound. In May 1940, a writer to the Evening News’ letters page using the pseudonym Tenement Warden and Old Contemptible suggested that police boxes be used to store “machine guns, hand grenades, ammunition and rifles” to deal with enemy paratroopers and “Hitler’s Fifth Column and Fascists all over Britain“. I cannot see that this idea was ever taken seriously!
Photograph of the type of air raid siren installed on the roof of Edinburgh police boxes. Evening News, 30th November 1938In 1939, the annual Estimates of Expenditure of the Town Council reported that there were now 143 police boxes in the city backed up by 40 telephone pillars. Running costs were £3,350, not including £250 for maintenance, £800 for electricity and £3,350 to the Post Office for telephony. The authorised strength of the force was reported as 871, comprising 688 constables, 91 sergeants, 30 inspectors and one each “woman sergeant” and “woman constable“.
In practice the boxes proved to be stiflingly hot in the summer and bitterly cold in the winter; the issued heater was much too small and badly located, so boxes often sourced their own additional heaters to make them more habitable. On account of the metal structure they “sweated considerably” in damp weather as a result of condensation. The roof interior would eventually be insulated in 1956 to try and tackle this particular issue. All boxes were to have been provided with both electricity and a water supply but in the end economies meant only 86 of the 140 boxes were plumbed in. It was some time before enamel mugs, at 6d per unit, were issued from which the water could be drunk and it took until 1947 for the Town Council to approve an expenditure of £781 to equip each box with an electric kettle for making tea.
“For Bobby’s Cup of Tea”, Evening News, 5th June 1947Uncomfortable they may have been, but the boxes proved to be immensely strong. This was demonstrated in November 1945 when PC John Anderson – on what was his last day of service of a thirty years police career – escaped with a fractured leg when a fire engine crashed into his box at the foot of the Canongate. In 1954, PC Donald Budge walked away from his box at Balgreen with only cuts and bruises after a two ton lamp standard, being installed nearby fell onto the roof of the box he was sitting in. The damage to the box was restricted to a cracked roof, a broken window and cracked sink. Also that year, two constables in the box at Murrayfield Avenue survived it being struck by lightning, although the interior lights, radiator and telephones were put out of service and the air raid siren on the roof activated itself.
It took the public some time to get used to the new system. In 1936, three years after its institution, Chief Contable W. B. R. Morren lamented that there was a general ignorance, particularly on the part of grown ups, as to the location and facilities offered by boxes. Boxes were always subject to interference and vandalism throughout their working lives. The authorities were keen to make an example of anyone caught in such an act and the first prosecution came in November 1933 when 19 year old Colin Gosschalk was caught breaking into the first aid compartment of the box on Prestonfield Avenue. His defence that a friend had dared him to do it was not accepted and he was fined 10s (the maximum being £2).
The system was not without its critics as evidenced in the columns of and letters to the Evening News – a particular but unfounded complaint was that constables were either never in the boxes when needed, or spent too much time sheltering within them rather than “on the beat” – a classic of the Schrödinger’s box genre! In an interview with the ‘News in 1946, Chief Constable Morren said that boxes “fulfilled and continues to fulfil a very useful purpose, but… did not develop that contact between the police and the public which was so desirable, and it had been proved that the system had not been the success in that direction that was anticipated”. Brigadier-General Dudgeon, HM Inspector of Constabulary for Scotland said that the box system had “proved to be of value to both the police and the public” but “the beat constable is the eyes and ears of the police, and be careful that the police box system is not overdone.”
Post-war, policing would begin to change again, with smaller district police stations re-established for the new suburbs. As was the case after its 1920 expansion, it was found once again that the city had “more or less outgrown the numbered strength of the police force“. This was particularly felt in the extensive housing schemes been built since the boxes were introduced and where petty crime and antisocial behaviour were an increasing problem. After the initial roll-out of boxes, too few had been added. For instance, in 1946 just one was approved for the West Pilton housing scheme at the junction of Ferry Road Drive and West Pilton Avenue. The peripheral estates were harder to police on foot as they had a much lower housing density than the inner city, so officers had a far greater distance to cover.
New council housing at the Inch, 1955, Dinmont Drive. Photograph by A. G. Ingram, © Edinburgh City LibrariesThese issues saw a move in the 1950s away from the “box and beat” approach to policing the suburbs to more mechanisation (cars) and technology (walkie talkies). They continued in use for the centre of the city however, but the last box installed in Edinburgh may have been that erected in Davidson’s Mains in 1958.
It is all very nice to see policemen going their rounds, but in these days of radio telegraphy the greatly increased use of telephones and the system of 999 calls it is quite reasonable to expect that there should be some saving in the actual pedestrian work
Bailie Matt A. Murray, Chairman of the Progressive Group of Edinburgh Town CouncilThe air raid warning system was renewed and expanded in 1952 with 56 sirens refurbished, ten additional ones installed and the remote control system replaced. The signalling was replaced again in the 1960s and the sirens were replaced in the early 1970s. Just before 1pm on Thursday 5th June 1969, the air raid sirens sounded across Edinburgh as an engineer working at the city Police headquarters on the High Street accidentally activated the system. A similar incident occurred on August 1st 1986 when all sirens in the Lothian & Borders Police areas were accidentally activated at 7:30 in the morning due to a fault in the telephone system.
The interior of a Police Box in 1983. PC 64B, Alan Saunders, using the ‘modern’ telephone that replaced the original fitted instrument, which was situated in the corner to the left of the picture, where a dark wooden box protrudes. Photo via Lothian & Borders Police WordPress.Just as Edinburgh had been slow to catch on to adopting police boxes, it was also slow to let them go. While the Metropolitan police started removing boxes in 1969 and demolished its last in 1981, those in Edinburgh were still nominally in active service into the 1990s. After 1984 however the Chief Constable wanted all officers to have a daily briefing at a station before they came on duty and so after then they were more rarely used and many that were found themselves relegated to providing shelter and storage for traffic wardens. In 1993 the air raid sirens were deactivated by the Scottish Office and in 1995 the Lothian & Borders Police Board deemed thirty five of the eighty six remaining boxes were surplus to requirements and put them up for auction, seeking to save the £500 per annum per box maintenance costs of the increasingly dilapidated estate.
Newspaper advert, Scotsman, June 13th 1995, advertising the sale of 35 surplus police boxesThese were the first boxes made available on the open market and generated much interest; a variety of proposals from public toilets to newspaper kiosks to air quality monitoring stations to removing the boxes entirely to install them as curios in pubs or people’s gardens were proposed. In 1990, the predecessor of Historic Environment Scotland listed thirteen boxes as Category B to protect them (there are now a total of seventeen) and the city’s Planning Convenor would issue guidelines requiring any changes to the boxes or their interiors needing planning permission.
Former lawyer Gordon Thomson purchased eight boxes and, as American-style coffee drinking swept across the nation, established a small chain of bijou “cappuccino kiosks” called the California Coffee Company. Thomson may not have realised it, but his innovation was very close to recreating a street scene once common in 18th century Edinburgh. A 2000 attempt by Feyzullah Marasli to emulate this success by converting a box on Princes Street into a coffee kiosk came to nothing when it was discovered that despite him refurbishing the box, changing the locks on it, paying £400 to have an electricity supply installed and applying for the necessary Street Trader’s Licence, he neither owned nor leased the box in question and it was still in operational use by the Police!
‘A street coffee house Edinburgh’. Paul Sandby, 1750s, Royal Collection Trust RCIN 914503Lothian & Borders Police attempted to rehabilitate some boxes in the late 1990s by installing touch screen public information points with a video-link to a police station within them. The first such box was unveiled to the press on Princes Street in 1998 at a cost of £10,000. It had 61,000 “hits” during its first year of operation and was judged to have been a success, with two further such boxes converted, however funding never followed through and the innovation was allowed to lapse.
Eleven more boxes were auctioned in 2001, advertised as “an exciting and unique opportunity to obtain a distinctive piece of cast iron street furniture with potential for a wide range of uses“. In 2002, the BBC successfully trademarked the London-style Police Box in connection with Dr. Who and the TARDIS, despite the Metropolitan Police contesting the application with the Registrar of Trade Marks. This did not apply to Edinburgh’s unique boxes, which are categorically not TARDISes, despite what some may say! From 2012 to 2013, the police box at Braid Hills Approach was restored to exhibition standard as a small museum by Angus Self, a great grandson of Chief Constable Roderick Ross. In 2014, fourteen of the remaining boxes were sold off, leaving just one in Police ownership.
‘SwimEasy’ Police Box Museum, Braid Hills Road. CC-by-NC SA 2.0, M J RichardsonThe boxes may now be entirely operationally defunct, but they remain throughout the city and many are in daily use. In fact I’m just back from visiting one this afternoon, It may not be a TARDIS but an architectural time traveller it was!
Late night Brazilian crepes anyone? A police box has you covered… CC-by-NC 2.0, Joe Gordon via FlickrNote to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
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The thread about the Edinburgh Police Box; architectural Time Traveller but no TARDIS!
The year 2024 was celebrated as the 900th anniversary of the “foundation” of the city of Edinburgh and 2025 is also an important local commemoration; the centenary of the appointment of the wonderfully named Ebenezer James (“E.J.“) Macrae as City Architect. His twenty years of service was a time of great change in our built environment and his office was directly responsible for much of that, not without good cause has he been dubbed “the man who shaped modern Edinburgh“. His tenure is characterised by both the volume of public buildings and housing that was erected and also their distinctive style; at once both modern in form and function but also very sympathetic to tradition. A splendid example of that contrast is the Edinburgh Police Box; a mix of anachronistic classical styling and what was then the cutting edge of modern policing.
Former police box at corner of Waverley Bridge and Market Street. CC-by-NC-SA 2.0, Ian T. Edwards via Flickr.The first police boxes with telephones were established in Chicago back in 1881, just 5 years after the unveiling of the telephone itself by a son of Edinburgh. In 1923, Chief Constable Frederick Crawley of Newcastle City Police instituted what would become known as the Police Box System to Sunderland and in doing so revolutionised British policing. He was looking to increase the efficiency of his his force and focused on trying to reduce time spent by officers walking to and from their beats; he estimated up to a quarter of each man’s time on shift was wasted in this manner. His solution was decentralisation. By placing many small, telephone-equipped police boxes at strategic points throughout the city, officers had shorter distances to walk and could devote more time to duty. Crawley recognised this would place the police more centrally within the communities they were expected to serve, creating a ready point of contact for the public – thus increasing the efficiency of reporting emergencies and also making it far easier for the police to contact and coordinate their own officers. Boxes could also be used as temporary lock ups for prisoners while transport was summoned, avoiding the long and often dangerous walks with them back to a police station. A final and significant attraction was that the increased efficiency also allowed the closure of most district police stations and therefore afforded a significant cost saving.
Wooden police box of the type instituted by Crawley for Newcastle City Police. Note the public-facing telephone and first aid boxes mounted to the left of the door. From The Police Journal, vol.1, No.1, January 1928Police boxes soon spread across the country but Edinburgh, as is often the case, was rather slow to catch on. It was not until May 1928 that a deputation was sent by Chief Constable Roderick Ross from the Edinburgh City Police to inspect the system in Newcastle. This was at the insistence of the Scottish Office who refused to sanction an increase in headcount for Ross and instead wanted efficiencies. He submitted a strongly favourable report to the Town Council, which approved a box system for the city in 1929. Ross served as Chief Constable for the exceptional term of 34 years and it was towards the end of his long watch that his force would be wholly and rapidly modernised.
Roderick Ross, when Chief Constable of Ramsgate Borough Police c. 1898The Edinburgh Evening News threw its editorial weight behind the scheme but also amplified significant local concerns that the appearance of boxes would have a detrimental effect on the city. As the system spread, there had been a plethora of different design styles before a utilitarian, standardised version was developed for the Metropolitan Police by the architect George Mackenzie Trench. Trench’s design is instantly familiar to generations of Dr. Who fans as the TARDIS. But “Cheapness has been obtained in England” wrote the News’ editor “by mass production, but Edinburgh has an architectural standard of its own, which the Cockburn Association endeavours to maintain.” The gauntlet was thus thrown down to the City Architect’s office that something altogether different and better was needed.
George Mackenzie Trench standard police box at the National Tramway Museum, Crich. Note the light on the roof, which would flash to indicate an officer was required to attend the box. CC-by-SA 3.0 Dan Sellers via WikimediaE.J. Macrae, along with his assistants Andrew Rollo and James A. Tweedie are credited with the design of the Edinburgh Box, with the signature of their colleague Robert Somerville Ellis on some of the drawings. The initial inspiration may have been taken from the barrel-topped box used in Sheffield which was used as an illustrative example by the Evening News. Two alternative designs were prepared and plans and models were put to the Lord Provost’s Committee in December 1929. The preferred option was then “submitted for the consideration of the Fine Art Commission“. After that a full-size wooden mock-up was erected on the corner of George Street and Frederick Street in October 1930 to test the practicalities of installing boxes and also to familiarise both the police and the public with the design.
Sheffield City Police box, as used as an illustrative example by the Evening News. September 13th 1938The approved box was, dare I say it, an iconic piece of British street furniture design, unique to the city and instantly at home in its environment. It is described in architectural terms thusly:
Rectangular cast-iron police box with classical details, 6ft by 4ft on plan, 2-bay pilastered long elevations, one of which contains door bearing City Arms. Painted blue. Single bay short elevations surmounted by open pediments containing ribboned wreath paterae. Saltire patterned glazing to all elevations. Low-pitched roof.
Official description of the Edinburgh Police Box from Historic Scotland listing
Each box was constructed of prefabricated cast iron panels produced by the Carron Company in Stirlingshire and tipped the scales at over two tons. The understated classical styling was decorated only with a small cast iron castle motif from the city’s coat of arms on the door and on each gable a wreath; symbolising power or triumph. Inside they were equipped with a desk, flip-down seat, telephone, sink and a small wall-mounted electric heater. There was shelving, pigeon holes and notice boards on the walls to accommodate items such as logbooks and forms and hooks were provided for hanging coats, helmets and capes. Hooks were provided for “beat keys”, premises officers on duty were expected to visit and check, or need access to, during their duties. An unofficial but entirely necessary function of the sink was an ersatz urinal; 8 hours in a district with few or no public toilets was a long time for a beat officer to spend without spending any pennies! (This was apparently best achieved by balancing on the stool and taking careful aim. Each box was provisioned with a supply of bleach to keep things as sanitary as possible.) All of this came at a price however; £58 per box (before foundations and services were laid), far more than the wooden hut type which had cost £13 each in Newcastle or £43 for a reinforced concrete standard box as used by the Metropolitan Police.
Sketch design of the Edinburgh City Police Box, redrawn by self from a copy of the original in the Edinburgh City Archives. The original is signed RSE (Robert Somerville Ellis), 6th September 1928. From Dean of Guild Court of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Police Boxes, Lord Provost, Magistrates and Council of the City of Edinburgh, 26th August 1932.On the outside of the box were small doors that gave members of the public access to a Speakerphone that would connect them to police headquarters and another containing a first aid kit. The Speakerphone was a hands-free system activated upon opening of its door. It was felt at the time that the general public were not familiar enough with the use of telephones to provide a handset, and it was also harder to accidentally damage or vandalise.
A police officer demonstrating the use of the Speakerphone unit. Opening the box door automatically connected the phone to the headquarters switchboard. Photo via Lothian & Borders Police WordPress.Despite the best efforts of Macrae’s office to produce a design that was sympathetic to Edinburgh’s built environment, not everyone was pleased. “W.M.H.” wrote to the Evening News that the box at the foot of Drummond Street by the old City Wall was a “case of outrageous vandalism and should be prohibited.” They questioned who in the authorities was responsible for such “outrages” and challenged the city’s heritage watchdog – the Cockburn Association – to “get busy!“. In Portobello, the Communist party had a particularly niche objection; it charged that the boxes were “designed for use in a rebellion” and that “the master class knew that they were driving the workers to desperation, and they were preparing in advance to deal with rebellion“.
The police box at Drummond Street, immediately in front of the Flodden Wall. The photo dates from 1951 and the box still sports its white stripes applied during WW2 to make it more visible during blackout conditions. Records of RCAHMS, SC1164082. © Crown Copyright: HESBoxes were installed throughout 1932 and a considerable public relations exercise was undertaken to get the public to understand how to use them. The Evening News maintained a regular stream of editorials on the subject, Chief Constable Ross gave numerous lectures, model boxes were taken around schools to show children how to use them and Boy Scouts were encouraged to learn the location of as many boxes as possible as part of their Pathfinding badge. In the final run-up to commissioning, public demonstrations of the boxes in use were staged and the press cameras invited.
Photograph showing a staged accident to demonstrate the use of the public call facility on the new police boxes, along with an operator of the switchboard at police headquarters on the High Street that received the calls. Scotsman, May 26th 1933.The box system and “a new era in the history of Edinburgh City Police” was inaugurated in its entirety on Sunday May 28th 1933 at 6AM. This was a year later than intended, a delay that the Lord Provost blamed on the General Post Office which had been slow to install the necessary telephony infrastructure (500 miles of underground and 23 miles of overhead wire).
Bailie Rutherford Fortune places the first call on from a police box with Chief Constable Ross (dark coat and light hat, with moustache) and Mr F. J. Milne (light coat and dark hat, with umbrella) Secretary of the Post Office in Edinburgh.The boxes were only one part of a greater overall system; policing of the city was entirely restructured at this time. The boxes were allocated to four divisions, each with its own headquarters – A at Braid Place, B at Gayfield Square, C at Torphicen Place and D at Leith – and were numbered sequentially and by division. A map of the all their locations as installed in 1933 can be seen here. Each division had a dedicated pool of motor vehicles for response and prisoner transport and was supported by a non-territorial traffic and mounted division (E) based in the Cowgate. At the same moment that the boxes were first unlocked for duty, the doors of nine district police stations (at the Pleasance, West Port, Abbeyhill, Piershill, Stockbridge, Waverley Market, Morningside, Gorgie and Newhaven) and eighteen smaller sub-stations closed for the last time. Most of these sites were disposed of, leaving only the four divisional stations, a sub-divisional station for Portobello plus city police HQ on the High Street.
The Leith Police. Relaxing on break time with tea and “pieces” at Leith Police station in 1930. Photograph by Photo Press Agency, CC-by-NC-SA via ThelmaThe reduction in manpower required by the box system saw fifteen open vacancies for constables written off, three inspectors and five sergeants made redundant and a further five sergeants demoted to constables. Overall the changes reduced the running cost of the force by £5,800 annually.
Six or seven constables might be based out of a single box and would serve their entire 8-hour shift from it, returning after every half hour or hour long “turn ” of their beat to check in with base by phone, write up their logbook and take breaks. Check in calls were performed according to a strict timetable and if any officer missed one his absence would be noted and a colleague sent to investigate. Men on duty could expect a visit by a section sergeant once every shift. The boxes were accessed by a universal key, which each officer kept on his chain with his whistle. A blue light on the roof of the box would flash to let him know that there was a call waiting for him. Sometimes these lights had to be mounted on an extension pole to be better seen from a distance and in the case of the box outside the Tron Kirk on the High Street, it was a high-mounted “sky lantern” on the building on the corner with North Bridge.
The High Street “sky lantern” is still in place on the corner with North Bridge, appropriately mounted next to a symbol of modern police surveillance, the CCTV camera.Commencing in 1938, air raid sirens began to be installed on top of the roofs of many of Edinburgh’s boxes as part of the city’s ARP (Air Raid Precautions) measures. By April 1939, thirty two sirens had been installed, all controlled from master switches at HQ on the High Street and tests of the system were under way, helping to familiarise the public with the sound. In May 1940, a writer to the Evening News’ letters page using the pseudonym Tenement Warden and Old Contemptible suggested that police boxes be used to store “machine guns, hand grenades, ammunition and rifles” to deal with enemy paratroopers and “Hitler’s Fifth Column and Fascists all over Britain“. I cannot see that this idea was ever taken seriously!
Photograph of the type of air raid siren installed on the roof of Edinburgh police boxes. Evening News, 30th November 1938In 1939, the annual Estimates of Expenditure of the Town Council reported that there were now 143 police boxes in the city backed up by 40 telephone pillars. Running costs were £3,350, not including £250 for maintenance, £800 for electricity and £3,350 to the Post Office for telephony. The authorised strength of the force was reported as 871, comprising 688 constables, 91 sergeants, 30 inspectors and one each “woman sergeant” and “woman constable“.
In practice the boxes proved to be stiflingly hot in the summer and bitterly cold in the winter; the issued heater was much to small and badly located, so boxes often sourced their own additional heaters to make them more habitable. On account of the metal structure they “sweated considerably” in damp weather as a result of condensation. The roof interior would eventually be insulated in 1956 to try and tackle this particular issue. All boxes were to have been provided with both electricity and a water supply but in the end economies meant only 86 of the 140 boxes were plumbed in. It was some time before enamel mugs, at 6d per unit, were issued from which the water could be drunk and it took until 1947 for the Town Council to approve an expenditure of £781 to equip each box with an electric kettle for making tea.
“For Bobby’s Cup of Tea”, Evening News, 5th June 1947Uncomfortable they may have been, but the boxes proved to be immensely strong. This was demonstrated in November 1945 when PC John Anderson – on what was his last day of service of a thirty years police career – escaped with a fractured leg when a fire engine crashed into his box at the foot of the Canongate. In 1954, PC Donald Budge walked away from his box at Balgreen with only cuts and bruises after a two ton lamp standard, being installed nearby fell onto the roof of the box he was sitting in. The damage to the box was restricted to a cracked roof, a broken window and cracked sink. Also that year, two constables in the box at Murrayfield Avenue survived it being struck by lightning, although the interior lights, radiator and telephones were put out of service and the air raid siren on the roof activated itself.
It took the public some time to get used to the new system. In 1936, three years after its institution, Chief Contable W. B. R. Morren lamented that there was a general ignorance, particularly on the part of grown ups, as to the location and facilities offered by boxes. Boxes were always subject to interference and vandalism throughout their working lives. The authorities were keen to make an example of anyone caught in such an act and the first prosecution came in November 1933 when 19 year old Colin Gosschalk was caught breaking into the first aid compartment of the box on Prestonfield Avenue. His defence that a friend had dared him to do it was not accepted and he was fined 10s (the maximum being £2).
The system was not without its critics as evidenced in the columns of and letters to the Evening News – a particular but unfounded complaint was that constables were either never in the boxes when needed, or spent too much time sheltering within them rather than “on the beat” – a classic of the Schrödinger’s box genre! In an interview with the ‘News in 1946, Chief Constable Morren said that boxes “fulfilled and continues to fulfil a very useful purpose, but… did not develop that contact between the police and the public which was so desirable, and it had been proved that the system had not been the success in that direction that was anticipated”. Brigadier-General Dudgeon, HM Inspector of Constabulary for Scotland said that the box system had “proved to be of value to both the police and the public” but “the beat constable is the eyes and ears of the police, and be careful that the police box system is not overdone.”
Post-war, policing would begin to change again, with smaller district police stations re-established for the new suburbs. As was the case after its 1920 expansion, it was found once again that the city had “more or less outgrown the numbered strength of the police force“. This was particularly felt in the extensive housing schemes been built since the boxes were introduced and where petty crime and antisocial behaviour were an increasing problem. After the initial roll-out of boxes, too few had been added. For instance, in 1946 just one was approved for the West Pilton housing scheme at the junction of Ferry Road Drive and West Pilton Avenue. The peripheral estates were harder to police on foot as they had a much lower housing density than the inner city, so officers had a far greater distance to cover.
New council housing at the Inch, 1955, Dinmont Drive. Photograph by A. G. Ingram, © Edinburgh City LibrariesThese issues saw a move in the 1950s away from the “box and beat” approach to policing the suburbs to more mechanisation (cars) and technology (walkie talkies). They continued in use for the centre of the city however, but the last box installed in Edinburgh may have been that erected in Davidson’s Mains in 1958.
It is all very nice to see policemen going their rounds, but in these days of radio telegraphy the greatly increased use of telephones and the system of 999 calls it is quite reasonable to expect that there should be some saving in the actual pedestrian work
Bailie Matt A. Murray, Chairman of the Progressive Group of Edinburgh Town Council
The air raid warning system was renewed and expanded in 1952 with 56 sirens refurbished, ten additional ones installed and the remote control system replaced. The signalling was replaced again in the 1960s and the sirens were replaced in the early 1970s. Just before 1pm on Thursday 5th June 1969, the air raid sirens sounded across Edinburgh as an engineer working at the city Police headquarters on the High Street accidentally activated the system. A similar incident occurred on August 1st 1986 when all sirens in the Lothian & Borders Police areas were accidentally activated at 7:30 in the morning due to a fault in the telephone system.
Just as Edinburgh had been slow to catch on to adopting police boxes, it was also slow to let them go. While the Metropolitan police started removing boxes in 1969 and demolished its last in 1981, those in Edinburgh were still nominally in active service into the 1990s. After 1984 however the Chief Constable wanted all officers to have a daily briefing at a station before they came on duty and so after then they were more rarely used and many that were found themselves relegated to providing shelter and storage for traffic wardens. In 1993 the air raid sirens were deactivated by the Scottish Office and in 1995 the Lothian & Borders Police Board deemed thirty five of the eighty six remaining boxes were surplus to requirements and put them up for auction, seeking to save the £500 per annum per box maintenance costs of the increasingly dilapidated estate.
Newspaper advert, Scotsman, June 13th 1995, advertising the sale of 35 surplus police boxesThese were the first boxes maid available on the open market and generated much interest; a variety of proposals from public toilets to newspaper kiosks to air quality monitoring stations to removing the boxes entirely to install them as curios in pubs or people’s gardens were proposed. In 1990, the predecessor of Historic Environment Scotland listed thirteen boxes as Category B to protect them (there are now a total of seventeen) and the city’s Planning Convenor would issue guidelines requiring any changes to the boxes or their interiors needing planning permission.
Former lawyer Gordon Thomson purchased eight boxes and, as American-style coffee drinking swept across the nation, established a small chain of bijou “cappuccino kiosks” called the California Coffee Company. Thomson may not have realised it, but his innovation was very close to recreating a street scene once common in 18th century Edinburgh. A 2000 attempt by Feyzullah Marasli to emulate this success by converting a box on Princes Street into a coffee kiosk came to nothing when it was discovered that despite him refurbishing the box, changing the locks on it, paying £400 to have an electricity supply installed and applying for the necessary Street Trader’s Licence, he neither owned nor leased the box in question and it was still in operational use by the Police!
‘A street coffee house Edinburgh’. Paul Sandby, 1750s, Royal Collection Trust RCIN 914503Lothian & Borders Police attempted to rehabilitate some boxes in the late 1990s by installing touch screen public information points with a video-link to a police station within them. The first such box was unveiled to the press on Princes Street in 1998 at a cost of £10,000. It had 61,000 “hits” during its first year of operation and was judged to have been a success, with two further such boxes converted, however funding never followed through and the innovation was allowed to lapse.
Eleven more boxes were auctioned in 2001, advertised as “an exciting and unique opportunity to obtain a distinctive piece of cast iron street furniture with potential for a wide range of uses“. In 2002, the BBC successfully trademarked the London-style Police Box in connection with Dr. Who and the TARDIS, despite the Metropolitan Police contesting the application with the Registrar of Trade Marks. This did not apply to Edinburgh’s unique boxes, which are categorically not TARDISes, despite what some may say! From 2012 to 2013, the police box at Braid Hills Approach was restored to exhibition standard as a small museum by Angus Self, a great grandson of Chief Constable Roderick Ross. In 2014, fourteen of the remaining boxes were sold off, leaving just one in Police ownership.
‘SwimEasy’ Police Box Museum, Braid Hills Road. CC-by-NC SA 2.0, M J RichardsonThe boxes may now be entirely operationally defunct, but they remain throughout the city and many are in daily use. In fact I’m just back from visiting one this afternoon, It may not be a TARDIS but an architectural time traveller it was!
Late night Brazilian crepes anyone? A police box has you covered… CC-by-NC 2.0, Joe Gordon via FlickrIf you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site – including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget to find further stories to bring you – by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.
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