Time for an update - 31-March-2023

It's been a very long time since I posted anything new and just as long a time since I was able to reposnd to any emails. Well I have plans to recitify the former and I've finally sorted out the latter. Email is an arse to set up now with the anti-spam measures employed by various free webmail providers who will remain nameless at this point. Needless to say I can now send and recieved emails and so will look to resurrect the email form.

A New Look! - 1-February-2018

Finally, after much toil and effort I've converted randomwraith.com into a fully responsive website. Happy mobile viewing!

Better Quality Rubik's Cube Video - 30-January-2018

It's been a busy day! I discovered my Rubik's cube video made back in 2003 contained four streams of varying quality. I extracted the best and uploaded it . More details of the cube can be found on the Rubik's cube page.

Rotational Full Adder - 30-January-2018

It's been sitting on my shelf for about 5 years and I've procrastinated that long too. But today I have made that well over due video of the rotational full adder in operation and of course details can be found on the LEGO logic page.

Powered push-pull logic - 30-January-2018

A big problem with the push-pull logic gates is the inertia, the output attenutaion. Powering them has always been a consideration and now I've done it Using linear actuators . There's a video available and details can be found on the LEGO logic page.

Happy New Year - 1-January-2018

The randomwraith.com wishes you a very happy 2018!

Newton's Ink - 1-October-2017

I recently found a recipe for making ink for use with dip pens. The recipe is none other than that used by Sir Isaac Newton himself although I modified it slighly to use wine instead of beer. I will say this, it is nicer to use that the Winsor & Newton in and Dr Ph Martin's ink I have, even if it does have a slightly odd odour!

Happy New Year - 1-January-2017

Time flies when you're having fun.! Have a very happy 2017!

Mechanical Computing Book - 25-November-2016

I've recently obtained an out-of-print book - "Computing mechanisms and Linkages" by Antonin Svoboda, which illustrates and explains many principles and techniques of mechanical computation, including the methods I've used. According to wikipedia the author, Antonin Svoboda (1907-1980) was a Czech computer scientist, mathematician, electrical engineer, and researcher who is is credited with originating the design of fault-tolerant computer systems, and with the creation of SAPO, the first Czech computer design.

One Million page loads - 10-October-2015

Actually this happend a couple of years ago on 21 June 2013 at 20.56.47 GMT. The dubious honor goes to someone with the IP address 76.29.137.98 in Orlando Florida USA, using Safari on MacOSX.

A New Sever - 10-October-2015

The site has been moved to a new server. More power, more bandwidth more space, less $$$

ANZAC Day 2015 - 25-April-2015

100 Years - lest we forget.

Happy Christmas and New Year - 1-January-2015

The Randomwraith wishes you a very Happy Christmas and a great 2015!

The Art of the Brick - 30-November-2014

The Randomwraith was lucky enough to visit the Art of the Brick exhibition by ex-lawyer now LEGO artist Nathan Sawaya. I'm glad I went to this after Brick 2014 as it reconfirmed my faith in LEGO as a medium for creativity! All I can say is that the show was wonderful and if you get the chance go and see it! I've put some photographs of the show up.

Brick 2014 - 28-November-2014

The Randomwraith had a good look round the Brick 2014 exhibition at the Excel Centre here in London. Sadly the majority ode displays were simply big towns with railways, which gave it more of a feel of being a model railway exhibition than a LGEO exhibiton! Don't get me wrong s ome of these models were impressive in their scale, but they were neither imaginative or creative. That said there were some wonderful models, the Thunderbird and Star Wars replicas, the Great Marble Run and a Rubik's Cube Solver to name but a few. Check out my YouTube Channel for videos of the show.

Logic Gates Get Published! - 1-January-2014

The Randomwraith was recently contacted by the author Vikram Chandra and in his new book "Geek Sublime" he uses some of the push-pull LEGO logic gates to illustrate the basics of computing. It's a great read, you can browse a preview here.

>Happy Christmas and New Year - 1-January-2014

The Randomwraith wishes you a very Happy Christmas and a great 2014! Wow! It looks like I've been doing nothing in the last 12 month too - completely untrue ... really it is!

Happy Christmas and New Year - 1-January-2013

The Randomwraith wishes you a very Happy Christmas and a great 2013!

New Host - 31-December-2012

We have a new host! After many years of good service from the people at ikaruga, it has come time to move on. We now have a fancy new vps - let's see how it works out managing it ourselves ...

RCX in action - 8-June-2012

Despite, many years ago, building an 'RCX' to control LEGO models via the parallel port, I've never actually used it beyond testing. So here is a simple demonstration of the device controlling a train, just to prove it does actualy work!

Rotational logic gates - 20-May-2012

I have finally gotton round to putting up the designs for several logic gates that use the rotation of an axle to represent a logical state. You can find out more here.

LEGOLAND Windsor Photos - 20-October-2011

I found my photographs from the LEGOLAND Windsor trip made a few years ago and uploaded them. It's well worth a visit if you ever get the chance.

A complete over haul - 8-July-2011

Well here it is! The all new randomwraith.com that was once the home of the goldfish online. I hope you like the new design. Don't forget to check back regularly or keep tabs on the Twitter feed.

A complete over haul - 18-October-2011

As is often the way, there comes a point when you look at your web page and think, ahk! Them starts the long process of trying to find a new template and refreshing all those old stale pages.

Well here are the refreshed pages thanks to the "customary" template available from Free CSS Templates. I've also used some nifty javascript called "lightbox" for the photo galleries, which is available for free from www.lokeshdhakar.com.

I hope you like the new look!

Randomwraith dot com - 8-July-2011

A new web page layout and name. That's right from now on the Goldfish Online will be randomwraith dot com. Why the change? Why not. The old design was getting pretty stale and the old name has been replaced, but not forgotten.

Technical Troubles - 19-June-2011

Apologies for any down time that you might have noticed, there have been a few technical difficulties ...

Active Matrix Prototype - 19-June-2011

I've also developed an active matrix screen using mechanical principals - fuly compatible with my existing Lego logic gates. Watch this space as they say ...

An update? - 19-June-2011

Wow an update! And there are more to come over the next few days so watch out! Oh yeah the reason the goldfish logo disappeared was due to the goldfish credit card company took exception to it and tried to claim that people might get confused. Hm, I'm sure their customers are intelligent enough to distinguish between Lego creations and credit cards. They also tried to force me to give them my domain name, not sell, but transfer for free. Nothing that some legal advice didn't solve ... very quickly ...

Twenty Ten - 31-December-2010

What happened in 2010? For The Goldfish Online is was the arrival of a baby goldfish. Perhaps that's why there have been no updates over the year!

Another No Logo - 2-February-2009

Notice anything different? Yep the Goldfish images have disappeared. I won't mention anything about this at the moment, but I'm sure you can figure out why they've gone, let's hope it isn't a portent of the enforced closure of The Goldfish Online.

Update - I will mention it now. It was a certain credit card company. Their claim was that it might confuse their customers. Yeah right! A webpage with LEGO models as it's main theme versus a finance company. They even demanded I hand over my dot org domain name, that I've owned since 2002. Sure I said, it's yours for £10K, haha. But can you believe it? No siree you don't bully me like that. A simple explanation to them about what a dot org means, how long I've owned it for and that I've taken legal advice (I did). They backed off pretty quickly.

So the lesson for anyone else out there is don't think the big corps can bully you with it without good reason nor that they can get away with it. They're bound by the law just like everyone else.

More On the Active Matrix - 8-January-2008

Finally I've had some time to play again and have come up with a basic design for a mechanical active matrix screen - I've got the model of a 2x2 pixel device made in LEGO and just need to take some pictures of it for the web site.

Happy New Year - 1-January-2008

Happy New Year everyone!

No Logo - 14-April-2007

Not much has been going on in the world of The Goldfish. You'll see a minor change to the Blood Bowl Soccer logo. It had to be removed after a letter from Games Workshop suggest that I was in breech of copywrite. Fair enough, but at least it's been noticed by them :-)

The Great Monopoly Pub Crawl - 7-December-2006

Our spin on the The Monopoly Pub Crawl. The crawl is through London with a drink, we half-pints, at a pub on each street an station on the Monopoly board. We made it though all 26 pubs (ok except for one which didn't exist any more). There are some photos too, just in case you don't believe it's possible :-)

K'NEX Logic Gates - 5-December-2006

Have a look at this video on YouTube. It shows a half-adder made by a buy William Hilton using K'NEX. Like my LEGO logic gates and adder it's base on a push-pull system to represent the logic states.

www.Dreamalong.com - 18-August-2006

Check out Dreamalong.com - now defunct. An educational online shop that sells a great selection of LEGO

www.rubiksillusions.com - 14-August-2006

I've added a link to a great new rubik's cube page run by a cube enthusiast Paolo. You can find it via the LEGO Rubik's cube page or directly at www.rubiksillusions.com - now defunct.

CSS and Java - 7-March-2006

Oh dear, how slack I've been for not updating this page for over a year. To make amends I've redesigned the whole site, sort of, making use of groovy things like cascading style sheets and javascript menus. I've checked the pages using IE6.0 and Firefox 1.5. But please let me know if something doesn't work correctly. Especially if you use Firefox and the embedded videos don't work.

LEGO XOR Gate - 10-March-2005

In the past months, actually about January 05, I finally developed a LEGO XOR gate. And of course the next step was the half-adder. You can find these and new designs for AND, NOT, OR gates through the LEGO logic gate page.

Happy Slash-Dotted New Year! - 10-January-2005

Happy New Year! Since my last update I've had the dubious pleasure of being slash-dotted. Actually I was quite amazed how much interest there could be in mechanical logic gates made from LEGO. On December 15th I had a whopping 96,976 page loads (63,445 unique hits). How crazy is that, once again I must thank the people at www.ikaruga.co.uk for providing me with space on a server that could cope with the demand :-)

I've also added and "About me" page, just in case you are at all curious. Ok It might be a little light on all the personal details, but it should give you enough info for the time being.

Typos typos - Thanks to all those people who have contacted me with comments about my page and for pointing out any of those nasty typos that always seem to creep in - no promises that they're all cleaned out though.

EDUCATORS! - 10-January-2005

I've had a number of emails asking for permission to use my LEGO logic gates as teaching aids. Of course the answer to this is yes, but please contact me so I can provide you with the correct referencing for my pages.

Missing Mail - 15-September-2004

It appears that some email sent from this site might not have been arriving in my inbox. I've changed all my contact details to my actual isp email address rather than a forwarding address. If you mailed and didn't get a reply then please try again! I've also removed the requirement for NOSPAM by using a groovy bit of javascript.

You might also notice that the form on the comments pages has gone. It never really lived up to expectation. Eventually I'll get rid of the comments page entirely since my contact is at the foot of each page anyway.

A New Server - 13-September-2004

A new sever! The biggest thank you possible must go to Jeff at www.ikaruga.co.uk who has very kindly provided this solution to my recent excessive bandwidth.

Bandwidth Overload - 12-September-2004

My apologies if you have found this site to be temporarily suspended due to excessive bandwidth. Unfortunately there's not much I can do about that in the short term. The reason? well I my page on LEGO logic gates was made site of the day at www.userfriendly.org. If their comment is no longer there is read: And now it's time for full on geek mode. LEGO Logic Gates at The Goldfish Online seems to be one man's attempt to build a computer using the most painfully inappropriate methods possible. And don't you wish you had his bragging rights? I'm pretty chuffed by this as I was, as a result, contacted by the news editor of SST Semiconductor Weekly! It also forced me into putting a counter on to my pages.

SPAM SPAM NO SPAM - 11-June-2004

NO SPAM! Due to the amount of junk email I receive, I've decided to try and do something about it. If you look at the comments page or the email link at the bottom of each page, you will notice a NOSPAM has been added to my email address. To email me you will have to remove this NOSPAM part.

New Web Template - 10-March-2004

A new web page design. Why? Well for starters it will be easier to maintain without all the frames and nested tables. And those nasty frames were giving rise to search engine problems. There is a lot of new stuff and I think it's all organised a bit better too. Please contact me if anything isn't working!

New LEGO Models - 10-March-2004

A lot of new LEGO models have arrived at The Goldfish Online. I've put up photos of my piano mechanism prototype, and a significant section on mechanical logic gates using LEGO. At some stage in the future I'll post my initial prototype ideas for a working replica of Babbage's difference machine and ideas that will eventually become my DIY Mindstorms RCX.

More Logical Logic - 10-March-2004

I've also reorganised my LEGO logic pages. There are now pages dedicated to different gates, rather than just one long, somewhat cluttered page. Gone is My Musings - a nice idea, but at the end of the day I'm not really into writing.

CV - 10-March-2004

You will also notice I've put up my CV (or Resume for those of you across the ditch) just in case you want to offer me a suitably large paying, but low houred job ;-P (since removed)

Blood Bowl Soccer - 10-March-2004

Other new things are my Blood Bowl Soccer rules. These were first drawn up way back in 1995. The rules here are the last revision, which, after much play testing, were submitted to a Games Workshop magazine. My rules for a Diplomacy style game that I invented, called 1930!, are also available.

Update - These games have now been removed. Blood Bowl Soccer, as much as I'd love to keep it here, would need an imense amount of work to bring it inline with the current version. Please feel to contact me if you'd like a version of the rules.

Essential Links - 10-March-2004

I've also put links to those essential pieces of software that I just can't do without! The different topic pages also have there own links in a more organised fashion. (since removed)

Rubik's Cube Instructions - 20-November-2003

Finally, the instructions for the LEGO Rubik's Cube have been finished and uploaded. You can find the instructions by following the LEGO link on the side menu, enjoy!

How things are spelt - 19-November-2003

Well I discovered that I had Rubic is actually spelt Rubik and so all my Rubik's Cube pages have been changed to reflect this.

Smaller Rubik's Cube Video - 8-September-2003

Thanks to a fellow LEGO enthusiast who put me onto the MS encoder software enabling me to reduce the original Rubik's Cube video from 10MB to 1MB! It can be found via the LEGO link on the side menu.

Rubik's Cube Video - 18-June-2003

A small mpeg movie of the LEGO Rubik's Cube is now available. Just follow the LEGO link on the side menu. The file is zipped to 1.27MB. Enjoy!

Rubik's Cube Photos - 11-June-2003

I've finally put up some photos of my LEGO Rubik's Cube. Yes it's fully working replica! You can find out more about the model by following the LEGO Technic link on the side menu.

Photo Album - 21-December-2002

The photo album is at last starting to take shape. So far some pictures of Malvern are available (since removed).

Animations - 18-December-2002

I've added a new section called "Animations". When my 50 Megs of web space finally arrives then I'll be able to expand that accordingly. There is one little animation to keep you happy though (since removed).

Spring Cleaning - 14-November-2002

There were several out-dated and unused pages lying around. So I over hauled the site and cut out the chaff! You won't notice much change other than the empty pages have now gone!

A Domain Name! - 23-October-2002

A domain name! Yes The Goldfish can now be found at www.goldfish.org.uk!

Have a Beer! - 02-October-2002

Before going anywhere have yourself an Imperial Pint (568 sillylitres) of Emersons Bookbinder Bitter! It's a New Zealand beer, and you'll be hard pushed to find a beer as good - anywhere, although Shropshire Lad, Timothy Taylor's Landlord and Meantime IPA here in the UK come close.

Update - well this was true before the craft beer revolution!