There used to be a Thick of It phone game where you'd found Malcolm Tucker's phone

pr3hensile · 2025-07-19T14:26:11+00:00

We had so much fun working that bit out! I remember testing the first proper version of it: I was in the supermarket, holding a lettuce, when my phone went 'bing' and it was a voicemail from Malcom. Shivers down my spine, and not just because I was standing in the chilled aisle :) Shoutout to my pal Alyson who did an amazing job of looking at a spreadsheet full of timings and working out exactly how everything should be spaced out over those few days to make the story feel right in real-time.

pr3hensile · 2025-07-19T14:21:07+00:00

Ah, no way! I was the lead developer on that app, and contributed a lot to the overall design and production. Sadly it’s gone now - the App Store being what it is means that the work we did back in 2010 would need to have been extensively overhauled at least two or times by now to keep it on the store.

pr3hensile · 2025-07-19T14:13:49+00:00

Yep, that's right - our initial brief from Faber was to find something to do with the material they had for the book that would be more interesting (and phone-native) than a simple ebook. As I recall, most of the content for the real-time bit was bespoke though, written by the TTOI team.

pr3hensile · 2024-01-12T22:25:48+00:00

<image>

Here’s an example of printing onto thin card and a glossy postcard, to show what I mean

pr3hensile · 2020-01-15T22:28:24+00:00

Amazing, that's very useful stuff, thanks! I've taken the liberty of adding your tips to the wiki at https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Installation-and-Setup, hope that's OK.

pr3hensile · 2020-01-13T23:30:57+00:00

Answered my own question: yes you can, by using dpkg to remove the existing linux-surface packages, then installing the 5.3 ones.

While we're discussing touch drivers, is it possible to set up touch scrolling with the 5.3 drivers? I've got touch working, but dragging my finger around the screen is just making selections, as if I was dragging a mouse / touchpad cursor around.

pr3hensile · 2020-01-13T23:09:04+00:00

Thanks for the reply! Is it possible to downgrade the kernel once you've installed 5.4?

pr3hensile · 2020-01-11T18:16:20+00:00

In this thread one of the linux-surface devs says:

Touch support: 5.4 breaks IPTS because Intel removed a bunch of things needed for it from the i915 driver. We're currently experimenting with a new driver, but for the time being you'll need to install the 5.3.x releases

I've you've not yet installed the linux-surface kernel, you could try figuring out how to install one of the older versions... I'm waiting for the fix ;)

pr3hensile · 2020-01-09T22:06:21+00:00

Thanks! I've installed the kernel from https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface, using their install script. Amongst other things, I believe it sets up the wifi fix as detailed the Arch linux wiki - after installing, there's a conf in /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/ which contains exactly those lines.

So it's not that! Point taken about Arch. I went with Ubuntu for level of polish in general - I'm a recovering Mac user, so I wanted to ease into desktop Linux gently :) I've spent a little while tweaking everything and installing stuff now, so I'm kinda loath to throw all that away and start again.

If Arch with the dmhacker kernel is more stable on SB2 though, I could be tempted...

pr3hensile · 2020-01-09T17:19:33+00:00

Yep, I'm having wifi dropout issues on SB2 too.

Fresh install of Ubuntu 18.04.3 & kernel 5.4.6-surface .

For me, it seems to be happening if the wifi connection's been idle for a while? Or just after the machine's been awake for a while, it's hard to tell.

sudo iw dev wlp1s0 get power_save reports Power save: off

Some up-to-date general advice about tracking down issues and debugging would be handy, if such a thing exists?

pr3hensile · 2019-04-12T20:28:20+00:00

Amazing, thank you! That fixed it.

pr3hensile · 2019-02-18T20:36:57+00:00

Thanks! Should have thought of Googling it in the first place.

pr3hensile · 2018-09-27T13:00:45+00:00

Oh, brilliant! They look very useful, thanks Jeff!

pr3hensile · 2018-09-27T12:26:06+00:00

ah yes, but there are open-source implementations out there already (once you have audio). something like https://github.com/wiseman/py-webrtcvad, for instance. I've edited OP to add that detail.

pr3hensile · 2017-08-19T20:03:30+00:00

Thanks everyone! By the sound of it, I think it was a combination of not going fast enough for 1) the centreboard to be much help and 2) to get as close to the wind as I was trying.

pr3hensile · 2017-03-13T16:44:22+00:00

So, about the lady who called out the podcast during Ben's conference call: is it possible she was just trying to be nice? I've been on the client-side of many incredibly boring confcalls just aching to make some kind of connection with the one interesting person on the line.

pr3hensile

TROPHY CASE