It’s been so long that I’ve forgotten how much I like playing around with Flash. My laptop hasn’t, it’s what its fan was made for!

drawing my first comic last year was a fun challenge but after it was completed I’m sort of stuck of inspiration for the next comic. So sticking with the same character I’ve starting a little cartooning diary documenting the fun things Charlie gets up to and says. This should help move things a long a little, plus it acts as a fun record of Charlie’s development.

You can tell the weather is improving because the Whitworths are out exporing again. This weekend Charlie wanted to ride his bike so we took to the many tracks around the village which has seemd to have breathed a sigh of relief as its inhabitants emerge from the winter hibernation.

I remember a quote I recently read by Jennifer New that went “Close observation of a single subject, whether it is as tiny as Pasteur’s microbes or as great as Einstein’s universe, is the kind of work that happens less and less these days. Glued to computer screens, we have forgotten how to look at the natural world, the original instructor on how to be curious about detail.” and whilst on our expedition of the village decided to take along my camera and pay close detail to the little things around us. Charlie loved it.

When we returned we made a little eight page zine of some of the photographs we took and called it Explore. They’re going out in my next mailing but if you would like one just drop me a line on jez.whitworth [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk.

I know I’ve been banging on and tinkering around for a few months now about my kite project but it’s nice to finally knuckle down and start bringing it all together. The payload is going to comprise of three modules: Temperature recording, GPS and photography/video and I’ve properly started work on the temperature module prototype last week.

It is based on exactly the same concept as last month’s robot, with three blinking LED’s relaying the current temperature as well as the highest and lowest. I’ve also added a little extra too in the form of an FM transmitter which broadcasts the current temperature from the kite down to the ground allowing me to get real time data.

The transamitter is one from a simple kit that works of a 9v battery and although simple and small, it actually has a pretty good range. The problem I did find however was that stronger signal from radio stations were masking my signal and so i’ve been hunting for a frequency where I won’t get interupted.

Anyway, I put together a short video of me testing the module with help from out chickens.

Dressing up with Charlie.