Z80 Retro, now Arduino free.

Over the long weekend I managed to get some work done on my Z80 retro computer. Having previously used an Arduino for much of the control elements and power, I've built a switch based clock circuit using NAND gates, a 5v power supply using a LM7805 and a reset circuit using an inverter. So I became Arduino free. I also started hooking up the recommended buffers to the Z80's data and address pins, which made the whole thing more stable. However it's clear that I need now to move some of these circuits to strip board as I often have to check the wires are all in correct and the machine, which I'm going to have name, behaves erratically at times. Pictured is the clock circuit, which is based on this circuit diagram - http://cpuville.com/images/Z80/schematic_2.GIF

40K terrain boards all set up

Well the first HATE club night was a huge success. We had a great turnout, eighty paying players with about two thirds of them being miniature gamers. We really hadn't done much in the way of advertising, particularly for board and card games, so to have had all the tables we set out for boardgames having games going on was terrific. We're hoping the venue thought the takings on the bar were good enough to lower the hire price and allow us back. We'll definitely need more space, and more terrain. Here are some photos from my boards set up.

More 40K Terrain

With one day to go before the HATE Club meetup I've been gardening by day and painting by night. Here are a few more photos of progress. As you can see the Arena is beginning to come together, however it's not going to be completed in time, so I'll have to get it into a usable state and then work on it further.

Arena Of Khorne : BFTBG

In preparation for our HATE club first event I've been working on a Khornite battle arena, designed for 28mm model bases, so essentially large steps. Character models who are victorious in a challenge within the area roll on the Chaos boons table, no matter what their origin.

It's made from foamcore, carved with a hacksaw blade and then detailed with scalpels. It's glued together with a mixture of spray on spider adhesive and rubber glue. I've painted it with watered down polyfilla to strengthen it and make it more stone-like in texture. It's based with an industrial scale sand basing material made from sawdust. I'm lucky that I've friends who make big stuff for films, operas and the theatre. I've got to paint it over the weekend, along with finishing off some city ruins and some others bits, so it's going to be very tight time wise, as the garden needs to attention too.

   

Doing Your Thing in 40K

While making terrain for our first club night I was talking with my good friend and long time 40K'er Toby. He mentioned that one of the frustrations he had with the evolution of the rules was that special abilities that were introduced for a particular unit to give them a unique and flavoursome ability where often watered down, given to others widely and, in the example of Chaos Raptors and Hit & Run, removed for that unit but left for others.

With my current Dark Heresy GUMSHOE hack in mind, I started thinking about how often in 40K you don't get to do your 'thing'. By 'thing' I mean that which makes your army unique, that which your character is feared for. It's your shtick. There are so many special abilities across units that there has been a steady increase in the countermeasures to them. Taking pinning for example. I can't remember the last time I ever saw it work, let alone considered a usable tactic, because so many units ignore it, or have enough leadership for it to be a cold day on Nocturne when it kicks in.

GUMSHOE's philosophy of being good at your thing can, and should, translated to war games. You should, unless you plan poorly, be able to do the glorious deeds you're forces are infamous for at least once during the game.

A very simple, and probably ill conceived idea to improve the situation in 40K would be to give each player a Joker card. When played, the Joker means an HQ, and any unit it is attached to can automatically make, or force the failure of a single dice roll. It also removes an immunity to a particularly ability that would resolve normally on that single dice roll. So, for example a Tau HQ leading a unit that has pinning weapons plays it after it's shot at a unit of Space Marines, who are normally immune to the pinning effect. The Joker means that they lose that immunity for that single test and automatically fail. Further examples would be a unit of Warp Talons deep striking with an attached winged Daemon Prince. The player uses the Joker to make the blind test a nearby unit of Devastators makes automatically fail.  A Tiberius, down to his last wound, uses the Joker to avoid making a psychic test, and activates his powers without fear of the warp consuming him. Of course it might mean that an HQ with a squad with a powerfist could remove the Instant Death rule from an opponent and force it to fail an invulnerbilty save. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Possibly it couldn't be used for attacks that have more than one to-hit roll.          

GUMSHOE Dark Heresy Drives

Clearly on bit of a roll today, powered partially by a strangely meetingless day at work.

Drives in Trail Of Cthulhu are the things that keep you sane, or accelerate your descent in madness. Similarly in GDH, Drives represent the reasons you serve the Inquisition and drive you to follow it’s orders. Stability has renamed Faith, and as it goes down the further from the God-Emperor’s ways you fall. Here are some sample drives for the characters to select.

Adventure : Excitement, Danger and Travel

The wild thrill of hunting your prey, discovering ancient secrets and putting a bolt round in the mutant, the witch and the heretic cannot be matched by any other experience. You’ll gladly follow into the Eye Of Terror itself, if commanded to do so. Hell, one day you’ll give those orders yourself. It’s clear the Emperor has great plans ahead for you.

Antiquarianism : The Past Hides Many Secrets
There are many ages to mankind’s journey through history and in these ancient aeons many great secrets are lost. To uncover them, and bend their powers to your will is all that matters, and only with the blessing of the Inquisition can this work be done without fear of execution. There is a price to pay, but a price worth paying thrice if needs be.

Conscription : There Is No Choice But To Answer The Call
Sharp moments of fear and pain have replaced a life of drudgery and service. Twenty years is the tally, and then freedom of a kind others can only dream of, if the rumours are to be believed. In the mean time, keep your head down, volunteer for nothing, but do everything well enough to survive.

Cruelty : Punishment Keeps The Weak In Line
The universe is cruel, and only those prepared to inflict cruelty prosper. The Inquisition knows this truth, and it’s methods are many and frightful. Learn, hold your temper, grow within its structure and butcher those who get in your way. Hurt those who do not, so they will know what it means to cross you.

Curiosity : The Universe Has More Things In It Than Are Known To Mankind
How old are the detestable Eldar? What is the bubbling language of Trinary? Do all planets have cores of minable iron? Why do Plasma Guns explode so often? How can mere words summon fell beings, and what are those words? A curious mind is dangerous mind, but a little less so in the Inquisition, so play the game and hide in plain sight.

Devotion : My Lord Inquisitor Is My Saviour
Once you was lost, but now you are saved. The grace and goodness of your Lord Inquisitor knows no bounds, and you’d gladly throw yourself in front of a melta blast to save your master. Be alert to dangers that threaten your Lord, there are traitors everywhere and in every guise.

Duty : Stand Between Mankind And Extinction
It’s simple, the universe is inimical to human life, and the Inquisition represent the best chance to prevent mass extinction. Serve, be wary and root out the alien. Humanity must survive by any means necessary, and nothing and no-one is beyond sacrifice to secure our future.

Faith : Faith In The God-Emperor
The God-Emperor is the divine being, and the Inquisition are his watchful eyes and hoary breath. To serve Him is to reach the pinnacle of work, and to serve Him hard and thanklessly in the Inquisition is to impose the noblest sacrifice on oneself. Never falter, never question, never disobey shall be your mantra and you shield against the wicked, the xenos and the impure.

Fate : Fate Brought You Before The Gaze Of The Inquisition
You always knew you would receive the summons. You know not why you are needed, what machinations lie behind your selection but here you are and everything will unfold before you. Great powers are at work, weaving their webs about you. You must be wary, and spot those that seek to cut your thread before you can realise your fate.

Fear : Fear Of The Inquisition
Caught. Execution, or worse awaited, but unexpectedly an offer came. Serve or die. When you realised it was from the Inquisition you knew it might as well be serve and die. But for now you’ll follow orders, and maybe you’ll get through it if you can prove to be useful enough to someone, somewhere with that damned seal.

Greed : The Cups Of Those Who Follow Are Ever Full
There are no hungry Inquisitors. While some may tread the path of austerity, it is a false penance, and you know that the vaults of the Ordos are filled with Thrones uncountable. So provide your services well, and strike bargains that lead to gain for you and your Inquisitor. One day you’ll see that repaid and never know that gnawing fear again.

Power : The Inquisition Is A Power In The Universe
The Inquisition can command the greatest warriors in the universe. With a word they can bring an end to an entire planet. Mutants fall before them, witches are made impotent by them and even Daemons fear them. Nothing matches that, and nothing will stop you from wielding that power yourself. You know it’ll be a hard road, a vicious road but by building your power bases early, with guile and brutality in equal measure will be your route to immortality.

Vengeance : It Will Not Be Swift, But It Will Be Vengeance
You’ve been wronged, maybe by your very family, maybe by wicked, maybe by the alien. Right now you have no means of satisfaction but the Inquisition is powerful and abrupt. Though the path to vengeance will be long, you’ll bring that power to bare on your foes and teach them to regret their actions against you.

Initial skills matching in GUMSHOE Dark Heresy

I went through Dark Heresy RPG and Trail Of Cthulhu and compared the skill sets. Sticking, for now, to the basic skills from Dark Heresy and not looking beyond ToC I compiled this match, which is pretty impressive. There is a lot less work here to do than I fear, clearly Messier Hite and Laws knew someday it would come to this. I can see that I'll need to add some kind of specialisation option to Athletics, to allow people to be particularly good at Contortionist, or more likely Dodge. There are quite a few GUMSHOE skills I'll want to added to GDH. Finally I realise that the list of Lore skills will be quite large and I should consider if PC's should get more investigative points to adapt to this increase. Probably not.

Dark Heresy Basic Skills with existing Trail Of Cthulhu GUMSHOE counterpartsAwareness - Sense trouble
Barter - Bargain
Carouse - Athletics
Charm - Flattery or Flirt
Concealment - Conceal or Stealth
Contortionist - Athletics
Deceive - Reassurance
Disguise - Disguise
Dodge - Athletics
Evaluate - Art history (partial)
Gamble - Streetwise (partial)
Inquiry - Interrogation, Reassurance or Assess honesty
Intimidate - Intimidate
Logic - Cryptography or Physics
Climb - Athletics
Scrutiny - Assess honesty
Search - Conceal
Silent Move - Stealth
Survival - Outdoorsmanship
Swim - Athletics
Tech Use - Mechanical repair or Electrical repair
Tracking - Shadowing

Trade - Craft or Art
Animal Wrangling - Riding (partial)

ToC GUMSHOE Skills missing from Dark HeresyCredit Rating
Evidence Collection
Language
Locksmith

Medicine

Oral History (gossip, traditions, folklore)

Streetwise

ToC Abilities To ConsiderAthletics
Conceal (items)
Disguise
Driving
Electrical Repair
Explosives
Filch (pilfer)
Firearms
First aid
Fleeing
Health

Mechanical Repair
Pilot
Preparedness (kit, stuff)
Psychoanalysis
Riding
Sanity
Scuffling
Sense Trouble
Shadowing
Stability
Stealth
Weapons

Dark Heresy Lore SkillsCommon Lore:
Adeptus Arbites
Machine Cult
Administratum
Ecclesiarchy
Imperial Creed
Imperial Guard
Imperium
Tech
Underworld
War

Forbidden Lore:The Black Library
Cults

Daemonology

Heresy
Inquisition - Ordos (Malleus, Hereticus or Xenos)
Archeotech
Mutants
Adeptus Mechanicus

Adeptus Astartes
Psykers
Warp
Xenos

Scholastic Lore:Archaic
Astromancy
Beasts
Biologis
Bureaucracy
Chymistry

Cryptology
Heraldry
Imperial Creed
Judgement
Legend
Numerology

Occult
Philosophy
Tactica Imperialis

GUMSHOE Dark Heresy

In The Grim Darkness Of The Far Future There Is Only Heresy.

While not a straight conversion GUMSHOE Dark Heresy is based on the original game, particularly around background and occupation suggestions. As GUMSHOE is a points based character system there are no enforced classes though, and players are free to imagine their own backgrounds if they wish. Characters spend points to gain access to class abilities. For example to gain augmentation, the character must buy points in Tech Priest. The starting power level is akin to Trail Of Cthulhu, in that the characters are talented but still starting out. The game will also feature troupe style play, like Ars Magica, where each player also has one or more secondary support characters, mostly likely more combat based. This is not to say that investigators, the primary characters, shouldn’t take combat skills, there is danger in every corner of the 40K universe, but when needed the investigators can call in combat retinue. 

There Is Only The Emperor, And He Is Our Shield And Protector.

The sanity and stability rules will be used from Trail Of Cthulhu, however Sanity is called Faith, and is a measure of how far from the emperors light the character has fallen. There are of course many ways that a character may descend, towards Chaos, towards rebellion, towards The Greater Good, towards selfish corruption, or towards inhumanity. Pillars Of Stability, that which helps you keep your faith, will come from the reasons behind your dedication to the inquisition, and can range from pious belief to utter self-interest. It might be that you’re a naive believer in His Divine Light, you may rationalise that only the Inquisition stands between mankind and the darkness of the void, it might be utter devotion to your lord inquisitor that keeps you sane or it might be you see power and righteousness trickles down to you through service.  

Big Guns Never Tire.

The gun-crunch and combat rules will mainly come for Ashen Stars. Further action elements can be discovered in Essoterrorists 2.0 and and Night’s Black Agents. Ship to ship combat, and design, as and when we need them will also come from Ashen Stars. Characters spend points to access more powerful weapons and armour than basic equipment. However while they can loose these items situationally, you get them back between acts. Likewise found items are yours only until the end of the current adventure unless you buy them with points.

The Flesh Is Weak.

Biomechanical augmentation can provide special abilities from Mutant City Blues. These tend to be things that enhance senses and provide beyond human-normal capabilities. However these enhancements reduce Faith as the character becomes less and less human. 

And When You Gaze Long Into The Warp The Warp Also Gazes Into You.

Psychic powers also come from Mutant City Blues and from a greater range. Psykers use the Quaid diagram in much the same way as intend in the MCB rules and gain the drawbacks of psychosis when they cross power boundaries. Some MCB powers are not available as psychic powers however. There is also always the danger of the perils of the warp.

Many Are The Faces Of The Enemy, And Many Are The Hands Which Do Its Work.

Investigative abilities are the main stay of the characters and much of the game will be driven by their application. This means that characters will get a separate pool of points to spend on investigative skills. 

Sailors On The Starless Sea play report 1.

Last Tuesday a reduced set of my general gaming group came to my place to have our first Dungeon Crawl Classics game. Overall it went well I thought, and I got positive feedback from the players. I’m hoping that as things get pulpier they’ll also start enjoying the settings as well as just the pure joy of rolling dice, roleplaying with good friends over a few beers.

I’m running Sailors On The Starless Sea, henceforth known as Sailors On The Sunless Sea because I called it that by mistake once, and it’s extra bleakness then appeal to me. In preparation I printed out copies of the 0 level character creation rules, weapons and armour pages from the DCC PDF, one for each player. I also printed out several blank versions of the excellent 4 characters per page PC sheets from Purple Sorcerer - http://purplesorcerer.com/create.htm

The players, Dan, Monkey, Michael and Toby all rolled up 4 funnel characters using the normal method. Only Monkey hadn’t been in my 4e campaign, so generally they got through the concepts very quickly. The only oddity was that three elves were rolled and no other races.  Then we began.

I added a little more flavour to the introduction around how the PC’s friends and family had disappeared from the village following the revival of the ruined Chaos keep.  I then read the standard introduction out. One of Dan’s characters had a spyglass with which scanned the ruins and spotted the Vine Horrors, writhing and briar riddled. The players started arguing over if it was night or day, I think Michael wanted them to have burning brands and pitchforks, which needed a night setting, but some measure of preservation held out and they agreed it was day time. I rule that if the players are arguing about the metagame, the characters are arguing in character about something, and this attracted the Vine Horrors who were then peppered with remarkably good shooting from bows.  Once the Vine Horrors reached the party good initiative rolls saved them from injury.

Then the party approached the ruins and upon seeing the portcullis and intact tower… split up! Yes you read that right. One group went to scale the tower using rope. This started well, with Monkey’s hunter making his first two climb rolls easily. He wanted to reach the roof, and this last ascent cost him his life. While he had cleverly tied the rope to the bars at each of the previous two floors windows, the rope mysteriously seemed to untie itself from it’s lasso on the crenulations. He only took a single d6 roll for damage, rather than the 3d6 he would have had he not tied himself off, but 5 points was enough to kill him. Another character went up to retrieve the body, which was swinging in the wind, but couldn’t revive him.

The second group started ducking under the portcullis when it collapsed down, almost injuring one of the characters, but splitting this second group into two.  Now the characters are in three groups. Those on the inside, dusted themselves off, looked around and headed for the ruined chapel. There they were met with the grisly sight of blacked skeletons and charred remains. Their immediate interest lay with the chainmail and weapons left behind, which they donned, ignoring the ghostly fire that swept through the chapel . Only then did they investigate the leering and bejeweled furry toad idol and fountain. One character saw a strange ripple on the surface of the black pool, but the others still approached and were met by the vile tar ooze. A dramatic fight ensued, in which the butcher was pulverised and burnt to death. After the battle they retreated back out without further investigation of the idol.

The tower group and those left behind at the portcullis regrouped and went to investigate the west side of the ruins where they found the partially collapsed wall.  

One of the characters spotted the danger here, but having been slighted by the character who wished to immediately climb the wall he cryptically declared it safe, and seconds later the climber was crushed to pulp beneath several tons of monolithic stone. I’m very lucky to have players who are more than willing to take cues from each other to make play more enjoyable, even at their own cost.

The wall’s collapse revealed the pit that seemed to lead to a portal outlined by ancient runes. At this point the characters all came together and descended. One of the sages knew these ancient symbols and deciphered the words, to which there was general confusion and very little analysis. My impression is that they haven’t yet taken on board that clues are generally there to protect against death. Then several of the characters worked together to shove the door open. Three of them died in the ensuing fiery explosion! High damage rolls meant even those who scrambled away were scorched to a crisp. But the door was open and the way ahead tantalized them with the tomb of the barbarian lord and his gleaming vorpal axe!

Here persistency paid off. The players tried repeated to get into the magically cold and icy room, eventually using rope tied to the waist of the most agile in their party. They then worked together to free to giant axe, and retreated before the numbing cold took them. However the echoing thunder and evil laughter that sounded out as they passed for the last time back through the portal may yet come to haunt them further. At this point we called it a night. I wrote up the deaths as follows :-

* The trapper Chi Rian was lost to us first, when he dashed his head upon the tower he was ascending with dubious rope.

* Brave Baldric Baldricson, radish farmer, passed to the better place holding the line against the vile Tar Ooze. * Tyle the butcher was crushed by the collapsing wall, he will be greatly mourned this wintermass. * Aura Frtiz The Wisewoman, Gribal Nubit notable Scribe and Rai Ock the blessed ropemaker were consumed in unholy fire before the quad curse’d gate.

So the party of villagers is down to ten characters and they have yet to enter the ruins themselves. Our next session is booked for Tuesday the 7^th of Jan, and I’ll write up their further adventures as they happen.  Next time I’ll make some food, as we’re not serviced by decent Pizza where I live, by which I mean the expensive sour dough kind. In the past when we’ve planned at Dan’s, and what used to be Toby and Monkey’s house share they made really good stews and every put in a few quid to pay for it, a tradition I’d like to extend.  

Star Trap Monster Manual

Here is is a link to a PDF of the monsters that reside on the first level of Star Trap Dungeon. They're presented in home brew Dungeons & Dragons style, and borrows from 1st, 3rd and 4th editions. The file is completely unformatted for now.

Star Trap Monster Manual

The Doom That Came To Tetanus

The Hackney Area Tabletop Enthusiasts celebrated the birthday's of Robin and Monkey in style on Sunday, playing a 6 player Apocalypse game situated on the planet imperial Tetanus, which was already beset by small Ork horde and a recently awaken Necron force. However Death Guard and Alpha Legion Chaos Space Marines had plans of their own for the world, and the three mortal enemies banded together for self protection against the over-whelming forces of Chaos. Each player had 2500 points and a super heavy vehicle. For me that meant another outing of my Plague Tower, but there was also a Shadow Sword Tank, a Lord Of Skulls total conversion, an Ork Gargant, the Necron gargantuan C'Tan and last but not least, a Warhound Titan. Here are some photographs from the day.  

Star Trap Lvl 1 monster manual

The first half of the first level of Star Trap Dungeon has a whole bunch of OSR style monsters, all now written up with AD&D / Labyrinth Lord style, with brief descriptions and is over five thousand words. I used the 4e format for splitting monster of the same race up into their own entries rather than having notes in the text detailing leaders and special types. It's been a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to working on the second half of the list, although it probably won't be as extensive as some of the creatures, such as the Pig-Faced Orcs live in the further reaches of the dungeon's upmost level.

1. Angry Owlbear
2. Banshaer Hermit
3. Barghest, Juvenile
4. Beetle, Fire
5. Beetle, Boring
6. Brain In A Jar
7. Centipede, Giant  
8. Crawling Claw/Severed Hand
9. Dimension Shambler
10. Farspawn Returned
11. Farspawn Mind Worm
12. Farspawn Teeth Eel 
13. Fungal Guard
14. Fungal Herder
15. Fungal Priest Of Decay
16. Fungus King
17. Gelatinous Cube
18. Ghoul
19. Goblin Archer
20. Goblin Acolyte
21. Goblin Bully
22. Goblin Hexamancer
23. Goblin King
24. Goblin Runts
25. Goblin Skull Cleavers
26. Goblin Stabbers
27. Goblin Strategist
28. Goblin Warrior
29. Green Slime
30. Grey Ooze
31. Horrible Black Tentacles
32. Iron Hound
33. Killer Bees
34. Lesser Demon, Demonic Two-Headed Warthog
35. Lesser Demon, Grarthrax The Meddler
36. Maggot Wraith
37. Ochre Jelly 
38. Pig-faced Orc Killer 
39. Pig-faced Orc Bannerman
40. Pig-faced Orc Sticker
41. Pig-faced Orc Shieldboy
42. Pig-faced Orc Demon Warriors
43. Pig-faced Orc Murderers
44. Pig-faced Orc Heart Eaters 
45. Pig-faced Orc Champion
46. Pig-faced Orc Warlord
47. Pig-faced Orc Teeth Caster 
48. Rat, Giant
49. Rat, Swarm
50. Rot spider
51. Shrieker
52. Skeleton
53. Skeleton Archer
54. Skeleton Legionnaire
55. Skeleton, Ramshackle 
56. Skeleton, Skullspider
57. Snake, Pit Viper
58. Vile Creeper, Barbed
59. Vile Creeper, Suckered
60. Wolf
61. Wraith
62. Zombie
63. Zombie Rotter
64. Zombie, Famine

Death to the P1, only order matters!

I often hear developers and product owners talk about all the P1 issues on the board or in the backlog. They need to stop it. It is only the order of the backlog that matters. Having stories that appear to equal importance confuses the developers and encourages management to think teams can work on many parallel work streams. Worse, cynical programmers will laughingly say ‘everything is a P1, except for the other stuff which we’ll never do anyway’ and they are often right. If work isn’t worth doing soon, it shouldn’t be at eye level for the teams, so calling a bunch of stories low priority will sound their death knell.

Product owners can steer themselves, and stakeholders towards lean and agile productivity by avoiding talking about buckets of priorities. It’s hard of course, especially with product work that spans multiple teams, instead talk about how stories, features or epics relate to each other. ‘Is getting the biplane flying more or less important right now than the catch the pigeon feature?’

Z80 8-bit microprocessor & Arduino Mega

My first computer was a ZX81, and as child I always wanted to make my own computer. However I always found writing software easier, and moved away from electronics to software. The Arduino rekindled some of that delight in physically making things,
so I started to wonder if an Arduino could help me understand how old 8-bit processors work, and kickstart the process of building one.

I bought two Z80s from RS Components, and after realising I was going to need a lot more digital pins than the Uno provides, an Arduino Mega. The video below shows my set-up running in test mode, which I reset at the beginning. The LEDs in the bottom right are power (green), clock (yellow) and reset (red). The reset blinks 3 times, to clear the Z80 program counter and probably it's registers. I read somewhere that 3 times was better than just once, but I'll play around with that to see if it's true.
The strip of LEDs at the top left are the low bytes of the address bus. The yellow is the 1's and the red the 128. Oddly once I hit 128 in the PC unexpected things start to happen. The LEDs at the top right are memory request (blue), read data (red) and write data (yellow).

When the processor is reset, it's also fed 0's on all of its data lines. This means that when the program counter requests each instruction, it gets a NOP  (no operation). This causes the program counter to increase by one, hence the address bus counts up in binary. Right now all the Arduino Mega is doing is monitoring the address lines and outputting the result to the serial monitor. This works, and proves at least that the Arduino is capable of limited support of the Z80, as well as making me more happy that I probably should be. One thing to love about the Z80 is that the clock signal can be manual, you can literally step through the instruction processing.

I've uploaded the very basic code to GitHub here.

The next step is to make the software recognise the memory request & read data signals to provide instructions, effectively working as a ROM. The after support RAM and IO. I plan to use a small Arduino controlled OLED display to act as an output for now. No idea about input though!

Probation periods or punishment periods?

Having changed jobs I'm currently in a probation period. I have, for a time, lost many of the advantages of full time employment I previously had, and it feels like a punishment for exiting my last employment. Recent family events have made me think quite hard about things like fitness, healthcare and pensions, none of which I'm entitled to during my 6 month probationary period.

I can, grudgingly, understand that the notice period is short during this period but withholding employee benefits feels like mixture of punishment and old fashioned 'you should be grateful for a job' thinking. When you're trying to hire clever, in-demand individuals who want to work in autonomous teams where their contribution and commitment is valued, you need to reflect those qualities in how the company treats its those new employees day one.

And as my friend Ian pointed out, it actually shows you're not confident enough in your hiring procedure to trust that you've made a good hiring decision. That makes me nervous about the company. Have you hired badly in the past and don't think you've fixed that yet? So actually, who should be sitting on the naughty step?