Tony is a Geek

A few posts back I mentioned: Oh, I've also been making a Java Android Mobile application that uses Speech to Text, then calls the APIs of the IBM Watson Conversation Service translates that Text back to Speech and enables you to have a full blown conversation in voice instead of having to type and read messages ( also does it in 3 different languages at the moment ) - I'll create an article specifically to show you how to do this quickly and easily using the Watson SDK.  Then, "if" my arm gets twisted enough, I might look at porting it to run on iOS ( but as I still don't have a iOS device, it might be tricky!) Well, here it is.... CLICK HERE TO READ THE WALKTHROUGH ARTICLE CLICK HERE TO READ THE WALKTHROUGH ARTICLE CLICK HERE TO READ THE WALKTHROUGH ARTICLE Naturally, I'll be extending and growing this example of using Watson APIs beyond just the Conversation Service.  I think I might interface with the Watson Visual Recognition serv...

Just like buses, you wait for ages and none come....then they all start to come at once.  Same with these posts! Right, this is something very close to my heart (and brain - pun intended!).  I want/need to sign up to this as soon as I can be a donor. CLICK HERE FOR THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE Here is a TED talk on "ems" - machines that emulate human brains and can think, feel and work just like the brains they're copied from. Yes, copy of your brain.  This is awesome (well, probably scary for a lot of people thinking of the negatives), but I want to be Clone#7.  I digress. Economist and social scientist Robin Hanson describes a very possible (near) future when EMS take over the global economy, running on superfast computers and copying themselves to multitask, leaving humans with only one choice: to retire, forever! Come and glimpse a strange future as Hanson describes what could happen if robots ruled the earth. As I say, where can I sign up to trials ...

So...it has been noticed that I have been rather quiet on the technical front for quite some time... have I been doing exciting things? have I been doing boring things? have I been doing both and neither of those two things?  I've been doing all of them....and more. "That makes no sense!", I hear you say.  Well, as you may or may not know I've had a bit more than a passing interest in Mysticism, Cosmology, the Occult and Magical teaching of times gone by.  Yes, I do actually have a larger library than John Dee had back in the day.  Did I go off and become the next Gandalf  the grey  or Dr.Strange?  No.  Well, okay, maybe a little bit...... I was attempting to learn the techniques and learning practices of working with the mind, soul and the perception of reality of the world ( as you do ) and looking at ways that these teachings and practices can be applied in a Technology orientated world.  I like a challenge ;-) As you can imagi...

Okay, so, if like me, you've had your interest piqued by the prospect of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) over the past year and a half and have even invested in Oculus Rift and/or a Samsung Gear headset (* other VR units are available ) and you've got yourself a copy of Unity or Unreal Engine and had great expectations about making this wonderfully great new VR world with magical spinning things and whooshy ( yes, that's a word I just made up ) swirls of rainbow goodness, only to the have to fire up Udemy or Coursera to find a course that teaches you how to make 3D models. Several weeks later, you've made a potato.  A bad looking potato.  It is kind of 3D, but has lumps in the wrong places.  It does NOT look like the prancing unicorn that you envisaged for your main character representation in your snazzy new VR world.  Come to think of it, the rocks, buildings, cars, <insert any other shape or object that you wanted to have in your landscape...

Roomba Inventor Joe Jones on His New Weed-Killing Robot, and What's So Hard About Consumer Robotics I've been toying with the idea of a GardenBot, for a few years now..... and many people have asked, "Why haven't you done it yet?". Well.....I'll let the "expert" explain why.  It's not as simple as it sounds. CHECK IT OUT HERE Although I am still in the process of making K9-RPi3_bot...so maybe that will evolve into my GardenBot at some point, we'll see...

Totally blatant work focused sales pitch material alert.  But, c'mon, you've got to admit, this is pretty bl00dy awesome!!!  The one below, not the one above. IBM Q is an industry-first initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers for business and science. While technologies like AI can find patterns buried in vast amounts of existing data, quantum computers will deliver solutions to important problems where patterns cannot be found and the number of possibilities that you need to explore to get to the answer are too enormous ever to be processed by classical computers. We invite you join us in exploring what might be possible with this new and vastly different approach to computing. IBM Q has successfully built and tested two of its most powerful universal quantum computing processors. The first has 16 qubits and is for public use by developers, researchers, and programmers via the IBM Cloud at no cost. The second is the fir...

Stephen Wolfram has a great extract from his book  about Machine Learning: http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2017/05/machine-learning-for-middle-schoolers/ Whilst he says it's for Middle Schoolers....as you get further and further into it, you realise those Middle Schoolers must be the top 1% next-gen geniuses we've been wondering about. Anyway, I thought it was a great introduction to anyone who wants to get their head around the modern day "Machine Learning principles" and got lost reading about Scala, R, Python and Big Data Analytics instead of APIs....it's all about APIs  :-) I especially liked the Guardians of the Galaxy image matching section: ...it's all about the continual training.....

We imported a Subaru Sambar from Japan a couple of years ago.  It was a replacement for a Bedford Rascal van that I purchased as a run around for hosting our 2 basset hound dogs.  They could get as muddy / grubby as they wanted and we could just stick them in the back of the van, wash them off and not get the interiors of our cars full of mud and dog fur. After a year or so, I finally decided that I'd replace the Japanese radio ( that didn't pick up anything anyway ) with a cheapo head unit from ebay.  That wasn't that good either.  I then got to thinking, I wonder if I could "modernise" it a bit. A few years back, I fitted an amp to my MG Midget, so that I could plug an iPod into it, instead of using a radio head unit.  I thought I'd do the same but update it a bit. I was also going to fit a set of "wireless" parking sensors and give the engine a service, oh and underseal the bottom of the van....and whatever else I could think of doing whil...

The Building Cognitive Applications with IBM® Watson Services series is a seven-volume collection that introduces IBM Watson® cognitive computing services. The series includes an overview of specific Watson services with their associated architectures and simple code examples. Each volume describes how you can use and implement these services in your applications through practical use cases. The series includes the following volumes: Volume 1 Getting Started, SG24-8387 Volume 2 Conversation, SG24-8394 Volume 3 Visual Recognition, SG24-8393 Volume 4 Natural Language Classifier, SG24-8391 Volume 5 Language Translator, SG24-8392 Volume 6 Speech to Text and Text to Speech, SG24-8388 Volume 7 Natural Language Understanding, SG24-8398 Whether you are a beginner or an experienced developer, this collection provides the information you need to start your research on Watson services. If your goal is to become more familiar with Watson in relation to your current environment, or ...

I've been a little quiet on the "work orientated" technical / geek front for most of this year.  The main reason being, I re-focused my geeki-ness - mainly due to the work I was doing here last year: http://tonyisageek.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/ibm-bmw-and-iot.html Now, I've officially migrated to the IBM Watson group , where my role is to help transform businesses using Cloud based Cognitive technologies that can think like a human, using the IBM Watson API services. Here's an official Vodafone press release on something I've been contributing to: Vodafone to use artificial intelligence to speed up online queries TOBi, Vodafone’s new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, is now helping some customers online It will be available soon in the My Vodafone app new messaging service as well, so customers can speak to advisors whenever they want Vodafone UK has launched TOBi – the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot – as an innovative way of offeri...