• Category Archives Computers

  • Imagine a life with no computers……ahhhh……bliss…..

  • Get to sleep faster with an app

    Posted on by beno Comment

    In a future blog post I plan to review some of the data that my wrist worn fitness tracker has been providing now that I have been wearing it for a few months.
    In the meantime, I came across this app and while I have not tried it, it sounds pretty interested and I have downloaded it want to give it a go….

    http://kk.org/cooltools/my-sleep-button/

    Just to be clear, this is a website that posts stuff the guy finds useful.
    Of course, you may or may not agree….

    The tool helps me get to sleep faster than I normally would. It also helps me get to sleep at odd times. I’m an emergency pediatrician who work shifts. Sometimes I need to sleep in the afternoon to prepare for a shift even if I don’t feel tired. The other sleep apps are all pretty much the same: They deliver white noise, music, other sounds, or meditation. There’s nothing special about that. None of them implements “the cognitive shuffle” (or SDI, serial diverse imagining).

    mySleepButton is truly unique. It’s based on cognitive science. This smartphone app (Android, OS X) reads you a word or phrase, one at a time, and gets you to visualize each one for 5-10 seconds. Each word or phrase is very different from the previous one. It might get you to imagine a pear, a lamp shade, a rock, fishing, trying on hats, skiing, whatever. This is meant to imitate and induce the first stage of sleep (“N1″), where your mind drifts from one “random” thing to another. The app keeps my mind off of daytime issues. And it just knocks me out.

    You can find links to the app on both the iTunes and Google Play store from this page here;

    http://mysleepbutton.com/get-mysleepbutton/

    It’s three bucks on Google, so I have not pulled the triggure yet… I have zero trouble falling asleep, I get a solid 1-2 hours, but then wake up and have trouble getting back to sleep.
    I don’t want an app that makes a lot of noise and thus wake up Freddy, and I am not sure about sleeping with headphones on, have tried that and while it sorta works, I usually wake up with a sore ear after sleeping on my earbud and I don’t want to invest in a set of sleepable earbuds….

    Anyway, just thought it interesting enough to post here.


    Computers 📎and tagged

  • Robot face

    Posted on by beno Comment

    Since you guys loved the last robot video so much, here is another that is sure to either inspire you, or really really creep you out.

    I think mostly all the detail you need is in the video, so won’t bother wall-o-texting you with it.

    Personally, I like it. A lot. But then I am all about the tech. The speed and flexibility of the facial expressions is really impressive.
    I wonder how much route programming there is with the face, or if there is some link between her AI and expressions. I sort of expect not, that is a pretty big leap to associate the ‘required’ facial expressions with the conversation.
    Then again, it is a solid start. Love the progress.


    Computers 📎and tagged

  • Data is free – right?

    Posted on by beno Comment

    My Dad told me that Telstra had a bit of glitch a few weeks back and took out some amazingly sized chunk of cell phone coverage for Australia.
    The root cause of the problem interests me a great deal, but I just have not had time to Google Foo what actually happen (be sure and comment if you have a nice link that explains it).

    To try and smooth things over with the public, Telstra opened the data floodgates and set aside a data cap free day.

    Surprise… Only a ‘few’ geeks really took advantage.

    http://www.engadget.com/2016/02/15/telstra-free-data-sunday-downloads-australia/

    To atone for a network outage last Tuesday, the operator turned its apology into a marketing stunt with the launch of “Free Mobile Data Sunday.” There were no restrictions on what could be posted, browsed, shared and streamed, allowing Telstra customers to gobble up a record 1,841 terabytes of data in 24 hours.

    It wasn’t all sunshine and downloads, however, as the volume of traffic reduced speeds in some parts of Australia.

    People like Reddit user DrRodneyMckay will have likely played a part in that. Telstra’s 4G plans typically offer up to 8 gigabytes of data a month but on Valentine’s Day, this customer gobbled more than 421 gigabytes.

    So a few thoughts from this one.
    1. I always remind others here in the States that the Internet is metered downunder. This is a foreign concept for pretty much everyone here. For the most part, we can download as much as we want can anytime we want. What is caped over here is speed.

    2. The average Joe that was deeply impacted by the original outage probably did not care less about having unmetered downloads a week latter.
    To him, the fact that he could not call his wife or kids when he needed to on that fateful day is more important than backing up his Steam game catalog, or downloading any TV shows that he does not watch.
    My point is, for most people, data does not equal phone calls.

    So, yeah, thanks Telstra, you goofed, but we have all come to rely on having a reliable mobile phone service. While data is a really big part of that, I suspect that when the crunch comes, voice is more important to most people than data… after all, data is free all the time, right?


    Computers 📎and tagged

  • Raspberry Pi 3 – now with added Wifi and BLE !!!!!!

    Posted on by beno Comment

    I should have blogged about this the day it happen, but I was rather busy (yah for scheduled blog posts), so we get to hear about it a week and a bit latter.

    Enough to say, I let out a big heavy sigh and said ‘About time’. (Actually, that’s not exactly what I said – but in the interests of keeping this blog PG, it’s close enough).
    They have released the latest Raspberry Pi 3 and guess what, it has Wifi and Bluetooth Low Energy built in……. Yah!
    Not only, but also, it now gets a 64 bit quad core CPU ticking over at around 1.2GHz. Still only 1Gb of RAM, but eh, the connectivity, same footprint and much the same price almost make up for it.
    In case you are wondering (I know you were), it is still crippled with piping the Ethernet through the USB bus, so it is still pretty slow, but again, what you are going to be using this thing for, I really don’t think that matters in real life.

    Am I buying one? Sure. Haven’t as yet, it would be overkill for an airplane tracker setup, so I don’t have a use for one just yet, but rest assured, there are more than one of these guys in my future.

    The reviews are sounding really good, people are saying you can, for the first Pi time, actually use this one as a computer. I would love to build a tablet with one of these at the heart. Could be really useful.

    There are a ton of links for more info, but here is a less techy one;

    Raspberry Pi 3 Launches — 50% Faster, With Wi-Fi, Bluetooth And An Eye On IoT


    Computers 📎and tagged

  • Blacker than black

    Posted on by beno 1 Comment

    There is a saying on the side of a billboard in Geelong (or at least there was last time I was there) that has stuck in my head….”I will stop wearing black when they come up with a darker shade”…

    Well, time to stop wearing black and time to start wearing the new shade of black.

    Check this light sucker out!

    http://petapixel.com/2016/03/07/the-darkest-material-on-earth-is-now-even-darker-than-before/

    If you can spare a moment, check out the link, just for the photos mostly… It is staggering just how black this stuff is.
    Hard to say from that article when we are going to see it at say, Target, in the form of clothing, but yeah, safe to say, when  you can, I will be lining up for a t-shirt in this stuff… It would look like you are wearing a black hole!

    Very cool.


    Computers 📎and tagged