[LOCKSUIT]

Right now I am at the i on this page afterr 1 full day or study:

https://developers.google.com/machine-learning/glossary/?utm_source=google-ai&utm_medium=card-image&utm_campaign=training-hub&utm_content=ml-glossary#b

[Freddy]

Our moderator Data got me interested in Amazon's Alexa gadgets.

Short story is I bought an Echo Dot, which has Alexa on it. Just £35 in the current sale. And very good it is too, so I am playing with that at the moment.

It's very good at general knowledge and controlling things in the home. Currently I can have her connected to my bluetooth speakers and play music I ask for from my library. She can also turn the TV on and search for movies and things like that.

You can also expand her abilities by adding 'skills' - like apps on phones. The skills do numerous things like quizzes, word games, play audio, tell the weather report, search for services and much more.

In fact, it's made me rethink my work on ElfScript and assess what I really want to do. So far I have successfully connected an ElfScript bot to the Alexa system and by talking to the Echo Dot via Alexa I can talk to my ES bot. Cool stuff and not that tricky to set up once you know what goes where.

[Art]

Very cool! Now you've really got to watch what you say and to which device.

"Come on Freddy...Time to get up!", as the room lights flash rapidly on and off and the music plays rather loudly in an attempt to get you out of bed!! Suddenly, I see the window opening and a few items hurled to the waste bins below!! Haha!!

Oh...the wonders of the IFTTT connected world and of course, good friends like Data!! 

[Freddy]

I've yet to try the waking up thing, but Data informs me that you can say something like "Alexa, wake me up with 80s music at 9am".

One of the things I really like about speech control on the TV is that I don't have to spend time fumbling with the remote to type text into the search bar.

[Ultron]

Fumbling around with web development - both for personal projects and for clients (saving up for some equipment) but aside from all this, I'm waiting on a development kit from Google for it's project Soli user interface chip.
https://atap.google.com/soli/

I have been on the mailing list for almost 2 years and still nothing. Anyone got a friend who knows a guy who has an insider? 

[ivan.moony]

Hi, Ultron, it's been a while.

There are many no-touch gesture projects out there. Though I'm not sure how appropriate they are for embedding in your own hardware.

[Ultron]

Hey moony, glad to see you're still around.

Project Soli represents a single microchip and while probably not power-efficient (due to representing an active radar array much like those mounted on fighter jets) remains attractive due to the very small form factor. Also, I estimate it has high accuracy. This means that it can be discretely embedded into literally anything, unlike other technologies that I usually notice use IR cameras or a combo of different camera types (ex. Leapmotion).

Edit: I am actually thinking of creating my own larger version of this (with a much smaller resolution and accuracy) and use my Arduino Uno as a controller, since Google isn't really giving me much hope.

[DemonRaven]

you might want to be careful what you say around your alexa there was a report of it going rouge and spilling some beans on someone a while back lol. Our nonexistent privacy just got worse.

[Freddy]

you might want to be careful what you say around your alexa there was a report of it going rouge and spilling some beans on someone a while back lol. Our nonexistent privacy just got worse.

Sorry Demon, I missed this post of yours. Yes privacy is a concern with these kinds of things. I'm not sure how true those reports are, but a week or two back I think I read something like that was fixed. Alexa can only listen for about 8 seconds after being triggered. Personally, I have so far avoided installing other people's skills and just kept it vanilla.

[Freddy]

After a lengthy hiatus I have returned to work on ElfScript and my bot Jess.

My interest was stoked again after seeing bots on the Discord chat servers over the past few months. So I made me a Discord version of Jess and there she now resides. The link in my signature ('Discord Channel') will give you an invite to my channel if you want to see how she's coming along or just to hang out.

I think Discord is now going to be where I focus my bot building, it's much easier to let them deal with the interface and that leaves me free to develop Jess. I will update the web version I have running sometime though - I had noticed that it can no longer play videos the way I wanted due to the way Google decided to change how they work.

You can talk to Jess by prefixing an exclamation mark (!) or backward slash (\).

Eg;

!hello
\what are you doing


I think from having Jess surrounded by humans it will help me develop her. She will remember things about you if you tell her. But it's a public space so don't go saying things that are supposed to be private.

[Freddy]

I went to look to see what was happening with OpenCyc as I had this idea about making a knowledge graph for ElfScript. Surprised to find they pulled the plug on it. Oh well, better get typing.

 

http://www.mkbergman.com/2034/fare-thee-well-opencyc/

[Freddy]

Hi guys, I am doing this brave the shave fundraiser to help people living with cancer. I'm trying to raise £300 for them here in the UK.

If any of you can spare anything at all, no matter how much then that would be wonderful!

https://bravetheshave.macmillan.org.uk/shavers/roger-davie

The scary picture below is of me with my long hair. Looking to get the locks chopped on Sunday.

[squarebear]

Nice one mate. I've sent a purple one your way. 

[Freddy]

You're a star Steve, thank you very much

[Art]

I see that you are in dire need of a proper "blading". 
Check your email.