3D Printer Part 21: Rear hood and maintenance

V3 with front and rear hood fitted
V3 with front and rear hood fitted

At the end of my last post in this series, we had added the top cover, filament guide and hood.  This post focuses on the rear cover and some additional maintenance, covering issues 82-84 of 3D Create and Print by Eaglemoss Technology.  If you’ve skipped a part of this series you can start from the beginning, including details of the Vector 3 printer I’m building on my 3D printer page

It’s been a while since my last post where I was hoping that I would have a post on my first print.  However, after reflashing the firmware as advised, I’ve struggled to get the laptop speaking to the printer.  There are things to be done that I’m working through and as soon as I have a solution I will post it up.  If you’ve got to this point and your printer is not working, please do not panic, I’ll put up diagnostic steps and solutions as soon as I have them. Continue reading 3D Printer Part 21: Rear hood and maintenance

How to build a human – review

Gemma Chan, a real human and also now a real synth
Gemma Chan, a real human and also now a real synth

Ahead of season 2 of Channel 4’s Humans, they screened a special showing how a synthetic human could be produced.  If you missed the show and are in the UK, you can watch again on 4OD.

Presented by Humans actress Gemma Chan, the show combined realistic prosthetic generation with AI to create a synth, but also dug a little deeper into the technology, showing how pervasive AI is in the western world.

There was a great scene with Prof Noel Sharkey and the self driving car where they attempted a bend, but human instinct took over: “It nearly took us off the road!” “Shit, yes!”.  This reinforced the delegation of what could be life or death decisions – how can a car have moralistic decisions, or should they even be allowed to? Continue reading How to build a human – review

ReWork Deep Learning London 2016 Day 1 Morning

Entering the conference (c) ReWork
Entering the conference (c) ReWork

In September 2016, the ReWork team organised another deep learning conference in London.  This is the third of their conferences I have attended and each time they continue to be a fantastic cross section of academia, enterprise research and start-ups.  As usual, I took a large amount of notes on both days and I’ll be putting these up as separate posts, this one covers the morning of day 1.  For reference, the notes from previous events can be found here: Boston 2015, Boston 2016.

Day one began with a brief introduction from Neil Lawrence, who has just moved from the University of Sheffield to Amazon research in Cambridge.  Rather strangely, his introduction finished with him introducing himself, which we all found funny.  His talk was titled the “Data Delusion” and started with a brief history of how digital data has exploded.  By 2002, SVM papers dominated NIPs, but there wasn’t the level of data to make these systems work.  There was a great analogy with the steam engine, originally invented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712 for pumping out tin mines, but it was hugely inefficient due to the amount of coal required.  James Watt took the design and improved on it by adding the condenser, which (in combination with efficient coal distribution) led to the industrial revolution1.   Machine learning now needs its “condenser” moment.

Continue reading ReWork Deep Learning London 2016 Day 1 Morning

Amazon Echo Dot (second generation): Review

Echo Dot (c) Amazon
Echo Dot (c) Amazon

When I attended the ReWork Deep Learning conference in Boston in May 2016, one of the most interesting talks was about the Echo and the Alexa personal assistant from Amazon.  As someone whose day job is AI, it seemed only right that I surround myself by as much as possible from other companies.  This week, after it being on back order for a while, it finally arrived.  At £50, the Echo Dot is a reasonable price, with the only negative I was aware of before ordering being that the sound quality “wasn’t great” from a reviewer. Continue reading Amazon Echo Dot (second generation): Review

Formula AI – driverless racing

The AI racing car (c) Roborace
The AI racing car (c) Roborace

We’re all starting to get a bit blasé about self driving cars now.  They were a novelty when they first came out, but even if the vast majority of us have never seen one, let alone been in one, we know they’re there and they work1 and that they are getting better with each iteration (which is phenomenally fast).  But after watching the formula 1 racing, it’s a big step from a 30mph trundle around a city to over 200mph racing around a track with other cars.  Or is it? Continue reading Formula AI – driverless racing