SBPerceptron—working with MLPs in Cocoa
January 31, 2007
My attempts at creating a good Connect4 AI player using a neural network has had an unforeseen side effect: I’ve implemented a powerful MLP (multilayer perceptron) class in Objective-C, and I’ve decided to extract into its own project. Enter SBPerceptron:
SBPerceptron lets you conveniently create and train multi-layer perceptrons (MLPs) and start working with them immediately. Just specify how many hidden layers you want and how many nodes should be in each layer and you’re ready to create history.
The perceptrons can be trained using iterative, semi- or fully batched backpropagation of error, or, if you prefer, evolved using a genetic algorithm.
Online documentation is available. You can also download a disk image containing an embedded framework or grab the source from Subversion.
It’s all lost and stoof
January 30, 2007
Someone over at ibiblio.org apparently has a good sense of humour. Witness it’s all lost and stoof, which has “file not found” translated to many languages. My particular favourites were h4×0r, C, Mac User and Webmaster.
(Via reddit.)
Great covers
January 30, 2007
Simon Rumble got me thinking about great covers:
I love cover versions of classic songs, but only when the cover finds a new angle on the song. So if you’re an acoustic vocalist, there’s little point covering Cindi Lauper or Tori Amos. Ditto if you’re a metal band, don’t cover Black Sabbath unless you’ve got some really new idea.Interestingly, the best ones I’ve found so far have been power/glam metal covers.
I just thought I’d add a few noteworthy covers in that category: A Perfect Circle covering Lennon’s Imagine, Vanessa Carlton doing Paint it Black (Rolling Stones), and Norah Jones’ rendition of Ride On by AC/DC (as the last piece of a concert I went to at the Hammersmith Apollo).
TV licensing
January 24, 2007
I sent the following mail to the TV licensing people a few days ago:
As far as I understand it is the tuner in a TV (the thing that makes the TV or VCR able to decode broadcast programs) that is requiring a license, not the actual screen (hence computer screens, projectors etc are not liable, but VCRs are). Therefore:
1 - If I buy a TV without a tuner I do not have to buy a TV license, since it cannot receive broadcasts on its own (obviously if I bought an external tuner for it I would have to buy a licence).
2 - If I bought a TV with an NTSC tuner (a broadcast format used in Northern America) it would not be able to receive broadcasts in the UK (which use the PAL system). Therefore I should not have to pay license.
Can you please confirm that I am correct in these two observations? If you, for some reason, disagree with any of them, please state why you think I am wrong.
Today I got this response:
Dear Mr Brautaset
Thank you for contacting us.
If the television set you purchase has it’s tuner removed and so it isn’t capable of receiving any broadcasts then no licence would be required.
If you purchase a NTSC only television and as long as it doesn’t receive any broadcasts . including foreign broadcasts then no licence would be required.
The bit about including foreign broadcasts is interesting, but this is all very encouraging. I’ve been drooling after a Samsung 32 inch TV for a week or so, and that page states that it only has an NTSC tuner; I actually suspect the page is wrong (and have sent an email off to the dealtime.co.uk people to confirm this) but if it’s not I’m going to buy one of those screens immediately.
Don’t knock the weather
January 22, 2007
This quote by Kin Hubbard seems particularly apt today:
‘Don’t knock the weather. If it didn’t change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn’t start a conversation.’
(Via the Quotes of the Day RSS feed.)
Falling for Roxane
January 14, 2007
I’ve bought a new electric guitar. It sounds fantastic and is beautiful—even Nadia fell for it. It’s an LAG Roxane Standard 200 and looks like this (this picture shows a brown one though; mine is dark cherry):
I also bought a Fender FM25 DSP amp. It sounds great—at least at low volumes (I haven’t tried anything else yet; I don’t fancy becoming “the loud guy”). It’s got several built-in effects too; enough to keep me from running around buying pedals and effect boxes any time soon.
I’ve never actually heard of LAG guitars before today. I just went down to Denmark Street to browse while Nadia was busy doing something else. In the second shop I was handed the guitar/amp combo above and when I mentioned I’m a bit shy I was promptly given a pair of headphones. Armed with those I could play without inhibitions and quickly fell in love.
Not wanting to just buy the first guitar I found I went to Andy’s Guitar Centre and tried out a second-hand (but mint condition) red Epiphone SG (not certain that link shows the exact model but it looks very similar). It was around the same price as the LAG, and its fret-board felt a little nicer, but it was very top-heavy and felt out of balance. It was also nowhere as nice looking.
After bothering Nadia on the phone I went back to try the LAG again. It was hanging there—in all its gorgeous glory—just waiting for me. It only took me a few minutes to reach the conclusion that I had to take it home. Playing it quite a lot today I realise that I’ve fallen head-over-heals for it; once or twice I’ve even heard Nadia snicker when she’s caught me talking to it…
Blog merge
January 7, 2007
I’ve decided to end the experiment of having a separate blog for tech content. All the posts from my now-defunct tech blog has been moved here, and for some time they will exist in two places. At some point in time I’ll remove the other blog.
Terrorism again
January 6, 2007
What he said. Only not so U.S. centric.
Rice instruction craziness
January 2, 2007
I’m visiting parents over Christmas. They’ve started working already so I’m heating dinner and cooking rice. I’m used to having a rice cooker do that last job for me, so I glanced at the instructions at the back. Despite Norwegian, Danish and Swedish being mutually intelligible, particularly so in the written form, there are instructions in all three languages.
I do not mind that, particularly, except that they are all different. The Swedish instructions lists a different amount of water than the other two, and the Danish lists different cooking times. I’m confident that all three recipes produce edible rice, but is a bit of consistency too much to ask?
