Two years ago, I got a DophiGo DV-200 WiFi Doorbell. It's been OK, but I was hankering for an upgrade. Something with a more reliable app and better video / audio quality. About a year ago, I got a Eufy Security Camera System. It has been excellent. The main advantage is that it comes with its own hub. That gives it a dedicated wireless channel and it stores my videos locally! It turns out…
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I know shamefully little about the British Empire and its colonisation of India. I remember going on a school trip to the memorial at Ypres - but I don't remember hearing about the thousands of Indian troops who served and died. I learned endlessly about Churchill - but not about his racist attitudes towards the Bengal famine. I was vaguely aware of partition - but not the casual ignorance which …
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As part of my MSc I'm taking a short course in Practical Machine Learning via QA.com. The first three days were just about basic stats visualisation using Python. It was great to have a refresher - but I would have expected that to be a pre-requisite. The tutor was excellent - very patient at explaining complex concepts. And the use of Jupyter Notebooks is a gamechanger for taught courses like…
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Google has decided to fuck over its early adopters. Way back in 2006, Google announced Google Apps for Your Domain. Basically it was Gmail - but you could use your own domain. No more example@gmail.com now you could be me@example.com. Hurrah! At the time, they said: organizations that sign up during the beta period will not ever have to pay for users accepted during that period (provided Google …
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Scratching my own itch. I want an alert when there's been a price drop on an item on my Amazon wishlist. I couldn't find an easy way to get an email directly from Amazon (customer-focused my shiny metal arse) so I knocked something up in Python. This is heavily inspired by Leigh Dodds' Wishlist Monitor. Amazon don't offer an API for wishlists (innovative my shiny metal arse). So this uses…
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NB: The bit about NFT and smart contracts is at the end. As I discussed yesterday, being able to resell digital art via an NFT means that the price of art falls to zero. Let's assume that I'm correct and, through a combination of technology and changing social attitudes, no one wants to pay for music, books, films, or art any more. What are the ways that art and artists could get funded? Here…
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At the moment, it is not possible to sell a 2nd hand eBook or MP3. This seems fairly reasonable because a re-seller might keep copies of their original files after selling them. This would allow the re-seller to undercut the original publisher and sell the file multiple times. We tend to label this "Piracy". Someone buys a DVD, rips it, then either sells or gives away copies. The Blockchain…
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I loved this movie but, the more I reflect on it, the less I like it. There's no doubt that Frances McDormand deserves every accolade - she's one of those rare actors who can completely inhabit a character and makes the screen light up. Chloé Zhao's direction is subtle and sublime, giving us a tender and touching portrait of a community cast adrift. I always find it hard watching stories …
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I am a vain man. For a few years, I've been tracking academic papers which cite my blog posts. Recently, someone let me know that they'd found one of GitHub repos in a paper they'd read. It hadn't even occurred to me to search for those! So, shove your GitHub URl into Google Scholar - https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=github.com/edent - and you'll see if any repos have made it into…
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Search back through this blog and you'll find dozens of posts about QR codes. Back in the day, I was a freelance "Mobile Internet" consultant. I'd rock up to companies and say "you know you can get the Web on your phone, right? It's going to be the next big thing!" And people would pay me handsomely for that advice. I'd also talk about apps - "You don't need one, but if you're going to…
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I remember being blown away by the original Matrix. I was an impressionable teenager and it absolutely melted my mind. The story was recycled from a hundred different sci-fi tropes that I was already familiar with - but the direction and effects were outstanding. Nowadays, of course, CGI is par for the course. Literally any film-maker with a laptop can churn out effects a hundred times better…
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"Alexa… timer for fifteen minutes." The problem with the English language is that it is full of homophones, or semi-homophones. 15 and 50 sound basically the same. Humans have a hard time distinguishing them. So there's no wonder that voice assistants also have difficulty. Recently, I've noticed that my wife and I have adopted a very specific accent when talking to our Alexa. Certain constants a…
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