Blog

Google AIY Voice Kit for the Raspberry Pi

Posted on by Dave

The Google AIY Voice Kit lets you build your own natural language processor and connect it to the Google Assistant. All of this fits in a handy little cardboard cube, powered by a Raspberry Pi. More information While on vacation, I am going to build this and I'll report back my findings. UPDATE I successfully built the kit and tested the example python code. I am looking for new features to add and will report back on what I find.   More Information url1 url2 url3 url4 url5 url6 url7 url8 url9 History of the Google and Raspberry PI Voice Kit Growing up, the free toys on the covers of magazines were made of plastic. They were cheap, and cheerful. Yet the last thirty years has reduced the price of computing to the point where cheap and cheerful plastic toys have been replaced by other things. Around this time last year Google and Raspberry Pi did something rather intriguing. Together they packaged machine learning — the ability for your Raspberry Pi to think and reason — as a kit, and made it available free on the cover of a magazine. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the print run of the magazine sold out in hours. To be fair,...Read More

Steelers schedule for 2018

Posted on by Dave

The NFL saved the best for last for Pittsburgh. The Steelers schedule has a relatively harmless early stretch punctuated by a Week 7 bye, but close with three of their final five games against future Hall of Fame quarterbacks -- Philip Rivers' Chargers, Tom Brady's Patriots, Drew Brees' Saints. The league's late-night darlings from 2017, Pittsburgh is slated to play in eight nationally televised games this time around; that's half of its season in prime time. Thanks to a random but significant quirk, the Steelers could have the AFC North wrapped up by midseason. How? They play five of their six division games between Week 1 (Cleveland Browns) and Week 9 (Baltimore Ravens), and only one more over their final eight games. If the Steelers perform well in those games -- and, overall, they have the NFL's easiest first half of the season based on opponents' 2017 winning percentage -- they could bury the Browns, Ravens and perhaps the Cincinnati Bengals early and provide all three little chance to make up ground. Pittsburgh's final division game will come in Week 17, at home against the Bengals. Steelers Toughest Test You know the drill by now. There will be a lot on the...Read More

Pi Day

Posted on by Dave

Pi Day is celebrated on March 14th (3/14) around the world. Pi (Greek letter “π”) is the symbol used in mathematics to represent a constant — the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — which is approximately 3.14159. The irrational number Pi has been calculated to over one trillion digits beyond its decimal point. In addition, as an irrational and transcendental number, it will continue infinitely without repetition or pattern. Only a handful of digits are needed for typical calculations, however, Pi’s infinite nature makes it a fun challenge to memorize, and to computationally calculate more and more digits. Pi to a 1000 digits 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286208998628034 82534211706798214808651328230664709384460955058223172535940812848111745028410270193852110 55596446229489549303819644288109756659334461284756482337867831652712019091456485669234603 48610454326648213393607260249141273724587006606315588174881520920962829254091715364367892 59036001133053054882046652138414695194151160943305727036575959195309218611738193261179310 51185480744623799627495673518857527248912279381830119491298336733624406566430860213949463 95224737190702179860943702770539217176293176752384674818467669405132000568127145263560827 78577134275778960917363717872146844090122495343014654958537105079227968925892354201995611 21290219608640344181598136297747713099605187072113499999983729780499510597317328160963185 95024459455346908302642522308253344685035261931188171010003137838752886587533208381420617 17766914730359825349042875546873115956286388235378759375195778185778053217122680661300192 78766111959092164201989 Calculate Pi (using the Nilakantha series) and Python P = 3 MC = 1 C = 1 for MC in range(1,50000): P = P + (4/((C+1)*(C+2)*(C+3)) - 4/((C+3)*(C+4)*(C+5))) PI = '%10.60f'%(P) print (PI) C = C + 4 You will need run this code billions of iterations to begin to approach calculating Pi. Of course, that is why Pi is so fun! Go here to run the program code. Just click the green run button. Note: 22/7 is NOT Pi...Read More

School Shootings 2018

Posted on by Dave

As always this behavior is despicable. The issues around School Shootings need to be discussed and changes need to be made in the following areas. Physical security within the schools. Identification of individuals that may be prone to this type of behavior. Control access to weapons that can produce mass slaughter. Human life is sacred. Lawmakers, get together and discuss. or you might find yourself without a job.   Misleading School Shootings Statistics reference Actual School Shootings 2018: 9 shootings, 22 dead, 37 wounded Feb. 14, Broward County, Fla. Stoneman Douglas High School 17 dead, 14 wounded Feb. 5, Oxon Hill, Md. Oxon Hill High School 1 wounded Feb. 1, Los Angeles, Calif. Salvador B. Castro Middle School 5 wounded Jan. 31, Philadelphia, Pa. Lincoln High School 1 dead Jan. 23, Benton, Ky. Marshall County High School 2 dead, 15 wounded Jan. 22, Gentilly, La. The NET Charter High School 1 wounded Jan. 22, Italy, Texas Italy High school 1 wounded Jan. 20, Winston-Salem, N.C. Wake Forest University 1 dead Jan, 10 Sierra Vista, Ariz. Coronado Elementary School 1 dead

Family Cookbook

Posted on by Dave

Feel Free to download our family cookbook. It is filled with all of our favorite recipes. The original version of this booklet was made for a family reunion in the 80's. Some day, I would like to update and publish online. Download Family Cookbook A few tips to save time and make your best Family cookbook: • Start with clean copy. Although I generally found custom software easy to use, it is not the best choice for copy-editing. Use a document-editing software like Word to make any corrections to your recipes before pasting them into the main cookbook. • Figure out the page layout before you get started. Play around with the placement of the recipe text, the font size of the title, and other layout details until you get it right. Then input the rest of the recipes. This will save you the headache of changing your layout halfway through, and having to manually fix each recipe. • If you have time, order a proof book. Before placing a big order, get a single copy of the book so you can see exactly what the finished cookbook will look like. I didn't have enough time to do this, and...Read More