Category: Geek Stuffs

Categories
Geek Stuffs

Speech Therapy: Using Voice Recognition Software #1

I was recently purchased a voice recognition software called Dragon dictate. It costs US$300. I must say it is very expensive, but the reason why I spend this amount of money is to be able to write my post off-line using a digital recorder.

What I realised is, that it is very difficult to use a voice recognition software if I don’t speak properly in the right pronunciation grammar. I know that with the Malaysian accent, it is extremely difficult for the software to recognise my voice. But I also know that the software will continue to learn as I correct the dictation. the decision to need to make is whether to continue to correct my dictation or fix my speech. I think, the combination of both will be ideal. Pronunciation is something that will take time to change. I always rushed through my pronunciation. Example: the Silent B in the word combination. My typical way of pronouncing the word combination is “comination”. and there are many more examples that I probably wouldn’t know.

I guess I should take this as a speech fixing therapy, and hope that by continuing to use the software I will be able to speak better English. I notice that my speech and my mouth doesn’t really synced. I don’t prove my voice out when I speak. I can to close my mouth when I speak. And the result of this is that, I don’t get proper pronunciation with the words that I say. I need to really fix my speech because I think that is a lot of value in a speaking clearly.

Speaking clearly is very important for my job. If I do speak clearly, it will project a different personality to my future clients and bosses. I think even after less than 12 hours using the software, I am already speaking better. I think if I continue to use it for the next 10 days-I will be amazed at the result. In fact I will compare the recordings of my speech last week to my future recordings next week.

As I continue the journey with the voice recognition software, I will continue to post some blog notes so that I can share the painful journey that I am experiencing. I know it is very tough but if I continue to persevere I will be able to enjoy the technology. Hopefully in the near future I will be able to write this post using a digital recorder, and transcribed using the software when I’m back home.

So day one, it has been an interesting journey discovering that my English language is poor. I hope that in the next 30 days I will be able to improve my English in pronunciation and grammar.

Till tomorrow, we shall see whether I get better with my English language. I hope that I will get better.

Categories
Geek Stuffs

Learning Adobe Illustrator

In the past couple of days – I am trying out Adobe Illustrator. I’ve been wanting to do this for years and finally I managed to get myself to do this.

It’s actually easier that what I thought. Here is an icon that I created using Illustrator.

aiviewcamera

Categories
Geek Stuffs Photography

Image Processing Technique: Noise Reduction

Learned a new technique today, which is the following:

  • Noise reduction on Lightroom. By zooming 100% – we can adjust the noise reduction but at the same time avoid the image from being washed out.
  • Masking the sharpening. By pressing the key Alt (Option) while adjust the slider, we can see the areas where the photo will be sharpened. More importantly is that the noise that was introduced by the camera are not sharpened. If this gets sharpened – the noise will be come more apparent. As such – we need to pay around with this.

Not sure if the photo below do any justice. The difference can perhaps be seen if I were to print this.

compare

Categories
Fun Posts Geek Stuffs

Design Thinking – Something new that I learned

I have been waking up very early in the past couple of months. Rejuvenating the lifestyle that I was accustomed too. And during this early hours – there are few things that I would do:

  1. Organize my day
  2. Clear my high priority tasks
  3. Learn something

These 3 items are done before I head to the gym to do and complete my workout. This is very similar to Miracle Morning. I am fortunate that the firm that I work for provides a comprehensive learning platform that allowed me to learn at my own pace. This is not inclusive of classroom training. What’s more awesome is that the training is tailored to my career and it is a combination of both materials that I can get off the web and internals. This is particularly relevant as the world becomes more digital.

The topic that was put in my learning path is “Design Thinking”. Never knew that this existed. I have been having the same thought process and has pursued my client to follow the same way. It’s just that I felt that I was probably one of the few who thought that people should think in this way while embracing the digital world. After looking thru this topic – I felt awesome (…. Until shit hit the fence the same day!).

Design Thinking is similar to agile, but instead of having sprints of development – it is about having sprints of prototyping and realizing ideas. This is very much like the whole concept of “start fast, fail fast…”. What’s the beauty about this is that it helped people to look at different ideas and work on it, until you find that one idea that’s cool. There are so many resources out there on the web. Just google design thinking and you are bound to see endless amount of resources.

In fact, there’s this video that I watched on YouTube that relates the principle of design thinking to Isabel Brunel. Go figure out who the person is. The video is below:

 

This is the new way of doing things, I have 256 pager document that I need to read. Comes from a company that was acquired by the firm. They specialized on these things, as such it is important that I read it, and embrace it in my daily work with the client. Not going to be easy though!

Categories
Fun Posts Geek Stuffs

Arrived back…

Finally arrived back from my one night trip to Singapore. Came back with an awesome toy..

 

Back in Malaysia. Super hot! #theta360 – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA

 

Categories
Fun Posts Geek Stuffs

New Toy! Theta360

One of those case of terbeli

First photo! #theta360 – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA

It’s fabulous though!!1

Categories
Fun Posts Geek Stuffs Uncategorized

Time Broadband…

It has been a long time since I last posted. Apart from busy with work, I have been busy enjoying my new broadband. I have been a customer of Unifi since they first launch, upgraded my then 4mbps Streamyx connection to 20mbps unifi. That was an awesome upgrade. I remember writing this then – Unifi Speed Test.

speedtest_tm.png

speedtest_net.png

It super awesome. Having to upgrade my speed 5 times faster to 20mbps. Despite a lot of complaints coming from various people, I was extremely happy as I managed to do things that usually I was not been able to do.

Fast track 6 years later…

Unifi launched 50mbps lines, while Maxis launched their 30mbps lines. I called the telco up for the past few months, and was told that due to the use of copper as the last mile connectivity, they are unable to upgrade my speed.Such a pity, I already paid RM249 a month for Unifi, the same amount of money – I would be able to get 50mbps from Unifi. Sad… time to move to landed property. And then I was walking along my lift lobby downstairs, I saw a banner stating that my apartment has 50mbps! I was so happy. Made few posts on facebook to ask feedback.

Screen Shot 2016-03-27 at 7.48.44 AM.png

Straight away I went to the www.time.com.my and ordered by service. The installation was set to be  21st March 2016. As you can see from the riser – how the cables are pulled from the hubs.

IMG_1642.jpg

Its just an empty casing, with hubs every few floors. As for mine, the nearest hub is 12th floor. Ok – after installation. The speed was awesome! Checkout the ping time 🙂

IMG_1643.jpg

Amazing. 20mbps to 50mbps is considered a good jump! Then two days after, right after workout at Firestation:

IMG_1647.jpg

Client of mine whatsapp me the image above!. I am like wtf… And then immediately I called time – and they said that… I’ve been automatically upgraded!

That night I came back and tested my speed, and here what I get…

IMG_1659.jpg

5191822863.png

Unbelievable…. damn freaking fast!

With this speed – it’s just mind boggling on the things that I can do. I can’t imagine me being able to finish using all the bandwidth that was given to me. This is just super awesome.

The question that I have now would be – would their customer support be as good as TM? Let’s wait and see…

But for now – i better go quickly terminate my Unifi!

 

 

Categories
Geek Stuffs Uncategorized

32GB FTW

I recently “upgraded” my Mac Pro to iMac. It came with 8GB memory. The cost of upgrading or doing BTO with Apple was way too expensive. My options were:

  1. Buy from MacSales
  2. Buy from Lowyat

Lowyat did not have much option apart from DDR3 1600 RAM. Pretty frustrating. So I decided to order from MacSales today. As today is Black Friday in the US, the shipping was so much cheaper.

As I was just about to place my order, I decided to go on Lowyat for last and final time, and I saw them selling the DDR3 1866 RAM. I quickly check on Kingston’s website and discovered that potentially the RAM would be compatible with my iMac.

This morning – I then quickly drove to Lowyat to checkout the RAM, and saw that the model that they have is the same exact ones that the one certified for Mac (by Kingston). I quickly bought and installed.

And now – my iMac is running on 32GB. It feels so much faster now 🙂

Categories
Geek Stuffs

More shopping..

And again – I bought more stuffs from RS Online. This time around I got few things:

  • I/O expander that runs on I2C
  • I2C based LCD displays
  • 220 ohms resistors
  • 10 kiloohms resistors (to act as a pull up resistors)

 

Damn

Categories
Geek Stuffs

Finally. Managed to get working

I finally managed to get my sensor working! So happy. The JST connector – after a few tries again I managed to crimp it. Seriously even with a crimpler – I would probably struggle to do it. 

I managed to achieve two things:

  • Read the sensor values
  • Upload the sensor to the cloud

There are quite a few things which I wanted to do such as:

  • Hookup GPS sensor
  • Hookup 3G module
  • LED to show the status
  • LCD displays to show the readings

Definitely I won’t have enough ports thus I need to use a serial bus. That’s probably the next target. That also mean that I need to go buy more toys!! Hahaha

Anyway – here are the photos of my pm2.5 sensor. Basic read and upload. Not much. I suspect there’s a memory leak though. Hehe

   
 

Categories
Geek Stuffs

IoT Cloud – It Works!!!

Here’s the setup. Simple temperature sensor connected to the analog inputs.So it works. I managed to do a simple setup to read the temperature of my room and send it to the cloud for analysis 🙂

The data are then sent thru Intel iotkit-agent. Shown below is the log file of the agent.

At the output is as follows!

A4FD05F2-CEAF-4A7F-B8E3-B730CB5B9AF2

Not bad. Now i know how to send data to the cloud. Easily

 

Categories
Geek Stuffs

JST ZH 6-pin 

As part of the PM2.5 project, I bought the the GP2Y1010AU0F sensor from RS online. 

   
What I failed to realized is that the sensor came in without a connector. The socket that it came with is a JST ZH 6-pin 1.5mm pitch male socket. Damn. Thought I could kick start some of the work but I guess not going to happen. 

What I need to get now is the female socket. Not easy to find the ones that are crimped. 

  
Above is taken from hobbymart. 

I was looking high and low including posting to the Arduino Malaysia Facebook. 

Few options:

  • Buy from Ebay(which I did)
  • Buy from Jalan Pasar(recommended by Facebook)
  • Buy components from RS including the crimper – too expensive and don’t think I want spend that much money. It’s over 1k!

While waiting for eBay, I’ll try my luck at Jalan Pasar tomorrow. Wish me luck!