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I'm so sad

This is what i'm now watching at 23:50 after working all day.

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You twit

I am such a tool. My robot has been at a brick wall for 2 months, finally got round to do some fault finding.

2 problems:

1. I didn't copy an array properly!!! bloody hell, that's the first thing you do when you learn a language. I blame it on C, which i have never used. I wonder if i get away with that one

2. I used the wrong type of neuron. One that only gives outputs between 0 and 1. When i should have used a hyperbolic tan (tanh) which gives them between -1 and 1. Basically letting a leg go back as well as forwards. The worst thing..... i wrote a note for myself about it months and months ago, i even stuck it on my wall to remind me, now it just sits there taunting me.

Anyway, put these fixes in 2 hours to find, 1 min to fix and the robot (i should really name him) is back to his jumping around self, rather than the shivering mess he has been for a while. Just set off a run, its on gen 4 and should take about 4 hours.

Hopefully post up some videos and nice graphs when its done, if not, a video of me weeping into a laptop screen.

The entangled web

just for kicks i've decided to connect more and more things together. so now google buzz has been linked in to the facebook, blog, twitter circle. i wonder when the cyclical posts start happening?

Google Buzz

Just what we all needed in our lives, another social networking site, Google Buzz.

Don't worry though, because this one will only work for those friends that already use gmail, not many then.

I thought i'd got everything down, writing to this blog, which in turn auto updates my twitter account, which again updates my facebook status. Hmm, perhaps buzz is closer to real life, and handily will allow us to separate out all the people in ours lives, into the groups of geeks, family, friends, shameless sheep etc.

In my opinion, i give it a month before its withdrawn, or it will just forever be this little tab that no-one ever uses, never to be touched again, well its not like they're short on computing power is it?

Image via Wikipedia

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• Google Buzz Introduction Video and Website (techie-buzz.com)

Axe Cop

This is one of the funniest things i have read in a long while, give it a look:

HERE

Film shot entirely by chimpanzees recorded at Edinburgh Zoo

The world’s first film shot entirely by chimpanzees is to be broadcast by the BBC as part of a natural history documentary.

This has been jacked from the BBC, i liked it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8472000/8472831.stm

The apes created the movie using a specially designed chimp-proof camera given to them by primatologists.

The film-making exercise is part of a scientific study into how chimpanzees perceive the world and each other. It will be screened within the Natural World programme “Chimpcam” shown on BBC Two at 2000GMT on Wednesday 27 January.

Making the movie was the brainchild of primatologist Ms Betsy Herrelko, who is studying for a PhD in primate behaviour at the University of Stirling, UK. ver 18 months, she introduced video technology to a group of 11 chimpanzees living in a newly built enclosure at Edinburgh Zoo, UK.

The enclosure, which contains three large interlinked outdoor arenas, as well as a series of smaller rooms in which the apes can be studied by researchers, is the largest of its kind in the world. Despite the fact that the chimps had never taken part in a research project before, they soon displayed an interest in film-making.

Ms Herrelko set the chimps two challenges.

The first was to teach the chimps how to use a touchscreen to select different videos.

By doing so, Ms Herrelko could investigate which types of images chimps prefer to watch.

The second challenge was to give the apes a “Chimpcam”, a recording camera housed in a chimp-proof box.

Chimps both in captivity and the wild will spontaneously use tools. Some use wooden hammers to break open nuts, others use rocks, while many use varying styles of stick to fish for termites and honey.

On top of the box was a video screen that showed live images of whatever the camera was pointing at.

Initially, the chimps were more interested in each other than the video technology, as two male chimps within the study group vied to become the alpha male, disrupting the experiment.

But over time, some of the chimps learned how to select different videos to watch.

For example, the chimps could use a touchscreen to decide whether to watch footage of their outside enclosure, or the food preparation room, where zoo staff prepare the chimps’ meals.

The results still have to be analysed in detail, but it seems the chimps did not prefer to watch any of these images over the others.

Ms Herrelko is not sure why, but it could be that the images shown were too familiar to the chimps or because they have no way of asking to see something different.

Then in the final the final stage of her work, she investigated what happened when she gave the Chimpcam to the whole group. A captive chimpanzee watching a video of a wild chimp Watching wild relatives

Gradually, the chimps started playing with the Chimpcam, carrying it around the enclosure.

The chimps soon became interested in the camera view screen on the Chimpcam box, watching what happened as they moved the Chimpcam around filming new images.

Overall, they were more interested in the Chipcam viewfinder than they were the touchscreen in the research room.

The apes are unlikely to have actively tried to film any particular subject, or understand that by carrying Chimpcam around, they were making a film.

However, the result, as well as providing new information on how chimps like to see the world, may yet go down in television history.