Jack Concanon

AuthorJack Concanon

Curiosity Rover Lands On Mars!

Mars just got a new resident today in the form of the NASA Curiosity Rover (or Mars Science Laboratory to give it’s proper name). This rover represents a huge leap forward in technical terms over the previous rovers, it is much larger than any existing rover and contains a plutonium fuel cell allowing it to avoid the slow solar panel death of the previous batch. It’s primary goal will be to analyse the geology of the Red Planet in order to find signs of microbial life.

It’s just extremely exciting to think that something built on this planet is currently driving around another planet, space exploration rocks.

Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition

July 29, 2012 / Jack Concanon / 0 Comments

A really excellent piece of news which I only found out from a tabloid website is that the original programmers for Baldur’s Gate have got back together in order to update the games for a more modern time.

The best part is that these games aren’t getting torn apart and dumbed down for the Call of Battlefield Duty console gamers but getting left in their original unadulterated RPG goodness. The Baldur’s Gate series is easily the greatest RPG made, the depth of the story and the characters, the environments and the many side quests. This release is the first game including the expansion with Baldur’s Gate II set for a release later on.

You can even play it on an tablet so I am very tempted to get it on more than one platform. Anyway, if you’ve played these games before you’re definitely going to be buying them and if you haven’t then you owe yourself a taste of how great a game can be given the opportunity.

Find all the information you need here – http://www.baldursgate.com/

UPDATE – Pre-ordered 😀

Watching BBC iPlayer While Abroad

July 28, 2012 / Jack Concanon / 0 Comments

I now live in Norway which means that I can no longer use the excellent BBC iPlayer service, this is especially annoying as the Olympics has just started.

The quickest solution for this is to use a VPN service but they all take such a large amount of configuring. I found this excellent tool called Expat Shield which provides a very simple one button VPN solution masking your IP to appear as though it is coming from England.

The terms and conditions do say that this should only be used by expats of UK so for once I’m not doing anything wrong!

The service is very easy to use, quick to set up and has very little slow down on the bandwidth; I’m sat here watching the rowing on the iPlayer right now.

DIY Raspberry Pi Case

July 25, 2012 / Jack Concanon / 2 Comments

I finally received my Raspberry Pi B board! But until I get a TV or a HDMI capable monitor it’s a bit of an (in)expensive paper weight at the moment. The final goal with this board is to turn it into a media centre allowing a seamless link between all of the household music, TV and films.

As it will be used for this it needs to be placed in a location where it would look a bit odd with just a bare circuit board sitting around, for this reason I had an idea for a very simple DIY case.

The biggest problem with designing a case for the Raspberry Pi is that there are connectors on all sides, this means that a simple closed case solution is not possible, additionally as it is passively cooled a closed case would not be too advisable although I’m sure it would survive.

The case design that I have come up with is an open sided case that allows for adequate airflow and easy access to all of the boards sockets. It consists of two layers of clear plastic supported on the corners by four supports, in this case wooden dowel. The case should not only look good (and show off the Raspberry Pi) but should be easy to build and work with, this case has been constructed using screws so it would allow for very easy disassembly.

The board shown here is my first prototype done with a fairly useless saw so it is incredibly wonky but it was a lesson learnt for next time.

Required Tools

A good saw, preferably a bench saw for a straighter cut.
An electric drill with some small drill bits.
Masking tape for marking out the plastic.
A solid screw driver, cross head preferably.
A pencil.

Required Materials

Some rigid, clear, acrylic plastic – about 5mm thick.
Thick wooden dowel; I used about 1cm width but it could definitely be thinner.
Small screws, ensure that they aren’t too long.

Steps

Mark out on the acrylic the size of the panels you would like. Mine were around 11cm square, this gave good room for the length of the board with the dowels not protuding too far from the ends.

Cut out the two squares and tidy them up if required. Remember to leave the plastic coating on until final assembly to avoid scratches on the plastic.

The next step is to cut out the four supports. Measure a good length of dowel so that it is taller than the Raspberry Pi board and gives a good amount of airflow over the top. Mine were around 3.6cm long. Cut these and try to get them as flat as possible.

Now that the parts are made it’s time to think about assembling them. Start by marking and drilling four holes in the corners of plastic squares.

Use a drill bit that is just slightly thinner than the screws you are using, this will make it much easier to screw the screws through the plastic.

Remember to remove the protective film on the plastic squares. Put the four screws through the holes and then screw the dowels onto the screws. This is the base of the whole case, in order to attach the final square line up the holes with the dowels and then screw straight through the plastic into the dowel. This will hold everything together very well and allow for easy disassembly later.

Now you have the finished product! I’m trying to think of a way to secure the board to the bottom of the case, hopefully using something similar to motherboard risers but the only two holes in the board are far too small for these. Once it has some cables plugged in then it should remain quite secured within the enclosure.

I will definitely be making a more refined version of this case once I get access to an electric saw.

Language Detection Algorithm

May 27, 2012 / Jack Concanon / 0 Comments

My thesis required dealing with large quantities of Twitter data and to make it easier for myself I decided to only use English language tweets. Due to the ‘interesting’ grammar and spelling that is frequently found on line a different algorithm to a standard dictionary test was required. This one checks for common English n-grams (letter groupings) and returns a value of how sure the input is English.

Here’s some examples:

Good morning everyone! : 66%
Im So Sick. Really in a bad Position : 50%
Thats the fear of unicorns : 100%
Gnt too com uma saudade daminha namorada vcs nao tem ideia :(((( : 0%
Ils testent les hologrammes pour faire des concerts par des morts. Bientôt même les pas morts feront des hologrammes et vous irez les voir. : 12%
il7ain ilnass ykhl9un men habat twitter o yntqlun to istagram=))!!! : 40%

from collections import Counter

class trigram:
    ngrams = ['the', 'and', 'tha', 'ent', 'ing', 'ion', 'tio', 'for',
        'nde', 'has', 'nce', 'edt', 'tis', 'oft', 'sth', 'men', ' th', 
        'he ', 'ed ', ' of', 'in ', 'to ', 'er ', 'as ', 'her', 'ng ',
        'of ', ' an', ' in']
    probability = 0.0

    def __init__(self):
        pass

    def parse_text(self, text):
        count = 0.0
        s = set()
        length = len(text.strip(' ').split())
        for i in range( len( text ) ): s.add( text[ i: i + 3 ] )
        c = Counter(s)
        for trigram in self.ngrams:
            try:
                count += c[trigram]
            except IndexError as e:
                pass
        if length > 0:
            self.probability = (count / length) * 100.0
        else:
            self.probability = 0
        return self.probability

    def get_probability(self):
        return self.probability

    def is_english(self):
        return (self.probability > 40)

from collections import Counter

class trigram:

ngrams = ['the', 'and', 'tha', 'ent', 'ing', 'ion', 'tio', 'for',

'nde', 'has', 'nce', 'edt', 'tis', 'oft', 'sth', 'men', ' th',

'he ', 'ed ', ' of', 'in ', 'to ', 'er ', 'as ', 'her', 'ng ',

'of ', ' an', ' in']

probability = 0.0

def __init__(self):

pass

def parse_text(self, text):

count = 0.0

s = set()

length = len(text.strip(' ').split())

for i in range( len( text ) ): s.add( text[ i: i + 3 ] )

c = Counter(s)

for trigram in self.ngrams:

try:

count += c[trigram]

except IndexError as e:

pass

if length > 0:

self.probability = (count / length) * 100.0

else:

self.probability = 0

return self.probability

def get_probability(self):

return self.probability

def is_english(self):

return (self.probability > 40)

Python Feed Forward Perceptron

May 27, 2012 / Jack Concanon / 1 Comment

I thought I would post a couple of useful bits of code from my final year of university.

The first is a feed forward perceptron written in Python. I tried to expand the examples on the internet as much as possible to help me understand how they work.

#!/usr/bin/python2.7

import random

class Perceptron:

    def __init__(self, weights=None, threshold=0.5):
        self.weights = weights
        self.threshold = threshold

    def activation(self, input_vector):
        # activation of the perceptron. 
        val = sum(value * self.weights[index] for index, value in enumerate(input_vector))
        if val > self.threshold:
            return 1
        else:
            return 0

    # learning rate is also the alpha
    def train(self, training_set, learning_rate = 0.1):
        # set the initial weights to random numbers in the range [-0.5,0.5] or 0
        self.weights = [0 for i in training_set[0][0]]

        while True:
            error_count = 0
            for input_vector, desired_output in training_set:
                print self.weights
                result = self.activation(input_vector)
                error = desired_output - result
                if error != 0:
                    error_count += 1
                    # weight training
                    for index, value in enumerate(input_vector):
                        #delta rule : learning rate * error * current value                    
                        self.weights[index] += (learning_rate * error * value)
            if error_count == 0:
                break

    def test(self, training_set):
        for input_vector, desired_result in training_set:
            if(self.activation(input_vector) != desired_result):
                return False
        return True

if __name__ == "__main__":

    # values for a AND gate.
    training_set_AND = [((0, 0), 0),
    ((0, 1), 0),
    ((1, 0), 0),
    ((-1, 1), 1)]

    training_set_OR = [((0,1), 1),
                       ((1,0), 1),
                       ((0,0), 0),
                       ((1,1), 1)]

    # values for a NAND gate.
    training_set_NAND = [((1, 0, 0), 1), 
                        ((1, 1, 0), 1), 
                        ((1, 0, 1), 1),
                        ((1, 1, 1), 0)
                        ]

    p = Perceptron(None, 0.5)
    p.train(training_set_AND, 0.1)
    print p.test(training_set_AND)

#!/usr/bin/python2.7

import random

class Perceptron:

def __init__(self, weights=None, threshold=0.5):

self.weights = weights

self.threshold = threshold

def activation(self, input_vector):

# activation of the perceptron.

val = sum(value * self.weights[index] for index, value in enumerate(input_vector))

if val > self.threshold:

return 1

else:

return 0

# learning rate is also the alpha

def train(self, training_set, learning_rate = 0.1):

# set the initial weights to random numbers in the range [-0.5,0.5] or 0

self.weights = [0 for i in training_set[0][0]]

while True:

error_count = 0

for input_vector, desired_output in training_set:

print self.weights

result = self.activation(input_vector)

error = desired_output - result

if error != 0:

error_count += 1

# weight training

for index, value in enumerate(input_vector):

#delta rule : learning rate * error * current value

self.weights[index] += (learning_rate * error * value)

if error_count == 0:

break

def test(self, training_set):

for input_vector, desired_result in training_set:

if(self.activation(input_vector) != desired_result):

return False

return True

if __name__ == "__main__":

# values for a AND gate.

training_set_AND = [((0, 0), 0),

((0, 1), 0),

((1, 0), 0),

((-1, 1), 1)]

training_set_OR = [((0,1), 1),

((1,0), 1),

((0,0), 0),

((1,1), 1)]

# values for a NAND gate.

training_set_NAND = [((1, 0, 0), 1),

((1, 1, 0), 1),

((1, 0, 1), 1),

((1, 1, 1), 0)

]

p = Perceptron(None, 0.5)

p.train(training_set_AND, 0.1)

print p.test(training_set_AND)

Lego Landrover

May 20, 2012 / Jack Concanon / 0 Comments

Just seen a fantastic video of a Landrover Defender 110 built entirely from lego; not just that but it has a full five speed sequential gear box, high and low range and a choice between two and four wheel drive (not entirely authentic that part)!

It’s really worth watching just to see the inner workings and fantastic little details such as moving pistons. Some more information can be found on Sheepo’s blog.

Also this seems like a pretty good excuse to post a picture of my full size version!

Pointless Error Messages

May 19, 2012 / Jack Concanon / 0 Comments

Gee, thanks Battlefield

So you’re sat there playing a game, about to pull off some spectacular moves and own some noobs when your game freezes, you fall through the floor and you are dumped back into the reality of the Windows Desktop. Quietly muttering some choice words about computers you discover a fantastic error message, informing you that ‘something went wrong’… Well, thanks error message, without your thoughtful take on everything I would have presumed to have teleported into a map that looks suspiciously like my desktop!

These error messages are becoming more and more common, and yes I fully understand that the alternative is the blue screen of death, which is equally unhelpful, but if you’re going to go to the effort of handling errors correctly without breaking everything why waste all that effort by just telling the user that something went wrong. How about, something went wrong and here is what it was?

Because I want a browser with sass

If it’s that important to try and hide the gory details of an error from the average user have a nice button called technical details. Average Joe isn’t going to click that, he still thinks an illegal operation involves the police.

How about some form of standard for displaying error messages? Maybe code red, yellow and green? Easy to understand for everyone.

Got any more examples of useless error messages?

Free Twitter Data Set

May 1, 2012 / Jack Concanon / 1 Comment

I needed a twitter data set for my thesis and struggled to find one that was freely available. I ended up downloading the data I needed so I thought I would release it here. It does come in a slightly annoying format which is a MongoDB dump file but it should be easy enough to extract to there and use it. The structure of each record is shown below.

So if you wanted to go over all records in the database you would do it like this –

from pymongo import Connection

if __name__ == "__main__":

    # connect to mongodb and get tweets collection
    db_connection = Connection()
    fyp_db = db_connection.fyp
    tweets_db = fyp_db.tweets
    num_tweets = 0

    for user_col in tweets_db.find():
        num_tweets += len(user_col['tweets'])
        for friend in user_col['friends']:
            if len(user_col['friends'][friend]) > 0:
                num_tweets += len(user_col['friends'][friend])

from pymongo import Connection

if __name__ == "__main__":

# connect to mongodb and get tweets collection

db_connection = Connection()

fyp_db = db_connection.fyp

tweets_db = fyp_db.tweets

num_tweets = 0

for user_col in tweets_db.find():

num_tweets += len(user_col['tweets'])

for friend in user_col['friends']:

if len(user_col['friends'][friend]) > 0:

num_tweets += len(user_col['friends'][friend])

Download Twitter Mongo Dump

CryENGINE 3

April 17, 2012 / Jack Concanon / 0 Comments

The latest version of the Crytek engine has been released, yet again pushing what you think is possible on current hardware. Another good bit of information is that Crysis 3 will be out next year. Unfortunately that means it will be released on the Xbox and the PS3 which seriously hampered the graphic performance in Crysis 2. Now if they were to focus on a PC only version we could really see some of the magic that the original Crysis brought to it. Fun fact, the original Crysis was being used as a benchmark in Custom PC magazine three years after it was released.

Check out the video here –

How awesome would it be to see Skyrim using this engine?

Code Golf Progress Bar

April 3, 2012 / Jack Concanon / 0 Comments

Had a go at some code golf today, went for this challenge: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/5382/create-an-ascii-progress-bar

Here is my solution which is 125 characters small.

a,b=raw_input().split()
a=int(a)
b=float(b)
c=int(a*b)
d="|"*c+" "*(a-c)
e=len(d)/2
print"["+d[:e]+`int(b*100)`+"%"+d[e:]+"]"

a,b=raw_input().split()

a=int(a)

b=float(b)

c=int(a*b)

d="|"*c+" "*(a-c)

e=len(d)/2

print"["+d[:e]+`int(b*100)`+"%"+d[e:]+"]"

So the output for this would be as such:

jack@Icarus:~/Projects/code golf$ python progress_bar.py 
10 0.7
[|||||70%||   ]
jack@Icarus:~/Projects/code golf$ python progress_bar.py 
10 0.56
[|||||56%     ]
jack@Icarus:~/Projects/code golf$ python progress_bar.py 
10 0.8
[|||||80%|||  ]

jack@Icarus:~/Projects/code golf$ python progress_bar.py

10 0.7

[|||||70%|| ]

jack@Icarus:~/Projects/code golf$ python progress_bar.py

10 0.56

[|||||56% ]

jack@Icarus:~/Projects/code golf$ python progress_bar.py

10 0.8

[|||||80%||| ]

Too Busy To Tweet

April 2, 2012 / Jack Concanon / 0 Comments

For my thesis I am investigating methods for finding the happiness on Twitter. I’ll release a lot more of the information and data after it is all completed. But for now here are some small and interesting finds.

Number of tweets separated by day of the week.

What the above image shows is my full data set of tweets (around 400,000) and on which day those tweets were sent. Interesting to note is that weekends have around half as many posts as the weekdays. I know I definitely use Twitter more when I’m procrastinating.

As well as having the least amount of traffic, the weekends also suffer from an increased number of negative tweets. The graph below shows my take on finding the happiest day of the week.

Happiness across days of the week ( repeated for ease of viewing)

There have been several studies aiming to find the happiest days of the week; from psychological studies into the idea that Monday is the unhappiest day of the week to studies also using Twitter as their statistical source.

What this appears to show is that the weekend suffers from a large scale drop in happiness from a week day high on Thursday. There does seem to be some correlation between the number of tweets sent on a day and the over all happiness of that day. Is it possible that when we are happy we want to share that with the world?

More information and graphs will follow as the study continues.

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Categories

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AuthorJack Concanon

Curiosity Rover Lands On Mars!

Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition

Watching BBC iPlayer While Abroad

DIY Raspberry Pi Case

Required Tools

Required Materials

Steps

Language Detection Algorithm

Python Feed Forward Perceptron

Lego Landrover

Pointless Error Messages

Free Twitter Data Set

CryENGINE 3

Code Golf Progress Bar

Too Busy To Tweet

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