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How to borrow e-books from the Wellington City (NZ) Libraries

My son has received a Kobo Mini e-book reader over the school holidays, and he enjoys reading from it.  It has become his nightly habit, prior to turning in for the night.  Here is a quick tutorial on how to borrow e-books from the Wellington City Libraries.


Do subscribe to the YouTube Channel Jo-Lo's Hangout, for kids' toys, hobbies and crafts videos!

User profile service failed the logon

This problem came out this morning with my wife's Windows 7 computer.  After some unsuccessful attempts using tips from the Microsoft website, I came across this video tutorial.

Success!

Thanks iYogi!

3D Printing

I wonder when 3D printing will truly reach mass market affordability.  I, for one, see this as an exciting technology.  Think about the stuff we can make from this!



And now, even food can be printed.  I thought this was still on the drawing board.  But is there a prototype already?  I read somewhere that printing food will be of importance in space travel.



The 3D Printer Manufacturer I am familiar with is MakerBot; they have made huge leaps and strides towards making 3D printing plausible, but at the current price of USD 2,800.00, it is still a rich man's toy (or a business-level endeavour!).

A brief history of video games

I come from a family who love video games.  My Mom and Aunt used to play Tetris til early morning, and when they played, we could not get them to budge!  My siblings and I had our fill of Game n' Watches, Atari's Pong, Super Famicom, Super Nintendo, PacMan, Battle City, Galaga, Space Invaders, Phoenix (my faviourite arcade game), then on to PlayStations and the Final Fantasy series.

So understandably, this video is quite a trip down to memory lane for me (and of course it's educational too!)

Kirobo: the robot of hope

Since we’re on the topic of robots, there is something that captured my interest with the more recent supplies transport to the International Space Station (ISS). The Japanese cargo ship includes a robot which will be the companion of the only Japanese astronaut (Koichi Wakata) in the ISS come November (the robot is flying a couple of months in advance).

The cargo ship left earth last Saturday 3rd August, and is expected to dock on the 9th.

While the robot (named Kirobo) is only 13 inches high and weighs around 1 kg, this small wonder will be the focus of research and development in human-robot interaction. Kirobo derived its name from a combination of two words: ‘Kibo’, which means ‘hope’ in Japanese, and ‘robot’.

Interestingly enough, Kirobo’s design takes inspiration from Astro Boy, a popular anime series set in a future where robots have advanced intelligence and are able to coexist (sort of) with humans. The main character is a robot boy with the same name as the anime’s title, and series chronicles his adventures and experiences.  It was a very popular series (and Astro Boy is a very familiar face); I remember watching this anime when I was a kid.

Kirobo naturally speaks Japanese and has voice and speech recognition, natural language processing, speech synthesis, and face recognition. The robot is also designed to adapt to ‘living’ in gravity-absent space, ensuring that the robot knows how to move about and talk in this weightless environment. Kirobo will also assist Mr Wakata with experiments to be conducted in space.

Incidentally, the robot has a twin. Mirata will stay here on Earth and monitor the progress of Kirobo and help out with problems or malfunctions, if any.

While Kirobo is a joint project by a number of companies, the fact that Toyota Motors is one of them was a surprise to me. Until now, I have always thought Honda to be at the forefront of robotics, with Asimo as its prime project. It’s great to learn that other companies are advancing research and development in robotics and Artificial Intelligence too.

I, for one, will be among the interested parties here in earth to keep track of how Kirobo will fare. This is definitely history in the making!

For further information, visit the Kirobo Project at kibo-robo.jp/en/.

Kirobo fans can also follow his exploits on Twitter at @Kibo_robo.  The tweets are predominantly in Japanese though, but it's interspersed with photos and links so it's still worth following.

Making a Life-Size Wall-E Robot

If I had the resources (time, money, geeky knowledge for this sort of stuff), I would certainly be making my own droids as well! But I have no time, money, nor the geeky knowledge, so I will content myself with this video of how Mike McMaster's Workshop recreated Wall-E from the hit CGI movie of the same name. Awesome work.

Description for this video:
"The beloved Wall-E robot was just computer generated graphics in the Pixar movie, but fans have spent years trying to bring him to life. We visit Mike McMaster's workshop to see his incredible life-size Wall-E, a remote controlled robot that lives among an R2-D2 droid and other pets on Mike's orange farm."

Get your colours right via Pictaculous

Whenever I get asked to do a website, the first thing I always ask first is their logo. The reason I do this is because the logo can give me an idea of the color scheme for the site, and sometimes even the layout. You need to match the website with the overall branding, for which the logo (and the typeface used) encompasses this.

Getting the colour right can sometimes be a major hurdle though.  I have been using colour wheels before, but I have just recently found this online service which makes choosing the right colours even easier.

Android Apps for toddlers

With an Android tablet changing hands in our household, it is inevitable that my 2-year old daughter would get curious and have a play with it too!  So naturally I had to install some apps which may be of use to her.  Here are some apps that keep her busy and entertained (the names link directly to Google Play):

Baby Phone - Musical Baby Game
It's colourful, it has boxes with numbers on them that wiggle, and it has a variety of nursery songs too!  The free version is ad-supported, but the ads do not get in the way - so far.  Our daughter is getting familiar with the songs and loves to sing along, although with baby talk of course.

Kids Doodle - Color & Draw
Of course, my daughter's doodles are not as fine-tuned a drawing as in the illustration shown here, but she has lots of fun with it nonetheless, especially with the fluorescent paints!  Also free.

Baby Flashcards
She already knows Apple and Banana, and with the help of this app, she will learn more words!  There are various flashcard groups to choose from: letters, numbers, animals, vehicles, furniture, colours.  The images and words are animated and suited well to touch-screen devices, with accompanying voice-overs and music.  Free!

Kids Paintings Coloring Book
Our daughter doesn't know yet how to change the colours, but she loves to wipe her fingers across the screen, and that is all there is to it when using this app.  She is fascinated with how the page becomes coloured in the areas that she touches.  This needs a bit of supervision though because of the need to touch certain areas to change the colours and pages, or else she gets a bit bored with the same screen.  Free!

There's a couple other apps that we have installed, but they are not seeing as much action as these four.  Hope this selection helps you with getting your wee ones occupied too!

Macross 7 VF-17D Transformation

Geek mode time!  I have this exact action figure - minus the gun armament :-(.  I do not have the manual, so I am so lucky to have found this video instruction.  This is the second time I searched for this though and it took me a while so I have decided to place it here for easier reference next time.

Welcome to Jo-Lo's Hangout!

My son Jo-Lo has just launched his own YouTube Channel.  It's called Jo-Lo's Hangout.  Here is his first video:

Angry Birds Star Wars II with TelePods

Coming 19 September 2013!

Google Currents - news for people on the go

I bring a number of things to keep me occupied in my daily work commute. Besides paper-based reading materials, my Android tablet has become an indispensable companion. I download the Coursera course materials for the week (mostly video, which is really nice). And when I’m not doing that, I read the news and tech updates courtesy of Google Currents.


Simply defined, Google Currents is a news aggregator app which is available for Android and Apple devices. The feature that I am most happy about is its offline reading ability. Every morning, I sync the App so it downloads the latest news items (by simply clicking “sync now” under settings) and then it’s ready when I leave.

Originally I turned off image downloading but a couple of days ago because I was worried about the space it might occupy. But I allowed the app to download the images as well and now I simply prefer reading with the images on as it makes the experience more engaging. Plus, I can now view photos from 500px even while offline, which is great. And this has not affected the tablet performance.

Give Google Currents a try.

Coursera: online learning made accessible and engaging

There is another online learning course that is keeping me preoccupied, and this one is courtesy of Coursera.

From their website: Coursera is "an education company that partners with the top universities and organizations in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. Our technology enables our partners to teach millions of students rather than hundreds."

Codeacademy - making coding fun and interactive

I have been studying CSS for quite some time now, although 80% of the time is devoted to reading and understanding the code by reading books.  That said, I am gaining a better appreciation of CSS coding, thanks to Codeacademy.  Simply put, the site is a place where you can learn about coding in an interactive manner.  You will be given an explanation about what a particular command is, then the syntax, and then it asks you to try it out yourself.  It's very effective.

The Adsense 10 Challenge

I learned about this 10-week masterclass only this afternoon, and this had already started last week!  Good thing registrations are still being accepted so I have signed up and will now try to catch up with 1.5 weeks' worth of sessions.
Simply explained, the Challenge marks the 10th anniversary of Google Adsense, and their publishers are now being offered the opportunity to learn how to maximize use of Adsense and understand how it works.  This is a really good deal, because you would normally pay someone to teach you Adsense, or wade through online tutorials and books as another way to learn about this service.  But I believe a classroom environment (through Google Hangouts) coupled with discussions and interaction with fellow publishers would be a more effective way to learn.  So here is our chance!

Learn more about the Adsense 10 Challenge and register!

yED Graph Editor

Hmmm... a possible equivalent to Visio.  And this one's free!



I haven't personally tried it yet, as I currently do not have a need for it.  But I'm posting it here for future reference.

yED Graph Editor website

Free Fonts at the Font Squirrel

Font Squirrel is by far one of the better free fonts service out there.  The selection of fonts are elegant and carefully selected.

Google's Project Loon: now trialling in New Zealand

"It's so crazy it just might work"



When I heard about this latest Google Innovation, that was the first thing that popped into my head. Balloons floating about, giving internet connectivity wherever you may be? It sounded unreal, especially when one comes from a country where in the 60s, you had to wait for 10 or more years in order to get a phone line! Of course that changed dramatically when mobile phones became the communication mode of choice.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Teaser Trailer

Wow, looks like we're off to another epic adventure in Middle Earth!  The teaser trailer looks great and full of action.  I read the book many years ago and have forgotten parts of it, but seeing the dwarves riding barrels along a raging river triggered a memory about that part of the story.

Looking forward to this movie!