I long ago discovered that my Macbook Pro doesn't play well with repeaters. It will connect without problem to the main router but, if it needs to connect via a repeater, then IP address conflicts arise and connectivity is lost. This was the problem in my bedroom but I overcame it by making use of the Ethernet port on my repeater. Once I connected the laptop to the repeater via an Ethernet cable, there was no problem.
Recently however, my granddaughter was having buffering problems when watching Netflix over WiFi on her iPad Pro. I gave the repeater to her, connected her to an Ethernet cable via a hub and all was well. For her, that is, not for me. I was very quickly confronted with my old problem again. However, I had my Android phone and thought that the solution would be to tether the laptop to my phone via Bluetooth. The Macbook was having none of that. No problem I thought. I have a USB cable so I'll tether via that. No luck.
A little investigation led me to a site run by Joshua White and an app called HoRNDIS-9.2.pkg (46919 bytes) that I downloaded to my laptop and installed. I restarted my laptop and connected to my phone via USB and I'm typing happily away creating this post.
No help of course from Apple popped up at the top of the search results but at least I'm connected now. I haven't tried watching Netflix or similar yet, in order to test the speed of the connection. I'll do that later and add to this post if there any problems. On his website, Joshua explains the technicalities of how the app works.
I still don't know why the bluetooth tethering didn't work. Perhaps there's a similar program that needs to be downloaded for that to work as well. For the moment, I'm just happy that I'm connected. Perhaps the motto of all this is indeed that CABLE IS STABLE.
My poor old Kingston Data Traveler 64GB was showing little signs of life. There was a faint pulse in the sense that my Windows laptop was showing that it had a size of about 4MB. My MacBook refused to recognise it at all. Reformatting in Windows had no effect on the 4MB upper limit.
It's been a while but I remembered that it was possible to perform a low level format on a USB drive. I searched about for a free utility program for this purpose and came across HDD Low Level Format Tool described as:
a freeware utility for low-level hard disk drive formatting. This small program will erase, Low-Level Format and re-certify a SATA, IDE or SCSI hard disk drive.
One virus engine flagged it as malicious but all others gave the program a clean bill of health. It's a very small program (759KB) so that it downloads almost instantly. When installed and activated, there is a prompt advising that payment of $3 will speed up the program and entitle you to future updates. The last update was on 02/03/19. However, I proceeded with the free option and the formatting was painfully slow, taking well over an hour.
However, the process was finally completed and I reformatted as exFat with a resulting storage capacity of a little under 62GB. The disk now seems to be working well and is accessible from both Windows and OS X. One reviewer wrote the following about the software and it seems a fair appraisal:
The free version is capped at 50MB/s, personally I feel this is fast enough for personal use e.g. formatting the odd drive now and again which is exactly what it is for.
If I was using it commercially and formatting drive after drive, speed would probably be important to me and then certainly the paid "Uncapped" version is what I would go for.
Remember speed issues are very likely due to your hardware, or limitations in your chain from the software to your drive, remember it will only run and the speed of the slowest part of the chain. Also if you are using the free version and not hitting the 50MB/s cap there's no point buying the full version as you will not get a speed increase!
In attempting to copy 38GB from my MacBook to this newly formatted drive, the operation ground to a halt around the half-way mark. I tried a second time and again it failed. I think there is some inherent problem with this device and there are many reports on the Internet confirming this. Here is another site that is promoting a tool to fix the problems associated with the device. I've wasted enough time and I'm not going to bother anymore. My advice to anyone thinking of buying a Kingston Data Traveler is DON'T. In fact I'll be avoiding any Kingston products in the future if I possibly can.
I use Google Translate intermittently, mainly to translate back and forth between Indonesian and English. It's easy to forget that the words that I've looked up are stored and can be exported as a CSV file to Google Sheets. From there the words can be copied and pasted elsewhere, as I've done right here using a small sample:
bee
lebah
investigation
penyelidikan
disability
cacat
anonymous
anonim
iodine
yodium
he is trying to create a positive image
dia mencoba menciptakan citra yang positif
suspicious
mencurigakan
image
gambar
treasonable
khianat
cautious
waspada
hypocrite
munafik
dolphin
lumba-lumba
shark
hiu
whale
ikan paus
cause
sebab
Within Google Translate of course you can hear the words pronounced as well which is of course an added bonus.
It's just made me realise how I underutilise the features of this free service. Evil as it is, Google still offers a lot of useful, free stuff. It's also possible to create a series of flashcards from the spreadsheet, using a template from flippity.net. Figure 1 shows the straightforward instructions:
Figure 1
Here is the link to the flashcards that were created. Figure 2 shows a screenshot of the interface:
I've been familiar with the Desmos Graphing Calculator since October of 2015 but my last saved file was from October 2016. While watching a video from 3Blue1Brown, I was reminded of this resource again because he made use of it when illustrating graphical properties of quadratic functions. It's remarkably easy to use. I watched a series of short YouTube videos about the Desmos Graphing Calculator, just to refresh my memory and then I was away. It's easy to embed a graph into a blog post as I've done below:
It's all remarkably easy. In this example, I've hidden the graph of the derivative function but used it to create the tangent to the curve at any point. The slider changes the x value of the point where the tangent touches the graph of \(y=x^x\) and the slope of the tangent changes accordingly.
I'm thinking that I could make use of this resource in the daily analysis of my diurnal age. For example, on July 28th 2020 I was 26049 days old. One of the properties of this number is that it is:
... a member of OEIS A064808: the (n+1)st (n+2)-gonal number (here n=37 so we have the 38th 39-gonal number). The formula is a(n) = (n + 1)*(n^2 + 2)/2 and the sequence, up to and including 26049, can be generated from the following SageMath code:
This relationship can be easily graphed and a corresponding table drawn up as shown in the embedded graph below:
It's not all that useful here as SageMath can easily produce the same output but it's a little different and could prove useful in the future as an aid to representation and analysis. The table is not visible above but looks like this:
This is the question that was asked in an article from towards data science on July 21st 2020. The answer follows: AI can now code in any language without additional training. The article goes on to say:
In 2017, researchers asked: Could AI write most code by 2040? OpenAI’s GPT-3, now in use by beta testers, can already code in any language. Machine-dominated coding is almost at our doorstep. GPT-3 was trained on hundreds of billions of words, or essentially the entire Internet, which is why it can code in CSS, JSX, Python, — you name it.
The article continues:
Here’s the situation: Beta testers are using GPT-3 to generate working code, with trivial knowledge necessary. From buttons to data tables, or even re-creating Google’s homepage. These examples are all being done with zero-shot learning. Besides the rapid evolution of AI, two other major tech trends are compounding the reality that programming jobs won’t be safe in the future: No-code and AutoML.
No-code refers to visual tools that make it easier for anyone to build new products, whether it’s websites, designs, data analyses, or models. WordPress, Wix, and Shopify are good examples of no-code tools that enabled millions of people to do things on their own rather than hire a developer or a designer. The second trend is AutoML, or automated machine learning, which drastically shortens the time it takes to bring AI to production.
Tools like Apteo combine these trends, and enable anyone to deploy AI models with no coding skills required. GPT-3 will spark an additional wave of no-code and AutoML tools. Many would-be employers will opt for these tools rather than hire expensive programmers. Naturally, the lowest-skilled swaths of programmers will be the first to go, while experts will enjoy job security for longer — the same as in any field.
As the OpenAI website is offering free testing of its API and many more uses of GPT-3 will emerge as a result. According to this paper:
“GPT-3 achieves strong performance on many NLP (Natural Language Processing) datasets, including translation, question-answering, and cloze tasks, as well as several tasks that require on-the-fly reasoning or domain adaptation, such as unscrambling words, using a novel word in a sentence, or performing 3-digit arithmetic”. The team also finds that “ GPT-3 can construct samples of news articles which people will get conflict in order to recognise articles transcripted by humans.”
This sort of news only reinforces what limited job opportunities will be available to the youth of the future. It also means that, as with deep fakes, we won't be able to tell what is real anymore. Future versions of software tools created from GPT-3 type software will be able to generate a plausible story about anything and even populate it with deep fake images and videos. A bewildered public will be forced to rely on accredited news sources because the amount of fake news generated by this type of AI will be overwhelming. Of course, the "accredited news sources" will be free to propagate their own fake news as usual but it will be officially sanctioned and therefore trustworthy.
Now that I've more or less mastered the 3 x 3 Rubik's cube, I've realised that anything I set my mind upon doing is more or less attainable, provided that my physical and intellectual limitations are taken into account. If I wanted to, I could master the 4 x 4 Rubik's cube.
Maybe. Maybe not. It's a question of where I want to focus my concentration. A post I made on Thursday, 1st February 2018 stated that:
2018 is shaping up to be a year where I make some decisive improvement in my grasp of musical theory and proficiency in playing the guitar. I've began with the minor pentatonic scale which the beginning point for everybody and have been practising consistently.
That post is over two years old now. Well, it's true that I did make some progress but hardly enough. I remain disappointed in my musical development. Perhaps this is the area on which to focus next. However, I must be specific in what I want to achieve. For example, it's rather pointless and vague to say that I want to improve my guitar playing. Instead I should say that I want to master Travis picking. This is a goal that is realistic and that can be achieved in a reasonable short space of time. Mastering the 3 x 3 Rubik's cube was a good example of this sort of specific goal. There's nothing vague about. I either mastered the steps to solve the Rubik's cube or I didn't. Similarly, I'll master Travis picking or I won't.
Figure 1
I'll use old LickNRiff to get me started on the Travis picking. Figure 1 shows the Tabs for this lesson. Staying with music for I while, I have great difficulty remembering the lyrics and chords to songs. This is a source of frustration to me because I'd like to have a repertoire of songs that I could sing without the need to reference notes, physical or electronic. I've managed it for some songs but not many. It would be nice to know more. I have my Ultimate Guitar Tabs website of course but I'd like to know my favourite songs off by heart. Only practice of course will make that possible. Although I concentrate on guitar, I can play the harmonica and, at least to some extent, the tin whistle. Sadly, I quite neglect these two instruments which is a pity because they are both quite portable. Apart from music, I'm still keen to memorise the first 100 prime numbers. I succeeded in memorising the first 50 and so I know that 100 is an achievable goal. I've made some starts toward it but have not followed through. Figure 2 shows a list of the first one hundred primes taken from Wikipedia:
Figure 2
I've made a series of 100 slides using Google Slides. Each contains a prime, starting with slide 1 (2) and finishing with slide 100 (541). This way I can practise until I get it right. Without creating and using reinforcement tools like these, no progress is possible.
For some reason, after all these years, I decided that I would teach myself how to solve a 3 x 3 Rubik's cube which I've succeeded in doing. However, I need to practise so that the steps become automatic and so for this reason, I'm summarising the steps here. I used a YouTube video that outlined a number of algorithms to follow in order to solve the cube.
The first step is understand the notation and Figure 1 shows the four terms for the four faces that will be used in the solution (D for Down and B for Back are not used):
Figure 1
Figure 2
STEP 1: the first step is to create what is called the Daisy. See Figure 2. This is quite straight forward and doesn't require any special algorithms as will be needed later. It can be completed simply by careful inspection.
We then rotate the bottom two layers so that one of the centre square colours matches that of a white edge. Once this has been done, the face is then rotated through 180°.
This is repeated for the other three faces. Figure 3 shows an alignment of the green centre square with the corresponding green/while edge. The face is now ready for the 180° twist. This completes the first step where we have a white cross.
Figure 3
STEP 2: the idea in this step is to complete the white face. For this we use what is called the RIGHTY ALG where ALG stands for ALGORITHM. This algorithm involves a right face clockwise turn, an upper face clockwise turn, an anticlockwise right face turn and an anticlockwise upper face turn. This is depicted as R U R' U'.
The white cross is placed face down and the corner whites are first positioned above where they need to be and the righty alg is applied repeatedly until the white corner pieces are in their correct positions. At the end of this step, the while face is now complete.
STEP 3: in this step we complete the bottom two layers. Additionally, this will involve the use of the LEFTY ALG which is characterised by L' U' L U or, in other words, a left face anticlockwise turn, an upper face anticlockwise turn, a left face clockwise turn and an upper face clockwise turn. In addition to the use of the lefty and righty alg, the cube will need to be spun clockwise or anticlockwise. See Figure 4:
Figure 4
To move an edge to the right, the steps shown in Figure 5 must be followed where R stands for the righty alg and L stands for the lefty alg:
Figure 5
To move an edge to the left, the steps shown in Figure 6 must be followed:
Figure 6
At the end of this third step, the bottom two layers should be complete.
STEP 4: this step involves creating a yellow cross, assuming one has not already been created accidentally. There are two possible scenarios that need to dealt with. The first occurs if one arm of the cross is already complete. See Figure 7 for the algorithm to complete the cross in this scenario (note that the already completed arm needs to be held horizontally as shown):
Figure 7
If neither of the two arms of the cross are complete and there is more than the central yellow square uppermost, then the algorithm show in Figure 8 can be used (note the empty corner must be in the bottom right position and care needs to be taken with lower case f which means the front two faces are rotated not just the first face):
Figure 8
Sometimes only the central yellow square is uppermost. In this case, complete the algorithm for the line: F R F'. This will produce the corner and the f R f' can then be applied.
STEP 5: this step involves getting the corner pieces of the last layer into their proper positions. Sometimes, two adjacent corners will need to be interchanged. In this case, use the algorithm described in Figure 9 (note that the corners to be swapped must be positioned on the right):
Figure 9
For a diagonal swap, the previous step needs to be completed once in any orientation (provided yellow centre is uppermost) to be produce a situation where an adjacent swap is required. Position the corners to be swapped on the right and repeat the algorithm again.
STEP 6: now that the corner pieces are correctly positioned (but in some cases twisted), we want to complete the yellow face. The first step is to flip the cube so that the white face in uppermost. See Figure 10.
Figure 10
Next, identify a corner that needs to be twisted and place it on the bottom right. See Figure 11.
Figure 11
Finally, carry out the RIGHTY ALG until the corner is correctly positioned. See Figure 12:
Figure 12
After doing this for one corner, rotate the bottom layer so that another yellow sticker that needs twisting is in the bottom right position. Keep doing this until the yellow face is completed.
STEP 7: now the edges on the last layer need to be positioned correctly. There are two possible cases to deal with. The first is when one edge is positioned correctly and the second is when no positions are positioned correctly. The first case algorithm is shown in Figure 13 (sometimes this needs to be done twice).
Figure 13
For the case where no edges are correctly positioned, carry out the above algorithm to get an edge that is correctly positioned and then repeat the algorithm with the correct edge facing forward. And that's it. These moves should lead to a completed cube.
For a mathematical examination of the Rubik's cube, the following Numberphile video is recommended viewing:
