TC_Chu's Point

Open Source Robotics Foundation

Open Source Robotics Foundation, Inc. (OSRF) is an independent non-profit organization founded by members of the global robotics community.  The mission of OSRF is to support the development, distribution, and adoption of open source software for use in robotics research, education, and product development.

http://www.osrfoundation.org/

Electric imp

http://www.electricimp.com/

In essence, the Imp provides an easy, integrated way to connect almost any hardware device both to other devices and to internet services. It's more than just a WiFi card, or even a WiFi module with processing built in - it's an integrated platform that deals with the drudgery of connectivity, allowing you to concentrate on the application instead of the mechanics.

The Imp itself is very small - 32mm x 24mm x 2.1mm - but packs a lot inside.

For starters, there's industry standard 802.11b/g/n WiFi, complete with WEP, WPA and WPA2 encryption, along with a great antenna.

Next, there's the processor. A Cortex-M3 core gives great performance combined with low power consumption, allowing the Imp to deal with both maintaining a secure connection to the service and also executing the developer's code in a stable environment.

Finally, there's the I/O. Though there are only six pins available for application use, they're six very capable pins. UARTs, I2C, SPI, analog in and out, PWMs, GPIOs... all selectable under software control.

 

 

證所稅的問題是？

我反對證所稅

不是因為證所稅的緣故

而是因為多一條法律就多一個被控管的規則

沒錯現在或許規定很寬鬆

但是只要有規則就可以調整

哪天他要改你也沒辦法

請神容易送神難！！

Hartverdrahtet – Infinite complexity in 4096 bytes

Check the Video

MCHCK – a small ARM Cortex M3 development board

Small form factor board, with a STM32L151 ARM Cortex M3 for around 5 dollars. This is the target of the MCHCK development board. The board was designed to be cheap enough so that you can develop a project with it, and not have to re-purpose it for the next project, but get a new one instead. Read about the design points below.

 

Small. The Arduino is huge. It is just way bulky for many purposes. Also you can’t breadboard with it. Ok, now there is the Pro Mini or the Teensy. Yes, that’s the form factor I want. Small form factor allows more use cases.

Cheap. Well, there you have it. Every Arduino sets you back about $20. The mbed costs way more. Ok, the MSP430 Launchpad costs $5, but then it is… well, the Launchpad. But $5 sounds good. At $5, you don’t have to ponder anymore whether your silly idea is really worth it. $20 might be too much to measure when the postman delivers letters (plot it over the year?). Or instead, you decide to take apart your Arduino rig that was used to count how often you open the fridge door, and use it for the mailbox instead; you all know the drill — $20 makes you stingy (“frugal”). $5 always goes. Low price fosters creativity.

Powerful. Because, sometimes, an AVR is just a bit slow. And really, getting an obscenely expensive FTDI cable every time you want to interface your microcontroller with a PC? Then all this serial console business, 10 different FTDI COM/ttyUSB ports… So what we need is enough computing power and easy interfacing with PCs. Modern ARM MCU with integrated USB transceiver! With a bit of supplied library code, implementing a USB device is a breeze. HID, mass storage, serial port. Easy interfacing with the PC. Powerful modern MCUs allow for easier development and usability.

Via the forum.

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Original Page: http://dangerousprototypes.com/2012/05/10/mchck-a-small-arm-cortex-m3-development-board/

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Via iPod touch 64g

 

花生與朱元璋的故事 （今天才知道）

另有明朝朱元璋皇帝的神話傳傳說：據說，古早古早的土豆，原本是長在地面上。有一天臭頭皇帝朱元璋在花生田裡玩，玩累了的他就倒頭靠在花生田隴上睡覺。結實在地上的土豆弄痛他的癩痢頭。一覺醒來，他可生氣了，對著花生大罵「你這麼壞心，以後你就生的土下，甲嘸弄到阮的頭。」從此以後，花生只能乖乖的長在地下了。[臭頭皇帝朱元璋和落花生的恩怨情仇]

康莊大道我不走 羊腸小徑我最愛！

Photo via samyaoo

'TeleHuman' uses Kinect for 3D holographic chat

via Engadget (check the video)

What is Bioinformatics?

Let’s assume we have a species of bacteria that is part of the normal millions of ‘good’ bacteria living on and inside healthy human beings; we’ll call this Bacteria X.0. One day Bacteria X started making people very ill. What happened to Bacteria X.0 to make it become the harmful Bacteria X.1? Let’s see how we could answer this question using bioinformatics, along the way gaining insight into the wonderful world of bioinformatics.

Using traditional molecular biology techniques, we isolate Bacteria X and extract its DNA. Then we “sequence” this DNA. Cue the first link in the bioinformatics chain: acquiring data! Acquiring data is the process of generating useable data from a biological sample. In our case, deriving and determining the DNA sequence of the Bacteria X genome.

The next link in the chain is storing this sequence data. While bacterial genomes are typically small, other genomes, such as those of human beings, can produce terabytes (1000 gigabytes) of data.

Now we analyze this sequence data. There are people who specialize in developing computational tools to analyze and visualize data, versus people who actually analyze the information. A typical analysis for our sample case might be to first graphically visualize and compare the genome of the original, harmless Bacteria X.0 with the genome of the new, harmful Bacteria X.1. A scientist might observe a segment of DNA in Bacteria X.1 which is not present in the original Bacteria X.0. This new region of DNA may be responsible for the harmful effects, so the next analysis steps might be to drill down deeper into this region and see what genes lie there, what the function of those genes are, where they may have come from, etc.

[Remember: all assumptions made and conclusions drawn in this example are hypothetical and for illustrative purposes only.]

In this example, we encountered at least 4 different specialized areas within the field of bioinformatics:

1)      Acquiring of data (working with machines and equipment, sequencing DNA)
2)      Storing data (typically working with databases)
3)      Developing tools to analyze and visualize data (programming)
4)      Analyzing data (statistics, analysis)

Typically, individuals will specialize in one particular area rather than working simultaneously across all these fields. That, combined with all the different applications of bioinformatics, means you could ask 100 different “bioinformaticians” what they do and get 100 very different answers!

 

16FUSB - A USB 1.1 implementation for PIC16F628/628A

The development of such a firmware really isn't a trivial thing, especially taking into account the limitations of a simple microcontroller, such as the PIC16F628/628A, especially with regard to its speed.

A PIC16F628/628A can work with frequencies up to 20MHz. However, each instruction cycle takes four clock cycles. This means that, in fact, with a 20MHz crystal we have our PIC running on 5MHz (20 / 4 = 5). Doing a little overclock, with a 24MHz crystal, we can run programs on 6MHz (or 6Mips). Since the speed of the USB low-speed is 1.5 Mbps, we can obtain a total of four instructions (6 / 4 = 1.5) to treat each bit of data during transfer. That is, each bit of the USB bus takes the time of four instructions of our PIC.

 

http://www.lendlocus.com/?q=16fusb

Bricks of a feather, build together

via Living Bricks <-- 更多作品

多一分理解 少幾分誤解 認識學習障礙者（101年5月4日）文／黃奕偉

給予適當的教育　學障者仍有一片天

在某些方面看起來聰明，在另一些方面卻顯得笨拙的人，似乎並不少見。其實心理學家早就發現智力至少有八種，而且這八種不同的聰明之間，並沒有一定的關係。也就是說，一個人可能在語文方面表現得很好，但數學卻學得一團糟；或者在球場上是無人能及的高手，唱起歌來卻五音不全。

我們很容易在一個人身上看到不同智能之間的差距；而從那些學習障礙名人身上，我們發現：他們雖然在學業或語文能力表現不佳，卻同樣能使用自己的優勢能力，創造超乎常人的成就。

增進對學習障礙者的認識，能使大家認識自己；其實，每個人都跟他們類似，某部分很聰明，某部分能力很弱，如果能善用聰明之處，就像電影中的伊翔發揮畫畫天分，不論在畫畫、舞蹈、音樂和運動方面，也一定能找到屬於自己的舞臺。

小補帖

一般說來，有學習障礙的孩子因為腦神經中某種學習功能異常，使他們的聽、說、讀、寫、算遭遇一項或多項困難，而產生學習問題。學習障礙大致分以下幾類：

●閱讀障礙：認字或閱讀理解方面困難，常認錯字或字義混淆，往往用耳朵聽的能力比用眼睛讀的能力好。

●書寫障礙：寫字和寫作困難，往往口語表達要比書寫表達好。 

●數學障礙：運算能力、數學概念、數學問題解決等能力差。

●記憶力障礙：短期記憶或長期記憶有困難，難記住或回憶聽或看過的東西。

●知動障礙：視覺收訊、聽覺收訊、運動感覺、平衡感覺收訊困難，常有聽而不聞，視而不見等狀況，肢體動作協調差，或手部精細動作協調力差。

●思考障礙：無法將學習內容分類、組織。 

●口語障礙：語音辨識、文法句型運用、口語理解均有障礙。 

●注意力不集中或過動現象。

學習障礙雖然是終身伴隨的困擾，但是只要經過適當且有效的教育，學障者還是可以發揮潛力。

原文連結 （國語日報）

Faceted classification

A faceted classification system allows the assignment of an object to multiple characteristics (attributes), enabling the classification to be ordered in multiple ways, rather than in a single, predetermined, taxonomic order. A facet comprises "clearly defined, mutually exclusive, and collectively exhaustive aspects, properties or characteristics of a class or specific subject".^[1] For example, a collection of books might be classified using an author facet, a subject facet, a date facet, etc.

Faceted classification is used in faceted search systems that enable a user to navigate information along multiple paths corresponding to different orderings of the facets. This contrasts with traditional taxonomies in which the hierarchy of categories is fixed and unchanging.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faceted_classification

 

R, now a major programming language

As a language specifically for data analysis, R isn't in the same league in raw sales as general-purpose languages like C++ or Java, but it does show the most growth of any major language: R is the bright green box in the bottom row of the treemap above. Amongst print book sales for functional languages, R is both the biggest seller and the fastest growing by a large margin (as shown in thechart at 00:29 in this video about functional languages).

via R-Blogger

Breaking the Genome Bottleneck

The group plans to sell its so-called "Bina Box" preloaded with software that can reduce the 300 gigabytes or so of raw data from a human genome into a few hundred megabytes of genetic information. The box will upload the compressed dataset to Bina's cloud service for storage, sharing, and further analysis. The Bina Box can do the initial heavy lifting and make the data small enough to send to the cloud, the company says.

Bina Technologies says its system does this initial processing of genomic data at speeds that are orders of magnitude faster than tools made available by the Broad Institute, the MIT-Harvard joint genome center. What takes about a week using the Broad's genome variation analysis pipeline on a high-end eight-core machine on Amazon's cloud can be done in about two hours on a Bina Box, says Bani Asadi. The company expects to publish a full description of its comparison to other analysis pipelines in the coming months.

via MIT Technology Review

 

National Geographic Vision of Earth 2012 (美麗的照片)

更多照片

惠妮休斯頓 ─ 一個教會女孩的故事 文◎王星然

《我仰望你》（I look to you）是惠妮最後一張唱片的主打歌，也是美國告示牌（Billboard）排行榜冠軍曲。惠妮說，這首歌總結了她所有想說的話。有人在猜到底她仰望的是誰？是歌迷？還是她的母親？惠妮告訴歐普拉：「是一位比你我更偉大的！」 

她在《早安美國》　（Good Morning America）節目裡獻唱這首歌時，悄悄改了歌詞：「當你失去一切振作的力量，在祂裡面，你會得到剛強！」她鼓勵歌迷在祂裡面找尋力量！ 

在網路上，你可以找到各種不同版本的《我仰望你》。我最喜歡的，是2011年惠妮在BET福音音樂節晚會上，與福音歌手金布瑞爾（Kim Burrell）合唱的版本。儘管那時她圓潤的高音已不再，但低迴黯啞的嗓音裡，自然流露出信仰的真誠；兩個姐妹激蕩出的音樂火花，和主內肢體間的愛，令人動容！ 

惠妮從靈魂深處向主吶喊： 

「……當暴風雨臨近，當日頭昏暗無光 走過了這一切苦難，在世上誰才是我真正的避難所在？ 我仰望你！我仰望你！ 當失去一切振作的力量，在你裡面，我得剛強！ 當璀璨的樂章戛然而止，在你裡面，我得聽凱歌！ 我仰望你…………………………………… 我選擇的每一條路都引我走向後悔， 我不知是否還能抵達終點， 我己經沒有力氣，只能抬頭仰望……… 我仰望你！我仰望你！」 

歐普拉問惠妮：「誰是你的最愛？」，她笑了笑說：「是主！（The Lord）」 

安息吧，惠妮！盼你回到所仰望的主懷裡。在那裡，再沒有暴風和巨浪，只有美妙的樂章！ 

原文連結

MIT and Harvard announce edX

EdX is a joint partnership between The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University to offer online learning to millions of people around the world. EdX will offer Harvard and MIT classes online for free. Through this partnership, the institutions aim to extend their collective reach to build a global community of online learners and to improve education for everyone.

MIT’s Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Anant Agarwal serves as the first president of edX, and Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith leads faculty in developing courses. Along with offering online courses, the institutions will use edX to research how students learn and how technology can facilitate teaching—both on-campus and online.

EdX is based on MITx, a technological platform from MIT designed to offer online versions of their courses. These versions include: video lessons, embedded testing, real-time feedback, student-ranked questions and answers, collaborative web-based laboratories, and student paced learning. Though this will never replace the traditional residential model of undergraduate education, it will serve to improve and supplement the teaching and learning experienced at both universities. In turn, Harvard and MIT have created edX open-source software and invite interested institutions to join edX with their own educational content.

EdX is a Cambridge-based not-for-profit, equally owned and funded by Harvard and MIT. The first set of courses will be announced in the summer and will begin in the Fall 2012.

http://www.edxonline.org/index.html

 

 

Is There Big Money in Big Data?

So what exactly is wrong with that?

It reminds me a lot of what was going on 15 years ago with CRM (customer relationship management). Back then, the idea was "Wow, we can start collecting all these different transactions and data, and then, boy, think of all the predictions we will be able to make." But ask anyone today what comes to mind when you say "CRM," and you'll hear "frustration," "disaster," "expensive," and "out of control." It turned out to be a great big IT wild-goose chase. And I'm afraid we're heading down the same road with Big Data.

http://www.technologyreview.com/business/40320/?ref=rss

 

Bases to Bytes Cheap sequencing technology is flooding the world with genomic data. Can we handle the deluge?

The cost of sequencing human genomes is plunging—in the most advanced genomics centers, it's falling five times faster than the cost of computing. Increasingly, people are getting their DNA sequenced by companies and research labs in a search for clues about genetic variation and disease.

But the industry must figure out how to cheaply store all the resulting data. Each of the 3.2 billion DNA base pairs in a human genome can be encoded by two bits—800 megabytes for the entire genome. But considerable data about each base is usually collected, and genes are often sequenced many times to ensure accuracy, so it's common to save around 100 gigabytes when sequencing a human genome with a machine made by industry leader Illumina. Keeping this much data about every person on the planet would require about as much digital storage as was available in the whole world in 2010.

The trick, then, will be to save less. Harvard geneticist George Church says that eventually only the differences between a newly sequenced genome and a reference genome will need to be stored. That information could be encoded in as little as four megabytes. Then your genome might be just another e-mail attachment.

via MIT Technology Review

 

責任制

各位勞工

領多少錢付多少責任

這就是責任制

 

生命樹

via Wiki

很美很有深度的電影 

帶我們由巨觀的宇宙和時間洪流到微觀的家庭互動人格的塑造 唯有順服與愛我們才能獲得救贖（自由）

在巨觀的創世記 順服是容易的 然而卻容易流於冷酷無情 在微觀的家庭關係中 愛是我們樂見 但是卻無法帶我們脫離那無理由的苦難   

PS.一部影像版的約伯記＋約翰福音

PS.這部片子不是一搬的故事 比較像是敘事詩 一段一段的 結構會顯得凌亂 不過我很喜歡 

How to download complete XML records from PubMed and extract data

How it works

What’s cool about esearch is that you can tell it to save a history of the articles found by your query, and then use another function called efetch to download that history. This is done by adding &usehistory=y to your search, which will generate this XML (in addition to some other XML-tags):

<WebEnv>
NCID_1_90555773_130.14.18.48_5553_1335519406_1226217114
</WebEnv>

Once we have extracted the WebEnv string, we just tell PubMed’s efetch to send us the articles saved in WebEnv. There’s one complication, though. PubMed “only” allows us to fetch 10 000 articles in one go, therefore my code includes a loop that will batch download the data, and paste it together in order to create valid XML-code. The XML cutting and pasting is done with gsub, since the unparsed XML-data is just a long string. It’s not the most beautiful solution, but it seems to work.

Now that all XML-data is saved in one object, we just need to parse it an extract whatever PubMed field(s) we’re interested in. I’ve included a function that will parse the XML-code and extract journal counts, although you could use the same method to extract any field.

原文連結 http://www.r-bloggers.com/how-to-download-complete-xml-records-from-pubmed-and-extract-data

 

去樂高網站投票 Motorized Tachikoma

http://lego.cuusoo.com/ideas/view/13519#

投票去！超過一萬人樂高就會考慮生產喔

IKEA Unveils Cheapo Digital Camera Made of Cardboard

via inhabitat

Touchy: The Human Camera

http://www.fashioningtech.com/profiles/blogs/touchy-the-human-camera

118 years of US State Weather Data

A recent post on the Junkcharts blog looked at US weather dataand the importance of explaining scales (which in this case went up to 118). Ultimately, it turns out that 118 is the rank of the data compared to the previous 117 years of data (in ascending order, so that 118 is the highest). At the end of the post,

via R-Blogger

5 reasons to sell your Apple stock

5 reasons to sell Apple:
1. Apple is Apple because of Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is gone… Great men do not have great successors.
2. It’s a toy company. A toy company can’t be the U.S.’ most valuable company for long…
3. You have too much of Apple… If you have your only fortune tied up in Apple, because you have ridden this amazing stock up to these crazy levels, you should top slice your position at the very least (that is to say sell half). Think of it as taking your retirement early.
4. The chart says so. If it looks like a bubble and acts like a bubble, it’s a bubble.
5. The cab driver is tipping Apple. When cabbies are talking about taking out Ninja loans to buy Las Vegas property, you know the real estate boom is over.

Chambers writes, “Let me be clear: I wish the best for the NY cabbie with his Apple stock. I hope Apple bounces back and smashes its way to $1 trillion of market cap, but gravity and hope are not best friends.”

via macdailynews

Full Article

 

Visualising the Path of a Genetic Algorithm

We quite regularly use genetic algorithms to optimise over the ad-hoc functions we develop when trying to solve problems in applied mathematics. However it’s a bit disconcerting to have your algorithm roam through a high dimensional solution space while not being able to picture what it’s doing or how close one solution is to another. With this in mind, and also just out of curiosity, I’ve tried to visualise the path of a genetic algorithm by using principal components analysis.

via R-Blogger

Tank Wars: a video game on ipad controlling a physical bot

The tank and the target are both run by Arduinos with RN-XV WiFly modules.  The tank has obstacle avoidance both forward and backward, which, from the video,  seems like it might make navigating a bit challenging at times. The iPad interface is just a web page, so it could really be used on any device. This is pretty cool, we can’t wait to see how he proceeds from here.

via HackaDay

DNA: The Secret of Life

via Amazon

前半段關於基因改造食物的部份差點看不下去 就算那是James D. Watson說的 後面有關基因治療的部份 我也是不是很同意 （我支持體細胞（Somatic Cell)基因治療 而不支持性細胞（Germline Cell)基因治療）因為如果你知道目前把好的基因植入你的細胞是使用反轉錄病毒而且你完全不知道會把基因植到哪邊 光是這一點就讓人不放心（對於重大的基因疾病這是兩難的選擇）Watson對基因工程的看法太過天真了 但是我同意我門應該對基因做更多的研究 甚至於找出與行為相關的基因 不是要逃避責任而是知道有這樣的缺陷才能用適當的教育或是環境來改善

The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology Is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease, and Inheritance

via Amazon

很有趣的書

3D Printing as an Art Form

The world of Chicago based digital artist Sophie Kahn is firmly embedded in 3D. Originally from Australia, Sophie trained as a photographer and came to perceive 3D scanning and 3D printing as post-photographic processes. Much of her work over the last eight years has revolved around these digital processes, either in the course of project progression or form of project resolution.

http://blog.ponoko.com/2012/04/19/3d-printing-as-an-art-form/

濁度計 (3)

via Thermo Scientific Orion AQUAfast AQ4500 Turbidimeter

Getting Historical Weather Data in R and SAP HANA

  Now, to get historical weather data, I am using Weather Underground's REST APIs and I put together a simple program in R to get the weather data in a data.frame.  This R module gets called from SAP HANA and it inserts a new table into HANA with the right weather information.  Once, I have the data in HANA, I performed mash-ups in HANA and off I go on my intellectual pursuit.

via R-Blogger