In part two I successfully decoded the TV Teddy audio embedded in a TV Teddy video, and I’ve watched the sync’d playback with the original video. In performing the decoding I learned that: The TV Teddy audio track is created by mapping the audio waveform to shades of grey The bit rate can be only …
Decoding TV Teddy – Part Two: Programming and Audio Output
As a purely fun and academic exercise, I’m going attempt to decode the TV Teddy audio track embedded in a TV Teddy video programme, and output the audio as a separate file. I’ll then try and play back both the audio file and the YouTube video in sync to enjoy this particular TV Teddy episode …
Decoding TV Teddy – Part One: Discovery
I’ve always been fascinated by technologies embedded in products – especially toys which use tech to provide interaction with the child playing with it. Indeed I think toys really ‘push’ technology as they need to be easy to understand and use yet be robust enough survive boistorous play. From the earliest clockwork rabbits, to dolls …
TechForTesco QR code appears on Midsomer Murders episode
An eagle-eyed TV viewer has contacted me to say that, when he scanned a QR code in an episode of the ITV detective drama Midsomer Murders called Murder By Magic, he arrived at my old blog at TechForTesco. Here is the original QR code: …which contains a web link to take you to this page …
Follow my DJI Mavic Pro Aerial Photography
Dear reader, As well as writing this blog, I also post YouTube videos of flights filmed by my DJI Mavic Pro aerial camera / quadcopter / drone at this web address: https://1fw.tv “1fw” stands for “1FW Flight Widescreen” (yes it’s recurive) so please take a look and let me know what you think!
I’m a panellist at Retail Connections’ “AI in Retail” London event November 16th 2017
I am delighted to be a panellist this November 16th at Retail Connections’ “AI in Retail” event in London. If you are a retailer interested in leading expert opinions on AI, sign up to attend this free event: https://goo.gl/DHEPAE
UK productivity falling for second quarter in a row
(pic: Eric Hossinger / Flickr) Today, I learned that that UK productivity has continued to fall at a time when growth in our economy is badly needed as we career towards an uncertain Brexit. Since I focus on innovation in retail, I needed some expertise on why productivity was down, so I turned to Nigel Driffield of Warwick Business …
How can you prove you’re not in a computer simulation?
I’ve enjoyed read this article in Cosmos Magazine, that has concluded that we cannot live in computer simulation of the kind indicated in the outstanding 1999 movie The Matrix. https://cosmosmagazine.com/physics/physicists-find-we-re-not-living-in-a-computer-simulation The article reports that two scientists set out to see whether whether it was possible to use a technique known as Quantum Monte Carlo to study …
Compressing MacOS / OSX files transparently using AFSCTOOL
As my Macbook Pro goes through a phase of getting full and needing to have its disk swept of old files from time to time, I wish that MacOS had a ‘compression’ tag for its files like Windows has.That way, files would remain on the disk in a compressed state without having to move them …
I’ve had published a new Alexa Skill (How-to walkthrough)
This article is long in order to provide a step-by-step guide to how I wrote my Alexa Skill. Never too old to learn, I wanted to understand how to code and publish an Alexa skill. It’s an interesting mix of web technologies that work together to bring Alexa skills to life, and I wanted to …