Gamespot video about The Elder Scrolls series

Just a quick note to share this video by Gamespot about The Elder Scrolls series, one of my favorite CRPGs. I started with Daggerfall, then Morrowind. Subsequently discovered Arena when it was made free for download. Then got both Oblivion and Skyrim when I got The Elder Scrolls Anthology.

Enjoy the video! 😄

App to manage books

I was thinking of making an application (desktop or Android) to help manage the books I have. One that can scan ISBN bar codes, then automatically fetch the details about each book from the Internet, plus allow for manual entries if the details cannot be found.

While doing a bit of background research into the tools for creating such a program, I instead found some Android apps that can already do this. A more promising one is Book Catalogue, which seems to be able to fulfill my needs. Although it seems to lack Japanese and Chinese support, which is a downside since I have books in English, Chinese, and Japanese. Still, will be giving it a try.

What attracts me is the project is actually open source. You can get the source code here from GitHub. Which means I can try tweaking it to query Japanese and Chinese sources if I can find the appropriate APIs. But that is something I will be putting off for a while. First, let me try the app... 😅

Self-driving cars and learning to drive on the other side of the road

Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

So now, cars have learnt to drive on public roads in the United States.

The question, though, is how easy it willl be to train these cars, originally trained to drive on the right side of the road in the United States, to drive on the left side of the road. Do we need to repeat the entire training process, this time with videos of driving on the left, and actual time spent on roads driving on the left? Or can the process be a simpler one?

At present, I would think the answer is probably closer to the former. But I hope someone can look into this to see how we can find an answer to perform the latter. Because the latter is closer to human intelligence. I learnt driving, and obtain my driving licence driving on the left side of the road. But when I had to drive in the United States, I did not retake my driving lessons to learn how to drive on the right side of the road. I just drove a bit more cautiously for the first hour or so to get used to driving on the right. Will we be able to achieve this in a machine?

The Trumpette is in Japan

Smurf. Smurfette.
Bachelor. Bachelorette.

Well, the Trumpette is here in Japan. Let's see how good she is at blowing her trumpet.

😄