Plugging in Intel’s Neural Compute Stick 2

Technology Editor Bill Wong gives us his appraisal of Intel’s latest Neural Compute Stick 2 after taking a hands-on look.

from Electronic Design - Engineering Essentials Curated By Experts http://bit.ly/2Qn5QOn

Smithfield’s Christmas Eve meat auction returns for 2018

Good news for meat lovers and lovers of a meaty bargain as the exceptionally good fun Christmas Eve auction will return to Smithfield this year.

Despite warnings that the venue might have to change due to development works, it’s been confirmed that Harts of Smithfield will once again open up their shutters in their traditional home near Farringdon Road for the morning.

This year it takes place on Monday 24th December 2018, from 10:30am.

What was once a necessity in the days before refrigeration, to sell of meat as close to consumption, and ensure none is left to rot over the Christmas holiday — is now a tradition maintained by one butcher.

Greg Lawrence has worked at Smithfield since he was sixteen and is now Managing Director of G Lawrence Wholesale Meats, and Chairman of the Smithfield Markets Tenants’ Association.

And it’s exceptionally good fun.

In the run up to Christmas, Greg gathers up plenty of choice meats and turkeys from the other traders ready for the crowd that’ll turn up on a cold Christmas Eve morning, often from 9am onwards.

You don’t need to be there quite that early, as while being at the front of the crowd undeniably helps, they go to a lot of effort to spot people who han’t made a purchase and try to ensure as many people as possible go home with something.

Out they come, parading a choice chunk of meat, declare a shockingly low price, then a roar as people wave money and try to grab a bargain.

Being at the back and catching their eye means handing cash forwards over people’s heads (and the crowd always helps) then then, often, a flying pig hurtles back at you as that pork loin or leg that you bought is sent your way. Or the turkey, or the lamb, or whatever it is they manage to rustle up.

Don’t however expect delicate little slices of something in a neat supermarket package, for this is a proper butchers, and you’ll be getting the real thing, in very large portions. But that’s the fun of it – to buy, for a price a fraction of what they charge in a supermarket – a hunk of meat that leaves you going home thinking “what on earth am I going to do with that?”

Bring your own bags, a handful of tenners and twentys, and enjoy the puzzled look on the way back home on the tube with a rack of ribs bulging out of a bag or a suckling pig draped over your shoulder, all of a quality better than a supermarket, and at a fraction of the price.

Whether you’re going with the hope of filling a freezer, or just to snag a single item as a treat, it’s as much a tradition for the bargains as the sheer damn fun of it all. I’ve never seen a person leave who wasn’t smiling.

It’s the perfect start to Christmas.

NB – for an additional fiver or so, they’ll usually chop up larger pieces if you don’t have a suitable knife at home – just wait until the auction is over for that.

from IanVisits http://bit.ly/2BJ4Uvy

Wave Computing's Total Funding Tops $200 Million

How much money does it take to compete with Nvidia and Intel? Wave Computing, holding $120 million in venture capital by the end of last year to fund the development of machine learning chips, is still trying to figure that out. Even though its data

from Electronic Design - Engineering Essentials Curated By Experts http://bit.ly/2DU4ALH

Ham Antenna Rotator: The Teardown

The hy-gain rotor is a very sturdy design that has passed the test of time. Paul Rako takes a look inside to see what makes it endure.

from Electronic Design - Engineering Essentials Curated By Experts http://bit.ly/2TYn5nQ

Bank tube station gets a new entrance under the Bloomberg building

A brand new entrance has opened at Bank tube station making the Waterloo & City line considerably easier to use, and reducing congestion in the ticket hall for everyone else.

The smart bronze and stone of the mighty Bloomberg Building now gaining the familiar tube roundel poking out from one side to indicate the arrival of a new way down into Bank tube station.

Until this morning, access to the W&C line was via the main ticket hall, then a sloping travolator or staircase down to the tube platforms.

Now, a brand new entrance has opened underneath the new Bloomberg building, with escalators directly down to the tube platforms. It offers a faster route down to the W&C line, and helps divert some traffic away from the ticket hall.

For some users it will also offer an alternative route to the other lines via the tunnel from the W&C platforms.

However, the new entrance is very late in being delivered, having originally been expected to open in late 2015, the opening was pushed back to late 2017 due to delays in completing the concrete box thanks to one of recent year’s most impressive archeological discoveries.

However, although the box was eventually completed by the construction of the Bloomberg building, there has been a long list of delays to works being carried out by London Underground to turn the concrete box into a functioning tube station entrance.

Deadlines were announced, and missed, repeatedly. Problems with the fire doors and the contractor seem to have been the main cause of the recent problems.

However, the latest deadline, of by the end of November, has just about been achieved, with barely a few hours to spare.

A flurry of last minute activity could be seen inside the previously shuttered gates and just at 10am, a lady came out to add the final touch to the new entrance — the tube map.

And, fittingly for a late delivery, the entrance which was expected to open at 10am, opened at 10:15am.

So has the wait been worth it?

Considering the modest entrance, inside is a surprisingly large space, with the usual ticket machines and barriers, and no ticket office.

A bank of escalators take you down to a landing floor, and here, a flourish has been added with a backlit set of graphics showing the Roman heritage of the site.

This was the heart of the early Roman London, and we are going down escalators just as Romans would have walked down what was the steep valley of the Walbrook river.

The backlit wall also creating the pleasing illusion of being in a room with windows and the sun streaming in, which is a little odd this deep underground.

A second bank of escalators take you down to the W&C line platforms, with a patterned ceiling above and adding a bit of decoration to the otherwise fairly unitary concrete, blue panels and steel of the rest of the space.

On the opening morning, the ticket hall was filled with staff who came to see their shiny new thing finally open after so many delays, and down at the W&C line, staff trying to tell passengers streaming off the trains to use the new entrance.

Such is the nature of people that if they see an open door they’ll walk through it, so within seconds of the gates opening, people seeing a tube sign started using the new entrance to get down, then at the bottom following signs to the other tube lines.

Overall the decor — roman panels aside — is a basic design that does the job well, but the most notable effect is the space. There’s a lot of space especially at the lower level that’s in contrast to the cramped tunnels in the rest of the station.

The new entrance adds new escalators to the station, plus an additional lift down to the W&C line, which indirectly improves accessibility to the DLR.

In a few years time, those cramped tunnels will also get a lot larger when the Bank Upgrade Project is completed.

 

 

from IanVisits http://bit.ly/2ADP0Ay

Suspend particles in midair with this acoustic levitation setup

Of course Styrofoam floats on water, but have you ever seen it float in midair? That’s exactly what Julius Kramer’s 3D-printed acoustic levitator does, using an array of 72 40kHz ultrasonic transducers to form standing waves of low and high pressure. When turned on, he’s able to simply insert a tiny foam ball which hovers like magic.

If this seems familiar, his Arduino Nano-powered device is based on work by Asier Marzo, Adrian Barnes, and Bruce W. Drinkwater. What’s interesting about Kramer’s build is that he does a great job illustrating how it works, starting at around 3:00 with an oscilloscope, and continuing on with diagrams, and even a visualization of the waves using steam. He also shows off a miniature version at around 6:00, which while less capable, could make this type of project approachable for those that don’t feel like soldering six dozen small speakers together!

from Arduino Blog http://bit.ly/2ACWQun

DVDFab 11.0.0.6 32-bit

DVDFab 32-bit is a DVD/Blu-ray/video processing application. The application allows you to copy any DVD/Blu-ray disc to a computer HDD and then burn it to blank media, or convert it to a variety of video files to be played on either a computer, portable devices or other compatible display. DVDFab 32-bit is an integrated shareware package that inc...

from FileHippo.com http://bit.ly/2tZf86G

DVDFab 11.0.0.6 64-bit

DVDFab 64-bit is a DVD/Blu-ray/video processing application. The application allows you to copy any DVD/Blu-ray disc to a computer HDD and then burn it to blank media, or convert it to a variety of video files to be played on either a computer, portable devices or other compatible display. DVDFab 64-bit is an integrated shareware package that inc...

from FileHippo.com http://bit.ly/2zhQG5q

How to design isolated CAN systems with correct bus protection

This paper explains the key parameters for both the protection device and the transceiver in order to design an isolated CAN system with correct bus protection.

from Electronic Design - Engineering Essentials Curated By Experts http://bit.ly/2Rot5EN

KeyDepot 2019.6.2

KeyDepot is a user-friendly and intuitive password solution that provides you with a robust way of storing all of your login keys, in a single, password-protected environment, located in the cloud. Key Features include: Supports AES-256 Algorithms. Cloud support. Intuitive User Interface. The app’s interfaces is simple to understan...

from FileHippo.com http://bit.ly/2rjoxHb

Thunderbird 60.3.2

Mozilla Thunderbird makes e-mailing safer, faster, and easier with features such as intelligent spam filters, a built-in RSS reader, and quick search. Thunderbird was designed to prevent viruses and to stop junk mail. Thunderbird includes tabbed e-mail, new search tools and indexing, smart folders, support for Firefox, a simplified s...

from FileHippo.com http://bit.ly/2ziJLsi

Perfect IP Camera Viewer 4.5

Perfect IP Camera Viewer allows you to create a professional video surveillance system on your computer in minutes.

from FileHippo.com http://bit.ly/2vSYIAj