I have been irritated that many recent introductions to machine learning/neural networks/whatever that fail to emphasise the most import trick in machine learning. Many internet resources don’t mention it, and even good textbooks often don’t drill it in to the reader the absolute criticality to success the trick is. In a machine learning context, we wish a learning system to generalise. That is, make good predictions on data it has never encounter before, based on what it learnt during from a training set. There is no easy formula to predict the ability of a learning system to generalise, but you can estimate it using held out data. That held out data is labelled but it is not used in training. It is called the validation set.

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Ahhh, #makgammon, make-a-game-month, is over. I have semi-recovered from the development exhaustion. The single transferable votes have been counted. I have the results!

Before that I would like to say #makgammon was really amazing this year. We had 6 entries, all of which represented a significant contribution in different ways. The spread of games was broad, so there was something for everyone. This was represented in the votes! We asked people to order the games by personal preference (of the games they played). Those orderings were pretty random, indicating that at least someone really liked *every* game. So it just goes to show, you can’t please everyone (so you should never try)! If a game dev did not win a prize, don’t feel bad, because someone in our judging audience did like the concept.

That said, the games that did win did appear higher on average in most people’s score sheet. So congrats to those for winning the mainstream appeal awards. Our prizes were kindly donated by Scirra who make the game development software “Construct 2”. I used that software to build Universal Machine, and I was blown away by how productive I was in 4 weeks. I think its fair to say that even if Universal Machine did not “win”, it was the most complex game, indicating how useful Construct 2 is as a productivity tool. So without further “ado”, the results…
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Good news everyone! After the success of the first Mini Maker Faire in Edinburgh last year, it’s coming back in 2014! MMF 2014 will be held at Summerhall and promises to be bigger and better than last year. The call for makers is open now. If you make cool things and have some interesting things Read more about Mini Maker Faire 2014 is coming![…]

This guide will get you running with the CNC for manual machining operations.

Turn it on!

There are three powered units:

1. computer & monitor

2. the electronics and stepper motors (powered by a computer power supply)

3. The CNC cutter, after turning it on at the wall, you also need to set the direction of the cutter, and turn the speed up. It will not turn the cutter until the speed is set to zero and then increased (so it doesn’t start spinning by accident)

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Want to make candles, but don’t know where to start? The workshop covers some basic candle making theory before getting your hands dirty making candles. No previous experience is required just come along and have fun! Topics covered will include: Different types of candle and wax How to safely melt and pour wax. Re-using wax Read more about Candle Making Basics Workshop, 1st December[…]

Arduino is a micro-controller platform designed for ease of use and learning. It allows the creation of electronically controlled projects, whether it be simple blinking lights, a robot or a music generator. This workshop is aimed at beginners. You don’t needs any previous electronics or programming knowledge or experience. Topics covered include: An introduction to Read more about Arduino Workshop – Saturday 23rd November[…]

We quite often hear people saying “I’d love to get into electronics but i don’t know how to solder” Although you can do lot of electronics including our Arduino Workshop without needing to solder, it quickly becomes a really handy skill to make you own projects and fix/hack electronics. The workshop starts with the absolute Read more about Soldering Workshop – Saturday 16 November[…]

Come join us Edinburgh for the second make-a-game-in-a-month, month. Stretch yourself creatively or technically to create something fun. Demo day is Sat. Nov 30th and open to the public, you can come to play other peoples games even if you’re not authoring. Tell your friends!

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The reason why we keep certain information private, when and to whom we disclose it, is a private choice. The Edinburgh Hacklab hosts on Friday (2013-10-25) the first tin foil hat party to investigate together how you can hack your daily routine to limit access to this information (Yes, it is a cryptoparty.in with a Read more about Tinfoil Hat Party[…]

In Summer 2010, 12 hackers/makers got together and rented a studio at Out of the Blue so that they could have somewhere to work, to keep equipment and to share with the rest of the community (apparently, having a milling machine on a coffee table in your lounge is okay for a bit but doesn’t Read more about Edinburgh Hacklab is three! Come and party![…]