benjamta

Started as a spreadsheet, moved to notion database, now a web app. Idea is groups have collective libraries across members, and planning what to play when is a pain.

Tried to make it easy to get going - take photo of your games shelf and we identify the games there, look them up via the BoardGameGeek API and add the to you library, then you can the pool with others.

It's free if you want to give it a go:

https://ourboardgames.com

We've put to together a series to try to give a flavour of what Knowledge Engineering as a career choice looks like - though it might be of interest here.

I used to fly model rockets from the fields by the White Horse. And I'll never forget being made to do cross country running on the Ridgeway from school.

There's so much history and myth tied up with that area. Especially true of the White Horse, Dragon hill (where legend says St. George killed the dragon), and Wayland's Smithy near by.

Infrequently updated thoughts on photography, logic, open rights, canoe building and many other things.

I was here for almost 20 years before I learnt that Heighham is pronounced as just "Ham".

The platform has two main parts:

1. The studio (an area where you can make visual decision-making models in a process similar to mind mapping)

2. The inference engine (which uses your models to automate decision making)

The platform is designed so that computer scientists and automation specialists can overcome the challenges of machine learning (in particular, our inability to stay in control of algorithms that find their own patterns in data) and RPA (in particular, a decision tree’s inability to juggle many variables at a massive scale). And that’s why we’ve focussed on two principles as we improve Rainbird:

1. Human-down structure: that is, we start with human knowledge and apply it to data (so that humans can always understand and explain what the machines are doing)

2. Non-linear automation: that is, we focus on capturing and codifying knowledge that can apply to multiple scenarios (rather than on steps to be followed in a one-off, isolated situation)

They’ve played with raspberry pi too, but Microbit is just so immediate. You write some code (or drag some blocks about), upload and it just works. It’s simple, understandable and quick. It’s also bridging the gap to learning some basic electronics too - building small circuits on a bread board with a mictrobit controller.

There’s something about microbit that just sparks my kids imagination - they’ve used it for school projects, homework assignments, they make little robots, figure out how they can automate tasks like watering their plants. All things they could do on Raspberry Pi of course, but still…

I see my kids playing about with mictrobits and I get a really sense of the same joy I had messing about with computers and electronics in the 1980s.

Some years ago I was taken on a tour of their facility, I was struck by how passionate about the product everyone I met there was. That passion seems to ride through to their loyal user base, I hope Ilford remain strong.

Currently to integrate you'll either need to use our REST api or a Javascript agent - essentially a little themeable widget you can embed in your site. This means that we host your knowledge base and you need do to be on-line to access what you've built.

We do have plans to provide a version of our engine that could be used off line or self hosted. Although we don't expect this to be available in the near future.

For me, and it is a personal thing, actually writing code - that is physically typing braces etc. is not the time consuming part of coding. Far, far more time is spent thinking about my code than actually typing it. Shaving off a few seconds when working in my editor feels like an optimisation too far, especially if it essentially means learning new syntax.

Like I said, it's a personal thing - I know others have good reason to love code completion tools. Now if someone could come up with something like this for when I'm writing in my notebook....