Sonos - Google Assistant

I have been a huge Sonos fan forever. I had four devices in my home although recently one of them became damaged and I am now down to three. About a year ago I purchased a Sonos One and it has been the best individual Sonos device I have owned. I was very excited about the potential integration with Alexa and Google Assistant when I bought it.

The Alexa support came quickly and it worked pretty well although I have to admit that I tend to favor the Google Assistant devices since I am a die hard Android user. What I had hoped for in terms of Google Assistant support was a long time in coming! Fortunately over the last several weeks, that support has finally arrived!

Last week I did the software update on my Sonos and then added the device to my Google Home set up. All in all it was pretty simple and I felt like it is something most people could easily handle. Once I had everything configured it became very easy to control all my speakers by using the Sonos One device or using my Google Home devices to stop or start play n the various rooms in the house.

In general it has been my experience that Google Assistant voice support is slightly better than Alexa although in my case that could be because I use Assistant on my phone as well as a number of devices in my house.

The only thing that I would say has been a negative is that sometimes it seems like the Sonos device is a tad bit slower than my native Google Home devices. Not sure if that is an underlying hardware issue but my guess is that it is just that it is the first production build of the Google Assistant. I would suspect that it will get fast over time. I never really noticed any latency difference between the Sonos One and my native Alexa devices.

If you are a Google Home/Assistant user and a Sonos owner I am pretty sure you will be as delighted as I have been.

Online Education - Vol. 1

I recently wanted to do a deeper dive into some of the AI areas that we use in our technology stack. Specifically we do a number of things with machine learning, natural language processing, parsing, and use of chatbots and voice assistants. The first three items are more on the validation and processing side where the last two are more on the output/consumption side.

I spoke with a good friend who has spent a lot of time working on ML/AI at FB and he recommended checking out some high level coursework on Coursera and some other services. I have to admit, I was pretty skeptical. I can't recall the last time I had set out to do something of an academic nature.

Throughout the various companies I have been involved at I would routinely go deep on specific books or articles around particular topics that were relevant to work. In looking at trying to understand some of the deeper AI topics, I would have to do some fundamental learning of Python as well as some of the overall topical information around AI, Machine Learning and Deep Learning. While I knew specifically what I wanted to explore, I would have to lay some foundations to grasp the potential to apply some of my theories to these toolsets.

I started out doing some overview classes on Coursera by Andrew Ng and at the same time started taking an introductory class on Python. Both of the classes were well done and I found myself quickly going through them as I have had some long time ago experience programming and the topical stuff from Andrew Ng was very well presented.

These classes only left me wanting to go deeper and I am now working through some coursework using various tools to data mine Twitter and doing analysis as well as doing an overview of TensorFlow through a Udacity Course.

What has amazed me in the few weeks I have been grinding on this is that there are some really powerful resources available to take you very deep in a very short period of time. In addition to the high quality video lectures, there are Jupyter Notebooks with sample code you can modify and various Python scripts that can get you going very quickly. I actually now find myself at the point where I am trying to not figure out if what I want to do is possible but rather what is the best tool or tools for me to test my theories out as fast as possible.

I started out very skeptical about the value of taking the "online education" path to gain new knowledge and I have to say that right now I am pretty blown away by what is available. Stay tuned for more as I go a little deeper in the coming weeks.

Game of Thrones

It was a great 8 year run. I can totally understand the frustration with the rush to a conclusion this last season but I think if you look across the great episodes over time, the good ones made the wrap up worth it, even if it wasn't anywhere near as good as we would have hoped for. Two consolation items. First, the books are still to come and we are certain to see a different outcome. Second, there are multiple spinoffs coming. Can't wait to see where those take it. While it wasn't the best series or end, on balance it was one of the most amazing TV experiences I have had.