Caffeine: the most potent artificial intelligence drink!

Caffeine: the most potent artificial intelligence drink!
Deep in the Lair of the Perpetually Curious Fox

Thursday 18 February 2016

Back in Yellowknife for some Raven company :)

 
Mein Rabe zingen fur seine Essen :)
(My Raven is singing for his Dinner)

In my 6 months absence, the Ravens have missed me! I am delighted that they still recognise me and greets when I come out for a quick hobble. Milli and Micro flies around when they see me. Waiting to see if I have any leftovers for them.

That is one of the babies from last year's nest. Two of the chicks have survived so far, and the parents are teaching them which humans are "safe" and which are "STAY AWAY AT ALL COST".

I am happy that I belong to the former :)

Die glucklich vogel ist sehr lustig.

Oh yeah, I am very impressed with how much German, Dutch, Spanish and Italian I've picked up via Duolingo and Memrise after only 2 months. Highly recommended with two paws up!

Saturday 6 February 2016

of GitHub and Python.



My GitHub link
I haven't migrated most of my files over. Kinda busy with lectures, reading and bookwork. There are several repositories in it already, with some codes that I scripted from the tutorials and lectures.

If you ever want to take up Python programming, I highly recommend this guy's tutorial:
Automate the Boring Stuff
 
At the risk of sounding like a complete Geek:

Now I can exclaim that I speak Parser Tongue!

January was here, and January left

As you can see, no photos. I find winter almost unbearably painful now since last year's accident, so I don't really get out much at all now. It got to the point where everytime it snows I feel like my ankle and foot is being crushed by a gigantic vice. Yeah, OUCH indeed.

And what have I done in the past month?

Actually quite a lot, in between doctor's appointments, physio, sleeping off the pain. It turns out that I will be needing urgent reconstruction surgery after all for my ankle followed by several weeks if not months of physio.

So in the expectation of being laid up for weeks (months?) while recovering I have signed up for several courses, and taken up to learning some more languages (both human and machine). Happily I managed to script quite decently in C++ and Python now. So yay. Adding R programming to the list now.

Coursera does very nice online courses on (almost) everything you can think of. There is something nice about being able to attend virtual lectures while being gimpy-legged. And when your mind is foggy from the painkillers, you can always replay the difficult bits in the lecture. Not something you can do with real live lecturers in a lecture hall.

For the moment I am sticking to Electronics, interfacing Arduinos and Pis, programming and Data Science. It's always good to polish up on the old skillls before you lose them completely.

For human languages, I highly recommend Duolingo App. It is free, and very intuitive to use. I find it's a good app to have when you have need to practice foreign languages, but lacking a human partner. It's nice to be able to read a German or Dutch article and actually understand (most) of it! My word recognition is not automatic yet, but (at least for me) German, Dutch and English are pretty closely related that picking up the vocabulary and syntax is quite easy. Just for the sheer fun of things I am also slowly going through other languages (err...10?) ... but the main 4 are Dutch, German, Italian and Spanish.

Technically, a screenshot is not a photo!
Oh yeah. And finished reading 5 books. I have to admit, it's mostly fiction, as pain makes it hard to focus terribly well. Going through some electronics, Python and C++ texts, too, but the progress is much slower. I do have a Github account that I will link to here when I haev finished putting all my codes in there.



No hiking for the next forseeable future until things are fixed. In the mean time, I will be busily filling my head. Before I die of boredom. When you cannot go anywhere physically, go everywhere mentally (before you go completely MENTAL!)

Oh the wonderful Thinks that you can Think!

Wednesday 6 January 2016

Frohes neues Jahr!

Better late than never !

I hope things will go better this year than it has in the last few.

Among other *skills unlocked* in the previous year -

1) learning to walk again, sans crutches. Still need a lot of work, and surgery. Still cannot run/jump/long distance hike.
2) Caught my first non-pike fish (trout). Caught my first tropical salt water fish.

3) Managed to just squeeze through 53 books. One book a week is not a lot if you don't watch TV.

4) Got over my programming phobia! Hurray for Python. Built a Raspberry Pi. Haven't programmed for years. About time I started again.





5) Restarted electronics and going in depth, hence no (4) . Thinking of even doing a degree in it, as it seemed that my physics degree did not attract that many prospective employers in Canada. 



Resolution for this year? Build up on last year's. Very simple. I have to cut down a lot on physical activities due to recent illness/injuries, looks like it's back to being a geek in a lab.