Nels Lindahl — Functional Journal

A weblog created by Dr. Nels Lindahl featuring writings and thoughts…

Month: December 2018

  • Sharing a photo of a Denver sunrise

    Earlier this morning I managed to snap a picture of the sunrise. It was fantastic and majestic (dare I say fanjestic?). The camera on my Google Pixel 3 XL does a pretty good job of capturing a moment, but it does not produce the type of depth and detail that a really amazing full size camera captures. Those amazing machine learning algorithms over at Google Photos did some magic to the base photograph. One of the photos shared below is stylized and the other is an enhancement. Both of the modifications look pretty darn good in my opinion. It is amazing to see what the machine learning algorithms are able to accomplish with a photograph. The real question is if the algorithm could be extended to make a decision about quality vs. numerically better. The algorithm that did the enhancement was designed to move the image from the original to something that would be considered enhanced. It was able to complete a transform that is numerically accepted as an improvement or at some level at least an acceptable alteration. None of that effort relates to a judgment of quality. None of it helps determine or explain why that transform improved the image.

    Google stylized this photo of a sunrise in Denver
    Google auto-enhanced this photo of a sunrise in Denver
    The original photo of a sunrise in Denver

  • A full day of working in the Google Cloud Platform

    Breakfast happened. Espresso shots were made. The movie Alien (2003) is playing with a few directors cut edits on the television. I have to say that today got off to a good start. I’m setup to sit and work for the next few hours without any planned interruptions or disturbances. The entire Alien quadrilogy is queued up to provide something in the background to help keep me focused. That might sound counterintuitive, but I work better with either some music or content on in the background. Sitting down and working in absolute silence is a recipe for my mind to start racing and for my attention to get pulled in a myriad of directions.

    Things got real pretty quickly this morning. It just took a few moments to setup a new project called newsletter in my Google cloud Platform (GCP) account. Setting that new project up was probably going to be the easiest part of the whole process. The next little bit of time will be spent working on setting up a natural language processing neural network within my GCP project. My efforts today will be broken down into three areas: 1) setting up the neural network or maybe using the natural language API, 2) building a content ingestion method, and 3) starting work on developing the workflow necessary to ingest content, process that content in a meaningful way, and generate a newsletter based on that content. Writing all of that into one really long sentence made me realize just how much work is on tap today. All of the foundational things are already in place. Today will be able staying focused and putting things together in an ordered and thoughtful way.

    Yeah —- I made some progress today, but my ambition outpaced my ability to build all of that in one day. In hindsight, I probably should have known better.

  • Beyond the depths of that first overwritten passage

    Opening with a witty barrage of prose might be a good way to get going. Beyond the depths of that first overwritten passage a nugget of truth might be hiding. Perhaps during the course of those moments when first filling the page something forms or builds out of nothing. Each moment follows on the legacy of the last. Echoes of promise and unfulfilled momentum shake a little bit of truth from what was left. Building out that start be it a fall start or a truly epic passage of pose the folly of overwriting always exists. The truth always turns out to be that potential outpaces performance. Every perfect possible future opens the door to something truly great. Unfortunately, each of those doors tend to have a certain commitment or consequence. Taking that first step toward a future that could be perfect might not unfold as a perfect journey.

    Maybe this is the moment I break out my fountain pen and write some lyrics or some form of poetry. That might end up being more and more unlikely as the typing keeps going. Tonight I’m stuck between listening to music while writing for a bit or maybe having Netflix on in the background. Tomorrow I took the day off work. It will be a day devoted to working on something. That is the big question right now… what exactly tomorrow will hold is a secret that has been kept from all my momentary considerations. Tomorrow is a day right now full of possibility. Every door is open and every moment could be a moment that opens the floodgates of productivity. For me right now the potential of tomorrow probably outpaces anything that will actually happen. Somewhere in that thought is a seed of truth. Maybe it is a honest one with the potential for more.

    Tomorrow I’m probably going to focus in on using my Google Cloud Platform (GCP) account to begin work on an automated newsletter based on a custom build natural language processing neural network. Sure that might seem like a lofty enough goal for a single day of fun, coding, and a few meals of Soylent. Maybe I’ll start watching the Alien quadrilogy and work on some coding in the cloud. Yeah —- that sounds like it will be desired direction for tomorrow. Things could devolve from that nobel path to an afternoon of Warren Zevon records, but we will have to wait for the moment to know it.

  • Perfect for the weight of words

    These moments of peace between the chaos of life are perfect for the weight of words. Left idle for even a moment my mind turns toward a racing condition. Thoughts build up and before you know it. Stacks of ideas end up competing to be at the forefront my thoughts. That is where things end up for the most part. Converting those ideas into some type of outcome requires taking things to a conclusion. It requires finishing things. Most major writing tasks are not single serving endeavors. They cannot be completed in one major writing session. Maybe that could be the natural end of a series of creative sessions. A few different sessions could produce something of merit. They could result into something of value. Turning ideas into a final draft or at least some type of manageable prose takes time.

    Tonight for example… I have one hour right now that could be spent on anything. That one hour really does exemplify the perfect weight of words. Every minute taunts the possible. Each minute counts down toward what could be and quickly separates it from what happened. That is the natural path of things when you sit down to write for an hour and end up reflecting on life, part of the universe, and some things. Those moments of reflection were stole from the perfect possible outcome of an hour of uninterrupted epic prose creation.

  • Eating only Soylent for an entire week

    You are probably ready for an update. If that was what you were waiting for, then this post might just be the post for you. This next week I’m converting over to only eating Soylent for every meal. That means 7 straight days of Soylent based meals. I have never managed to do 21 straight meals of nothing but Soylent. My normal days involve one or two Soylent fueled meals. My theory on ordering Soylent was to replace breakfast and some lunches with a more reasonable alternative. Switching over to a diet of water, coffee, and Soylent for an entire week sounds like something that will work out pretty well. Updates on my progress should be expected at a daily cadence. Each update will probably be as eventful as the last, but the cumulative nature of the process could produce some interesting prose. That in and of itself will probably be enough to fuel the process.

  • Taking a two hour exam wore me out today

    Taking the day off was a great idea. Every now and again having a Wednesday off is great. Part of the day was devoted to taking the AWS certified machine learning specialty beta exam. The whole process took about two hours and was very interesting. The PSI system took a little bit to setup and get running. The actual exam part took about 90 minutes. It has been a bit since my last adventure to a testing facility. It was pretty much exactly the way I remember it being.

  • Falling asleep during an epic studying session

    It has been some time since I last fell asleep during an epic studying session. It was probably back in graduate school. Those days were fun, but they seem like forever ago. Let me set the state for you a little bit for a moment. My Dell ultra wide monitor was playing some AWS videos on one side and a document was open on the other half of the monitor. My entire focus was on what the presenter was saying then all of a sudden my hands hit the keyboard and my attention jerked back into focus. It had happened all of a sudden. Sure enough for a minute or two I had fallen asleep during some AWS training videos on my day off in the middle of the day. Maybe the right way to look at it is to assume my cup was full and it was time for a nap. Perhaps it was an unplanned power nap. It was most definitely not part of my machine learning and artificial intelligence learning plan for the day. Today was a day that was entirely devoted to learning and studying. That was what made it such an interesting day. It was full of possibility. Oddly enough, it also was a day that that included an impromptu nap.

  • Today was a day without a ton of machine learning classes

    For some reason today was for better or worse devoted to watching some football. This Saturday was full of college football conference championship games. To that end, today was a day without a ton of machine learning classes. Throughout the last year I have been listening to a variety of Dune books. Audiobooks are interesting, but they do tend to distract me at the end of the day. Sometimes a little bit of distraction is required. Maybe that little bit might be more than what my Pandora internet streaming stations could provide. To that end sometimes listening to an audiobook was the right way to shift my thoughts to something different before falling asleep. A ton of the Google Cloud Platform and AWS content has been consumed in that hour or so before falling asleep. Trading out my relaxation time for some deeper learning was the right thing to do. It was something that helped me power forward toward a deeper understanding of machine learning. So much artificial intelligence related content is now available mostly for free or a nominal charge.

    Tonight, I finished listening to the last hour of the 2016 audiobook, “Navigators of Dune.” It was mostly derivative and the plotlines were shallower than the classic story told by Frank Herbert. That does not really make it bad content, but it does help explain how it is a lesser contribution to the world of science fiction novels. I’ll need to pick another audio book collection sometime this month. Within the Google Books application a few suggestions have popped up, but I am not entirely sure what direction I want to go with my listening adventures.

  • The zoo lights were pretty decent in the rain

    Things looked ok before it started to almost snow and then it rained for a few hours this evening. Denver is a place where weather can shift rapidly. The folks at the Denver Zoo work pretty hard to have a ton of lights on display this time of year. It was raining and cold tonight. That probably kept most of the crowds away. Things worked out well enough. I walked the entire loop at the zoo. My new Marmot Yorktown featherless jacket worked really well in the rain. I was surprised at how well the jacket stayed dry. We walked in the cold rain for well over an hour and the Marmot jacket just worked and kept me warm. We will see how well it holds up throughout a year of usage, but so far it has performed well enough.