Happy 4th of July, the Independence Day of America!
Since the pandemic is still going and has no trend of getting any better soon, I thought I just share some random nice things to boost the spirit up!
1. The Finch Story
A pair of finches made a nest next to our garage door window, so I put a Wyze camera there and recorded some clips. Finally put everything together into a nice little movie. So enjoy. The background music I used was from Night Coming (a great story by Maoni), composed by Roc Chen.
2. My Indoor Pepper
I planted a pepper plant in a flowerpot late last year. I had not expected to get anything out of it because people normally plant peppers after Memorial Day, so I was like half a year ahead of the time. But the plant actually produced a pepper! I'll be fine during the summer with respect to veggie supply now!
3. Mozart's Sonata
My daughter has been practicing this song for over 6-months. She finally got to a level minimally presentable. Very happy for her! So enjoy!
4. Around the World
I set a goal for my kids to be able to do Around the World by the end of summer. They asked me to also do it. So here it is (although this one is really the reverse around the world), the first time I've ever done anything so fancy. Feeling pretty good about it! Of course, I'll still have to master the real around the world by end of summer.
5. My Bookshelves
Someone on Twitter asked people to post photos of their bookshelves. So I snapped a picture of mine. I like my bookshelves (I also share the shelf space with kids), because I love books, in case you haven't noticed. See how many different collections you can spot from the photo.
BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://blog.lannyland.com
I have been following the COVID-19 situation very closely for the last 5 months. Thought to share with my readers some useful websites, so you can get up-to-date information on the Coronavirus.
Lanny's Predictive Model
First, let me shamelessly promote my own predictive models that I update daily when real official data gets in, and then tweet them to my Twitter account. I have two predictive models.
So for the entire United States, you can see that on July 2nd, we just had a new record of 52,981 new cases in one day, when my model predicted 50,972 new cases. Not too bad from the model perspective. Very bad from the virus containment perspective. Following this trend, we would exceed 4 million cases on July 20th if no extreme measures are enforced. That means over 183,000 in death toll by August 1st. I use numbers reported by CNN at midnight Eastern time each day (link in the section below.
For the Utah State, I predicted 668 new cases for July 2nd, and the official number was 554. Because the number of people tested each day can vary dramatically, the daily positive rate line is the more interesting indicator of how well Utah is doing.
CNN COVID-19 Live Feed
I don't want to search for COVID-19 related news every day, so I simply follow the news live feed from CNN. When new information becomes available, I get prompted to see the new updates automatically, which is nice. However, you do have to manually change the date in the URL manually to stay update to date. For example, replace the 07-02-20 in the URL below with today's date to get the latest info.
CNN also has a page showing more detailed information by each state with maps, tables, and graphs. They are doing a pretty good job updating total numbers using the Johns Hopkins website data. That's why I just use their numbers for my daily update to my US model.
This website is a great tool to compare different countries and different states. You can sort by total cases, daily new cases, total death, or daily new death. The numbers they report are always more than the ones reported by CNN and Johns Hopkins data feed. I don't know why. Maybe they track data more aggressively? But anyway, still great to see trends.
This website focuses on computing the Rt value, a metric on how fast the virus is spreading. It ranks different states based on the Rt value. You can also go into each state and get more detailed information.
I used to use this website a lot for up-to-date COVID-19 data. It is one of the most famous data-hub websites. However, the website is very buggy. It takes forever to load and tends to crash my Chrome browser frequently, so once CNN started using data from this website, I stopped visiting it. You can use this website to look at worldwide data, and can also drill down to one country or one state to get more information.
Hope these can be useful for you to get more information about the spread of the COVID-19 virus so you can be prepared accordingly. Best luck to all of us in this long fight, but we will prevail!
Video of the Day:
I will survive and you'll survive if we all wash our hands frequently!
BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://blog.lannyland.com
I am so thrilled to have survived the first half of Game 2020, and I am going to put it all in for the second half!! I am going to stay tough and fight it all the way with my teeth and nails. I swear that I'll be more efficient, more productive, healthier, and stronger when I look back at 2020. I'll be fighting like this little tough guy:
Join me to fight in the second half! Let's kick some ass!! And whenever you feel hurt, defeated, or feel the need to give up, look at this video, chill, and then get back into the fight! We can do this!!
Sharing a good read, an article on WIRED summarizing all the events happened inside Google for the last three years. WIRED talked with 47 current and former Google employees and then produced a great story explaining the bumpy road Google had to take in the last three years. The article was written by NITASHA TIKU, a senior writer at WIRED.
Imagine a mad scientist has taken your brain from your body and placed it in a vat with life
sustaining fluid. Neurons in your brain are wired into a supercomputer which can general all the sensing signals your brain normally receives. Thus, this computer has the ability to simulate your everyday experience. If this were indeed possible, how could you ever truly prove that the world around you was real, and not just a simulation generated by a computer?
This thought experiment is called “brain in a vat” and has to be the most influential thought experiment that touches the subjects from cognitive science and philosophy to popular culture. The idea for the experiment, which was popularized by Hilary Putnam, an American philosopher, dates all the way back to the 17th century philosopher Rene Descartes. In his book Meditations on the First Philosophy, Descartes questioned whether he could ever truly prove that all his sensations were really his own, and not just an illusion caused by an “evil daemon.” Descartes accounted for this problem with his classic maxim “cogito ergo sum” (“I think therefore I am”). Unfortunately, the brain in a vat experiment complicates this argument, too, since a brain connected to electrodes could still think.
This really sounds too familiar, you say, to the movie The Matrix. Well, that film, along with several other sci-fi stories and movies, was heavily influenced by the brain in a vat thought experiment. Neo was hooked into this big simulation called The Matrix, and before he unplugged, he thought that was his real life. Then turned out Zion, the last sanctuary for human kind, is merely another layer of the matrix, another simulation.
There are really two perspectives here: The first perspective is that from humans.
When we humans dream, our brains can experience signals that are pure simulations generated by the brain itself. We can see, smell, touch, walk, jump, run, fall off a cliff or a tall building (this one happens pretty much to everyone), and even fly. The simulation generated by the brain is so good that we could interact with the world and the world changes accordingly, for example, when we turn in a dream, the world rotates correctly "in front of" our eyes.
Once in a dream of mine, I was able to correctly recognize that I was in a dream. Since anything is possible in a dream, I tested it. "Let there be a spear!" I commanded. And a giant spear magically appeared in my grip. Next thing I know I was there swinging the spear, showing off a beautiful staff form. Unfortunately, the dream ended shortly. To this day, I don't know why I asked for a spear when I could have anything I want in a dream. That's also why my kids now call me Shakespear from time to time.
So how do you know you are not dreaming? How do you know you are not in a simulation? There's no spinning pendulum to give you a clue like that in the movie Inception.
Humans are also very good at simulating input signals to our brains when we are awake. That's why we enjoy books, plays, and movies. We put ourselves into the characters minds, or merely become a bystander in an imaginary world. Then we experience joy, sorrow, love, and hatred from things that never truly happened in the real world.
Then there's the world of MMORPGs (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game) from text-based MUD (Multi-user Dungeon) games in the early days, to EverQuest, to World of Warcraft, to Minecraft today. Players of such games get deeply immersed into the simulated worlds and sometimes preferred the fake worlds over the real one.
The other perspective is that from Artificial Agents.
In the Matrix Trilogy, Neo had no idea that he was actually not even a real human. When a software agent has been told that the world it lives in is the real world, it is just like a brain in a vat. When Agent Smith realized that, he went all haywire!
Software agents we build today are frequently developed or trained in simulations. It is true that most simulations today are not very sophisticated (but the agents themselves don't know), but they will get better over time. And the agents we train or send to work will also get more sophisticated and more intelligent. What if one day they become so intelligent that they realize they live in a simulation? What happens then if they break out of the simulation and start feeling the real world with real sensors and interact with the real word with real actuators? Will we end up with Jane (from Ender's Game series)? Or Philip (from The Outcast)?
Now comes the ultimate question: How do you know you are a real human, not just an artificial intelligence agent?
In the movie Total Recall, Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn't really tell if his Martial adventure was just the imaginary vacation he paid for or he really was a spy. And in the movie Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio also wasn't sure if his return to home and his kids were real or merely another dream. In a sense, Arnold and Leonardo were both in the superposition of both in a dream and also in reality (why do I keep thinking of Schrödinger’s Cat?). Arnold stayed confused. But Leonardo made a choice to accept it as the reality, even though the pendulum never stopped spinning. So maybe what matters the most is whether you choose to believe the world around you is real. But then what would you do if you were presented with the blue pill and the red pill?
Man, this is deep!! My brain hurts (whether it is in a vat or not). This concludes the 10 Famous Thought Experiments That Just Boggle Your Mind series (only took 10 years). Hope you had a good read!!
Now on to my daily battles!
BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com
Schrödinger’s Cat is a paradox relating to quantum mechanics that was first proposed by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger. He hypothesized a scenario where a cat is sealed inside a box for one hour along with a radioactive element and a vial of deadly poison. There is a 50/50 chance that the radioactive element will decay over the course of the hour. If it does, then a hammer connected to a Geiger counter will trigger, break the vial, release the poison, and kill the cat. Since there is an equal chance that this will or will not happen, Schrödinger argued that before the box is opened the cat is simultaneously both alive and dead.
Schrödinger meant to use this thought experiment to demonstrate the absurdity of Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, where a quantum system remains in superposition until it interacts with, or is observed by the external world. Turned out that:
Successful experiments involving superpositions of relatively large (by the standards of quantum physics) objects have been performed.
I still remember the day when my Statistics Professor Dr. Reese threw a coin to the floor and then immediately put his foot on top of it. "The event has already occurred. But what is the outcome?" he asked. That was a great example of the Bayesian world, where the reality has already happened, but we still don't know -- the uncertainty.
Uncertainty is actually everywhere in AI/Machine Learning/Robotics challenges. For example, an object detection model detected a person, but only with 50% confidence. That means the object detected could be a person or not a person at all. And the bounding box detected could be spot on, perfectly bound the person inside, or it could be 50% off with a 50% IOU (Intersection Over Union). So how do you use this information if you have to decide if there is a visitor by your door? In this case, the event has already happened (there's an object there, whether person or not). There are also cases where you don't know what future holds. If you are in a self-driving car, the self-driving car has no idea what the car next to it will do in the next minute, it could just stay in its lane, or it could change into your lane and collide with your car. A well-designed self-driving car has to be able to deal with uncertainty, maybe when it notices the car next lane starts to weave, maybe it's a good idea to break a bit and keep a good distance from it. But just like Schrödinger’s Cat, before you open the box, anything is possible.
One solution is to try to obtain more observations that might give you more information and reduce the uncertainty. Maybe if you shake the box and hear the cat meow, then you know the cat is likely still alive. Maybe you wait 20 years, and then likely the cat is dead. Actually you don't even have to wait that long, a cat probably will die if it eats no food for a week? What is the cat is pregnant when you put it in the box. You would now have multiple cats that are both dead and alive and you don't even know how many cats you have.
Let's end this with a picture of cute kittens. Didn't Jeff Dean build a deep neural network that learned the concept of a cat all by itself simply by watching lots and lots of youtube videos?
Read part 7: Monkeys and Typewriters [Found a 10-year old draft of this post that was never published. So here it is with some new contents added.] 3. The Chinese Room (Turing Test)
Source: Wikicomms
The Chinese Room is a famous thought experiment first proposed in the early 1980s by John Searle, a prominent American philosopher. Searle first hypothetically assumes that there exists a computer program that can translate Chinese into English and vise versa. Now imagine a man who only speaks English is placed in a sealed room with only a slot in the door. What he has are an English version of the computer program and plenty of scratch paper, pencils, erasers, and file cabinets. He would then receive Chinese characters through the slot, process them following the program instructions, and then produce Chinese characters on paper that he can slip out through the slot on the door. Although he doesn’t speak a word of Chinese, Searle argues that through this process the man in the room could convince anyone on the outside that he was a fluent speaker of Chinese.
Searle wanted to answer the question of whether a machine can truly "understand" Chinese, or does it only simulate the ability to understand Chinese. By creating this thought experiment, Searle argues that the man in the room does not really understand Chinese, therefore, the machine can also be a simulation and doesn't have a "mind" to understand the information, even if the machine can produce responses that gives people the impression of human intelligence.
This thought experiment raises a big question: Does something that appear to be intelligent truly possesses the intelligence. Searle calls the system that actually possesses the intelligence "Strong AI", and the system that doesn't "Weak AI". He argues that this thought experiment proves that "Strong AI" is false.
Today, there are many AI/Machine Learning algorithms at work that perform tasks for us human beings, from chatbots to self-driving cars. Especially with the popularity of deep neural networks, computers can do an amazing job at recognizing things such as human, cars, or stop signs. But how does the machine know an object is a stop sign? With the deep learning approach, we humans don't really know. Interestingly, with just changing the values of a few pixels, an object that still looked like a stop sign to humans now becomes a sign for speed limit 45 sign. And that's the danger of using blackbox systems, where misclassifying the sign could mean the difference of life and death.
This thought experiment is an extension of the Turing Test, which deserves a blog post entirely dedicated to that topic. Turing proposed that if a computer can fool human judges into thinking they are conversing with a real human through a typing only chat program, then the computer is considered to have artificial intelligence and has passed the Turing Test.
Based on this simple definition, many programs could be considered as having passed the Turing Test. in 1964, a program named ELIZA out of the MIT AI Lab gained fame by making users believe they were actually chatting with a psychotherapist, when in fact, the program simply was parroting back at patients what they'd just said. Then later in 2007, a Russian chatbot that emulated a woman was able to fool many lonely Russian males into giving out personal and financial details, given that these males probably couldn't think straight especially after excessive vodka consumption. In both cases, these chatbot programs appeared to be intelligent, when they don't really truly understand what humans had said to them.
On March 23, 2016, Microsoft released a chatter bot named Tay via Twitter. Only 16 hours later, Microsoft had to shutdown the bot because it started posting all kinds of inflammatory tweets. Was Tay really a racist? Of course not! But it sure looked like it was intelligent enough to get conversations going.
In one of our Innovation Weeks at work, I actually played with a bunch of chatbots, including cleverbot and Mitsuku (Pandorabots), and integrated them with smart home/smart assistant functions. Mitsuku chatbot has won the Loebner Prize 4 times out of the last 6 years, so it is really up there with respect to its capabilities. During the live demo, when I asked the bot "where is my wife?" it actually replied, "Did you check the bathroom?" Very impressive!! Things got a bit weirder when I had a volunteer talking with the bot and the bot started asking him, "How is your father?"
[GPT-2] has no other external input, and no prior understanding of what language is, or how it works,” Howard tells The Verge. “Yet it can complete extremely complex series of words, including summarizing an article, translating languages, and much more.
This is a perfect example of the Chinese Room scenario. We have AI that can behave as if it is intelligent, yet has no understanding of language. I guess we have to be super careful about what tasks we give such AI agent/algorithms/models. It might be able to fool us most of the time. But when it comes the time when it fails, because it is only a fancy simulation, we are in big trouble.
Quite a while ago, I posted some brain teasers in my blog. When I was randomly looking through my past blog posts, I realized that I never provided answers to those brain teaser questions. So today I'll post the answers in a new blog post. If you have not seen those questions before, you can read the questions here:
[Spoiler Alert]: Scroll down to find the answers:. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Problem 1: The Missing Dollar ==========================
Image credit: Canvas
Answer: The three guests each spent $9 at the end. That makes it $9 x 3 = $27. The hotel owner kept $25 and the bellhop kept $2. That makes it $25 + $2 = $27. The common mistake people tend to make is that they use $27 + $2 = $29, instead of realizing it is really $27 the 3 guests spend and the $3 the guests got back: $27 + $3 = $30. The $2 here really should be -$2, which makes it $27 - $2 = $25, where $25 is the real cost of the hotel stay for the 3 guests. The official name of the problem is Missing Dollar Riddle. Problem 2: Cut the Loss ==========================
Image credit: iStockPhoto
Answer: This problem seems very confusing due to the many moving parts and money (real or counterfeit) exchanging hands. The easiest way to think through this is from the perspective of each person involved and just check the difference at the end. If we treat the counterfeit bill as worth $0. Customer: $0 out and $20 worth of merchandize plus $30 cash in. Total gain: $50 Tom: $20 worth of merchandize, $30 cash to customer out. Nothing in ($50 from Charlie was returned to Charlie at the end, so just a wash). Total loss: $50 Charlie: $50 out to Tom and then $50 in from Tom at the end. Total loss: $0 Everything balances out. So the answer is $50 total loss for Tom. There are many variations of this Counterfeit Money Problem out there you can read about.
Problem 3: Green Onion Vendor ==========================
Image credit: The Virginian Pilot
Answer: The original price of the green onions is $1/lb. So you spend $1 you get 1lb. of green onions. Once separating into stems and leaves, the prices become $0.70/lb. for stems and $0.30/lb. for leaves. So spending $1 now you can get 1lb. of stems and 1lb. of leaves. That is actually a total of 2lb. of green onions. That's why the customer was able to spend $50 and get 100lb. of green onions. Problem 4: Find the Odd Ping Pong Ball ==========================
Image credit: 123RF.com
Answer:
The key challenge in this problem is that we don't know if this odd ball is lighter or heavier. There are many solutions to this problem. Here's one: If you divide 12 balls to 3 groups of 4 each. You can compare two groups with the first weighting. Let's name them group 1, 2, and 3. If group 1 and 2 are identical (case 1), then the odd ball has to be in group 3. If group 1 and 2 are not equal (case 2), then group 3 must have all normal balls. For case 1, take 3 balls out of group 3 and compare to 3 normal balls (just pick them from group 1 and 2). Case 1.1: if the weights are identical, the 3 balls from group 3 must be normal. The remaining ball from group 3 is the odd ball. We just have to compare it against a normal ball in the third weighting to see if it is lighter or heavier. Case 1.2: if the 3 balls from group 3 are heavier, now we know the odd ball is heavier. Pick 2 out of these 3 and compare them. If the weights are identical, then the remaining ball is the odd ball. If the weights are not equal, then the heavier one is the odd ball. Case 1.3: if the 3 balls from group 3 are lighter, now we know the odd ball is lighter. Then perform same steps as above, but looking for lighter ball instead. For case 2, let's just say group 1 is the heavier side (we can swap group names if not), remove 3 balls from group 1, take 3 balls from group 2 and add to group 1, and take 3 balls from group 3 (normal balls) and add to group 2. Remember the balls originally in group 1 and 2. Case 2.1: If group 1 is still heavier, that means either that original ball in group 1 is the odd ball and is a heavier ball, or the original ball in group 2 is the odd ball and is a lighter ball. Just compare one of them to a normal ball, we would know which one out of the two original balls is the odd ball and if it is lighter or heavier. Case 2.2: If group 1 is now lighter after the swap, that means one of the three balls moved from group 2 to to group 1 is the odd ball and it is lighter. Now you just have to find the light odd ball out of the 3 by comparing 2 of them similar to case 1.2. Case 2.3: If group 1 and 2 have same weights now, that means the one of the three balls we removed from group 1 is the odd ball and it is heavier than a normal ball. Now just find the heavier ball out of those 3 using methods similar to case 1.2. The official name of this problem is the Balance Puzzle. You can read the Wiki page if you want to lean more. Problem 5: Silver Utensils Problem ==========================
Image credit: Shutterstock
Answer: The key of solving this problem is to realize that there are many possible combinations of how much the fork, spoon and knife each cost. But there is only one answer on how much money Bill has once the prices for the fork, spoon and knife are set. The easiest way to solve this problem is to just pick some easy numbers for the prices of the utensils that meet the requirements, and then figure out how many sets Bill can buy. For example, let's just say a fork is $1 and a spoon is also $1. That means 21 forks and 21 spoons would cost $42 and that's how much money Bill has. If $42 can buy 28 knives, each knife must cost $1.50, and a set of fork, spoon and knife would cost $3.50. Now divide $42 by $3.50, we get 12. So Bill can buy 12 sets of utensils with all his money. If we double the prices of each utensils, so fork is $2, spoon is $2 and knife is $3, the only thing changes is how much money Bill has. He now has $84, and he can still buy 12 sets of utensils. What if the fork is $1, spoon is $2, and knife ends up been $2.25, and with the $63 Bill has, he can still buy 12 sets of utensils. You just have to make sure each utensil ends up in whole cents. You can of course solve this problem using system of linear equations. You will end up with 12 set and you also don't need to know what price each utensil has. Hope you enjoyed the reading. Do you feel smarter now? BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com
My dear readers, if you haven't noticed, I haven't posted any blog for a long, long time. Sorry for the long wait. The good news is that I have finally overcame myself and a lot of new blogs will soon be coming.
So why haven't I been blogging? One main reason is that life is so busy, and I have to fight many battles on different fronts everyday, which just eat away all my free time. Some of the battles are about being a responsible parent (teaching/fighting the kids), some other ones are about dealing with random life issues that just come up, such as flat tires, auto accidents, fixing various things in the home, taking care of aging parents, etc., etc. However, I have noticed that a great amount of my time are spent fighting technology glitches/failures almost on a daily bases.
On one hand, as someone who "lives in the future", I do have a lot more gadgets/devices/robots than a normal family, which does increase the likelihood that things break more often at my household. But on the other hand, I consider myself a skilled fighter in the tech realm. Even I have to struggle so much with technology today, it would be much more painful for other people who don't have my background and knowledge to deal with such technology failures. That's why I have decided to blog about these daily battles I have to fight, so other people who are fighting the same battles might be able to find something useful to facilitate their daily battles with technology.
Credit: GoComics.com
When looking at social media postings today, you probably have noticed that most people post more about their fun moments/achievements/happy time. That is a very skewed view of the reality, and psychologists have concluded that viewing such posts can increase depression and loneliness. I am going to change that! That's why I'll be posting about my struggles with my daily battles with technology and life in general. So reading my posts should make you happier, knowing that other people struggle too! And most importantly, it gives me a way to vent, so I can stay mentally healthy!
Credit: comicskingdom.com
So why am I blogging again? First of all, I am on vacation! This is a long deserved vacation, the only true vacation in the last five years!! Wife and kids are out of town for a Ping Pong tournament, and after I took care of many things/repairs/battles, I still had time to sit down, relax, and enjoy peace in my own house!!! But also, as I mentioned before, I need a way to vent; people can get info on how to fight similar battles; readers can gain happiness by looking at my sufferings; and it's just a good habit to write everyday!
Medium, as a blog platform, has gained a lot of popularity with its very clean and simple look and lots of people contributing. I actually thought about moving my blog to that platform. Then I realized that:
All contents published on Medium now belongs to Medium, and
After free trial, you have to pay $5/month subscription fee in order to keep reading.
So I am staying with Google Blogger, where my writing belongs to me and you can all read for free. I do like the simple and clean view of Medium though, so I tried to clean up my blog design -- one of my daily battles with technology! Well, I tried the best I could, but since my template is a super old customized one, which required a lot of html/css tweaking/hacking, and I didn't like the new templates, so this is the best I can do and what you get. But for your best viewing experience, I suggest keeping 150% zoom in. If you are using Chrome, that's CTRL+ (Command+ for Mac).
As always, leave me comments so I know people are actually reading this, which is the best encouragement for me! Subscribe if you like, and let me know if it doesn't work, and I'll add that to my daily battles list. LOL!
Oh yeah, I am translating again! Focusing on The Outcast and Smiling Proud Wanderer.
Disclaimer: I will not post about my daily battles with all the Alpha/Beta products/services my employer is currently testing in my house.
BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com
My beloved author, Mr. Jin Yong, the author of The Smiling Proud Wanderer, just passed away today at the age of 94. It is a sad day for all his fans around the world.
Thank you Mr. Jin Yong for the wonderful Wuxia worlds you created for us that not only entertained billions but also taught many about gallantry and virtue. Wish you peace in heaven where there's probably no hatred, no revenge, and no heroes.
Pen name Jin Yong (金庸), real name Zha Liangyong (查良镛), English name Louis Cha, 1924-2018.
Man, I can't believe it has been almost four years since I last posted any blogs. Time really flies!
First let me quickly summarize what I have been doing for the last three years and 8 months:
The first year or so was eventful and also a year of harvest. During this year:
I turned 40.
I also had two surgeries (never had surgeries before, correlation or causation?).
I received two Black Belts, one in Taekwondo, and one in Hapkido.
I successfully defended my thesis and officially became Permanently Head Damaged! It is worth mentioning that I actually completed and got my dissertation approved on New Years Eve inside a hotel right next to Disneyland. Then as a celebration, I took my kids to Disneyland that night and enjoyed the new year count down party and watched the new year fireworks show.
I found a job I love after many rounds of traveling and interviews.
I bought a bigger house and moved in.
Then the next three years or so, I focused on building two "intelligent" entities:
Sky, the intelligent smart home assistant for my work, and
Philip, my dumb personal home butler. Philip is really just my house, and also has a second name Jane. The name Philip came from a great Chinese Sci-Fi/Wuxia novel by Maoni, which I am also translating from Chinese into English. The name Jane came from Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game Series.
And because I was so busy with life and the above, I didn't really
Translate, or
Blog, or
Sleep much.
But since now that Sky and Philip are both in relatively better shapes, I am hoping to be able to get back to the two things I enjoy very much: translate and blog. As it is the Chinese New Year right now, I figured that I'll make a list of my new year resolutions:
I will try to sleep more and have better sleep quality. This is my top priority.
I'd like to get back into routine translating. After all, it is another one of my life goal: to win (kind of) the Nebula Award with my translation.
I'd like to blog more. Blog about technology, AI, machine learning, robots, etc. In the past I tried to write too much and keep the bar high for each blog. This time I am going to just go with the flow. Hopefully a short summary of my thoughts on things I read can still be good reading resources for others and inspire them to be creative. If you haven't noticed, Lannyland is the land of imagination and creativity.
I'd like to read more on latest advancements on AI and machine learning. Hopefully this also results in more blogging.
I'd like to also get back into routine exercising. I am a black belt! I should stay a black belt!
I'd like to also find some time to play the piano once a while.
So Happy Chinese New Year to your all, wish you all a very productive new year, and wish myself good luck adhering to my new year resolutions!!
It's never too late to follow your passion and love.
