Category Archives: journey

An orbit of the sun

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So a year in and a few things are apparent. First I am not really a blogger. While I have many ideas for interesting blog posts my focus is on the idea. The activity to turn it into a blog post worth publishing seems to add little value for me – so it doesn’t happen. The idea gets logged and I move on to the next.

I enjoy what I do. I had frequently thought to myself ‘in an ideal world what is it that I would do?’ and found that there were no evident opportunities out there to do it. For me it is to understand knowledge using the medium of ideas. There are opportunities once this has progressed to commercialise – but commercialisation is not a directing objective, and brings along with it its own negative trappings. Demanding a focus on the machinery of commercialisation rather than the underlying inspiring activity.

The cult of productivity is ingrained in the current commercial culture and seems to be becoming more ingrained. By exposure it also habituates into the minds of the participants in that culture. But an optimisation of productivity also digs a pit on the top of a hill that is a barrier to change when that hill is discovered to be a local maxima – or even inhibits the vision to see that the hill is a local maxima. For me this resulted in an initial focus on activities that, while they delivered visible progress, denied me the opportunity to deconstruct the foundational pillars they were built upon.

In the field of AI it is naive to think that we are even close to what is achievable. Many of the current generation solutions are little more than complex calculation tools that can solve a specific problem of a general class of problems. They can add significant value to what we do at the moment, so are not to be dismissed, but they are just a step along the way. Much as balancing one flat rock on top of another is a step along the way to reaching the current capabilities of architectural construction.

So far my focus has been on generating ideas towards reasonably undirected objectives.  A process that I have developed reasonably useful practices around. I will continue that. While I am not imposing direction on my future self, a couple of ideas that might indicate near term activities are; to try to project into code a paradigm that more closely fits with working with knowledge and ideas, and designing practices and expression forms that allow me to build second order value on top of ideas.

Playlist

Dancing / Kylie Minogue

The art of craft and design

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I was recently in the British Museum for the first time in a long while. After the customary stop to see the ever popular Rosetta Stone I had a look in the room on the opposite side of the main courtyard – the King’s Library.

As well as books in the bookcases that lined the walls there were a number of crafted pieces from across the globe and through the ages. I didn’t have a camera with me – which proved to be a good thing. It allowed me to really look at the pieces rather than check them off as seen – as so often happens when taking a photo.

When you look deeply you realise that these pieces probably took an individual a significant amount of time to create – either in learning the craft, creating the piece or both. As such each piece represents a dedication to the processes that led to its construction.

In the present day many of these pieces would be easy to create using modern tools and modern machinery. As such the same pieces from today do not necessarily carry the same weight of dedication.

Instead that dedication typically goes into the understanding and creation of processes and techniques that can craft things at a mass consumer level. The end piece may not look as visually stunning, but if you look closely you may be able to envision the dedication of time that has gone into its design and the design of its fabrication technologies.

An example may be tucked in your pocket right now, waiting for the next call.

Playlist

Call me maybe / Carly Rae Jepsen

I ai mianbao

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I am progressing through the HelloChinese app picking up more Mandarin.  I dip into it a few times a day – doing a lesson or two which each take about five to ten minutes.

The hardest part to learn by far is the Chinese script. I do not think I can yet recall any of the characters that I have so far covered in my lessons. Although I am starting to build a mental model of the stroke ordering to expect for any given character. An unconscious cognition as cognitive scientists might call it.

Pinyin – the romanization of Chinese script – helps a lot, although remembering the tonality to apply adds a layer of complexity.  My favourite word so far is mianbao (excuse the lack of tone marks) which mean bread – and is just nice to say.

But don’t let the complexity of Chinese script put you off learning Mandarin. Learning by listening and talking along with pinyin simplify the challenge a lot.  Also the lack of conjugation more than makes up for the complexity of script.

Playlist

Talking to you / Izzy Bizu

Start it anyway

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I have found that the removal of pressing future time demands has an interesting psychological impact. Things that previously remained undone for a protracted period of time are now easier to start and complete.

A characteristic of these activities is that they have an unknown effort or time requirement before starting them. For example finding the power cable of a music keyboard or refactoring a particularly gnarly class. It seems to be this unknown (and before the event unknowable) commitment that leads to their continual postponement.

A part of this, for me at least, is the desire to determine what is the best use of time. What things should I commit to and what things are not worthwhile to commit to. Because an activity may have an unknown duration beforehand, the benefit received for time committed cannot be accurately calculated. This fuzziness puts in into the delay basket even though a probabilistic calculation of return may indicate that it is more valuable than an activity that has a know time requirement.

With the removal of future time demands the calculation changes. Because time is no longer a scare resource, activities with unknown requirements can just be started. If during performing these activities I think they are taking too long, or not delivering the benefit expected I can just stop. When I do bail out of an activity my retrospective analysis of time spent no longer leads to regret at starting it.

And yes, I did find the power cable. It took about ten minutes.

Playlist

Get ready for this / 2 Unlimited

The first week

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The first week has been an avalanche of starting projects. Probably too many projects. Some of them have sustained through the week and others have been put on hold quite quickly.

The core project, some theoretical research into AI techniques, is moving along. The availability of time to be able to work on it has sustained its pace of progress, if not yet significantly accelerating its pace.

Other projects include learning Mandarin using the HelloChinese app on Android (a DuoLingo style app for Mandarin.)  It is early days but Mandarin is actually quite a nice language to learn.  I think a part of this is knowing that I have time to learn it – rather than having to run to a self-imposed demand to try to get through the lessons as fast as possible, or to a given timescale.

Music has also come to the forefront.  As tracks pop into my head I now stop for five minutes, find it on YouTube and listen to the track.  The source of the playlists that I can hopefully sustain over the long term.  It has highlighted to me that I need to discover new music – and that there are tracts of time where I was just not engaged with the chart and so have no sense of what was the excellent music of the time.

Playlist

Whatever / Oasis

Wake up it’s a beautiful morning / The Boo Radleys

Somebody to love / Queen

A first step

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“Take care.” The words hung in my mind as the reverberation of the door quickly dissipated.

The tube and the train were far emptier than normal. As I sat letting the carriages transport me to a new life phrases from the music at the end of The Matrix and Greengrass’s Bourne drifted through my head.

On arriving home the last shards of sun beaming from a clear blue sky still cast their light. A smile, then a grin and a short laugh expressed my emotion more than words could.

The weekend is first but then day one will arrive.

Playlist

You ain’t seen nothing yet / Bachman Turner Overdrive

Wake up / Rage Against the Machine

Extreme Ways (Jason Bourne) / Moby