My oldest daughter Amanda has been doing a bit of biking while at college – it’s her primary mode of transportation while at school. When she came home for the summer, she said that she wanted to do some biking and asked me if I’d be interested in taking a ride out to the Point Mugu rock. Since I wasn’t sure if she was serious, I said “Sure, I’m in!” It turns out she was serious, and we finally made the trip this past Saturday. Here’s how it went.
Making a goal is the easiest part of the goal setting process. Holding yourself accountable is the hardest part. I set out fitness and reading goals for 2014. So in the name of accountability, here is my progress at the halfway point of the year.
It’s been a slow month or so for keeping things updated on the site. There’s been a couple of reasons. First, my son’s high school graduation involved attending numerous events and entertaining a house full of out-of-town guests. Second, I decided it was time to make the move away from Rackspace and migrate the blog to Amazon’s EC2 service. Here’s why I decided to make the switch and some lessons learned in the process.
Dr. John Johnson addresses the audience at the 2014 UCSB Captone Project Day
Last year, I had an opportunity to preside as a judge for the UCSB ECE189 Capstone project presentations. I had an incredible time, which I documented here, and was hoping that I would have the opportunity to do it again. Fortunately, my good friend and UCSB professor Dr. John Johnson asked me earlier this year if I’d like to judge the projects from this year’s class. Needless to say, I accepted.
Recently, I took a trip to Salem, OR, and chose to stay at a La Quinta Inn. I didn’t choose it for any reason in particular. It was priced right, and the reviews online through Expedia and Trip Advisor were reasonable.
After completing my stay, I received the typical follow-up survey to rate the hotel. I figured I’d go ahead and complete the survey since things went fairly well during the visit. The rating scale was 1-10, and knowing that companies use these surveys for evaluation, I’m pretty liberal in my grading scale unless some egregious event occurs. Nearly all of my responses on the survey were between 8 and 10.
After completing the survey, I received the following email:
Unsurprisingly, Pitt bowed out of the NCAA tournament with a 61-45 loss to Florida today. Unlike prior March disappointments, Pitt represented itself well this time around. They made it to the semifinal of the ACC tournament where they lost to eventual champion Virginia, and they won their opening round NCAA tournament game in dominating fashion by beating Colorado by 29.
Unlike prior seasons, expectations were not high for this year’s team. There was a lot of roster turnover in last year’s offseason, so one could consider making it to the NCAA a success for this team. However, had things gone a little differently, Pitt could have had a special season. So I’ve labeled this season “what could have been.”
I have a couple of aging computers that are still in service in my house. With the end of support approaching with Windows XP, I decided it was time to start replacing the old rigs with new ones. After replacing a 12-year old Dell machine with my first min-ITX build, it was time to replace my first DIY computer.
I built the machine back in November, 2005. It cost just north of $1,200 to build and featured a 3.0 GHz Prescott Core Pentium 4. I probably should have went dual core at the time, but dual core was just hitting the mainstream. Prices were still pretty high, and I wanted to build something that was a bit more economical as well as a bit simpler to setup. Here is the build sheet for the old machine:
I recently decided it was time to retire from coaching football after ten years. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, the time commitment became too much. There’s a lot I’ll miss about it, especially the relationships with the other coaches and the players.
Luckily, over my ten years of coaching, I had some great mentors who taught me how to instruct the game and, more importantly, how to be a coach. Under their tutelage, here are the most important coaching lessons I learned from them. The best part, these lessons can be applied to any sport, not just football.
Over the end of year holiday break, I cleansed my work and personal inbox. My work inbox had hundreds of emails, some as old as 8 months in it. While I’m not an “inbox zero” nut, the amount of clutter in my Inbox had become overwhelming and distracting. I decided something had to be done.
I’m a huge fan of William’s Hertling’s Singularity book series. Since reading the books, I’ve started following his blog where he often talks about artificial intelligence (AI) and the coming of the Singularity – that point in time where AI has achieved greater than human intelligence.
This weekend, he wrote an article in response to articles by Ramez Naam, author of one of my favorite books Nexus (and the sequel Crux), about how and when the Singularity may occur. In short, Naam suggests that the singularity is a ways off and won’t happen overnight. While Hertling more or less agrees with Naam, his concern is more related to the risks of an advanced AI. His biggest point is that we should be addressing the complicated ethical issues surrounding AI now so we are prepared for the Singularity when it occurs.
I’d be wading into water that is way over my head if I were to offer an opinion on how and when AI advancements will occur. I just don’t understand the technology well enough. However, I’ve read enough sci-fi books over the last 18 months regarding the Singularity that I agree we need to start discussions regarding the risks and ethical issues of a smarter than human AI sooner rather than later so we are prepared for it when it happens. I’m not suggesting I should be a part of the discussions, as I feel there are people who know way more about AI than me who should be addressing the issues, I’m just suggesting they happen.
Either way, here’s a link to all three articles. I suggest that you give them a read if you have any interesting in the advancement of AI and the emergence of the Singularity.
Finally, for good measure, here are my book reviews of Hertling’s and Naam’s books on AI and the Singularity. They’re longer form reading, but worth it if you want to understand the paths that AI could evolve along: