Sauvik Biswas

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Learning Artificial Neural Network has been tough I would like to elaborate this a bit more. Learning Artificial Neural Network (ANN) in two weeks has been tough. Prof. Ng’s Machine Learning course on Coursera explains the algorithm without getting into mathematical exposition or exposing the complexity behind the algorithms. In the end, my perseverance paid off. I managed to complete the quizzes and the programming assignments. (It also meant, I had nearly locked myself indoors for two days revisiting the course lectures and notes.) Ready Player One and the art of g33king out Ready Player One is a dystopian, science fiction novel by Ernest Cline. I had picked this title up on a whim after I had read the blurb on a Goodreads list. If you call yourself a geek, and come across a text like this, how can you not resist? My connection with this book # Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. In fact, I finished it in three sessions. The settings embraced all things that define me so well that I couldn’t resist getting back to the book after I had finished each of the segments. It’s not written on the blurb, but to be precise, the author squarely pins the references to the “decades past”, mentioned in the book blurb, in the ’80s. I am a kid of the ’80s. My earliest fragments of happiness has been shaped by the events of late ’80s and early ’90s, just as my opinions and raison d’être has been shaped by the 2000s. However, there is a difference - and it is a geopolitical one. I have grown up in India, a place that took quite some time in warming up to the western influence, until the IT boom of the late 90s and early 2000s opened the floodgates. Prior to that, information and products that managed to set foot in India (or how about, lost their way to India), got the word-of-mouth treatment in the most localised fashion. As a result, my exposure has been fragmented - i.e., not getting my hands on every game, film or soundtrack that defined the period - and also chronologically distorted - i.e., playing both PacMan and Wolfenstein 3D on an MS-DOS PC in 1994. (While the former has an important part to play in the plot, the latter doesn’t.) Arunima Sinha and her Everest narrative Exchanging books related to Himalayas with Nabyendu # Last Sunday, I paid a visit to Nabyendu. He had lent me Ed Viesturs’ biography earlier and I wanted to return it. (If you want to read my thoughts on that, please click here.) I had also packed another book for him. This one to be precise: This is a very different take on a Himalayan travelogue. King of punctures I can officially declare myself as the king of punctures. Riding with strangers # I had plans to do an airport loop. En route, I met a guy, Ram, on his Lynskey Titanium bike, who invited me to join him and two of his friends to Bagalur. These guys were rolling pretty nicely and were riding at a pace that is slightly higher than mine. But it was not something that I couldn’t sustain over a three hour ride. Boxed cycling stuff Spare tube stuff # After that puncture last Sunday, I repaired the tube (and posted a photo). What I didn’t realise was that the nail had done more damage than just punching one hole. Long story short, the tube was damaged beyond repair and I was out of patch kits. I had no spare tubes left. So, I immediately placed an order for four Conti Race tubes and a patch kit. Mastermind Bicycle Studio were prompt in delivering them. Here they are: Goodbye Bluehost, almost Incase you are wondering how to sing that line, you can use this song as a reference. Me and Bluehost: A history lesson # About three years ago, I wanted to migrate my anime blog (Line of Flow, later merged with my personal blog) from the shared Wordpress.com servers. I wanted to do so because I wanted more control over the customisations. Previously, I had maintained the website of my (now defunct) band Dark Project. I had used free servers like cjb.net before moving on to paid services from GoDaddy. The legend that is Ed Viesturs Ed Viesturs is a great thinker. Well, he is a great climber, too. Reading through his book, I could realise how much of a mental fortitude and clarity one needs to do tasks that are superhuman. In his case, it was climbing all fourteen eight-thousanders in the world. A few days ago, I had borrowed his autobiography from Nabyendu. It’s aptly called No Shortcuts to the Top. It is a narrative of Ed’s legendary feat of summiting the fourteen beasts without supplemental oxygen during the period from 1987 through 2005. Just another night out with old friends I have an opinion that the closest friends you make are the ones with whom you have spent your early twenties. That would roughly be from 18 to 25 years. The reason that happens is because that’s when a person starts to construct his own raison d’être or if not, at least constructs the axioms and principles that will form the basis. Parth Sarathi, a friend from my college days, called me up last Friday. The last time I met him was at Camp Linger (where we did nothing). It was the same group. Well, almost. We were joined by another of our batchmates this time, Manu Pratap. I paid for a Coursera course I have just completed the Week 3 programming assignment for Prof. Ng’s Machine Learning course on Coursera. I have learned linear and logistic regression so far and their application in regression and classification problems respectively. The course also introduced me to Gradient Descent algorithm to solve for the minima of a function. I have used other iterative algorithms to solve for linear algebra problems but this was a new one for me. A new saddle and a new posture So, I got a new saddle for my bike. # Ravish, my weekend cycling partner, had injured his knee while running sometime earlier this week. I believe he wouldn’t be cycling for the next few months. Last time during the Kolar trip, I had chafed in my chamois. This always used to happened after I had ridden for about 3 hours or so. I thought the culprit was my saddle or my reach or both. I did not know what to do. One of the best places where I could have gotten some consultancy was BOTS.