Week 11, 2021
March 22, 2021 Categories: Weekly Notes
Work
“Faster along, further together” – The quote sums up this week at ## work. Working with QA engineers to test the integration, configurations, and algorithm for a project that was worked on by many developers at different times, tested by different QA engineers and approved by another product person. The software development process can’t get more complicated than that now, can it? I can’t appreciate enough the tools in Atlasssian product suite. Did you know that Atlasssian is an Australian company? One of the very few tech companies in Australia that has had a major impact on the world especially the silicon valley ecosystem. It’s a fascinating story (Listed to the podcast if interested). Also spent some time on websites of electric utilities to provide some market research support to the sales staff. A decent week. Side Project I am volunteering with Professors from University of San Francisco (my Alma Mater) to ## work on a project that involves predicting the progression (direction and speed) of wild fires once they have been ignited. The project is part of the MAGIX lab at USF where they ## work on solving complex societal problems using Machine Learning and Deep Learning and publish papers. Our project involves using deep learning to do the prediction. More details on the project can be found in the ## projects section. Spent just over 3 hours this week on the project mostly researching.
Books
Gold in the Water | P.H. Mullen Finished the last 150 pages of the book over this week. A wonderful read. It’s a fascinating insight into the world of Santa Clara Swim Club that has produced numerous world records in swimming and won medals in the Olympics. I would never have imagined the city of Santa Clara to have such a rich history. It always seemed so lifeless to me when compared to San Francisco. I have a new respect for the city now. Some day I hope to swim in the SCSC’s swimming pool where many Olympians trained. Water is around 780 times denser than air and hence is merciless to inefficiency. Looking forward to getting into a pool to improve my strokes and speed. Deep Learning with PyTorch | Eli Stevens, Thomas Viehmann, Luca Antiga Started learning PyTorch to be able to use the library for my Fire Progression side project. What better way to learn something than read ## books about it, right? The goal is to understand as much as possible to be able to write a deep neural net model from scratch. This is an intense book. Takes up a lot of mental energy. I have found myself reading, re-reading, and absorbing 1 page of this book for a couple hours. I am targeting up to 50 pages per week. This week I am short of the target by 15 pages. Next week is going to be super busy. Practical Programming for Strength Training | Mark Rippertoe and Andy Baker Now that I have started going to the gym, I thought I might as well get some cheap training from ## books to make those gym sessions more effective and avoid injuries. Though this book is aimed at training weight lifters, I am hoping some of that knowledge rubs off and helps me in my amateur ## fitness regime. Looking forward.
Fitness
Gym: Spent around 3 and half hours on functional strength training at the gym. Mostly equipments for leg muscles and some free weights. Biking: I set a personal record of 30 miles a week in the last 10 weeks. As the knee feels better and gets used to this kind of mileage on the bike, I’ll start commuting again. Can’t wait for the over 50 miles weeks to begin.