Unmesh Mali

Unmesh Mali

Week 24, 2021

The punches you miss are the ones that wear you out. - Boxing trainer Angelo Dundee

I quit the Fire Progression Prediction project this week :( I wasn’t making any progress on it. Since I wasn’t actively working on it, I never mentioned it in the weekly logs. The last update I have on it is from Week 16. I was carrying that burden in my head without any action on it. It became an energy sink. Quitting that project meant letting go of a lot of future possibilities, burning bridges with professors, etc. It was a hard decision to make. But now that I have done it, it is time to focus my energy on the task at hand. Enough time to cry at night eh?

Work ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Work has been slow. Given that we are a small startup with a skeleton crew, any and every problem that arises affects the development of more advanced features in the product. This week and the last, I spent majority of my time understanding the different problems we are facing in our product and then communicating those problems with other teams in the company. My boss is really good at troubleshooting. The other day we spent 4 hours on a google meets call to discuss a problem that one of our clients had raised. What makes him good at troubleshooting is his stubbornness with the problem. He falls in love with the problem and is not satisfied until he has exhausted all his options of understanding the problem. And even after that, he’ll discuss it with me or someone else for perspectives to address the gaps in his understanding. It is a pleasure watching him troubleshoot.

Projects ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Machine Learning Bootcamp

This bootcamp is packed with information. I missed blogging last week. 2 weeks of content in this bootcamp was more machine learning than I have learned till now. Having said that, I am really enjoying studying machine learning. We finished 4 assignments in the last 2 weeks. I won’t list and describe them here. I’ll just leave my GitHub link here : https://github.com/unmeshmali25?tab=overview&from=2021-06-01&to=2021-06-21 I am also enjoying the community that we have built at the Bootcamp. People from all over the world speaking to and working with each other. One thing I want to take time to learn is eloquence. Communicating technical or non-technical concepts or ideas to others is an art that is essential in life. I will try to search for tools and opportunities including my full-time job to improve my communication skills.

CEEW – Sustainable Mobility Research Assistant

There was a certain amount of goal shifting that happened at the internship in the last 2 weeks. At this point, we have a pre-trained model, which we use to apply certain rules and generate a set of labels for every image. The tricky part now is the dashboard. I have used Dash in the past to host web apps. The visualization was using plotly. But now that I have spent some time on it again, I have realized that very small amount of knowledge and experience is transferred to solve this new problem. The deadline is end of next week. I just hope I get to spend more time to figure out this problem.

Books ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech | Sally Smith Hughes

One advantage of quitting the Fire Progression project was that I picked up this book. Very soon I will be completing 4 years in San Francisco. Apart from being a fantastic tourist destination, boasting a staggering amount of wealth, and enjoying one of the most pleasant climates around the world, San Francisco is also the hub of biotechnology in the world. The main reason for that is a company called Genentech. This was the first company that developed Insulin and commercialized it. Saving numerous lives. I am on page 30 of this book and I have learned that the 2 co-founders were from Standford University and University of California in San Francisco. I have been to UCSF more than once but never knew why it was so rich. Now I know. More interesting reading to follow.

Fitness ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆