Willie's Life's Historical Record

God help you if you ever decide to implement camera functionality in Android. I didn't have much planned today, but thank goodness I didn't. The Setup Here's the dilemma: I wanted to make a very simple app that will let me take a photo of text and have it read out to me. Using the Google Cloud Vision API ,  I can essentially scan documents and listen to their contents instead of having to use my eyes and scan the thing. It will be great for accessibility and so on, but the thing is I can't have the Cloud Vision API scan documents that I haven't taken. I want to do processing in the cloud to model common app architecture and to reduce strain on the client app. Here's the service flow: Client app takes photo Client app uploads photo to Cloud Storage for Firebase Cloud Functions scans the document for text Cloud Functions updates Firebase Database with scanned text Client app intercepts database update Client app speaks text from database The Co...

What did I accomplish today? I finished my lesson on naive Bayes, learned about linear dependence, and began learning about graph-based algorithms. Because of my unfortunate procrastination and a request from a family member to do some unexpected work, don't have too much time today to document my experiences. I'll likely produce a follow-up or two on Saturday to compensate. Other news Today, the third developer preview for Android O came out. I've been reluctant to join the Android Beta Program, though. My Nexus 6P already dies around 40%, and I don't want to tempt the gods of battery life to increase that number. Sure, Android Nougat already introduced improvements to Doze, and Android O will put background execution limits for services, but I know the real problem is likely the hardware. Because my phone is from Best Buy, and my benefactor didn't get extended warranty, I'm essentially screwed until I get a new phone. (Hopefully, that new phone is a Pixe...

Did Thomas Bayes ever think a small part to proving God's existence would be used in machines to classify data? I don't know, and most of us don't care. I'm waiting to use this and other algorithms in production to something I can showcase. Progress I am almost done with the second lesson of Udacity's introduction to machine learning course. The lesson, titled "Naive Bayes" reveals exactly the topic of discussion. Continuing with my goal, I've taken detailed notes about an example relating to the probability of having cancer based on a test. Because of my excitement, I've created a Python virtual environment for machine learning-related packages including TensorFlow, Scikit-learn, and numpy. I've already played around with inputting different values into a Bayes classifier. In terms of scheduling, today was actually a bland day with only four events (besides this) scheduled. Tomorrow has eight activities to occupy my day including l...

I think the plan's working; I'm already motivated to accomplish everything I've planned in The Schedule . Thanks to Google Calendar, I have the flexibility to change what I do on a daily basis. (I know, it's like I'm a spokesperson for Google right now, but you haven't seen half of it.) With Calendar's goals feature, I specify frequency and position of goals I want to accomplish, and machine learning ensures the times work out for me. Sure, it's a bit finicky right now, but at least I didn't have to make a hundred something event times for goals that don't have entirely consistent definite start and end time. MOOCs and More Because of my existing knowledge and experience with Udacity , I've decided to use their online courses to enrich my currently unstructured learning. Here's everything scheduled to be completed during the summer: Introduction to Machine Learning (the big one, the real thing I want to accomplish) Introd...

What is this? Imagine you could harness the full productive capacity of summer vacation without having to succumb to sleeping in while mindlessly looking over documentation or forgetting to finish a summer assignment until a week before school begins. Imagine how many hours you lose by simply not having a plan? (It's in the range of 581–787.) I'm imagining summer break as school/work on my terms. Of course, that means I'm "off" on holidays, but I'm keeping weekends open for work. Weekends are fair game because I wanted to increase the "number of days in summer break" for marketing, and I realize if I properly schedule events on weekends, I can finally have projects I can start and finish in a week.  Of course, I didn't begin summer break on the first day I wasn't required to attend school because I really wanted to begin on day one.  Beginning on day one makes me punctual (if you don't count the fact a day zero would truly impress ...

The seniors didn't have to return to the school as of last week, but the rest of us had finals to take or exempt. My school's final exams began last Friday because Memorial Day had taken the place where exams usually start. Scheduling Speaking of exams starting, the final exam schedule for my school district had a very memorable formula: 1st and 8th, 2nd and 7th, 3rd and 6th, 4th and 5th. For my high school, at least, the schedule is screwed up beyond belief. It goes like this: 1, 5; 2, 3; 7, 4; and 8, 6. That's not even remotely intuitive. I can't even make up a song for that sequence of numbers! I won't complain that much, though; all days with final exams were early releases (1:00 PM). Since my district lets students in secondary education choose to exempt their exams if their grade is high enough and if their absence count was low enough, everyone here knows that the last week is essentially a week of blow-off classes, but it's even more extreme. ...