Complexity of David

Supercollider - This could be such a great tool if it didn’t force me to learn a new language. Not saying that it is a bad language (per Wikipedia sclang is dynamically typed, garbage-collected, single-inheritance object-oriented and functional), it is just that right now I have my hands (and brain) full with other things.
(supercollider.github.io)

Artificial Neural Nets Grow Brainlike Cells to Find Their Way - Can’t understand Wired use of ALL CAPS. But what do I know?
(wired.com)

How to build a Gesture Controlled Web based Game using Tensorflow Object Detection Api
(towardsdatascience.com)

Burned out: why are so many teachers quitting or off sick with stress? - One more month to go, one more month to go… :-)
(theguardian.com)

Inbox zero and the search for the perfect email client - My inbox count is 1324 :-( .
(arstechnica.com)

I Used The Web For A Day With JavaScript Turned Off - Unfortunately the web is a race between those that push stuff out and those that have to implement them. (smashingmagazine.com)

Getting Started With The Web MIDI API - It is a real pity that web Midi isn’t well supported across browsers. (smashingmagazine.com)

Consensus Mechanisms — As Detailed and Concise as possible! - Great read on such important algorithms, informative, mainly focused on blockchain technologies. (hackernoon.com)

“A Sloppy Machine, Like Me”: The History of Video Synthesizers
(wearethemutants.com)

What’s the difference between UX and UI design? - Everywhere you need to tick boxes, put things into small confined spaces, otherwise they’ll bite you in the hand. (medium.freecodecamp.org)

I’ve rely on physical index cards for many tasks related to managing information, but I’d like to have the same functionality on the desktop. I don’t want it integrated in a “brainstorming, mindmapping” package, or in a “screenplay” software. I wanted something like a shoe box of index cards, that I could just sort by some criterion, or group under certain labels. Just something simple. In design making things simple is sometimes the hardest.

My other need is about the Contacts app in OS X. As all Apple software, Contacts is suffering from the “we don’t have time to think about OS X software while we are stealing candy from hipsters buying iPhones” syndrome. I really need to have some way of categorizing, cleaning, and searching through my contacts easily. Every time I open Contacts, I’m surprised by the number of people that I don’t know and never contacted. I’m starting to think that the app just comes up with fake contacts like fake twitter followers.

If you know about an app that can help me, please share it with me! I’m avidly searching for apps to solve these two tasks.

I’m very happy that Ubiquity just started publishing a symposium on Big Data, where I have a humble contribution as editor and author. The introduction statement of this symposium is available from the ACM website.

For you to get an idea about what this simposium is all about pleasel let me quote the paper:

The term “big data” is something of a misnomer. Every generation of computers since the 1950s has been confronted with problems where data was way too large for the memory and processing power available. This seemed like an inconvenience of the technology that would someday be resolved when the next generation of computers came along. So what is different about big data today? The revolution is happening at the convergence of two trends: the expansion of the internet into billions of computing devices, and the digitization of almost everything. The internet gives us access to vast amounts of data. Digitization creates digital representations for many things once thought to be beyond the reach of computing technology. The result is an explosion of innovation of network-based big data applications and the automation of cognitive tasks. This revolution is introducing what Brynjolfsson and McAfee call the “Second Machine Age.” This symposium will examine this revolution from a number of angles.

Our authors will argue the big data challenge is the not technical problem of moving the maximum amount of bits in the minimum amount of time, but the scientific challenge of formulating methods to represent the complex and entangled systems that we must design and manage to run the modern world. This goes beyond “computational analytics” that abstract statistics from large data sets; “data mining” that discovers useful structures in combined data streams; and “visual analytics” that display multisource data as ingenious maps, color-coded images, and multidimensional videos to aid understanding and inform decisionmaking.

Big Data is a no brainer game changer. Understanding it and more importantly, understanding its implications for society will clear many misconceptions around Big Data. I hope that by reading this symposium we can contribute for some clarification of the field.

[REFERENCE:] Jeffrey Johnson, Peter Denning, David Sousa-Rodrigues, and Kemal A. Delic. Big data, digitization, and social change: Big data (ubiquity symposium). Ubiquity, 2017(December):1:1–1:8, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3158335 December 2017.

Sorting algorithms are one of those basic concepts that every CS course has, and that act as a great pedagogic tools for teaching students about how computers work. But many times they tend to be difficult to visualize and explain. That’s why it is always great to find some visualizations that are very clear and that compare several algorithm side by side.

I’ve been using Google’s Calendar since I can remember. The fact it has become one of the most important tools in my daily running around. I use it both to plan the future and to take short notes of the past. It acts like a life log.

Lately I’m finding that the Android version of Google Calendar needs an upgrade in terms of usability and simplicity. It doesn’t show all my calendars. When adding events, seems to hide them until some background thread thinks that I should see them (usually at random). The events entered sometimes don’t sync quickly with the online version. Argh…

The worse thing is the lack of feedback in the cases when your event doesn’t show right away on the calendar. You don’t know if it was recorded or if it just disappeared into the internet oblivion…

Calendar Alternatives?

Right now I’m using the simple (and beautiful) Cal. In works in a totally different way, and I’m taking some time to get used to it. But it has many positive things, namely that it did recognise ALL my calendars from the G company.

If you have other preference of a calendar app for android, please leave your comments below and tell me why. I’m searching for something really productive. I’ll take a careful look at your suggestions.

I’ve been trying to move away from Wordpress for so many years that I don’t even remember when I first started using it. It was probably in early 2000s but who cares anymore? WP has since improved and has grown up but also sideways. It has become the blogging platform of choice.

AND I’M FED UP WITH FIDDLING WITH WORDPRESS!!!
My God, it feels great to be free again.

All I really needed was a simple static website. That’s why I’m moving on. The old 6H is still there if you want to check it out, but now everything is powered by a static site generator.

I’ve chosen Hexo. Why? Jekyll, Hugo, and many others could be chosen. But I couldn’t run away from Node.js. Javascript is a great language and with all the recent developments it will very important in the years to come. Therefore, if I’m writing a blog why not use a static engine that runs on the same technologies? Can’t beat that.

• What’s next?

I’m updating things slowly and trying other things as I explore the static generator. Somethings might break, but I’ll try to fix them quickly if they don’t work.