blog – July 26, 2021
If you are trying to learn the nuts-and-bolts behind the machinery of Machine Learning (ML), like I am, then this is a nice, short book to dive into. Don't let the brevity of the book fool you, though. This book is 130 pages of pure rubix cube type thinking. This book takes a bit of work to digest, and I am still trying to assimilate Chapters 1 and 2, to be honest. Nevertheless, I feel that great things will come from persistence in understanding this material, as it has caused Cindy and I to ponder what exactly constitutes the word 'Intelligence' in 'Artificial Intelligence (AI)'; and further, is Machine Learning truly a waypoint on the path to AI or AGI (Artificial General Intelligence)?
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blog – July 12, 2021
Why try to get hired by a company as an Individual Contributor (IC) when you can team-up with a few colleagues, start a business, and sell your business to a big tech firm for $44 million? You don't need a product, inventory, income or even a business plan. This is exactly what Jeff Hinton and two of his students did when they founded DNNResearch and got bought by their highest bidder - Google. Turns out that to be worth that much money, however, your company has to be on the fringe of starting a technological revolution (like 'Artificial Intelligence'), as Cade Metz eloquently and meticulously describes in his book, 'Genius Makers'.
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blog – June 8, 2021
You've undoubtedly heard the old adage, 'practice makes perfect.' Daniel Coyle, in his book, 'The Talent Code,' explains the biological imperatives behind the act of practicing a task over and over in order to build-up a skill in a certain area. 'The Talent Code' explains that practice, and deep practice in particular, helps to build-up fatty tissue called myelin around neural connectors in our brains, helping to retain data between neural transfers and improving data throughput in the process. So one mystery unlocked, I suppose, but what motivates us humans to put in the amount of work required to beef up our myelin to such a degree that we can actually become great at something?
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blog – May 31, 2021
Driven by a singlular passion to create the world's first feature-length CGI (Computer Generated Image) movie, Dr. Ed Catmull followed his dreams from the completion of his PhD at the University of Utah, to the New York Institute of Technology, to George Lucas' Lucasfilm, to being a founder of Pixar and getting to work with the likes of John Lasseter, Steve Jobs, and ultimately Robert Iger at Disney. Creativity, Inc. not only documents the story of the creation of Pixar, but primarily shares lessons-learned about how to be a great Manager and Leader while also nurturing and fostering creativity (and excellence) within a business organization.
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blog – May 3, 2021
Ancient Mesopotamia gave rise to one of the earliest and richest cultures in the world - Babylon. Even then, mankind struggled with how to best play the financial game they were born into with the cards life had dealt them. Today, the game continues. The book, 'The Richest Man In Babylon', provides a very simple, yet deceptively complex, game plan for winning the financial game of life. Shall we play (and win) a game?
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