Author: JohnCanessa

Bigger is Greater

I was going to have a different introduction (the regular chit chat) to this post, but based on the article “Malevolent Machine Learning” by Chris Edwards on Communications of the ACM 12/2019 Volume 62 Number 12 I changed my mind. Allow me to explain.

A couple years ago I took a few courses from Coursera. The general topic was big data and machine learning. The course of interest is “Neural Networks and Deep Learning” by Andrew Ng deeplearning.ai. It was very interesting class and I highly recommend it.

I tried locating my notes on those courses, but not sure what I did with them. Found my notes. I hoped to have stored the transcriptions to verify what I recall about a specific class. I do not have the transcriptions Continue reading “Bigger is Greater”

Matrix Layer Rotation

I am moving along with a project at work. I have completed the first pass. I am now optimizing the code and testing the system as a whole. As soon as I am done will move to replacing a component with a machine learning (ML) model. I am planning on developing the model using Azure. I would like to see if it is better that using OCR (Optical Character Recognition). Will let you know the results later this month.

I decided to give a try to the HackerRank Matrix Layer Rotation challenge. The challenge is rated HARD and worth 80 points. If interested take a look at the requirements. If interested you can read about how I addressed the problem in this post. Continue reading “Matrix Layer Rotation”

Organizing Containers of Balls

Hope you had a happy Thanksgiving Day with your family. As usual there is lots of anticipation and suddenly it is over.

Some years my wife and I have gone out shopping on Black Friday, but as time goes by, it seems that most of the shopping can be done on-line. For that, the best day seems to be Cyber Monday. Besides the ability of shopping from the computer on Cyber Monday, there was a lot of snow and ice over in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul over the Thanksgiving holiday. One of my wife’s nephews posted on Facebook a video of cars slipping and sliding all over in Minneapolis. Continue reading “Organizing Containers of Balls”

Finding Intersection

Earlier this morning I spoke with my friend Gustavo. We know each other for most of our lives. We started kindergarten together. Today we are both married to our respective spouses and have kids and grand kids. We get on Skype about once a month always on a Friday at 06:00 AM and have a great time catching up.

He studied geology and currently owns a company that was started by his dad. He bought out his siblings and with time has grown his company quite a lot. Last time we got together was for a geology convention last year in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. We had a great time with our spouses dining, dining and doing tourist things. The only thing of the trip they did not like was the snow. The show was in February and there was a lot of snow and of course cold temperatures. Continue reading “Finding Intersection”

Sliding Window

I been reading, watching videos and experimenting with the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and cpp/WinRT most of the day. On this final block I decided to take a break and make a post in my blog. I want to get some software done before the end of the day this Wednesday. Will let you know if I meet the deadline.

I noticed in my Gmail that JAVAAID had posted a video on YouTube titled “Sliding Windows Technique”. It called my attention because the Rabin-Karp algorithm is based on a sliding window technique.  In the past few months I wrote a post on the subject and named it “Rabin-Karp Algorithm” (not too creative on my part). Continue reading “Sliding Window”

Cats and a Mouse

In the past few weeks I have been reading several articles about how great Visual Studio Code is and how software developers are starting to use as their main IDE. I have been using VS Code on and off but have made up my mind that from now on for Java development I will only use Visual Studio Code. I have installed Eclipse and IntelliJ in my machine, both of which I have used for Java development. I will leave both of them installed for compatibility purpose only. Will let you know my findings towards the end of the year. Continue reading “Cats and a Mouse”

Java Static Initializer Block

It is Sunday at 07:36 AM in the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis. I try to get in at least a couple of 2-hour blocks each weekend day. I can see from my home office that the day is still dark although sunrise occurred at 07:14 AM.

Lately I have not posting much due to the fact that I am working on software that I would like to have finished by the end of this week. I like the project because the requirements were quite vague. In addition, the hardware when I received it had a couple issues. After contacting the vendor I had to wait a week before I could take the unit to be repaired. It just took a few hours for me to drive to the OEM’s office, have it looked at and repaired and get back home. Very knowledgeable technical support! Continue reading “Java Static Initializer Block”

TDD is Seldom Understood

Introduction

I read and re twitted the post by Chris Fox titled “Test-Driven Development is Fundamentally Wrong” in Hacker Noon. In the past few months, I have been reading multiple articles a day about TDD. It seems to me that most people (i.e., software engineers and software managers) have heard about the benefits of using TDD, but it all collapses when understanding and applying the proper concepts or fundamental nature. Continue reading “TDD is Seldom Understood”

Graph Search DFS and BFS

It is Sunday November 10, 2019 around 10:30 AM. As usual get up at 05:00 AM, prepare and have breakfast with my wife, shower, get dressed and go down to my home office for the first two-hour block of the day. I practice the Deep Work technique methodology by Cal Newport. I have been practicing the technique for years and it seems to work for me.

After the first block of the day I prepared tea and my wife and I sat down in the living room to chat. The high temperature yesterday was 44 F. The high for today is 30 and currently we are at 29. Taking in consideration wind, the wind chill is at 19 degrees. We were considering going out to Trader Joe’s to get some tea which we are running low, but we decided to have an early lunch and watch some movies this afternoon on Amazon Prime and Netflix. Continue reading “Graph Search DFS and BFS”

Missing Two

Usually my youngest son calls on his way to work. Is almost 10:00 AM and have not heard from him. I work from home so I am able to receive his calls pretty much any time. I do not like to call him because he works out in the mornings and has to go home, get ready and drive to work. His time varies from day to day. We have this unspoken arrangement that if he does not have a chance to call we will do so the next day.

The arrangement is exactly the opposite on weekends. I tend to call him as soon as my wife and I head out for the first activity of the day. Typically is on our way to or from shopping for groceries or running any other morning errand. Continue reading “Missing Two”