Quick Byte
Setting up Miniconda instead and connecting it to Jupyter Notebook.
I remember when I started learning Python in my university days and found this “thing” called Anaconda.
To me, it was basically an all-in-one Python package that comes bundled with a lot of packages. Goodbye pip install, I can finally focus on the code instead of managing the requirements.
The problem would come a while later when I was working on a task for my Machine Learning class.
It was a pretty straightforward task, load csv dataset, do feature engineering, create some visualisations, and then train a model.
“Nice, I should be able to sleep for 8 hours tonight,” I…
Quick Byte
You have been using it everyday without paying attention.
Throughout my journey working with data, I have discovered a tool that will help save your time and make you more productive, no matter what programming language you are using.
The shell.
When you run any program from the terminal, you are actually using shell to run it. Any command you type on the terminal, it runs on shell.
Unfortunately, most of us only learn a small amount of shell, mainly cd and ls to navigate through directories.
Other than that, maybe we learn tool-specific commands such as git and docker , and language-specific commands to compile and run different…
Quick Byte
The default MacOS terminal is not for you, or anyone really
Have you ever bought a mattress?
Let me tell you about my experience with the notorious mattress salesmen.
Salesmen would talk their way into making you buy something you don’t really need or a more expensive version of something you do need.
Personally, I like to shop in peace. That means I would prefer not having a salesman follow me while I browse. However, it is nearly impossible to find a mattress store without salesmen.
Once you heard one of the sales pitches, you realise that all of them are exactly the same. …
Learning Machine
Because not all of Sensible Vim might be sensible for you
There are 3 possible reasons why you clicked on this story. First, it pops up in your screen as a recommended story. You are not using Vim, but you are curious about Vim and Sensible Vim.
Alternatively, you have been obsessed with Vim for years and you thought “I already know all the lines inside it, but it’s an article about Vim so I will read it anyway.”
Finally, you are in the same stage of learning Vim as me and you have searched about an annotated version of Sensible but haven’t found one.
Anyway, I will give a quick…
Tech Talk
Big Sur? More like Big Mess.
Have you ever had that feeling of regret for doing something spontaneously out of boredom?
Just like when you decided to go out for a walk because it’s a sunny day outside. Then, once you are outside, you realised that you actually liked being inside better because it’s cool and doesn’t make you sweaty?
I just had that experience by upgrading to Big Sur.
It was 9 p.m., I just started a retraining for a model that would take at least 30 minutes, and a notification popped up on the top right corner.
An update is available for your Mac.
…
Learning Machine
Natural emotive high-quality faster-than-real-time text-to-speech synthesis with minimal data
One beautiful Sunday morning, I saw an unexpected video being recommended by YouTube.
It was a video about Team Fortress 2, an FPS game from 2007 that I have spent 1300 hours on during my high school years.
There are 9 possible characters inside the game, each with their own unique voice lines and distinct accents. The scout has a Boston accent, the medic speaks German most of the time, the spy dons his French accent, you get the point.
I was very familiar with all the voice lines from the game, and also from Team Fortress’ official videos, so…
The Data Science Experience
Have you worked on big data or “big data”?
128 Petabytes. Not Terabytes, Petabytes. That’s how much storage space the Hadoop File System (HDFS) had when I first started working with big data.
We have all heard of the term big data, but I believe we never fully understand it before getting a hands-on experience.
I first learnt about it during my sophomore year in the university and even worked on “big data” in my first job.
I was responsible for setting up a pipeline to process 10 MB of generated data everyday. Which would amount to around 3.65 GB of data per year.
We even decided to not…
The Data Science Experience
Get to know yourself before going down the data science career path
Bzzz! My always-on-vibrate phone buzzes in my pocket as I walked along the Orchard Road in Singapore on a beautiful Saturday morning.
It buzzes a few more times in quick succession after the first one, but I thought nothing of it since I have tried to ignore messages on weekends.
I learned that disengaging from chats and social media will help you better appreciate your time with people around you.
Once I arrived back home, I was surprised to see it was from someone who had not messaged me for a very long time. I don’t really know this person…
Learning Machine
Amazon and Apple already have a huge head start.
Covid-19 has caused massive disruption to industries around the world. Airline and tourism were among the first ones to be hit hard due to entry restriction by most countries in an effort to curb the pandemic’s spread. Giant startups like Airbnb and Uber, among others, have also laid off some of their workers in an effort to shed expenses. Famous consulting firms, Accenture and Deloitte, did the same thing a couple of months ago. The list goes on and on.
Among these industries, there is one, in particular, that may usher in the next trend in machine learning and AI—…
Tech Talk
It’s a step to the right direction, but they should have been able to do more.
Apple has always thrown a lot of big and powerful words around in their marketing. The following quote was taken from the latest Apple Event on October 13.
For example, Deep Fusion uses machine learning on the Neural Engine for pixel-by-pixel processing of photos with unprecedented detail, texture, and minimal noise. (source)
As far as I know, image processing will process images pixel-by-pixel, because that is the only way to do it. What other data would you use to process an image aside from the pixels?
I am not undermining Apple’s technology. With Ian Goodfellow himself as the Director of…
