Learning Deep Learning

Category: Writing

  • Prerequisite 1: Machine Learning

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    wombat
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    To get into any subject, there is a lot of jargon to wade through. I love simplicity but precise terminology makes things much easier. In this post I’m going to establish basic definitions for these terms, which are necessary for deep learning: machine learning model supervised learning prediction cost function function optimization local minimum vs. global…

  • PSA: What makes a good personal essay?

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    wombat
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    It’s college essay season again. As hard and annoying as they are to write, I’m a huge fan of the genre of which they are a sub: the personal essay. The personal essay, when well done, exploits tools of both expository and creative writing. Here are some excerpts from my heroes and some notes about…

  • My brutish love of poetry, part 4

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    wombat
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    Poetry can be dangerous. Yes, it can be pretty, pithy, wise, amusing. But it’s gotten me and countless others into trouble. My web site here is a pretty safe place and I’ve quoted some pretty safe poems. There are many poets I love who are big troublemakers. Some write about the experience of love and…

  • My brutish love of poetry, part 3

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    wombat
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    Another gift of Canada is exposure to French Canadian poetry. If you know even a little bit of french, you can poke around at the edges. I am a fan of Anne Hébert and of her cousin Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau. His life was brief and his family posted his works here. Somehow poems in…

  • My brutish love of poetry, part 2

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    wombat
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    In 1920, Marianne Moore wrote a poem that begins: The Fish wade through black jade. You can immediately see that this poem plays with line breaks and structure and is not about meter and rhyme. Yikes, free verse. What is there for a brute lover of poetry to sink her teeth into? Marianne Moore is…

  • My brutish love of poetry, part 1

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    wombat
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    I never studied poetry the way I studied other subjects. But I love it, poems stick in my head for years, I can recite a few, and sometimes reading a poem colors my thoughts for hours. Since I don’t know or understand many underlying references and details, I love poems like a brute, like an…

  • Musical cross dressing – Bill Evans and “I love you Porgy”

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    by

    wombat
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    Trio performance Here is a link to the Bill Evans Trio playing “I love you Porgy”. I bought this on vinyl years ago. Recently I had to chance to play “I love you Porgy” with some friends. And I thought about singing it. The lyrics are very much from a woman’s point of view: I…

  • It’s a boy thing

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    wombat
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    I like boy things. When I hear about explosives and magnets and highly nauseating g-forces I am drawn like a moth to flame. I once spent a week in Mumbai hanging out with an engineer who designed ship propellers. You only like me for my propeller talk, he’d say. Not true, but I did like…

  • Viva le vélo

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    wombat
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    I wrote a novel for twelve year olds that features bicycles. The novel is set in China in 1902, when the bicycle was a fairly new technology. Many key features of the modern bicycle were present in the 1902 bicycle. So, why bicycles? When I was in Africa for six months in 1991-1992, Chinese bicycles…

  • Chekhov’s Rabbits

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    wombat
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    The first time I fell in love with Anton Chekhov was when I read “The Darling” and other short stories. The second time was when I saw Wallace Shawn play Uncle Vanya in a movie. And the third time was when, on a whim, I read some biographical notes about him. When he was young,…