Big question
Will twitter and facebook gonna kill blogging? .. it seems like .. but hope not
11:56pm, September 30th, 2007
Neural Networks and My Kid
Recently I completed one of my assignments (I published some parts of it in my blog) on neural networks. When I looked at my 13 months old kid I see a real neural network (non-artificial, of course) working inside her.
She tries to imitate us and does things. When we try to correct her, next time she improves little by little. Even when she is calling me and my wife, now the words are much clearer than those days. There are lot more things she does like this and she seems to be training her neural net really well.
I am not sure the best way is to explain artificial neural nets from real neural nets or the other way round, but whatever it is there is a clear similarity between them in a very abstract level. It will be interesting (one day) to study how neurons really "learn" without using weights that we use inside AI. And how about back-propagation inside brain?
Also there are some more interesting things I saw when I observe the behaviour of my kid. How is she doing some things? For example, how does she know how to walk? People who know about robotics and simulation must be knowing how dofficult is to walk a robot. It is a complex set of actions. How did she learn that? Balancing, cordinating legs, concentrating on obstacles, she does all of them amazingly well. There are lots of amazing things that she just do. As soon she was born, she could suck mother's milk. How did she know how to suck and how to manage the flow of milk? How did she know the way to crawl, get-up, balance her self? And also now she has began to dance to some of the Sinhala hip-hop songs. How did she know the how to relate the rhythm of the music to some movements of her body, i.e. to dance?
I should either learn cognitive science or continue to be amused by the wonders of nature.
She tries to imitate us and does things. When we try to correct her, next time she improves little by little. Even when she is calling me and my wife, now the words are much clearer than those days. There are lot more things she does like this and she seems to be training her neural net really well.
I am not sure the best way is to explain artificial neural nets from real neural nets or the other way round, but whatever it is there is a clear similarity between them in a very abstract level. It will be interesting (one day) to study how neurons really "learn" without using weights that we use inside AI. And how about back-propagation inside brain?
Also there are some more interesting things I saw when I observe the behaviour of my kid. How is she doing some things? For example, how does she know how to walk? People who know about robotics and simulation must be knowing how dofficult is to walk a robot. It is a complex set of actions. How did she learn that? Balancing, cordinating legs, concentrating on obstacles, she does all of them amazingly well. There are lots of amazing things that she just do. As soon she was born, she could suck mother's milk. How did she know how to suck and how to manage the flow of milk? How did she know the way to crawl, get-up, balance her self? And also now she has began to dance to some of the Sinhala hip-hop songs. How did she know the how to relate the rhythm of the music to some movements of her body, i.e. to dance?
I should either learn cognitive science or continue to be amused by the wonders of nature.
10:40pm, September 30th, 2007
Api okkoma booruwo!
Api okkoma booruwo! -we all are donkeys
As I see the sunrise & sunset here from Sri Lanka I can’t avoid feeling like a Donkey. Yes man I really feel so. Let me explain why.
Every time I switch on the T.V. there are people waiting to make us booruwo showing advertisements about fairness creams which make me handsome &/or popular, Milk powder which fight against Osteoporosis or fast forward kids growth, Hair gels which run girls mad & let me f*ck them, Telecom services just fall short at telepathy, Soft drinks make us young & someday immortal…Dammit the list goes long. When the ads are gone, then comes the tales of ultra-rich men & women who always in their leisure time having loads of fun in midst of a hell of problems. When I turn to news Oh…my…godwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
Sorry, at the end of the last line I felt dizzy & I’ve fallen on the key board. Guess who made me that much shocked. Easy huh? . Politicians. As long as I live in Sri Lanka, those people will never give up trying to grow a donkey tail on ma back. They know how to convince us that sun rises from west. We know the truth but they are smart enough to make us believe what they want. Those donkeys say & we donkeys believe. If they make a little mistake we donkeys mark x for the other party of donkeys. But no worries, things won’t change & new donkeys do *little* mistakes too. So I’ll never have to loose those fairy tails in NEWS.
After the T.V., I get the news paper. It’s just a change of media, again ads & politics. I throw the paper under my bed & turn on the radio. I’m still a happy donkey who lives in heaven. Suddenly I realize that I can’t get rid of this donkey-ship coz I’d never miss radios shouting in my ears where ever I go. I force my brain to reject the signals come from my ears & trying to relax looking around. Hehe… I’m still a happy donkey living in the land of luxury. Massive billboards are doing well. My eyes are dazed of those half naked cuties & my mind has forgotten all the worries.
In this way I always manage to stay as a booruwa being fooled by all those people. I guess there won’t be any changes in your life either. We know Sri Lanka is the country which made the movie Matrix true. Politicians & media make us feel we are living in a luxurious country or in heaven in mind; while our bodies live in this hell.
But enough is more than enough. We must get out of this Matrix. I am ready & hope you intelligent rebel is also ready to fight the way out. Just make it clear in your mind what really is happening around us & you make yourself FREE. I don’t believe that every one is ready to go out. There are enough of people who are willing to gain the ‘Puttalam Booru-ship’ because they are taught by the booru education system to be even booru. I just want very few of you, who are intelligent enough to think a *BIT*.
7:07am, September 30th, 2007
Laaazy Sunday (yawn..)
Lazy Sunday by Chief Austin
So sad to start a lazy Sunday with a cancelled class (even in the wake of completing a headache assignment), although it looks like Beautiful Gorgeous’s ECIS lab is going to be held, surprise! Time to wakeup, stretch, yawn and toddle on, hmm..
10:47pm, September 29th, 2007
Scheme and Neural Networks
I wrote (actually had to write) piece of scheme code to run a neural network. This may not be the best code one can write using scheme, but as a starter I am pretty much happy to get this work.
This code can create a network with any number of hidden layers with any number of hidden nodes in each layer. Then you can feed some test data, using a file, to train the network and then test it.
You can download the code from here.
(define my-network (generate-network 10 8 12 3)) - create a network with 10 inputs, two hidden layers having 8 and 12 hidden nodes, and 3 outputs.
(train-from-file "xor.tra" my-network 10000) - train the created network from the data found within the given file. Run 10000 iterations. You might have to cd to the folder containing this file before running.
(cd "folder name") - change to folder.
(test-network "test file name" my-network) - test the network with some test code in the given file.
(display-network my-network) - displays the network
I included a train file for training the network for XOR problem. Some Scheme compilers have problem in picking up the matrix code that I have put at the end of the file. If that hits you, I've included matrix operation in a separate file. Load it by un-commenting first two lines in neural-net.ss file.
You can follow scheme setup instructions in one of my earlier blogs.
Special thanks should goto Todd and Chathura who helped me with this code and to Srinath for answering some of my stupid questions during the process.
This code can create a network with any number of hidden layers with any number of hidden nodes in each layer. Then you can feed some test data, using a file, to train the network and then test it.
You can download the code from here.
(define my-network (generate-network 10 8 12 3)) - create a network with 10 inputs, two hidden layers having 8 and 12 hidden nodes, and 3 outputs.
(train-from-file "xor.tra" my-network 10000) - train the created network from the data found within the given file. Run 10000 iterations. You might have to cd to the folder containing this file before running.
(cd "folder name") - change to folder.
(test-network "test file name" my-network) - test the network with some test code in the given file.
(display-network my-network) - displays the network
I included a train file for training the network for XOR problem. Some Scheme compilers have problem in picking up the matrix code that I have put at the end of the file. If that hits you, I've included matrix operation in a separate file. Load it by un-commenting first two lines in neural-net.ss file.
You can follow scheme setup instructions in one of my earlier blogs.
Special thanks should goto Todd and Chathura who helped me with this code and to Srinath for answering some of my stupid questions during the process.
3:54am, September 29th, 2007
Software Updates, for good or bad
Software updates has taken a new step as we all know software updates used to deliver us patches and new features but now most of the software providers use update to kick pirates out from the drama. Microsoft is trying as much as they can Windows Genuine Advantage has became a big joke after few [...]
9:47pm, September 28th, 2007
Facebook suxs
what a bad news facebook blocked me same like azhan, i used to login facebook everyday and add all my friends after deleting my hi5 account i used to add many to facebook, but today facebook policy disable my account without any warning. well if facebook administrators cant maintain the bandwidth if they cant mange [...]
1:35pm, September 27th, 2007
How stuff works in the movies
Something I wrote a while back:
From the Good Guy’s Bomb Disposal Guide:
1. Always arrive at the scene just in time to defuse a time bomb at T minus 00:00:01.
2. Criminals use a strictly enforced color coding standard for the wires in their bombs. You must cut either the red wire or the blue wire to defuse the bomb.
From the Psychopath Bomber’s Manual:
1. Color code the wires in your bomb. Never, EVER use cheap, single color wires for assembly.
2. Always include a countdown timer so that the good guy may cut the wire at 00:00:01.
3. Pay attention to aesthetics: use nice blinking indicator lights and periodic high pitched beeps in your bomb.
4. Audio-visual interface is extremely important. Prerecord and include in your program, voice messages in sexy female voices. Use the following as guidelines:
“Releasing deadly virus…”
“Destruction of Washington D.C. in 5 seconds…”
“Now downloading top secret files…”
“Counterfeit passport creation in progress…”
From the User’s Manual for the Typical Movie Car:
1. If your car hits a parked car at medium to high speed, it will suddenly fly up in the air, cartwheel, and then land upside down.
2. If your car hits a wall or an electricity pole, it will explode.
3. If you are still alive inside your car after impact, it will not explode. It will, however, explode immediately after you drag your injured passenger out of the car to a safe distance.
4. If your brakes fail, your clutch pedal will also fail to disengage the engine. You will not be able to shift to neutral gear. You will somehow forget to turn off the engine by turning the key. The car will continue to move at top speed until you run out of gas or hit something.
5. In the above situation, if a good guy races to your side in his car and then jump into yours, he will be able to turn off the engine.
How not to get out of problems:
1. If your wife walks in on you when you are with another woman, do not ever ask “How long have you been standing there?”, because she will always answer “Long enough”.
2. In situations such as above, do not use the following phrases. They never work:
“Honey, it’s not what you think!”
“Wait, I can explain!”
3. Or, if you are being arrested:
“I don’t know what you are talking about”
“There must be some mistake”
About Aliens
1. Even though you are technologically advanced, do not wear clothes — come naked.
2. Even though your spaceships are advanced enough to travel hundreds of light years, they may fail at the last one billionth of the journey and crash land on Earth.
9:26pm, September 26th, 2007
Ran Depeya Rocks!
I was looking for something to post here & found this in a deep dusty folder in my compy. It was condemed due to bad writing, but i thought…who cares? so here it is…
I’m not a T.V lover. But I really love “Ran Depeya”, because every episode (all the episodes of all ran depeya crap) makes me laugh, including the ones which are intended to be very serious. But I miss the fun coz I never watch takaRAN DEPEYA [I spend very little time with T.V.]
I know there are lots & lots of people who are watching ran depeya & crying, laughing, dancing sometimes f*cking & puking…I’ll say…doing everything the characters do. And I know this very well; making fun of someone’s fun is not very good for a blogger. It’ll possibly make some readers angry. If you are going to stop reading me because of this article, so be it.
Check the following quote.
“Api denna hemadama anuradhai praveenai wage adaren Indimu” - roughly means “we’ll be in love forever like Anuradha & praveena”.
What you read is a part of a love letter which has been given to a guy in grade 9 by a gal same age, learning in a school somewhere in Sri Lanka. I think this example is more than enough to prove the Ran Depeya [or even wider; television] effect on lankan culture. (Thanks to my friend Nayomal for the nice story)
I have no problem even if those kids f*ck like Anuradha & Praveena & I don’t mean love should be restricted for the grade 9 ADULTS. The problem is whether those kids do it with the correct attitude. Do they know what they are doing? They are just imitating what they see on screen. Some one or other would say that the responsibility of the kids is in their parents’ hands. I don’t have an answer but a question back; do the parents have a brain to understand that Ran Depeya affects their kids? If yes, how is Ran Depeya so popular? Sri Lanka has a good Literacy rate but still we have to go so far to get better ‘intelligence’ rate.
I saw a huge debate on “Poor O/L exam results” all around the country, sometimes back. Did any one think that T.V. stats are a considerable fact on that failure? , personally I believe it. It’s evident that T.V. is slowly but strongly harming mother Lankas future. It makes a dumb & lame generation who just believe what they see, without any further thinking. The whole system including education is tailored to make dumb machines to work out a given task and not to think.
I know that there will be a lot of people, broken hearted, calling me “Wimal Weerawansa no2”. Please don’t be that much cruel to call me in name of someone in lankan politics. [My definition for lankan politics is ‘the donkey feeding system’]
I’ll finish this with something I found on a productivity tips roundup, just three words.
“Avoid the tube”. Dead simple.
PS- Sometimes back I found a nice article about “mahagedara” on lame-duck which is a piece of takaRan Depeya & it encouraged me to write my own.
10:26am, September 26th, 2007