Drawing pen tablet XP PEN Star G640 and Google Canvas.

When we work online and the whiteboards are not available to show your ideas something is missing. When I am in the online meeting I do a lot of hand waving and gesticulation with mixed results in conveying the message. 

However, while watching YouTube classes I noticed that a lot of instructors use tablets to draw their ideas. I also noticed some of my coworkers started to use pen-based tablets.

At work, when we draw driving scenarios, trajectories, acceleration curvatures, and so on, a drawing tool is becoming necessary, not to mention trying to convey any mathematic formulas.

While searching the subject, I came across this video and a very inexpensive XP PEN Star G640 tablet for $39, which is nothing compared to what my wife has spent for her design Walcom $$$ tablet.

As a bonus, the video showed the Google Canvas:

https://canvas.apps.chrome/

It is true that at work I use Microsoft Notes with a drawing area, but the cleanliness of Google Canvas is very enticing.

How is the Bird-Eye-View used in autonomous driving?

Andrej Karpathy talks about the Bird-Eye-View image-stitching and transformation and then Deep Neural Training

https://youtu.be/2iq6CnMcL6g

Ketogenic Diet

I am taking the opportunity while the girls are in on vacation to go on a ketogenic diet, lose a few extra pounds, and detox a bit.

My routine consists of 16 hour night and morning fast, 2 meals, one around noon, the other around 6 PM.

The meals are keto and very satisfying. The mix greens organic salad with olive oil, Modena balsamic vinegar makes it very tasty. I tried few other vinegars, but they are to harsh.

I eat 3 types of nuts, Brazil, Pistachio and Macadamia.

For the extra crunch and flavor, I put some pickles.

Pluto for kids with Julia language

I have installed Pluto.jl for Julia language and while going thru the exercises provided by the creators, I realized that it would be a great tool to teach my kids programming. 

And, it is not any toy programming, programming in the best of the scientific languages!

How does the Pluto.jl work?

You write one, or multiple, lines of code in each "cell" and execute it.

Once you finish writing and executing a line, you can HIDE the code and only leave the result.

All other cells are able to "see" what you wrote and evaluate it, providing immediate feedback. 

The following two images illustrate this better than I can describe in words:

After adding the necessary code I was able to get a good answer:

Is Pluto.jl only for Mathematics?

Absolutely not! It is a generic programming environment. You can create word games, and anything else that you can imagine. I use it as my primary programming tool.

What are the next steps with Pluto.jl for kids?

Now, I have to write a few notebooks that are age-appropriate for my kids.
I will post them online so you can download them, but I believe YOU should learn how to create them, too. You might find a new great hobby for yourself.

Look inside the links I posted below for any updates.

Will I maintain this post with new updates on Pluto.jl for kids?

Most likely not, please check the links below for the updates.

References

• Pluto.jl folder (this article):
  https://github.com/UkiDLucas/QUANTA_QUALIA_Julia/tree/master/src/pluto
• Pluto.jl  for kids:
  https://github.com/UkiDLucas/QUANTA_QUALIA_Julia/tree/master/src/pluto/Pluto.jl%20for%20kids

How to install Julia language Pluto notebook?

 What is pluto.jl

TBD

How to install Julia?

Install Julia language from https://julialang.org/

Start Julia 

    I can do that from Terminal,

    or by clicking an icon

How to Install pluto.jl?

Once Julia's prompt opens,

    click the closing bracket ] to enter the "package mode"

% julia
(@v1.7) pkg> add Pluto.jl

This will take a few moments.

How to stop a Julia prompt? 

julia> exit()

The installation is very fast.

Press BACKSPACE to exit the package mode

What do I need to do before running Pluto notebook?

I have learned that it is wise to change to the directory you want to work with. 

The support of Pluto notebook to jump thru many directories up or down is very sketchy.

cd /Volumes/_MY_DIRECTORIES_/Julia/Brilliant/
Brilliant % julia

julia> pwd()

How to run Pluto notebook in Julia?

julia> using Pluto
julia> Pluto.run()

At this point, the pluto website should open in your browser:

Sync: How Order Emerges from Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life by by Steven H. Strogatz

This is the second book of this author I am listening to. 

The concept of "coupled oscillators" is absolutely riveting to me and I want to explore it deeper.

 I have a clear intuitive understanding of how it works and I think I could write a simple computer program to showcase it ( firefly synch ), maybe I can follow up on that later #todo

The occurrence of synchronized coupled oscillators is common all over in biology from single-cell organisms to humans, as well as in astronomy, physics, and computer networks. 

It is the #AI field that is getting me excited. Imagine a #distributed network, or rather a #graph, of nodes doing constant analysis of the input data flow, traditionally, they would wait for a signal, process it, discharge the output, and wait for the next one. 

I want it ( the graph) to create a state where the info is disseminated, nodes synchronized, created the state and reported on it to the "secondary" and "tertiary" observer and "reporter" nodes, then the whole system discharged that state and while creating the output ( e.g. chat response), took that "previous" state and any new information from the outside as an input to the next cycle.

Crispy, spicy chicken

How to execute Julia code in VS code editor with Julia Language Support plugin?

In VS code,

with the Julia Language Support plugin installed,

with Julia installed on my macOS,

% which julia
/Applications/Julia-1.7.app/Contents/Resources/julia/bin/julia

 When trying to run (Shift-Enter, or RUN icon) Julia in VS code I got this error:

command 'language-julia.executableCodeBlockOrSelectionAndMove' not found

Solution

• I reinstalled the VS code plugin
• I rechecked the PATH (see above)
• I CLOSED and RE-OPENED the VS code

And voila, it works. Not very scientific, but I am happy. 

References

• Unresolved bug: https://github.com/julia-vscode/julia-vscode/issues/2116

How to add VS code executable to the command line on macOS?

 

% nano .zprofile

#### VS code - Uki 2022-06-26 ####
## set PATH to "code" executable so it is available directly from Terminal
export PATH="\$PATH:/Applications/Visual\ Studio\ Code.app/Contents/Resources/app/bin"
## the following line is the key to launch "code" from the command line
alias code='/Applications/Visual\ Studio\ Code.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron'

After adding these lines, save it in NANO by pressing 

control x 

Do not forget to double-check your work.

% cat .zprofile 

And re-run the content of the .zprofile: 

% . ~/.zprofile

 
 

How to add "julia" executable to the PATH on macOS

 

% nano .zprofile

#### Julia - Uki 2022-06-26 ####
## set PATH to "julia" executable so it is available directly from Terminal
export PATH="\$PATH:/Applications/Julia-1.7.app/Contents/Resources/julia/bin"

Make sure to change to the version of Julia you have, check the path.
After adding these lines, save it in NANO by pressing 

control x 



 Do not forget to double-check your work.

% cat .zprofile

Is .zprofile replacing .bash_profile in macOS?

 In the macOS 12+ (Monteray, etc.) the .zprofile is replacing .bash_profile

Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA by Neil Shubin

Amazon

Mitochondria and the Future of Medicine: The Key to Understanding Disease, Chronic Illness, Aging, and Life Itself by Lee Know

Amazon

The Joy of x; A guided tour of math, from one to infinity by Steven Strogatz

"When the things on our desks are not used to surf the web, or play the games, they can be used to discover things our ancestors have never dreamt of."

Very interesting statement, ever since I have owned my first computer, it came with a box of games, I never played them, friend would come and play, but I was only interested in what the computer can do, programming Basic, the Pascal.

Embedding a GoogleDoc as a iframe in a BlogSpot.com post

Today, I decided to organize my writings, and since I find Google Docs the best way to compose, I was looking for a way to "PUBLISH" them in another way than ePubs.

Google Docs page has two options: to publish the whole document, hosted by docs, and EMBED the document on another website, in my case uki.BlogSpot.com. 

Embedding uses the <iframes> [horror music playing in the background].

The <iframes>, people have been hating them since the '90s, yet we are still using them.

I have spent an embarrassingly long time (ashamed to mention how long) trying every HTML attribute combination with width, height, <DIV>, and multiple JavaScript replacement and resize methods. 

All of them failed. 

Finally, I went back to my experience circa 1999  @ RollingStone.com and said, if everything else fails, put it in the TABLE grid and format the grid to your liking. It worked just how I wanted. 

 

I posted the solution on Stackoverflow.com as no one reads my blog: https://stackoverflow.com/a/72750122/6312771

<table width="100%" height="800px" border="0">
  <tr>
    <td>
     <iframe src="https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTaRY68GO9FWHU8K64bqGUVD1V_FKxKqlpeeEBT44UZvwe_vi62hDh-yJM5bKPrDR6B-a96BeRTzejx/pub?embedded=true" 
              frameborder="0"
              height="100%"
              width="100%">                       
      </iframe>
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>

Here is the result, please let me know if this helped you.

 

a book of my poems

On the mobile, the page is hard to read so I am including a LINK to Google document
Please let me know in comments what you think.

No more development on Turi Create

Since I have been using Apple's machine learning framework, Turi Create in the past,
today, I went to check if there is any new development and if there is support for Julia language. 

Unfortunately, it seems like it is a NO on both counts, there is a minimal code activity since the beginning of 2020, too bad.

https://github.com/apple/turicreate/graphs/code-frequency

Please let me know in the comments if you are still using it and what for.