Another Day Another post (week 6 overview)

Hello again, these blog posts won’t write themselves, alas. Let’s dive into week 6, shall we? What can I say? It was MCA week all the way. Honestly, a part of me wishes I had picked a different one since I’d have had an idea of what I was doing at least. Nevertheless, I did enjoy exploring something new, even if my grasp on it was a tad shaky. I mentioned last time that I would try to break it down to a basic level, and while my memory is somewhat hazy, I’ll give it a go.

So imagine this: you have a framed painting in front of you, but it’s pitch dark, so you can’t see anything. That also means you have no clue what the painting depicts. Now, imagine you have a small pocket light that only illuminates a tiny part of the painting at a time, only visible as you slide it over. Your ultimate goal is to discern some pattern from the little part you can see to make an educated guess about the whole image. That’s exactly how a convolutional neural network (CNN) perceives your image. The painting metaphor represents the image, and the area your pocket light illuminates represents your kernel. It slides over the image with a size determined by the CNN’s creator. The value by how much it slides (the stride) is also predetermined. Usually, smaller strides are preferred as larger strides might gloss over some details. I won’t bore you with how it checks the patterns and what a feature map or the fully connected layers are. Let’s shift gears.

The presentation was a nerve-wracking ordeal, primarily because I wasn’t entirely sure if my understanding was correct. Plus, I didn’t feel like I had achieved anything tangible (the feeling persists). We didn’t even manage to train the car on Unity. Initially, my goal for the MCA was to create something fun on my own, but I ended up working on someone else’s idea without fully understanding it(technically mostly), and didn’t produce anything concrete in the end. I’m not griping here, just expressing a wish that I knew more to maybe do something better, something concrete on my own. Nobody has complained, so let’s assume I was at least accurate in my presentation. I’m not a fan of presentations since they rarely go as I prepare (mostly my fault), but I survived. As you can see on the picture I dressed up for the presentation (well it didn’t make me better).

That week, we also had a pasta-making session. It was a whole new experience and quite an interesting one. I discovered my divine talent for making pasta sauce and got to enjoy some really good homemade pasta. However, we nearly skirted a disaster when we found out there was no cheese. Thankfully, I foresaw this issue and procured some from the creamery in the same building. I also got an ice cream, but I can’t judge its quality since I’m not fond of ice cream to start with. Why did I get it then? I succumbed to peer pressure, which is also how they managed to drag me to the pool in week 8, but that’s a story for another day.

The luncheon lecture with Carmen Gomes was pretty engaging. Actually, post high-school, Bio-engineering was a major interest of mine. I even took engineering school exams to fulfill this ambition. I was accepted, but as you can see, I didn’t follow that path. It turns out; that field might not have been for me. Looks like my father might remain the only scientist in the family.

That’s all for this one, sorry if it sounded like a rant I actually enjoyed the MCA a lot. Ask me if you want me to continue my metaphorical explanation of CNN n & al and if I am actually right. Finally The game for this blog will be Ori and the Blind Forest.

Okay, how to put it… since I talked about painting before: Ori and the Blind Forest? It’s like stepping into a painting. A platformer, filled with heart-wrenching narrative and stunning visuals. The player guide Ori, a glowing guardian spirit, through a beautifully haunting forest, solving puzzles and battling enemies, all while trying to restore balance to your world. If you’re looking for a game that can make your heart throb and give you some challenge, this one’s for you. Believe me it even made me cry.