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Review: The Welch Labs Illustrated Guide to AI

The Welch Labs Illustrated Guide to AI by Stephen Welch My rating: 5 of 5 stars This a beautifully conceived and put together text book. I was blown away with the quality of the videos on YT and hence not surprised that the author has managed to put together such a high quality production in physical form. The book is heavy - in terms of weight - which meant it took some time and cost some dollars to ship to Singapore, but it was a joy to find it waiting outside my house. The book is hefty - in that it covers 70 years of machine learning from Rosenblatt’s perceptron to attention models and diffusion. When I started building neural networks in 1990 there were few accessible textbooks. I had to bribe one computer-scientist author with a bottle of wine to explain how to implement some of self organising algorithms. This has it all. Diagrams, models, beautiful illustrations and code. It also has some exercises, and the author has left wide margins for th...
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Review: Great Ideas Miracles and Idolatry

Great Ideas Miracles and Idolatry by Voltaire My rating: 3 of 5 stars View all my reviews

Review: Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History

Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History by Moudhy Al-Rashid My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews

Review: Solaris

Solaris by Stanisław Lem My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews

Review: Ulysses

Ulysses by James Joyce My rating: 5 of 5 stars I first read Ulysses almost thirty-five years ago, when I was roughly the same age as Stephen Dedalus - one of the first characters we meet in the book. I was backpacking across Indonesia on the cheap with a friend, eating Gado-Gado and Nasi Goreng, and climbing volcanoes. In Sumatra, where I first opened the pages of the book, a cramped day-long mini-bus odyssey across the equatorial jungle cost a few dollars, accommodation a dollar, lunch just 25 cents. In truth, I enjoyed the sights and sounds and smells and tastes of Indonesia more than I enjoyed the book back then, and I recall swapping the finished book with some satisfaction at one of the many travellers' shops for a couple of Julian Barnes’s novels. ‘Look, it’s almost 1000 pages; that must be worth two books.’ Ulysses is this year’s family project - we intend to visit Dublin on Bloomsday, the long summer day when the book's protagonist jo...

Review: Ulysses

Ulysses by James Joyce My rating: 4 of 5 stars I first read Ulysses almost thirty-five years ago, when I was roughly the same age as Stephen Dedalus - one of the first characters we meet in the book. I was backpacking across Indonesia on the cheap with a friend, eating Gado-Gado and Nasi Goreng, and climbing volcanoes. In Sumatra, where I first opened the pages of the book, a cramped day-long mini-bus odyssey across the equatorial jungle cost a few dollars, accommodation a dollar, lunch just 25 cents. In truth, I enjoyed the sights and sounds and smells and tastes of Indonesia more than I enjoyed the book back then, and I recall swapping the finished book with some satisfaction at one of the many travellers' shops for a couple of Julian Barnes’s novels. ‘Look, it’s almost 1000 pages, that must be worth two books.’ Ulysses is this year’s family project - we intend to visit Dublin on Bloomsday, the long summer day when the book's protagonist jo...

Review: Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear My rating: 5 of 5 stars I am always a bit wary of the 'Top-Selling' books; I know.. I have an underlying streak of 'Road-less-travelled' that could be misread as a Frosty arrogance. It's not, I promise. Atomic Habits is an excellent book. I listened to the audio version, and it had lots of practical tips and protocols (yay - just like Huberman). The book doesn't replace [book:The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business|12609433, but augments it. 'Habits reduce cognitive load and free up mental capacity, so you can allocate more attention to other tasks.. its only by making the fundamentals of life easier that you can create the mental space needed for free thinking and creativity' I would definitely recommend the book, and also the audiobook (read by the author James Clear) is excellent. I gave it five sta...