Ask Peter anything

[Christopher McCandless]

Are you getting paid for the coding stuff, or is it a hobby?

It's a hobby; it would be nice if I found a way to make some money from it, but I do it because I find it interesting.  So far, I don't think I've created anything that other people would find interesting or useful enough to give me money for; I'm not skilled or experienced when it comes to programming, and generally just muddle along, gradually learning as I go.

Why don't you sign yourself onto some courses, or something along those lines?

I've always learned more effectively when pursuing things on my own than when following a curriculum.  I tend to get stressed and anxious about assignments and exams, and spend more time worrying than studying, which isn't an issue if I'm taking things at my own pace and don't have any obligations.  It would also cost significant sums of money for a university-level course, relative to my income.  I already have a B.Sc in geography, so I don't qualify for much in the way of financial aid (and the aid I got for my first degree was all in the form of student loans that I still owe).

You could do a PGdip or something on those lines. Anyway, I thought the 2nd degree funding still existed for disabled students. Though you don't have to do university level courses to become an employed programmer, there are other ways to gain certification.

Though I have had similar problems with my degree, made many times worse by going to a shambles of a university. If they bothered to give out the information properly, have a 24/7 library and set exams properly, then everything would be fine for me. Unfortunately, because of the intake, the place is stuck in Victorian ways of doing things.

[Peter]

I discovered this yesterday, thought you might find it interesting. Dunno if it would be useful for your current project since it sounds like you've got a different kind of algorithm structure, but nonetheless:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327151.600-memristor-minds-the-future-of-artificial-intelligence.html

Plus some stuff on self-organized criticality and the patterns/balance of neurons firing:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227141.200-disorderly-genius-how-chaos-drives-the-brain.html

I'm a regular reader of NewScientist, so I'd seen those already, but thanks anyway.  I've modeled chaotic neural nets before, but the system I'm working on at the moment isn't chaotic (or is only weakly chaotic), although it would be easy to add chaotic behaviour, and I'll probably experiment with chaotic and non-chaotic (or less-chaotic) modes when I reach the point of fine-tuning the program.  When I've modeled chaotic neural nets in the past, they've tended to either lapse into an unrecoverable comatose or epileptic state, so I'm keeping things simple while I get the basic functionality in place.

[Peter]

This is one of the neatest things I've read recently:

http://www.stanford.edu/group/brainsinsilicon/index.html

[Silk]

What was your favorite childhood treasure?

[Christopher McCandless]

Have you read this - its apparently coming in your area:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8153564.stm

[renaeden]

That is so cool. They get to work with Lego as well.

[Pyraxis]

Have you read this - its apparently coming in your area:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8153564.stm

Quoted for awesomeness. 

[Peter]

Have you read this - its apparently coming in your area:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8153564.stm

It looks interesting.  I might contact them.

[Peter]

Here's the latest version of the project I'm working on.  It's not pretty, it doesn't have a user interface, it's buggy and it doesn't do anything particularly interesting, but I've set it up to run a simple demo where it finds solutions to a range of mathematical problems that I've coded into it.  It doesn't actually tell you what the solutions are; it just gives an overview of the average fitness of individuals in the population, and of how large and varied the genomes are over time, but it demonstrates that it works, and if you look through the source code, you might get an idea of what's going on behind the scenes.  The compiled binary is windows-only, but the source should compile on linux.

link

[Christopher McCandless]

Here's the latest version of the project I'm working on.  It's not pretty, it doesn't have a user interface, it's buggy and it doesn't do anything particularly interesting, but I've set it up to run a simple demo where it finds solutions to a range of mathematical problems that I've coded into it.  It doesn't actually tell you what the solutions are; it just gives an overview of the average fitness of individuals in the population, and of how large and varied the genomes are over time, but it demonstrates that it works, and if you look through the source code, you might get an idea of what's going on behind the scenes.  The compiled binary is windows-only, but the source should compile on linux.

link

Looks pretty impressive so far. How long did it take to make?

[Peter]

Based on the timestamps on my files and how much they resemble the project as it currently stands, I'd say I started on 25/06/2009.  I have files from as early as 27/04/2009 that are related to this project, but I was at the 'hello world' stage of learning C++ back then, so real progress had to wait until I'd learned enough to code effectively.

[Christopher McCandless]

Kind of surprised you started with C++. Java is a lot easier to learn - when I have had the odd bit of spare time I have been learning it. Plus adding a UI would be a piece of cake.

[Peter]

Actually, I learned Python first, and have some earlier neural net projects that I've written in Python.  I decided to learn C++ because I found Python too slow and restrictive for the stuff I was trying to do, and although I've found C++ a lot more difficult and unforgiving, I'm quite pleased with how it's worked out.

[Blasted]

How is Scotland like to live in?

[Christopher McCandless]

How is Scotland like to live in?

Are you planning on running away?