New Year 2016

It's new years eve and - as always - I try to finish some things and have some plans for next year.

Review of 2015

The last year has had it ups and downs. Most of them are private, so I'll not write too much about it. However, I would like to share two of them with you: I've been on my first summer school of the German National Academic Foundation (Sommerakademie der Studienstiftung, see photos) and I've been for two weeks hiking the west highland way (see photos). This month was really awesome.

Here are some other mentionable facts:

  • I've founded Machine Learning Karlsruhe. See ml-ka.de for more information.
  • I've got 10 000 points on StackOverflow and reached 2.5 million people with my questions and answers (source)
  • I've got the funding by the Begabtenstiftung to go with my friend Marvin to Berkeley. Let's see if Berkeley accepts us.
  • I've published 4 papers on arXiv (link) (one is still on hold) and started building an academic profile with orcid.org/0000-0002-6517-1690. I'm not sure how important that will be, though.
  • I posted 36 articles on my blog in 2015. However, I don't think there is a single good article amongst them. I simply didn't have enough time to write an interesting article ☹. There are 47 drafts from 2015; 134 drafts in total.
  • write-math.com now has
    • 2520 users who contributed something
    • 1595 formulas (that includes simple symbols)
    • 274244 recordings. 6495 of those are not classified yet.

Finishing Things

I always do some cleanup before the new year begins. This means especially cleaning my computer stuff of unnecessary trash.

E-Mail

Finding and deleting old unnecessary emails:

This were several hundret emails.

The next step is going through "marked emails".

Desktop and Downloads

Clean those folders up ... *sigh*... I didn't get ready.

Updating

# apt-get update
# apt-get upgrade
$ upgrade_oh_my_zsh

Plans

I want to get the following things done in 2016:

  • ✔ Quit church: That one is actually more complicated in Germany than it should be. I have to get to the civil registry office, get a personal date, pay 31.50 Euro (Source: karlsruhe.de)
  • ✔ Migrate from Jekyll to Pelican (see article draft)
  • [ ] Get all my stuff from my fathers apartment to my room. I've already packed most of it in boxes (In total: 1.30m (+0.30m?) × 0.39m × 0.60m by 7 boxes)
  • ✔ Get rid of my old bed
  • ✔ Get rid of my old vacuum cleaner
  • ✔ Paint the wall
  • ✔ Contact BSI, BKA, CCC and the car sellers and send them my paper in which I summarize current problems in car security.
  • [ ] Get new slippers

Of course, I have a lot of other plans. Although some people say I don't do anything besides computer stuff, I do have a prive life. But in contrast to others I like to keep it private.

I wish all of you a happy new year!

Predictions for 2016

I've just seen Predictions for 2016 on Computational Complexity and thought it is a fun idea. It is currently the 4th of January, so the year is still young enough to not consider this cheating:

Machine Learning and Technology

  1. Networks will get deeper. Currently about 8 layers is usual; I expect this to get to over 30 layers.
  2. First hacks / funny results by people abusing the fact that machine learning is used will appear.
  3. Machines will generate "high" resolution images of at least 256 × 256 pixels.
  4. Speech synthesis will fastly improve. To benchmark this, I will use the original quotation that explained the importance of towels is found in Chapter 3 of Adams' work The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. See Towel Day, Google Translate Recording, Festival Recording
  5. ALPHABET INC. (C) (GOOGLE) shares at Frankfurt Stock Exchange will go up to about 900 Euro sometime in the year (currently, it is at 690 Euro).
  6. Solar Roadways will make some tiny advances.

About Me

  1. One of my papers will get cited at least 5 times.
  2. I will spend at least 2 weeks abroad.
  3. I will publish at leat 40 articles on my blog.
  4. I will get a 90 days streak on GitHub (currently, my longest is 43 days).
  5. I will get 15 000 points on StackExchange (see StackExchange profile)

Politics

  1. The European Union will still exist and Britain will still be part of it (see Brexit).
  2. Donald Trump will be the republican candidate and Hillary Clinton the democrat candidate.
  3. The republican candidate will get president.
  4. More mass shootings in the US and terrorist attacks all over the world will happen.
  5. Grüne and SPD will still be in Baden-Württemberg (see Landtagswahl in Baden-Württemberg 2016).

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