I failed to post here for several days for what seems like a pretty good reason. I have been working aggressively on the GRIME3 software to support new opportunities in both GRIME Lab research and its usage by some of our collaborators. We have reworked the research and development road map with an end to the main GRIME3 functionality work in sight, followed by new research and development on a completely new package we are currently calling GRIME4.
I spent the entire weekend working on improving the new GRIME 3 water level measurement software so it is usable by a collaborator in Idaho. I think I got it into a workable state, but will have to wait to hear back from Troy at UNL when he gets a chance to test it. It was a good time to reflect on what I want to do next now that I have pretty much kicked the idea of a second PhD to the curb. I am not sure what I will do, but going through the exercise of figuring it out has been healthy for me. I hope to spend the next few weeks avoiding making hard choices and doing more reflecting.
I had a very interesting talk to do with my PhD adviser, Troy. After finding several PhD programs interested in my background and wanting me to participate with them, it started to dawn on me that the bulk of the opportunities available to me were not particularly focused on scholarship, science, and academic camaraderie. Rather, there was what seemed to be a very transactional aspect to the whole enterprise. It became more and more clear that the environment of my department at University of Nebraska was exceptionally benign and well meaning relative to any of these other programs I was evaluating. I was offering 50 years of experience and a proven track record to people who, generally, were only interested in what advantage they could obtain rather than how the community could be served. I am very much less disposed to continue down this path after this discussion and, especially, after my discussions about this whole topic with Troy and my son, Christian who is an MIT research scientist.
I am beginning to think I did this as a result of the great experience I had in community at University of Nebraska after losing the church community of the first 67 years of my life. It turns out that even though the stakes are much lower and do not include eternal life, realizing the community that seemed to provide meaning really never existed in the first place. The thing that I am most thankful for in all this is that it pushed me away from unrealistic expectations about mere human institutions to the only ones that have any meaning–those that are found in Jesus Christ.
I had an interview with a Texas A&M professor yesterday that was genuinely disappointing. The professor represented himself as someone who was highly knowledgeable about ML/AI and image processing in an agriculture related domain when he obviously did not know the language nor the technology at all. He runs a big lab with many PhD students and I shudder when I think about what they have to endure to get through his program. It has me rethinking how I want to go about all this and realize how spectacular were my professors, committee, and the entire program for my first PhD at University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Lorena just took this picture of the excavator digging the wine cellar in our new house. We are very excited to see the project finally in progress!!! It is a day to celebrate!!!
I spent the bulk of the weekend finishing up the first release candidate for the web browser based GRIME 3 water level measurement software release candidate. It really is a nice piece of software which we will be testing with one of our users in Idaho. You can download it here: GRIME 3 download.
The main functionality of the GaugeCam GRIME3 software is now running in a browser. It was a long weekend and I am sure I will need two or three more similar ones to get it to the point where I can focus on other things. It just feels great that it is working better than ever and I think both its precision and robustness are imporved.
I am well into the second half of my introductory (lay level) book on the philosophy of mind titled The Soul by J.P. Moreland, so the timely arrival of Science and Its Limits by Del Ratzsch in the mail was greatly appreciated. I expect to start in on it at the same slow pace am taking to read The Soul.
My new glasses came today and I love them. They are almost exactly the same as my old glasses–maybe a tad bigger in diameter. I have learned people do not take it well so I have happily decided to try to get round tortoiseshells until I die.
I have an ongoing need to describe my professional qualifications and have never had an easy way to do that. Right now I am talking to several universities about a possible future PhD, people in the orbit of the GRIME3 water level measurement project, and in the near future, if I do not return to school and semi-retire, I will hope to do some contracting for which a page like this would be useful. So I created an about page here on the blog with a bunch of videos, a few images, and some succinct descriptions of some of the things I have done. It is not about some things I have done to show that I know how to do those things. It was pretty fun to put together and I hope to be able to add new things to the page every now and then.
Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén