Willkommen auf Eva Winterschön's site für Erinnerungen und Reflexionen
Eva Winterschön

reflections on OSS, HPC, and Ai/ML engineering, with occasional considerations on Cognitive Neuroscience

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    Another World, Another Time, in the Age of Wonder

    Patterned thoughts going through my head, off and on this past week of major change, being back in the valley yet again. My career took off here, just down the way nearby Central, by Thomas, Stevens Creek, Mathilda and Lawrence.. and during every cycle when I left, surely never to return!

    One cannot escape the loop. Is it truly Sisyphean if the endless hill is worn flat, the endured evolved into appreciation for its challenge? The illusion then shows its edge, beautiful, glinting reflections from facets ever-changing, neverending.

    Another World, Another Time, in the Age of Wonder..

    When single shines the triple sun, What was sundered and undone, Shall be whole, the two made one..

    Where abouts this time last year? Vancouver, prepping round two of treatment. How about in 2017? Fiji island hopping, searching for demise. Back when in 2012? Where else but Nicoya, seeking refuge. Or decades ago, seasons ago, seeking solace among the silence of snowy peaks alone.

    All of those years, the endless dreams, and seemingly endless sunrises… yet memory is the illusion, the vector maps of neurotransmitter mixtures changing over time. Still yet, we have no magnetic tapes at Iron Mountain which could store them all.

    Perhaps that malleability is the most beautiful quality of which growing older finally affords.

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    The World Bank's involvement with NASA, OSS, Ai, and LLMs

    Ever wondered how The World Bank’s open source software contributions have shaped global economics, financial markets, and generally been used for all manner of really quite fascinating insights into data science?

    How about the ways in which The World Bank’s usage of Ai and LLMs have helped scientists understand populations at risk, how to analyze massive datasets to respond to climate catastrophes, and how to accurately predict global infrastructure changes before they occur?

    Well… it’s our lucky day!

    The World Bank regularly posts Jupyter notebooks, LLM tooling, data-sets, data analytics scripts, global dashboards related to climate sciences, infrastructure, poverty assessment, economic awareness modeling, and so much more… right over here on their GitHub page: github.com/orgs/worl…

    One item recently in the FOSS news was this gem, the Metadata Editor.

    Oh but there’s also some fun with NASA!

    BlackMarblePy is a Python package that provides a simple way to use nighttime lights data from NASA’s Black Marble project. Black Marble is a NASA Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS) project that provides a product suite of daily, monthly and yearly global nighttime lights.

    This is a heartening example of the beauty and benefits which Open Source Software offer to our world.

    #science #finance #worldbank #foss #oss #llms #ai #programming #engineering #nasa

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    🌐 Surprise! 18 Million of the Bestest Money 🌐

    Sometimes there’s a reminder, an initiator of memory and emotions, which occurs upon opening my passport booklet. “Oh look! It’s millions of Colones!, and with such a uniquely beautiful design. Every time this occurs it provides an unexpected reminder of my favorite country, Costa Rica.

    In association with the country itself, the bills are very pretty, colorfully fun, and durably resistant to humidity and water damage — useful for hiking through cloud and rain forests, diving at a local reef, or being caught out in a multi hour downpour.

    For unknown reasons I left these bills inside of the booklet’s secondary tab next to my passport, and now they’re going right back into the booklet for a future surprise, and certainly future use during the next visit.

    #travel #surprise #CostaRica

    An opened booklet for a U.S. passport, some banknotes from Costa Rica, and a smartphone are laid out on a table. Eva standing on a beach near Playa Buena Vista in Costa Rica

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    Episode 44: "Leaving ORD, minimalism yes please."

    At airport gate, waiting. Originally, a dawn departure.

    Hilton at ORD decides that rooms do not need the usual bathroom items, and prefers the full plastic half-assed attempt at a capsule pod coffee maker. Substantial displeasure occurs, events transpire, and now we’re rebooked on flight a few hours later — sleeping in for those hours and have been – words and thoughts – but brain still not really awake. Robin is finding coffees somewhere on the concourse.

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    Episode 42: "We're leaving. Take only what you need to survive!"

    ETA, 2 hours till movers arrive, in yet another episode of… “Take only what you need to survive”, and they’re packing up everything else for transit. Countdown to California thereafter.

    Goodbye to another location. I suppose that I could say that Chicago was beneficial in the larger sense of existential purposes, and that much was accomplished, sure sure.

    However, and not in jest, nearly the entirety of those accomplishments could have occurred in an old military quonset hut located off-grid, deep in the vast stretches of the Northern Nevada desert, preferably near the Ruby Mountains. It’s far more beautiful out there, truly yes, but the pizza is not delivered, and Chicago does have very good pizza. 🤍

    a screenshot from the movie Spaceballs, in reference to the phrase, take only what you need to survive Auto-generated description: A serene mountain lake is surrounded by rocky cliffs and vibrant wildflowers under a clear blue sky. Auto-generated description: Snow-covered mountains with rugged peaks under a partly cloudy sky.
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    Memories of a Younger Era — Tokyo Hiroshima Kyoto

    Memories of Japan are easy to get lost in, the time period was often a blur. Capsule hotels, bullet trains, insomnia, and several neuro-cognitive mods offering symbiotic boosts to perception. An immediate realization dawned upon landing, so many people seem to love tall western women, to be quite vocal in appreciation and awareness, and hey that’s me!

    Those were memories of a pure, simple existence, the joy of living in a beautiful foreign land with a wonderfully kind culture; one where I could not read a single sign, nor understand more than several helpful conversational phrases. A stranger in a strange land. A summer of intense philosophical reassessment, of isolationist meditation, with the majority of months spent traveling alone through four countries across two hemispheres. Circa 2017 feels so far away.

    Perhaps more travel photos will follow. I’m in a reflective mood today. 🩷

    #travel #photography #memories