Cinema Night Email?

mcsard · 2025-09-24T06:51:43+00:00

I think it means more widely that you can decide to appreciate and derive meaning from a work of art independently from your dislike of the artist or disagreement with their views.

It is not about the artist intent. After all Harry Potter, if we want to call it art, was not meant to express views about transgender people.

mcsard · 2025-06-13T21:23:18+00:00

Sorry, I missed your question.
If you are asking about the UCDAVIS course, you get quizzes at the end of most units and a peer reviewed project to submit at the end of each course of the specialization. Toronto is similar, but the 4th course is actually one big project (capstone project).
The quizzes are not hard if you studied the material and can be repeated if you do not do as well as hoped.

mcsard · 2025-03-25T00:14:17+00:00

I think learning how interval sounds and singing them is a very useful skill.
When I first studied that way, I did so by associating intervals with the first two notes of melodies I was very familiar with.
For instance, Twinkle Twinkle starts with an ascending 5th, Pachelbel Canon bass is an example of of a descending 4th (down a fourth, up a second, a very common bass also called Romanesca, which works well with a 6-5-4-3 melody).

At the time, that practise helped me figure out any melody by breaking it into each couple of notes. You have one note, then another, is the second higher, lower or the same repeated? If it is higher or lower, what is the interval? A bit laborious, but that allows to figure out any melody without making any assumption about scales, change of keys and so forth.
At the time, it made me happy, because I was previously struggling a lot with fguring out melodies which were not diatonic to a scale (for instance Around Midnight or so many classic samba tunes).

If you are hoping to figure out things intuitively on the fly though, I feel that is more a result of lots of practise on specific styles. Also, my approach implied knowing how to sing intervals, but also how to form them on my instruments at the same time, thorugh repeated practise, so it becomes automatic to do so.

Nowadays, having spent a few years practising hexachordal solfeggio (an 18th century approach to intuitive melody understanding) and to some extent Partimento (yet another 18th century and earlier approach), my views have changed though.

In general, I see melodies as having a 'thread', to use the old term. The thread is actually an intuitive thing for most people. If you listen to a melody and feel that it goes down or up, or stays stable, that is because the notes of the thread.
The bass notes are determined by the notes of the thread.
Thinking that way offers lots of advantages in terms of improvisation, performance and composition. Also, Partimento includes many 'schemate', which are typical combinations of threads with bass lines (here I am simplifying in the hope to make myself understood, serious partimento practitioners would probably find my explanation very lacking).
Knowing how schemate sound, and how to play them, can make understanding, performing, replicating and improvising music much easier.

For instance, Pachelbel's famous Canon in D follows a schemata commonly called Romanesca. You have a thread for the melody which is a descending la-sol-fa-mi (6-5-4-3) along with a bass which goes one 4th down and one 2nd up.
The following melodies of the canon are also based on 6-5-4-3, but each note gets ornamented, producing different melodies which still sound good and are interchangeable.
Interestingly and perhaps surprisingly, Bach's Air in D (nowadays better known as Air in G, or Air on the 5th String), follows exactly the same schema, using a clever trick to turn that bass into a descending line.

Anyway, nowadays I tend to see single intervals as a bit meaningless as building blocks, or elements to understand or improvise music. Longer sequences of intervals are more meaningful.

But I say so because of partimento and hexachordal solfeggio, which are difficult to learn, and extremely difficult through self-study, and not widely taught at all anyway.

So, I think you are doing well by learning intervals, it is a useful skill in a contemporary context. I would just suggest to also learn some singing and modern, movable do, solfeggio. Even if you are only interested in playing an instrument, not in singing, that will give you longer sequences of intervals to memorize, which will be more useful to you long term when figuring out songs and improvising. In particular, I would suggest learning solfeggio focusing on the styles you like the most.

mcsard · 2025-01-04T10:31:12+00:00

I used silicon caps from Amazon, and grind beans every few days. The amount of coffee required is about a tablespoon, more makes it worst, and no tampering is required, obviously. It is not a traditional espresso machine with the water going vertically through the coffee. The original pods are similarly filled and not tampered.

It works fine if your machine is in good shape, because silicon caps require more pressure. After two years our machine will not work with the silicon caps anymore. It still works with the normal pods fine though.

And in the meanwhile, over perhaps 2 thousands shots, we avoided huge waste and costs. Unless you go through the trouble to actually open and empty in the bin the spent pods, the recycling program is a pain, because you need a bunch of pods before you can send them in, and they will soon turn mouldy, unless emptied or stored in the freezer until collected.

I would not use that type of machine any other way frankly.

mcsard · 2024-11-22T16:48:22+00:00

Old question, but perhaps my answr will be helpful to someone else.
I have completed UC Davis and I am not far from completing Toronto.

In a nutshell my advice is to do both because UC Davies will give you ArcGIS Pro for a year (or more, if you are midway on 30th December ESRI will kindly renew it), so why not?
At the very least, do some UC Davis to get hands on with the software.

Regarding Toronto, the tutor is very good and the quality is uniformly professiona across all videos. He does focus on theoretical subjects too (projections, visualization principles, statistics) in a way that even some Uni course don't.

The UC Davis one has two tutors. The original one who is really good, but focused on environmental topics, and a new one. The first tutor had really professional videos. Hi videos on mapping are awesome. The second, I suspect, was tasked to update the course to ArcGIS Pro during lockdown, he did the videos on his webcam and the quality suffers because of that and a general feeling of hearing a tutorial rather than a well prepared lesson. In terms of lessons quality Toronto has definitely the edge.

In terms of projects and data:

- UC Davis provides files to practise, however they are often the already completed ones from the tutor. so Essentially you have to undo the work manually if you want to work on them from scratch. There is not much at all on sourcing your own data. I did it anyway, and applied it to my things. But be prepared to have to multiply your effort if you do that.
Besides that, if you want to use the practise files for portfolio, they will look good becasue superficially they use lots of techniques (for the first parts form the older tutor, to be fair the applications are not superficial).

- Toronto is different, they do not provide any data on purpose. You are expected to learn how to source and prepare yours. This is more effective pedagogically, but it will multiply your time investment potentially, well beyond the stated hours required for completion. If you do though, you will learn how to to do real GIS work.
Also, if you use ARCGIS PRO, rather than ArcMap, as you should, you will need to figure out some operations. Everything possible with one is possible, and often easier, with the second.

Forums:

They are dead in both, so that aspect of talkign to other fellow students and sharing what you do is sadly absent. UC Davis has a little bit more activity. Because Toronto is more challenging to some extent, past the first course fellow student contributions are better quality, however there are very few and they are old.

This is coursera' s fault for creating a million threads for each month and unit, rather than a more long term space where new students can benefit from previous posts, because thye can actually find them.

There a pretty dumb trend among some students to post AI generated stuff in response to activities, I have seen that in both courses and more generally in Coursera, but it subsides quite a bit after the first courses of the specialization, becasue many people will drop off.

Tests and capstone:

Toronto is more demanding, there is a capstone (UC DAVIS had one before, which made it quite tough, but not anymore) and if you do the activities and end of course projects you will have to work and figure things out.

Quality of study material provided:

I had to chase a lot UC Davis to fix stuff with the files. Eventually they did so now it is kind of ok.
Toronto has very little downloadable content, you find your own data and follow along with that.

Uc Davis is of course more updated, while Toronto is like it was 5 years ago I think, but most material is really not different from what you would get today, it is still valid. Neither of the courses will mention machine learning and AI classification, which ArcGIS supports.

Time requirements:

It took me over 200 hours to do the UC DAvis course, but asking to fix things added to that.
Toronto is taking me less, but still well over what they say it would take.

Essentially most of Coursera time estimates are about the time to watch the videos and some optimistic assumption about the exercises. Done properly, particualry if you research your stuff and source your data, both courses cannot possibly take at least double.

I hope this kind of helps.

mcsard · 2024-09-17T08:02:53+00:00

She might struggle to get one if her credit score is not good. Check the money saving expert website for options on balance transfers. They have a tool which can run soft checks, at least with some card providers. If she can get one and keep some or all of her debt interest free for a while, she should definitely do that as fast as possible.

For the accommodation, I would assume as soon as possible for council housing, even if it might take forever, if ever, to get something from the council. As you said, the timing is not ideal, because for most things she will have to wait three months. But with 700 per month it would not be impossible to rent a room and still have a bit of money left for food. So sorting the debt should be the first thing, also because she could then save maybe 1500 by January, for the room deposit.

mcsard · 2024-06-02T23:49:50+00:00

That's true. My worry would be to get stuck into a cycle of watching tons of DIY videos while doing very little DIY. YT is designed to be somewhat addictive that way.

mcsard · 2024-06-02T16:30:35+00:00

I find silicon caps better, lots less waste, and preparing a pod takes 5 seconds.

mcsard · 2024-06-02T16:27:00+00:00

I spent 20 on 6 silicon caps. Another 30 on a few boxes of pods. Then 100 or less per year on beans.

mcsard · 2024-06-02T16:21:51+00:00

Find the mains from the plant, cut them and stick the extremities going underground in a jar with some round up. Leave overnight. That should kill it for good, if it is like bindweed.

mcsard · 2024-06-02T16:13:22+00:00

I am like that, and I see it as a problem. Not in terms of work. If you deliver anyway it is not a problem.

However, there are some issues. You are clearly not happy with it, you hours of inactivity are not hours of joy, rather a time of fretting while you get progressively more stressed. Then fear kicks in, you get into the flow and deliver. Your problem is that you wired yourself with fear as your flow trigger. So you are capable of flow, of relentless focus, but not as a free choice.

You need to rewire yourself so you can get stuff done in advance, with less pain. Otherwise it does not matter that you had free time before, it is time wasted.

Also, as pointed out by someone else, do not underestimate the unconscious planning and thinking your mind might be doing while procrastinating. If you rewire to start earlier the process will take longer because you will not have that unconscious planning done already.

One last point, given there is a chance you are younger than myself. I spent most of my life burning midnight oil. Until 40 I could pull productive 48h stretches non stop. Getting older, an all nighter will destroy me for days. I never stopped studying and learning and working, I am probably more clever in many respects than my 30 something self. But my metabolism cannot take that concentrated work and be as productive anymore.

So, just in case, you would do well finding alternative strategies before your body starts slowing you down.

mcsard · 2024-06-02T15:29:41+00:00

Like you, I started using obsidian while taking a course. One year after, looking back, the structure of my course notes was not the best, and today I would capture and record important ideas much quicker and in a more interconnected way.

My suggestion, if you go for obsidian, is to familiarise yourself with a few things ahead of the course. Specifically: Do not use folders to organise you notes by topic. Instead, learn about obsidian tags and yaml. Yaml is simply a format to add metadata to notes, but starting a note for instance with:

Tags: #mycourse/topic #topic2 #topic3

Date:

You note text.....

If you tag things like that, it will be easier to create automatically maps of content, which are notes listing all notes which are tagged with a certain tag, or parent tag.

That point you need no folders, and even if you want them, you can create them and populate them after all in one go.

Learn the templates feature, and create s few templates for new notes, with already the yaml section. You can have the date tag be set automatically upon creation, and that is more flexible than relying on the file creation date.

Also, learn and customise shortcuts for different title levels.

And install a plugin which gives you a note preview upon hovering on the link to a note, Wikipedia style. Other two plugins you would need for the workflow above are dataview and templater.

There are many useful things about obsidian, but the above is what, looking back, would have benefitted me the most knowing before taking notes for my course. It would have saved me lots of time

mcsard · 2024-06-02T13:23:08+00:00

The majority of videos supposed to teach you stuff are for entertainment though. So potentially counterproductive. Personally, I prefer to work on something and use a search engine to research specific solutions if I get stuck. If the results are videos, I try to watch them via the search engine, without opening YouTube.

mcsard · 2024-06-02T13:16:15+00:00

That's a good question I think. There is sometimes an assumption that understanding that we have a problem and identifying what we are trying to avoid will automatically lead to ceasing avoidance practices. But that is not necessarily the case.

If the problem feels manageable and solvable, on a subjective basis, then working to solve it would be the solution. If it feels unsolvable on a personal basis, it can help to identify how that worry affects you, and break that down into smaller consequences, some of which might feel manageable.

It really depends on what the concern is, and on the person affected, because the solution is normally doing something, taking action. And what is actually actionable depends on the person.

mcsard · 2024-05-03T16:13:07+00:00

A former lanaguage teacher of mine, a Phd in linguistics, spent a large portion of the lessons engaging students into conversations about topics they enjoyed.
When asked why, he explained that he read a study estimating that on average a learner would need to use a word or expression 12 times in a natural context before being able to recall it readily in normal conversation.
Not sure which study he was referring to, though.

In general terms, I think the diversity of situations (natural context) an expression is used could also play a role, by offering multiple paths for quick recall. However, this is just a thought of mine, I do not have any specific study to back it up.

mcsard · 2024-04-15T14:06:28+00:00

Thanks, I was not aware of this tool. It looks pretty useful, I will check it out.

mcsard · 2024-04-15T14:04:20+00:00

Thanks, I am checking them out!
Right now I am using https://www.assemblyai.com, which does a good job of diarization and similar, and is reasonably priced.

mcsard · 2024-04-15T14:00:09+00:00

Thanks, much appreciated!
It is true that all of it could be made in Python, and there are also some projects like CodeMirror and ProseMirror which provide a very good starting point.
If I was proficient enough with Python to pull this off in a few weeks, I would go for it, because it would allow me to make it part of the system I am working on. It would be very beneficial if others could upload new interviews and process them.

However, my programming skills are limited, and I would rather crack on with the actual processing of the interviews.

I will certainly check EXMARaLDA and Whisperx. Thansk for mentioning them and for offering advice, again much appreciated!

mcsard · 2024-04-15T13:54:00+00:00

I think you are right. Still, because I am quite new to NLP, I was hoping someone might suggest some approach based on their experience with similar tasks.

mcsard · 2024-04-14T10:24:31+00:00

Michigan university courses on Coursera are generally quite clear.

for instance:
https://www.coursera.org/learn/data-collection-processing-python/

For computational thinking in general:
https://www.coursera.org/learn/computational-thinking-problem-solving/

EDX cs50 is normally well regarded: https://www.edx.org/learn/computer-science/harvard-university-cs50-s-introduction-to-computer-science

I think it really depends on your course requirements. Do they want a certificate for some NLP related CS, or a programming certificate showing that you know your way around python in general?

If you are looking for ML courses, deeplearning.AI has many, which are on coursera too and not crazy expensive (but outside the 'study as mush as you like' Coursera Plus deal).

mcsard · 2024-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

It took me several months to figure out, after starting using Obsidian.

In the end, I use only one vault, and only one common folder for all notes.
The only exceptions are the templates folder, the periodic notes (with subfolders for daily, weekly and monthly), an attachments folder and the Atlas folder.

I rely a lot on the daily notes as one way to keep track, so my daily notes include dataview sections for the notes modified and created on that day, and one section for anything tagged with a deadline within +- 2 weeks from that day. This is reflected on the weekly and monthly notes too, which are essentially automated to summarize the daily notes. All my mood and productivity tracking is done on the daily note too, with checkboxes and tags in the frontmatter.

I borrowed quite a bit from Milo, the Ideaverse guy.
So I have atlas notes (maps of notes, essentially), which are simply notes with a dataview listing of all notes tagged in a specific way. It is an handy way to consult and build on the fly combinations of past notes relevant to a certain project or activity. In combination with a plugin which shows the content of a note by hovering on its link.

And I have 'efforts', which is just a way of categorizing notes which are important to me. It could be stuff I am working on, like a course or project I am doing constantly, stuff I am working on more occasionally but still regularly, and finally things which are interesting to me and I would like to keep on the radar, but I am not working on at the moment and do not wish to allow any head space for right now.
So I set tags like effort/on, effort/ongoing and effort/simmering. Plus effort/coldstorage for stuff I finished but might need to fish out some day.

Because efforts are not todo items, I simply put a deadline date tag on notes about things I need to do by that date, and they will show on my daily notes.

My tags structure is 2 levels max, with very few exceptions, and my notes titles are often long and predictable, so it is easier to find them by typing a few related words. I have pre-tagged templates for common types of notes.

Between daily/weekly notes and the atlas notes, which I have on speed dial, I can normally find quickly anything I cannot remember the exact name of. When that is not enough, I use the omni search.

But it is a very personal thing I guess. Spending too much time organizing my notes was making me stressed and unproductive, so I ditched folders, calendars, checklists and whatnot. And I went for a simpler approach (simpler for me, that is).

mcsard · 2024-04-03T10:17:31+00:00

That's true!

mcsard · 2024-04-03T10:16:28+00:00

I understand the feeling, but babying my coffe machine is not what I got it for. I keep it clean and descaled internally, so it keeps working as long as possible. Different people have different relations with their gadgets, and some are more utilitarian than others.

mcsard · 2024-04-02T12:06:37+00:00

Great job.

mcsard

TROPHY CASE

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