Prasanta Behera Blog

After spending last 2 week to write another machine learning blog (work related) (if u want to read) LinkedIn: Rapid-development-deployment-machine-learned-models   ScoreData.com Rapid-development-deployment-machine-learned-models   I was lazy ... enjoying .... But good things still happen...  Here is poem that was shared to me by a friend. Very nice poem! Dust If You Must by Rose Milligan D ust if you must, but wouldn't it be better To paint a picture, or write a letter, Bake a cake, or plant a seed; Ponder the difference between want and need? Dust if you must, but there's not much time, With rivers to swim, and mountains to climb; Music to hear, and books to read; Friends to cherish, and life to lead. Dust if you must, but the world's out there With the sun in your eyes, and the wind in your hair; A flutter of snow, a shower of rain, This day will not come around again. Dust if you must, but bear in mind, Old age will come and it...

Mahabharata is an epic like no other. It is four times bigger than Homer's Iliad and Odessy and very complex in not only the story/characters but also social norms also.  We all have read enough stories from Mahabharata, saw the serial, read Gita (understood very little) and have experienced (but not realized) many of its teachings during our life in small measures.  Growing up, we have seen pictures/artifacts with the following sloka from Bhagavad Gita with Lord Krishna as the charioteer explaining to Arjuna in battlefield.   यदा यदा हि धर्मस्य ग्लानिर्भवति भारत। अभ्युत्थानमधर्मस्य तदाऽऽत्मानं सृजाम्यहम्।।4.7।। The first sloka in Gita starts with Dhritarashtra inquiring Sanjay to tell what is happening the battlefield which is about to start. धर्म क्षेत्रे कुरुक्षेत्रे समवेता युयुत्सवः। मामकाः पाण्डवाश्चैव किमकुर्वत सञ्जय।।1.1।। धर्म ( dharma ) is used throughout Mahabharata a lot. It sounds simple  - but when you dig deeper, it is quite a complex co...

Making wine is both an art and science. It is hard to describe the art unless you are an artist (in this case wine maker and I am not -- like to try it!). The science part is also interesting. I am not a chemist (although I inherited few genes  and nicely  passed them to my daughter (a bio-chemist) and son (studying to be material scientist) ). But I am a computer science person - what can I do? Machine Learning comes to rescue. In my current startup we are building products with machine leaning to its core. I will give a small tutorial on machine learning. This is not a new concept - it stems from statistics (and math).. We have been doing statistical analysis for a long time. What changed is that, now we have lots and lots of data, we need to get results faster, complex application (e.g.., face nonrecognition) and machines are cheaper. This created the new field of Machine Learning.  Most of the problems falls into 3 kinds Classification, Regression or Cluster...

Some pictures from Pt. Reys National Park which we visited on April 2, 2016. Few pictures

Few more haiku(s)   - continuing the journey. ===================================== Barren maple tree Awaiting birds to nest Unfettered openness Anxious mind. (Sitting in our garden) ===================================== Swallows air dancing Over sprouted wheat plants Tumbleweeds rolling Nature's spectators (Driving in a windy hwy near Bakersfield) ===================================== Setting sun in death valley Shining hills like a painting Covered in darkness now Lost in emptiness. (Driving late night in death valley, pitch dark - mostly alone ) ===================================== Starry dark night crickets buzzing Twinkling lantern light Book in hand, alone. (Mostly reading James hardly Chase book under a lantern in my village long time ago) ===================================== Village seems far Mind running faster than legs Paddy fields in between Grandpa waiting. (From the bus stop to my village was ~3 km, we used to walk) =======...

We (our startup) have sub-leased a small office in Palo Alto. On the wall, there was a picture. I asked one of my team members to  describe it  He told that it was a poem and he described in bits and pieces. It sounded very interesting and so, I searched for it. It is written by a 8th century Chinese poet Liu Zongyuan.   Beautiful poem! A thousand hills, but no birds in flight Ten thousand paths, with no person's tracks A lonely boat, a straw-hatted old man, Fishing alone, in the cold river snow. 

This is a journey. I am sharing what I went thru. After our 7 am Sunday tennis exercise stopped (because few team members started to have knee injury), I picked up biking. I did not have to depend upon anyone and could get the biking done before anyone in the family wakes up :-) I was doing bike rides in the weekend but mostly in the range of 10-12 miles (Cupertino Sunnyvale area). I started to enjoy biking. I was given an opportunity by my family to upgrade to a new and better bike as a gift  - thank you! I bought the bike in late 2014 and since then continue to do weekend biking but never went beyond the 10-12 mile range. It never occurred me why I am not pushing forward. Last year (2015), my mother passed away, here in my home. I went through the normal process of rituals and grieving. But I felt that there needs to be a one on one connection to reflect. I had left India ~30 years ago and have seen my parents once in few years. During those short visits, there is not much ti...