Sunday, February 28, 2016

The Rise of the Machines



Technology is improving at an exponential rate and becoming more ingrained in our lives. Few people can live without being connected to their phones. In one way it is good. I now can call for help or check the weather from almost anywhere. In other ways it bad, because besides being addicted to the connection, our privacy is being compromised as companies use the data to target advertising at us and to make us buy more stuff.

This past week I was at a conference in Vegas with 20,000 other like-minded geeks to discuss the latest technology trends and how to use this technology to improve our software to make it more cognitive. It was a good conference and I learned a lot. One of the main themes discussed was how to use artificial intelligence to pull meaningful information from the vast amount of data we all generate.  (By some estimates a person generates 1.7 MB of data per/min)

For those that remember, Watson was a computer system that won Jeopardy about 5 years ago. The main innovation of Watson was the ability to read natural speech and understand the main concepts behind it. This allowed it to answer complicated questions and learn from its mistakes so the more it read the smarter it got. Watson can tell the difference between Apple the company and apple the fruit based on the context of how it us used. This is a simple thing for us to do but very hard to do for software to do because of the way both process information.

The Watson on Jeopardy was a science project powered by hundreds of computers wired in parallel. Since then the software and technology has improved to the point that it is now has become a set of programming modules on the cloud. What that means is that anybody can wire up these modules and create some practical applications for only a few bucks.

At the conference I saw the Watson software being used to analyze the presidential candidates, help scientist analyze research papers, help support team reduce support calls, and much more. What started out as research project is now having real world impact and is going to bring in a new age of software that is going to make us even more dependent on them. I believe that in general that this will be beneficial for most of us. On the other hand there is a possibility that this will lead to Skynet  or Collossus so I’m making sure that all my software has a kill switch (just in case)

As part of the conference I did get a chance to see a presentation by the US Cycling Women’s Pursuit team.  The coach of the team was there, showing how IBM helped create an application to bring the data from the power, heart rate and muscle oxygenation sensors into a single view with in minutes after each training session. Normally compiling all this data use to take days. Now he is able to the view of the video of the training session along with the data and give immediate feedback. It was an interesting talked and I learned a lot about how power and heart rate sensors are used to improve training and performance overall. One of the most important thing the coach was able to get from all this data was W’ which is the amount of reserve energy a rider has. At the beginning of the race this will be 100% but as the rider pushes their power level above their max sustainable level this will go down. The idea is to be close to 0% by the end of the race but be careful use the reserve energy too early.

After the presentation I talked to the coach an asked him how much of this analysis would be useful for recreational riders like myself. He said that I would not want to go to the extreme that he does but that monitoring trends with heart rate and power could be useful. Power meters are still too expensive for the average recreational rider but as a result of this talk I may start collecting some data from my rides (heart rate, length, elevation gain, and a few other factors.) to see if I can use some of the tools I learned about at the conference to do some useful analysis. I know after doing a ride by myself today that I could use whatever help I can to get back to peak riding shape.


Sunday, February 21, 2016

Spring Break

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Although  I have spent more miles on my mountain bike than my regular bike so far this year the winter hasn't been that bad. We did have one big snow storm but it melted quickly and we have had  some cold weather like last weekend that made it too cold to ride (for most of us) but I have been able to get out more than the last two winters and have not posted any winter rants.

This weekend we had a taste of spring with temperatures close to 60 degrees. I convinced Laura to move her Saturday ride to this side of route 1. We meet at Mercer park and took a circuitous route to Roy's Deli that I put together. It felt good to be on a regular bike again. The route was mostly flat and the pace was on the slow side of B but I definitely felt the lack of real riding over the past couple of months.

It was good to see some of the regulars crew again and talk about the upcoming riding season and trips we might take. Although there is some probably some more cold weather ahead there is only 30 days until spring and more regular warmer riding.




Saturday, February 6, 2016

Snowbiking 2016



 
Although most of the snow melted with this weeks warm weather, Friday's wet snow made riding on the roads a little iffy. So Saturday I decided to head to Mercer County park. The 3 or 4 inches of snow we got on Friday made it perfect for riding in the at the park. A lot of the snow we got on Friday morning had melted so the main paths in the park were clear. There were still a few icy spots but nothing I couldn't ride over. The main problem I had was some flooding by the lake so I had to turn around a few times to stay on the paths further from the lake.

Its been a while since I road the mountain biking trails so it was fun riding through the snow. My mountain biking skills are average at best but they were good enough to get me through the trails and over a few trees in the middle of the trails with out falling. I spent almost 2 hours riding through the park. Its a good work out. Its a lot harder than road biking and a good way to get out a do a little different type of riding.