They say if at first you don’t succeed try, try again. Never in my life has this phrase been more appropriate that whilst learning to program python. After many, many tries, I have finally completed my first python program & successfully submitted it. It is a beginner python program based quiz. This post details how I got there. It has taken a while to build up my knowledge of programming in python so that I understand it. I have started to use supplementary material in the form of machine learning podcasts, a book called automate the boring stuff as well as seeking out advice using github and stackoverflow to get…
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Speaking Snake
If you had told me this time last year I would be excited to be learning Python I would have responded ‘you must be mistaken, I’m no parselmouth!’ - shout out to all the Harry Potter fans out there who got that reference*. Oh how times have changed. As I am beginning to learn to program I increasing see the Python programming language as the key. I also want to share some things that have been helping me in staying motivated to learn to program with the Udacity Intro to programming nanodegree Python course. So what is this Python programming language? For those of you not familiar with computer programming,…
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Deciphering the code - Teach yourself to code; HTML and CSS for beginners
Are you trying to teach yourself to code? I have now completed parts 1 & 2 of the Udacity course covering HTML and CSS for beginners. I must admit I rushed through the HTML and CSS tutorial to some extent as I know the language I really need is Python. Having said that I found both parts really interesting. In particular I liked how logical it all was. I mean this both in terms of the nanodegree program content and practically getting to write the code. Also I achieved a couple of excellent ratings on my project submissions which helps 8D. I honestly don’t know why I hadn’t started learning…
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Machine Learning: How do I love thee, let me count the ways
I was recently talking to a friend of mine who had been reading this blog (thanks pal!). He was asking me “why care about machine learning? What about it motivates you? Should we be concerned about machine learning?”. What a great question I thought. I think that could make for an interesting post - or at least more interesting than my limited progress to date with the course materials (I got distracted by holidays. It was great thanks for asking). Before answering my friend’s question I thought I’d take a step back for those less familiar and first explain what is machine learning. Then I will highlight the application of…
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Finding the code
Why am I learning to code? I am seeing the first step of learning to code and program so to get to writing ML algorithms as a mission boot camp. If I am to be serious about my mission then I must be serious about where I train. But where I hear you ask do you start to teach yourself to code? I chose a Udacity nanodegree. (New to the blog and wondering what on earth is this person on about talking about missions I just want to learn to code! What is this mysterious mission? Find out in my post here: The Mission) Where to learn to code: finding…
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Entering the domain
Write a blog they said… It’ll be great they said… You’ll love it! They said… And I believed them. What they didn’t say was how f***ing complicated setting up a blog is, or how stressful. How hard could it be though? I naively thought. How do you set up a blog? Everyone’s got a blog these days and I have a masters degree, I’ll fly through the process… How wrong I was. Setting up a domain First of all you need to choose a web hosting platform and a domain name for your blog, but not just any name, ohhhh no. The domain name you choose has to be unique,…
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The Mission
What is success? I must have read hundreds of articles preaching strategies to achieve success. They tell me pick up these habits, follow these simple steps, adopt these rules to live by etc. etc. etc. They all insist I get up approximately 4 hours earlier than I want to and eat exclusively plant based substitutes that cost 3 times the price of the original product. The question I have is, if I were to follow the steps and achieve success what would that mean? What is success? What makes something successful? How can I tell if I am successful? Who am I and why do I care about ‘what is…