Here’s what I got up to in February 2021:

Polaris

Machine learning/data science

  • Began Chapter 9 of the FastAI book. This is on tabular learning, which is really interesting; I think this is the sort of approach I’d want to take for loostmap, my attempt to predict HF propagation by looking at data from the Reverse Beacon Network (I picked that project name from a random name generator…I really need something that makes more sense.)

  • Began playing with the New Westminster tree inventory, an open data file from my city. I’ve tried mapping that https://va7unx.space/trees, and the code can be found here.

  • Played with Roboflow, an online service that augments image data for machine learning. Also came across imgaug, a Python library that covers much the same ground.

  • Some work on the dishwasher loading critic, including beginning to work with PyTorch directly rather than using Detecto.

  • Dig into what may (or may not) be a bug in Detecto with bounding boxes.

  • Began feature engineering course on Kaggle.

  • Talked to my manager about the possibility of looking for DS/ML projects at work. Apparently there’s one team he knows of that’s looking into a project in this area, and the possibility exists to work with them for a bit. 🤞

Hardware hacking

  • My father-in-law finished a prototype of our anemometer; he’s a retired millwright, so he actually knows what he’s doing. (puts popsicle sticks and yarn away)

Radio

  • A few contests entered. Closer to getting my WAS – only missing Maine and Nebraska, and state contests for those are coming up in the next few months.

  • Reached Japan (7550 km) via CW on one watt!

  • Sysadmin work for the club.

Home sysadmin

Birding

  • Backyard bird count, plus started doing counts in local parks on weekend; submitted through Audobon app, which goes to ebird.org.

Gardening

  • Began growing wildflower seedlings at home under a grow lamp and promptly got mildew. There are a couple that have survived; I plan on transplanting those & trying again.