30 years Back to the Future

30 years Back to the Future

Today I wondered what I was doing 30 years ago?

Turns out it was something fairly interesting (today was mundane but interesting - ferrying my younger son up and down Mount Stromlo so he could do multiple downhill rides on a vintage Iron Horse downhill bike). Me? I just drove up and down, enjoyed the view at the top, and ate a donut.

30 years ago I was doing research for a PhD at UNSW in Machine Learning, trying to crack the problem of accurate and efficient machine learning of first-order relational and temporal concepts (still appears to be an open problem).

The year, 1987...

I had received an invitation (based on submission of an extended abstract) to the Fourth International Workshop on Machine Learning, UCI, Irvine, June 22-25, 1987.  I had to self-fund my trip but decided to attend and explore as much of the USA as I could in a few weeks.  I didn't get to present anything but there were lots of talks and informal seminars to attend to pretty stimulating. I've still got a copy of the proceedings. 



My experience of the USA was what I mainly recall. Flying into LA I took a local flight to UCI. The pollution was unbelievable, flying through a soup of orange cloud the entire way. The UCI campus was nice, I stayed at the equivalent to a university college, but 2 people/beds per room, and strange juices for breakfast out of a machine (e.g. Cranberry).

The locals were friendly and helpful. I got advice on what to do for the next few weeks.and ended up hiring an Oldsmobile car at UCI and driving non stop to Yosemite National Park.



It was like driving a tank, and the freeways were multiple lanes wide, and people drove on the right!  I had a small tent with me and arrived at Yosemite after dark, only to find a sign that said that people with cars (but no camper van) had to park a long way from the tent camp site and walk to the site. Everyone else had huge campervans with TVs!  There were warning signs about hanging any food on a rope between trees so that you didn't get eaten by a bear! I didn't have any rope and didn't get eaten by a bear (luckily). Next day I did the walk up to the top of Half-dome and back. I recall seeing a squirrel for the first time, and passing a ranger with donkeys. Had lunch at the top.



Next day I drove to San Francisco and walked across the bridge and went to the science centre.



A long flight later I arrived in NY which was mind blowing. The streets were like canyons surrounded by multi-storied building everywhere. I was wearing shorts, nobody else was. It was HOT and SMELLY. I stayed at the YHA and ate all you could eat salads at Wendy's. I went up the empire state building in the daytime and again at nighttime. Amazing views. I didn't go up the twin World Trade centre towers but had a look from the bottom - they were huge.



View from Empire State building at night.



I saw a patch a green and explored it, Central Park.  I recall the Alice statue and the Guardian "Angels" Gang members (good gang!), and I attended an open air Shakespeare performance.






Angels



Open air theater




While in NY I visited the Metropolitan Art gallery and the Guggenheim as well.

This 3,000 BC Egyptian Lion Cub statue caught my eye.



The Guggenheim building was amazing, a spiral walkway (can't recall the art!)




I also recall doing several boat trips around Manhattan (day and night), there were lots of bridges,



and visiting the Cloisters and seeing the Unicorn Tapestries,



And going to the Bronx zoo.

The NY subway system was noisy, overcrowded, and like "Hell"!

I spent a few days in Washington DC and visiting the museums (space museum as best), and their subway was like Utopia!  The Smithsonian had a real lunar lander!





And back to the present - the last few weeks I've been getting up to speed with Cassandra and Spark at Instaclustr. Last week I was trying out some ML algorithms that pre-dated my PhD research at UNSW in the 1980s, using regression and decision tree algorithms on 0-order data. Seems a bit old fashioned, so I'm keen to something more 21st century soon, maybe trying to solve some streaming temporal graph/network data problems!