Roger Federer’s neural net

Here’s a paragraph that caught my attention when I was re-reading one of David Foster Wallace’s late essays Roger Federer as Religious Experience a couple of evenings ago:

Continue reading Two thoughts on AI and genius

Browsing through some old notebooks last night I found my notes from the solo walking trip I took to Snowdonia last October. I fell into a mental health hole shortly afterwards —probably spending a week alone with no connection to the outside world didn’t slow the fall—and didn’t do get around to writing up the trip.

Continue reading Snowdonia walking, October 2017

Some things I’ve enjoyed recently.

Continue reading Links

I’m back today from a week’s holiday visiting old friends and colleagues in Southampton, where I spent the days haunting the maths department, helping myself to coffee and leaving behind the occasional half-pack of hobnobs.

Continue reading Southampton, in the middle distance of my heart

Last week I found myself hoping, for the first time in my life, that the snow would go away. For Sunday was the Cambridge half marathon and since coming back from a period of illness over Christmas I’ve been training hard to maybe this time, finally, go below 90 minutes. I was quite confident I’d be able to do it: two weekends ago I went out and ran 15km at an average of 4:07/km, which left room to go slower and still come in below an hour and a half if I could keep it up. In fact, it raised the tantalising possibility of beating my friend and rival Dave’s all-time best of 88 minutes.

Continue reading Sub-90