James Weaver on Quantum Computing and Java

Machine Learning Exposed! slides and video

I've recently been speaking at developer conferences about machine learning, with my primary focus being to shed light on some of its seemingly magical inner workings.  I'd like to share the slides from a recent session:

 

 

Also, here is a video of a presentation on the subject that I did with Sandhya Kapoor of IBM at JFall in Netherlands:

 

Regarding future sessions, I'm really looking forward to giving a Machine Learning Exposed workshop with Katharine Beaumont at Devoxx/UK on 11 May 2017.  Here's the abstract in an attempt to pique your interest:

In the age of quantum computing, computer chip implants and artificial intelligence, it’s easy to feel left behind. For example, the term "machine learning" is increasingly bandied about in corporate settings and cocktail parties, but what is it, really?

In this session, James Weaver and Katharine Beaumont will explore machine learning topics such as supervised learning, unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, and deep learning. We'll also survey various machine learning APIs and platforms. We’ll give you an overview of what you can achieve, as well as an intuition on the maths behind machine learning.

The presenters are very aware that some material on machine learning can be maths-intensive, and off-putting if you are not confident with your calculus. Conversely, some material doesn’t go into enough detail so you don’t get a feel for how things actually work. We aim to give the session we wish we’d attended at the start of our journey: We will start right at the beginning with the basics, and build up in an approachable way to some of the most interesting techniques so you can get the most out of your machine learning adventure.

Please join us if you can!

Regards,

James L. (Jim) Weaver

Brief demo of ConceptMap v1.1 - Creating dynamic concept maps

Just a note the I've released an update to WikiBrowser, and renamed it to ConceptMap as it now creates dynamic concept maps.  ConceptMap is a web application that leverages the structure of Wikidata to semantically navigate Wikipedia articles and dynamically create directed graphs composed of items that you select.  It is my hope that ConceptMap will be widely used by students and teachers of all ages for learning, research and teaching.  I am developing ConceptMap in Java, using technologies such as Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, Spring Data, Neo4j, D3 and Cloud Foundry. This web application is live at ConceptMap.io and the code is open source and located in my GitHub repository.  Here's a brief video that shows features of ConceptMap v1.1.  In honor and memory of David Bowie, this video constructs a concept map of an infinitesimally tiny portion of his amazing legacy:

 

ConceptMap v1.1 Demo - Dynamically creating a concept map from James L. Weaver on Vimeo.

 

You can open the ConceptMap application with the David Bowie concept map created in the video by clicking this link.  One of the core features of ConceptMap is the synchronized navigation between Wikipedia articles and their Wikidata semantic relationships.  In the brief video, for example, the Wikipedia article named "David Bowie" is displayed in the rightmost panel.  The semantic relationships defined in Wikidata for David Bowie (whose Wikidata identifier is "Q5383") are displayed in the center panel.  The user can see the items related to David Bowie (e.g. All the Young Dudes), as well as the relevant Wikidata properties (e.g. performer).  When the user clicks on a related item, the Wikipedia article for that item appears in the rightmost panel.  Conversely, when the user clicks an article link in a Wikipedia page, the center panel is updated to show the relationships defined in the Wikidata item corresponding to that article.  This synchronized navigation feature enables the user to explore areas of interest using an approach that combines structured (Wikidata relationships) and freeform (Wikipedia links) navigation.

Another core feature of ConceptMap is the dynamically created directed graph in the leftmost panel.  When a Wikipedia article is displayed and its corresponding Wikidata item appears in the title area, the "Pin item" checkbox may be used to pin/unpin the item from the concept map.  Each of the pinned items appear as labeled circles (nodes) in the concept map.  As items are added to the graph, relationships from Wikidata are displayed as labeled lines (links) between the nodes.

As shown in the video, the Wikidata icon in the upper right portion of the page opens the Wikidata page for the selected item.  This is useful for adding missing relationships to Wikidata, as shown in the video when adding "space rock" to the list of genres for his song entitled Space Oddity.  To share or bookmark a concept map, click the button with the link icon as shown in the video.  A shortened URL appears that you can copy.

In future posts I plan to share details of the technologies and code involved in creating this application.  In the meantime, whether you are a learner, researcher, teacher, or all of the above, I hope that you'll take it for a spin!

Regards,

James Weaver
Twitter: @JavaFXpert

Brief demo of WikiBrowser - Semantically navigating ALL the knowledge

I'd like to share an application with you that I'm developing entitled WikiBrowser. This is a web application that leverages the structure of Wikidata to semantically navigate Wikipedia articles. It is being developed in Java, using technologies such as Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, and Cloud Foundry. This web application is live at http://WikiBrowser.io and the code is open source and located in a GitHub repository.  Here's a brief video shows features of WikiBrowser, and I hope that you'll take it for a spin!

 

Regards,

James Weaver

Composing Music in the Cloud at J-Fall 2015

"I see people going to college for 14 years studying to be doctors and lawyers.

I see people getting up at seven-thirty every morning going to work at the drug store to sell Flair pens. 

But the most amazing thing to me is I get paid for doing this."

- Steve Martin in Let's Get Small

 

Readers of this blog, or my other blog entitled CulturedEar, know that I often combine my passions for music and software development.  The most recent example of this is an application named Counterpoint Composer that I developed to demonstrate how to leverage Spring Boot and Cloud Foundry.  I now have the privilege and pleasure to deliver presentations entitled Composing Music in the Cloud about this application and technologies.  The first such presentation was in November 2015 at J-Fall in Ede, Netherlands to a gracious audience of software developers, shown in this video:

 

Here’s the abstract for the presentation: Leveraging the power of Cloud Services, this session demonstrates how music can be analyzed and composed in real-time to augment musical performance with a futuristic instrument. This session contains an introduction to relevant cloud services, and an introduction to music theory and composition. This session also has musical demonstrations and code snippets scattered throughout. 

I hope you enjoy the video!

Regards,

James Weaver

Timely Words from a Wise Yogi

The brilliant baseball player and manager, Yogi Berra, known for his pithy and paradoxical quotes once said:

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it"

Last week I came to a fork in the road as a result of being suddenly and involuntarily separated from Oracle.  The outpouring of kind words, offers of assistance, and leads for employment from the Java community (see Best.Developer.Community.Ever) were overwhelming.

The fork I took is an exciting opportunity with a very impressive and nimble company named Pivotal.  I'm now a developer evangelist at Pivotal with the privilege of working with the likes of Josh Long, Matt Stine, Kenny Bastani, Andrew Clay Shafer, and former Oracle colleague Mark Heckler.

I look forward to my continued interactions with you, the Java community!

All the best,

James Weaver
t: @JavaFXpert

Best.Developer.Community.Ever. JavaOne 2014 Community Keynote

It was my honor and privilage to lead the JavaOne 2014 Community Keynote last week in San Francisco.  The breadth and magnitude of projects and skills in the Java community is amazing, and this keynote samples some of it.  Grab some popcorn, click the image below, and settle in for some geeky entertainment :-) 

 

Regards,

James Weaver

Interview with Thierry and Yolande at Devoxx/France 2013

One of the great joys of being a Java Technology Ambassador is to interact with the global Java/JavaFX development community.  Here is an interview that Yolande Poirier conducted with Thierry Wasylczenko and me after our co-presentation at Devoxx/France in March 2013.

 

Regards,

Jim Weaver

Best-kept "secrets" surrounding JDK 8

"We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows."
- Robert Frost

The current state, and future plans, for JDK 8 seem to be well-kept secrets, so I'm writing this post to shed some light on the subject.

Well-kept "secret" #1:

The schedule for upcoming features in JDK 8 builds is posted, listed by feature and by milestone.  These lists are available from the JDK 8 page on the OpenJDK site.

Well-kept "secret" #2:

Significant progress has been made in Project Jigsaw, and active development continues.  You can see working documents, a quick start guide, and sign up for the mailing list at the preceding link.  You can also download an early access version of JDK 8 with Project Jigsaw to try it out.

Well-kept "secret" #3:

You can play with lambda expressions (closures and related features) now, using them, for example, in JavaFX event handlers.  Check out the Project Lambda page on the OpenJDK site for very detailed documentation and early access downloads.

Have fun learning about, and playing with, these upcoming JDK features!

Regards,
James Weaver
[email protected]