The international #conference on #MachineLearning ( #icml2023 ) has 30 associated workshops, and all of them are calling for contributions right now.

https://icml.cc/virtual/2023/events/workshop

Apple now has Rapid Security Updates available for users running iOS 16.4.x … they are smaller and faster updates for security vulnerabilities.

The update download took like 10 seconds but preparing the update took around one and a half minutes. The update itself was very fast and the phone restarted and was done in around 30 seconds …

The current update is 16.4.1 (a) and if you want to be sure that you are protected against the latest vulnerabilities, you might want to give it a try …

There’s apparently one for macOS as well, but I haven’t installed that yet.

#Apple #iOS #macOS #SecurityUpdates

The Apple Watch — my wife and I got Apple Watches a year (or is it two) ago since we wanted to track our health.

Now I haven’t seen this mentioned anywhere widely, but both of us got rashes/painful bumps from wearing the watch. And this wasn’t a one off either — my wife tried it several times, and also switched hands, but the issue would come back every time. So there’s something wrong with the Apple Watch, at least for us. I gave up on the watch at that point and have been vehemently against the Apple Watch since then.

We started talking about health stats recently and we decided to give a fitness tracker/watch another chance but no Apple Watches, no sireee Bob! We aren’t going that route again 😛

So we gave the Mi Band 7 a try. It did most of what we wanted but the screen was a little too small for our agin eyes 🙂 So we tried the Amazfit Band 7 and that has a slightly bigger screen and better battery life than the Mi Band 7 and at a fraction of the cost of the Apple Watch.

I’ve moved on to an Amazfit GTS 4 mini since then and I have to say that I’m actually very happy with Amazfit and the functionality you get for a very low price. But it’s still just a couple of weeks and I’m curious to see if the Apple Watch issues surface with this one too …

#HealthTracking #AppleWatch #Amazfit #MiBand

Decided to give DeepFloyd a try today on macOS.

The good news? It works … kinda 😛

The bad news? It doesn’t work all the way … as was to be expected 🙂

I took the following code from their GitHub repo (https://github.com/deep-floyd/IF) and modified for an Apple Silicon (M1) Mac. Here’s the actual code I ran:

from diffusers import DiffusionPipeline
from diffusers.utils import pt_to_pil
import torch

# stage 1
stage_1 = DiffusionPipeline.from_pretrained("DeepFloyd/IF-I-M-v1.0").to("mps")

# stage 2
stage_2 = DiffusionPipeline.from_pretrained("DeepFloyd/IF-II-M-v1.0", text_encoder=None).to("mps")

# stage 3
safety_modules = {"feature_extractor": stage_1.feature_extractor, "safety_checker": stage_1.safety_checker, "watermarker": stage_1.watermarker}
stage_3 = DiffusionPipeline.from_pretrained("stabilityai/stable-diffusion-x4-upscaler", **safety_modules).to("mps")

prompt = 'a photo of a kangaroo wearing an orange hoodie and blue sunglasses standing in front of the eiffel tower holding a sign that says "very deep learning"'

# text embeds
prompt_embeds, negative_embeds = stage_1.encode_prompt(prompt)

generator = torch.manual_seed(0)

# stage 1
image = stage_1(prompt_embeds=prompt_embeds, negative_prompt_embeds=negative_embeds, generator=generator, output_type="pt").images
pt_to_pil(image)[0].save("./if_stage_I.png")

# stage 2
image = stage_2(image=image, prompt_embeds=prompt_embeds, negative_prompt_embeds=negative_embeds, generator=generator, output_type="pt").images
pt_to_pil(image)[0].save("./if_stage_II.png")

# stage 3
image = stage_3(prompt=prompt, image=image, generator=generator, noise_level=100).images
image[0].save("./if_stage_III.png")

You have to make sure that diffusers, transformers, and accelereate (at least in my own trial) are fully up-to-date. The larger models probably work too but it took too long to download/test and so I opted for the smallest models.

Stage I and II generated images but stage III errored out. I will need to figure out what happened there later …

Resulting images are attached …

#DeepLearning #MachineLearning #DeepFloyd #ImageGeneration

Stage I image — 64 x 64 in size…
Stage II image — 256 x 256 in s…

#durdledoor #sunrise #photography #landscape

University 🌺
@_ksu_erm_
#Chernivtsi

#LosGigantes
#Tenerife
https://www.facebook.com/644456685967305/posts/pfbid064ZsYhK1yeUvqaQwBzm7obhDg2tGgsBX9pCZMmAULvpsQYnSEzuVGVEuodTPC53ql/

#tokyocameraclub
#東京カメラ部
#私の花の写真

#AmazingWorld
#ValleyOfCactuses

“Citadel” looked interesting on paper — the Russo brothers, Priyanka Chopra, Richard Madden, and a story about a global spy agency — but the initial story (before the credits) was so full of holes and logic issues that they’re going to have to work really hard to convince me …

I guess we’ll see how the first episode plays out.

#TV #FirstTakes

Been gone for a while... here is one from my archives.

The sky in Oklahoma is a constant source of inspiration!

Get a print and take it home with you!

https://shelli-fitzpatrick.pixels.com/featured/oklahoma-sunrise-sky-on-fire-shelli-fitzpatrick.html

#sunrise #art #MastoArt #DigitalArt #AYearForArt #artist #ArtPrints #sky #oklahoma #FediArt #FediGiftShop

Purple grapes on the vine, seen on a hillside vineyard in Tuscany.

ART - https://deborah-league.pixels.com/featured/purple-grapes-on-the-vine-deborah-league.html

#mastodon #AYearForArt #Art #artist #MastoArt #buyintoart #digitalart #painting #food #photography #Italy #travel

Just singing away.
#birds #procreate #photography #art #bird #birb

StabilityAI has released DeepFloyd IF … there goes the next few weeks probably 😛

https://github.com/deep-floyd/IF

#MachineLearning #DeepLearning #ImageGeneration

Black Hole

2023 04 02 day 283 of doing art every day for a year (mostly – I took sick days off). I’m doing a one art-thing every day challenge to take me from wannabe artist to something around beginner artist. I’m very much still learning and am self-taught. This series chronicles this journey.

I saw an image of a black hole on the Curiosmos site, linked below, and thought I’d do my own take. Here it is!

For more info, including seeing the time lapse, follow this link: https://lmashton.com/black-hole/

#ArtMatters #AYearForArt #Procreate #DigitalArt #WomensArt #ArtistsOnMastodon
An imagined vision of a black h…

We went to San Francisco Botanical Gardens yesterday, and I took photos of three new birds. These jays were my favorite.

#birds #StellersJay

Alien Landscape

2023 03 31 day 281 of doing art every day for a year (mostly – I took sick days off).

To clarify for those who weren’t with me at the beginning in May 2022, I decided to do a one year challenge to do some kind of art every day for a year so I could, hopefully, learn to do art. In the beginning, my art, or more accurately, “art”, wasn’t very good. I had not done much since finger painting in grade two or three. I considered myself a wannabe artist. But I figured that, if I worked at art seriously for a year, I could improve. I aspire to competence. So what you see here is very much that of a beginner artist learning to art.

On to the now. I seem to be developing a habit of painting otherworldly scenes. I must continue that with zero restraint.

For more info, including seeing the time lapse, follow this link: https://lmashton.com/alien-landscape/

#ArtMatters #AYearForArt #Procreate #DigitalArt #WomensArt #ArtistsOnMastodon
A digital painting of an alien …

Suppose I should provide a brief #introduction

- Background in #physics
- Use #datascience #machinelearning and #cloudcomputing to solve challenging problems in #insurance
- Live in #Madison #Wisconsin
- Organizer of our local #python meetup group -- see @madpy
- Perennially hopeful #WhiteSox #baseball fan
- Devoted #tea drinker
- Proud papa of two

For all their talk about #MachineLearning support on their latest Apple Silicon devices, you just can’t do any of the newer generative stuff on Macs easily, or fully.

So what’s the point of Apple touting their machine learning prowess except to be misleading?

Any time I try to do anything even slightly complicated/off the beaten track, I run into issues on the Mac side 😕 Even a few years after the introduction of Apple Silicon, it just feels as if Apple is just not ready for all the new stuff …

Makes you almost want to go back to using a PC full time … almost 😛

#MachineLearning #DeepLearning #AppleSilicon #Hardware

Friday Flyday! Here’s a portrait of a hanging-thief fly, Diogmites sp., photographed in Saint Louis.

#FlyDay #Asilidae #Insects #photography