Yesterday afternoon, I completed a delayed task of writing a recommendation letter for an Iranian student who was at INSPEM during my deputy directorship. I did not expect to write such letters years after my retirement. As IFM chair mentioned to me, there is no real retirement for those academics that care.
Another unexpected correspondence was the suggestion of my ex-PhD student of a possible publication from the last chapter of his PhD thesis submitted more than two years ago. But he has also raise concerns about an arXiv paper carrying similar ideas of what he had, which has been accepted by a prestigious journal. Having forgotten most of the work, I have to dig deep into both the works of my student and the mentioned arXiv paper and concluded that the authors of the arXiv paper had done their work independently. Perhaps the lesson here that one should document one's ideas and put it out accessible to others (and not kept it) so that some form of time-stamp is made. Ideas kept are at risk of being outpaced by others. I remembered the rumours we heard verbally in a string conference in Cambridge long ago about the idea of heterotic string may be mooted by Witten (if true, unknown to many). The Princeton string quartet did the work that produced the celebrated paper, not taking in any way its value by raising this rumour that we heard (true or not) . Just saying that who produced the work accessible to others first will get the credit. I am still working on my ex-student's paper (with apologies to my ex-student). I tend to do my own independent reading these days, my coping of the back pain and personal commitments may have gone in the way.
With respect to document ideas down, my formerly blog entry has made its way to Majalah Sains, making it as a more acceptable publication with wider circulation. Initially, I thought of modifying the blogpost to make it better for such publication. Reading more to get better understanding of the economic solution made by Mostaque (raised here) but have decided not to proceed then. When it was out in Majalah Sains, I showed it to my family in WhatsApp (so they will understand why I'm always 'working in my room'). My son then asked Meta AI to give a comment on the article and it had this to say:
Actually I was rather anxious of what experts will say about the writing. I know for instance, some object to the term black box with respect to AI but I also said the same about human learning. In any case, the term black box is not necesarily derogatory. We treat many things as black boxes everyday; the vehicle we drive and our own body itself. Do you know that there are 10:1 ratio of microbes to human cells (see Gemini's response below). Talk about the hidden world and things that we don't know about ourselves (don't get me started).
This was prompted by my digestive problems I'm having So, you probably have heard about the brain-gut connection.
Today (and tomorrow) my high school mates are having their 50th reunion which I could not quite go. partly commitments (my other half is working) and partly expenses (have to keep it under control and making sure my family has something to eat in the days to come). Recently my son from JB also came back home coinciding with my youngest son's semester break. So, we have the full family at home and hence our 'smaller reunion'. My son from JB wanted to give us a treat for (a steamboat) lunch on Saturday he asked Meta AI for possible places to go and got the following (Note: I do encourage my family to use free AI tools)
Unfortunately all the available places was full that day for some reason. Finally, we settled for Woodfire in Seremban where we had a late lunch (see pic).
At home, created this clip (with the above pic as input) using PixVerse:
One small happy family gathering. From the clip, Ihsan saw that AI hd rendered him wearing earrings. Of course, he didn't wear any and we simply laughed it off.
Yesterday, was my eldest's first day of work at a glass factory in Senawang. My third son has also got a job offer at Commerz Global Service Solutions Sdn Bhd which begins next month. He has to work odd hours (3pm to 1am). May Allah ease their way around work. Me, I will be still be at home, trying to do some meaningful work.
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