Saturday, November 21, 2015

European History: Greeks Romans and Vikings


I've begun my very ambitious project of learning the entire history of the world. Learning from books is impossible for me currently because I no longer have the abundance of time. So, I've decided to learn from documentaries available through YouTube.

This weekend, I begin with the series European History: Greeks, Romans and Vikings, which tells the long story of Europe from around 400 BC to 1100 AD in short.  This series only gives a high level story and not all the details.

Following are the links to the videos. I own no copyright of these videos; they're publicly available from YouTube.

Episode 1: The story of Greeks, their culture, religious beliefs, government, Philosophers, theater, sports, their influences in modern world, Alexander and their fall.



Episode 2: The story of Romans, their rise, government, Roman law and its influences, military, sports, theater, roads, water management, gladiators, attack from Germanic tribes, battle of the Teutoburg forest by Arminius, and the fall of Romans.



Episode 3: The Vikings (~AD 800--1100), raids, farming, religious believes, incursion into Europe, exploration of Iceland, discovery of Greenland and America by Leif Erikson, incursion into Constantinople (present day Istanbul), trade, and merging with European society.


I will update when I watch more videos.

--Sandeep

Saturday, July 25, 2015

Navlab



Navlab: Autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles developed by The Robotics Institute at the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University. This one uses a 3-layer neural network trained by back-propagation for identifying the road and directions to move.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navlab

Josh Kaufman TEDx Talk on How To Learn Anything in 20 Hours



How to learn a new skill in 20 hours?

1. Deconstruct the skill into smaller pieces.
2. Learn enough (essentials only) so that through practice you can self-correct.
3. Overcome barriers to practice. Barriers are mostly emotional.
4. Practice at least 20 hours.