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Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal infrastructure (2019)

writings.stephenwolfram.com

81–90 of 110 posts

Re: Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal infrastructure (2019)

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. I keep even more than that. And at a finer grained resolution. And have done so for almost two decades. It's all put on to a write-only-by-the-capturing-device/read-only-by-other-device secured storage system.

Have you written anything public about your setup (and/or rationale)?

You are the third person this week to ask me that. I answer reluctantly.

The rationale is, because I want to.

The system has evolved over the years, current configuration is: Several 1080p SONY cameras with hacked firmware that stream video to a capture device. An older view of the camera rig that has since evolved again, is here: https://youtu.be/dGRDB1vVxyY

Some 4K webcams connected over USB that I don't stream. I capture one full frame every X milliseconds.

Two Kinects set to be out of phase capturing the entirety of the office as a depth map.

Two Rode shotgun microphones capturing audio and feeding it in to a Focusrite box.

Custom built USB "keyboard" with a few arcade buttons that permit "pause/unpause", "forget a little bit" and "forget five minutes."

Two LED lights to indicate recording status for both myself and anybody walking in the office.

Timesnapper on Windows, and a little custom C++ capture program for macOS and Linux that takes a snapshot of my desktop every X seconds.

All that data gets stuffed on to a secured drive on a file server. The data goes back more than a decade. Nobody has access to that data but me.

I use an NVidia Jetson to analyze everything: the desktop images, build up a map of applications, analyze people in the room, identify who they are, what clothes they are wearing, identification of activity, OCR of images, transcription of spoken word to text, identification of websites, identification of music playing, "oh hey, he's listening to the following artist, let me pull that artist's social feed and put it on the ambient screen in the hallway", which is kinda creepy when the software identifies my own music https://soundcloud.com/justinrlloyd and then stalks me and puts up my own social feeds on the household ambient screen. I also have the Jetson watching the front door via the Ubiquiti doorbell camera and can switch on the TV in my office if someone comes to the front door so I can see who it is, and also will notify me that a package is on the doorstep ready to be brought inside via the second high viewpoint door camera performing a "what changed in this scene, is that a package? That looks like a package. Package! ZOMG! Package! Package!!!" That algorithm has one job and it does it really well. Like a hunting dog staring at squirrels.

Lots of this stuff is readily available as ML models, for the most part I just strung them together with simple scripts to move data around.

I have a "virtual assistant" that I wrote, using NLP and key phrases with a speech recognition model that understands specific commands and some free form speech, an early prototype of my virtual assistant is here: https://youtu.be/uhl8wN7Uvv8 and I state for the record that it has gotten far better in the intervening years. And then a text to speech model when absolutely necessary to give me voice prompts.

This virtual assistant can control cameras, e.g. tally lights, zoom and focus, recognize the fact I am holding a receipt from a grocery store, or a book, and take a high resolution picture and tag it with meta data.

I keep a near real-time backup of my computers, and that data goes back probably three decades, any time I retire a machine I take a full drive dump and store that.

Out of office, I take a snapshot of my desktop on the laptop (Microsoft Surface or Macbook Pro), which is then automatically copied to the server when I return to the office. I built my own Sensecam-like device using a J2ME device almost two decades ago, but have since moved to using an Autographer for life logging.

Re: Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal infrastructure (2019)

#82
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common sentiment on the Internet. But when I look around at the people I know, none of the people who are anti-productivity are people I admire. In fact, the pro-productivity people do much more of everything with better outcomes. - The pro-productivity people are more involved parents and family members - The pro-productivity people are more involved in hobbies - The pro-productivity people create many mor…

> Work is not a thing I do for money alone. I feel happy and fulfilled when I do it. It is fun! I really wish I could get into this mindset instead of dreading work. I find no fulfillment from work, in fact the most fulfilled i've felt was when I had no obligations to anyone or anything (taking a break from work)

When you’re like Wolfram, where you are head of a 800-employee organisation, profitable from real users, and have a long road map of where you want to take your product, then work is essentially infinite and energising.

When you get to lead the vision of your “baby”, with support from 800 people, work is completely different from your typical middle manager of individual contributor.

Re: Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal infrastructure (2019)

#84
post #35

My intuition is that all of the benefit you get being outside and walking is probably lost by strapping a laptop to yourself and being on calls the whole time. Call me old fashioned but I'm outside to look at the sea, hear the birds and be very definitely away from my tech.

For the last year or so I have scheduled my two status meetings back to back in the mornings. That means I have 90 minutes of walking in the forrest in the morning (30min before the meetings and then 30min each for the two meetings). I have two teams reporting to me, and each have a 30minute morning meeting where we decide what needs the team attention during the day. There is also room for small talk to keep it a bi…

> I have two teams reporting to me, and each have a 30minute morning meeting where we decide what needs the team attention during the day.

Why you have to talk with your team on a daily basis? That’s too frequent and into weeds. The earliest should be weekly. Delegate and plan for long term.

> Walking in the forrest have two benefits; less risk of getting hit by a car

There’s a risk with everything. You just switch one with another.

Re: Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal infrastructure (2019)

#85

What a fascinating person! Personally, I prefer to run 10 miles on a trail in the morning then go to work and grind. Vs trying to combine exersize and work.

Rucking (walking with weight on your back) is actually really really good for both cardio and strength. Once you get older and the knees start wearing out it's a great alternative

Rucking is great, but it can be just as bad if not harder on your knees if you’re not careful.

Re: Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal infrastructure (2019)

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you written anything public about your setup (and/or rationale)?

You are the third person this week to ask me that. I answer reluctantly. The rationale is, because I want to. The system has evolved over the years, current configuration is: Several 1080p SONY cameras with hacked firmware that stream video to a capture device. An older view of the camera rig that has since evolved again, is here: https://youtu.be/dGRDB1vVxyY Some 4K webcams connected over USB that I don't stream. I…

... WOW

This is just amazing. You've basically built your own JARVIS, and I really want to know how much you would charge to replicate this ? ... its almost impossible to turn something so bespoke into a purchasable product, so I'll never be able to walk into a store and walk out with this entire thing, but its like art, you can pay the artist to make you one thats pretty similar since they know how to do it... I suppose that does open a more interesting question for the wider audience.

How much effort does it take to maintain this?

Re: Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal infrastructure (2019)

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the last year or so I have scheduled my two status meetings back to back in the mornings. That means I have 90 minutes of walking in the forrest in the morning (30min before the meetings and then 30min each for the two meetings). I have two teams reporting to me, and each have a 30minute morning meeting where we decide what needs the team attention during the day. There is also room for small talk to keep it a bi…

Don't you feel rude to the other people trying to enjoy their time in the forest for yammering on a work call? Not as egregious as the mountain bikers who blast music from speakers on the trails as they ride, but still.

What does this mean? Is there a list of approved conversation allowed on trails? What difference does it make if they are talking to someone virtually or physically present on the trail?

Re: Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal infrastructure (2019)

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are the third person this week to ask me that. I answer reluctantly. The rationale is, because I want to. The system has evolved over the years, current configuration is: Several 1080p SONY cameras with hacked firmware that stream video to a capture device. An older view of the camera rig that has since evolved again, is here: https://youtu.be/dGRDB1vVxyY Some 4K webcams connected over USB that I don't stream. I…

... WOW This is just amazing. You've basically built your own JARVIS, and I really want to know how much you would charge to replicate this ? ... its almost impossible to turn something so bespoke into a purchasable product, so I'll never be able to walk into a store and walk out with this entire thing, but its like art, you can pay the artist to make you one thats pretty similar since they know how to do it... I sup…

I have never considered product-izing it. I have no interest in doing so even as a one-off "art piece." And I don't know your net worth, but I doubt there is anybody on this green Earth that I would be willing to work with that could offer up a dollar amount that I'd be interested in. Besides, I'm currently building a task list, https://github.com/justinlloyd/retro-chores/ so have no time for an adventure - nasty, uncomfortable things that make you late for dinner.

With regard to maintenance, I don't know, I haven't touched it in months. Maybe every once in a while I get some weird, catastrophic failure of "I can no longer talk to the ambient screen, but I am still sending commands" and then I have to spend a half-day debugging what the issue is only to realize that the CNC in the workshop stole the IP address because I forgot to lock that IP to the device's MAC when I switched out the old screen for a new screen.

Re: Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal infrastructure (2019)

#89

I want to be as productive as possible while working. What I don't want is to be as productive as possible while living. So tools that integrate work into non-work aspects of my life end up turning my whole life into endless work; for some people that might be fine -- and it used to be fine for me 2 decades ago, but it's not fine anymore.

Exactly this. Boundaries are important otherwise it's all just work. You need to allow the space for peace to poke through.

Re: Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal infrastructure (2019)

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you feel rude to the other people trying to enjoy their time in the forest for yammering on a work call? Not as egregious as the mountain bikers who blast music from speakers on the trails as they ride, but still.

What does this mean? Is there a list of approved conversation allowed on trails? What difference does it make if they are talking to someone virtually or physically present on the trail?

I guess it depends. When you're talking to a person directly, most likely your ears aren't blocked. So you get the feedback of your voice levels, and adjust accordingly. This is really difficult to do when you have earphones in, blocking everything. Usually people with both earphones in tend to raise their voices nearly to a shouting level. I don't know if OP does that or not though.
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