fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Running TPU (Tensor Processing Unit) in Kaggle
By: Muhammad Ardi
Tags: Kaggle, TensorFlow, Keras, Computer Vision, Deep Learning

Performance comparison

According to many sources (like [1] and [2]), TPU runs faster compared to the others. But here I wanna actually test it myself. Note that I set the batch size to 32 and epoch to 20 for all experiments in figure 9 below for the sake of fair comparison. Keep in mind that we don’t really care about the final accuracy score since the purpose of this experiment is just to find out whether TPU really runs faster than GPU.

Figure 9. Training duration comparison between different accelerators.

According to the experiment result above, it looks like TPU runs approximately 1.89x faster than CPU. Well, it’s pretty fast but we still see that GPU completes the entire training process more rapidly with the speed of 3.96x faster than CPU. But why this happens?

Kaggle’s documentation [3] mentions that the we need to use batch size of 128 in order to make TPU running at its peak performance. So then I try to perform comparison between different batch sizes while sticking with the value of 20 for the epoch. The experiment summary is shown at figure 10. Notice that here I don’t include the training duration of CPU as it’s just going to be extremely a lot taller than the others in the bar chart.

Figure 10. Training duration comparison between different batch sizes.

I think I found something interesting here. We can see the figure 10 above that increasing the size of batch greatly reduces training duration when we are using TPU. In fact, GPU shows similar behavior, yet the reduction in training time is not as significant as what we see in TPU. Also, I think using TPU with 128 batch size is not as fast as what Kaggle claimed in their documentation since it still takes quite longer than what GPU achieves.

The training speed of TPU is in fact higher than GPU when we use the batch size of 512 or more. But it is important to keep in mind that using such large size of batch is not quite common — well, at least I usually use relatively smaller values for some reasons.

According to [4], TPU is indeed optimized for large training batches, while GPU is relatively faster when it comes to smaller batch size. However, increasing the size of batch just because of this reason is not always the best solution since large batches might cause the neural net classifier to converge pretty slowly. This is in fact proven by the result experiment shown in figure 11.

Figure 11. How batch size affects training process.

It’s also important to know that 1024 batch size may eventually reach high accuracy as well as that of smaller size, yet it will take several more epochs which also causes the increase of overall training duration. So if I were to say, the choice of using TPU or GPU is a kind of hyperparameter to tune.
Data Preparation Guide for Histopathologic Cancer Detection
By: Abdul Qadir
Tags: Cancer Detection, Keras, Machine Learning, Kaggle Competition, Python

Data Augmentation

What is Data Augmentation and why do we do it? In its essence, data augmentation is a way to increase the size of our image dataset by introducing slight changes to our data. The goal is for our model to generalize to more examples which are introduced through image augmentation. More importantly, image augmentation also allows our model to generalize different versions of different kinds of image.

Look at the image below. Suppose the terribly drawn cat on the left is from a training dataset, but the cat on the right is in the test dataset. They are, quite literally, the same image except that the image on the right is flipped. A human is able to easily notice that, but a model may not be able to succeed at this task and will fail at identifying it in the test dataset. Ideally, you want your model to not care about variations in images, and correctly classify the image, which is why you introduce augmented versions of images so the model can generalize better.

Example of an augmented picture

Here is code for a function that augments images by applying various transformations to them such as varying the contrast of an image, increasing its brightness, applying random rotations/shifts. The code was referenced from here.

We then use this function to augment our extracted images in the ‘train’ folder. The code below generates an X amount of new images (based on a variable called ‘images_to_generate’ that you can change) by randomly choosing images from our train set, applying the augmentation function above, then saving the image in the train folder with an ‘augmented’ + its previous ID as the new name. Lastly, we also append the label and name to train_labels csv file and save a new csv file which also contains the ID and labels to the augmented images.
Ördü Kader Ağlarını Bölüm 1 — Yapay Sinir Ağları
By: Samed Harman
Tags: Artificial Neural Network, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Machine Learning, Keras

Stochastic vs Batch Gradient Descent

One of the first concepts that a beginner comes across in the field of deep learning is gradient descent followed by…
BERT Text Classification using Keras
Tags: NLP, Bert, Bert Text Classification, Keras, Nlp Training

Fine-tuning the pre-trained BERT model:

BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) is a big neural network architecture, with a huge number of parameters, that can range from 100 million to over 300 million. So, training a BERT model from scratch on a small dataset would result in overfitting.

So, it is better to use a pre-trained BERT model that was trained on a huge dataset, as a starting point. We can then further train the model on our relatively smaller dataset and this process is known as model fine-tuning.

Let’s prepare the input data for the BERT Model, which contains

Encoding of the labels

Convert ‘ham’ to 0 and ‘spam’ to 1 and save it into a new column ‘gt’ (ground truth).

Label Encoding

Sentences contain the entire text data and labels contain all the corresponding labels.

Encoding of the text data using BERT Tokenizer and obtaining the input_ids and attentions masks to feed into the model.

Load the sentences into the BERT Tokenizer.

Model input

BERT Tokenizer returns a dictionary from which we can get the input ds and the attention masks.

Convert all the encoding to NumPy arrays.

Arguments of BERT Tokenizer:

text ( str , List[str] , List[List[str]] ) – The sequence or batch of sequences to be encoded. Each sequence can be a string or a list of strings (pretokenized string). If the sequences are provided as list of strings (pretokenized), you must set is_split_into_words=True (to lift the ambiguity with a batch of sequences).

2. add_special_tokens ( bool , optional, defaults to True ) – Whether or not to encode the sequences with the special tokens relative to their model.

3. max_length ( int , optional) — Controls the maximum length to use by one of the truncation/padding parameters. (max_length≤512)

4. pad_to_max_length ( bool , optional, defaults to True ) – Whether or not to pad the sequences to the maximum length.

5. return_attention_mask ( bool , optional) –

Whether to return the attention mask. If left to the default will return the attention mask according to the specific tokenizer’s default, defined by the return_outputs attribute.

Saving and loading the data into the pickle files:

Pickle files

Spitting into train and validation set

Split the dataset (input_ids,attention_masks and labels) into train and Val sets (80–20), set the test_size=0.2 i.e 20%.

Train-Test split

train_test_split: Split arrays or matrices into the random train and test subsets

Setting up the loss, metric and the optimizer

Model utils

A callback is an object that can perform actions at various stages of training (e.g. at the start or end of an epoch, before or after a single batch, etc).

Callbacks are used to:

Write TensorBoard logs after every batch of training to monitor your metrics

2. Periodically save your model to disk

3. Do early stopping

4. Get a view on internal states and statistics of a model during training

5. …and more

Here, I am saving the model based on min val loss, setting monitor=’val_loss’,mode=’min’ in ModelCheckpoint callbacks.

Training the model
Enable TensorFlow-gpu with NVIDIA graphics on Windows 10
By: Koushik Kumar
Tags: Gpu Deep Learning, Cpu, TensorFlow, Keras, Windows 10

A few days back, I had to make a decision of keep aside the dual core I5 laptop I’d been using for the past 7 years and purchase a new laptop. After a check with friends, doing my own research, I landed on ‘Lenovo Legion 5i.’

With interest in the area of deep learning, I started to work on TensorFlow and Keras. As you know, model training on the CPU takes time, and GPU makes it better reducing time at least by 1/6th of CPU. To run TensorFlow on GPU, we need to install NVIDIA graphic drivers (If they are not pre-installed), CUDA Toolkit, cuDNN libraries. The problem is the versions that get released often, and few are not compatible. I, like a few of you, ended up in a loop of DLL errors.

DLL errors due to incorrect installation / compatibility issues

Legion 5i runs on the this configuration — CPU: I7 10th Gen | GPU: NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX1650Ti | OS: Windows 10 Home, 64-bit. To work with Keras, the TensorFlow needs to be updated to 2.2 or higher. TensorFlow-GPU v2.2 is not yet released with Anaconda for Windows OS.

TensorFlow | Keras | Anaconda Tensorflow-gpu version

Going through other blogs, Stack overflow questions, articles, CUDA, cuDNN documentation and search through google, following steps helped in solving my requirement.
Fully Connected vs Convolutional Neural Networks
By: Pooja Mahajan
Tags: Neural Networks, Convolutional Network, Keras, Computer Vision, Deep Learning

Dataset Used

MNIST (Modified National Institute of Standards and Technology database) dataset of 60,000 28x28 grayscale images of the 10 digits, along with a test set of 10,000 images.

It is a subset of a larger set available from NIST. The digits have been size-normalized and centered in a fixed-size image.

It is a good database for people who want to try learning techniques and pattern recognition methods on real-world data while spending minimal efforts on preprocessing and formatting.

Model Implementation

A) Using Fully Connected Neural Network Architecture

Model Architecture

For the fully-connected architecture, I have used a total of three hidden layers with ‘relu’ activation function apart from input and output layers.

Model Summary

The total number of trainable parameters is around 0.3 million. In a fully-connected layer, for n inputs and m outputs, the number of weights is n*m. Additionally, you have a bias for each output node, so total (n+1)*m parameters.

Model Accuracy

On training the fully connected model for five epochs with a batch size of 128, and validation split value set to 0.3 we got training accuracy of 98.6% and validation accuracy of 96.07%. Moreover, after 2nd epoch, we can visualize how train and validation accuracy tends to move wide apart.

Accuracy on Test data

On test data with 10,000 images accuracy for the fully connected neural network is 96%.

B) Using Convolutional Neural Network Architecture

Model Architecture

For Convolutional Neural network architecture, we added 3 convolutional layers with activation as ‘relu’ and a max pool layer after the first convolutional layer.

Model Summary

With CNN the differences you can notice in summary are Output shape and number of parameters. As compared to the fully connected neural network model the total number of parameters is too less i.e. 0.1 million.

Model Accuracy

On training, CNN for five epochs for a batch size of 128, and validation split value set to 0.3 we got training accuracy of 99.19% and validation accuracy of 99.63%. Moreover, unlike the fully connected model, we can visualize train and validation accuracy do not tend to move as wide apart.

Accuracy on the Test dataset

On test data with 10,000 images, accuracy for the fully connected neural network is 98.9%.

Final Thoughts

Although fully connected networks make no assumptions about the input they tend to perform less and aren’t good for feature extraction. Plus they have a higher number of weights to train that results in high training time while on the other hand CNNs are trained to identify and extract the best features from the images for the problem at hand with relatively fewer parameters to train.

Please find the relevant codes used in this blog here. On similar lines, you can find the implementation of CNNs on the FMNIST dataset using PyTorch here.

References :
Data Preprocessing for Machine Learning
By: Kr. Wan
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Keras, Machine Learning, Data Science, Deep Learning

Preprocessing before…Preprocessing

First thing first, how to load a csv document? One way is to use pandas . For example, the following code loads a csv document from a specific path you provided:

Next, let’s have a look at the dataset we have:

Housing dataset

This is a housing dataset that provides relevant information so that people could use it to train an algorithm to predict median house value based on all other information (pay attention to the fact that our label is within our dataset, not as a separate dataset). As you can see, the dataset is not so clean for machine learning purpose and we need to preprocess this dataset before feeding it into our algorithm. Here are some standard ways to do it:
Intrusion Detection System
Tags: Keras, Machine Learning, Python, Intrusion Detection, Random Forest Classifiers

“Fewer than one in twenty security professionals has the core competence and the foundation knowledge to take a system all the way from a completely unknown state of security through mapping, vulnerability testing, password cracking, modem testing, vulnerability patching, firewall tuning, instrumentation, virus detection at multiple entry points, and even through back-ups and configuration management.”

― Stephen Northcutt, Network Intrusion Detection: An Analysts’ Handbook

In this article implementation of IDS (Intrusion detection system) is covered using Random Forest Algorithm of Machine Learning.

What do you mean by IDS: An Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is a network security technology originally built for detecting vulnerability exploits against a target application or computer

The dataset used for this project is mentioned below and link is available of GitHub for reference “kddcup.data_10_percent: https://github.com/edyoda/pyspark-tutorial/blob/master/kddcup.data_10_percent.gz

Python is used for implementation, Jupiter Notebook (preferred):

Firstly, pandas and TensorFlow is imported as the main libraries we need will be available. Then dataset path is provided using try catch, and if any error it will throw downloading error. Then read file command is used to read the dataset. Reading rows and printing their status.

Afterwards os library is imported along-with numpy, sklearn, scipy.stats.

The logic categorization and analyze the data. And the below is the output of the analyze data.

Training dataset

In this phase dataset is trained and then tested. Later on importing and fitting of dataset into Random Forest Classifier with estimator 20 and calculating its score. Good accuracy of is achieved through this algorithm and better system performance.This how things gonna easy using python for intrusion detection and finally the system is implemented successfully. The code will be uploaded on GitHub soon.

Stay tuned for interesting stuff related Network Security and its Application.

Have a great day!
DistilBERT Text classification using Keras
Tags: NLP, Keras, Distilbert, Hugging Face, Text Classification

In the previous blog, I covered the text classification task using BERT. In this blog let’s cover the smaller version of BERT and that is DistilBERT. DistilBERT is a smaller version of BERT developed and open-sourced by the team at HuggingFace. It’s a lighter and faster version of BERT that roughly matches its performance.

DistilBERT has 40% less parameters than bert-base-uncased, runs 60% faster while preserving over 95% of BERT’s performances as measured on the GLUE language understanding benchmark.

DistilBERT Implementation in Keras.

First, the trained distilBERT was used to generate sentence embedding (768 dimensions) for the dataset.

Then a basic NN Architecture (with Dense and Dropout layers) was used for the further classification task and the training.

Finally, the evaluation of the model.

DistilBERT Implementation

The Tensorboard visualization is not clearly visible here, the output of Cell 23 will be something like this:

Tensorboard Visualization

Happy Learning:)

References
What I Found
By: Tiana Rose
Tags: Relationships, Peace Of Mind, Soulful Rose Sundays, Poetry, Lessons Learned

What I Found

I woke up to the sun shining,

The sky that same shade of powdery blue,

Contemplating life with so many thoughts anew.

Where am I going?

Where does this road lead?

Am I fulfilling my purpose?

Am I giving myself everything I need?

It all stops when thoughts jog back to how we used to be.

I think of the times it wasn’t all too bad,

Go back to the last few good memories we had,

Damn.

What if I would’ve stood there?

What if I continued to play your game?

What if I would’ve never left?

Am I the one who should be blamed?…

Knowing now what I always knew then,

I would never trust you the same,

But at least I wouldn’t be alone.

Alone…yet I’m fulfilled in ways you could never.

Though I’m not with you and don’t have a warm body to lay next to at night,

I’ve gotten back my sanity,

I’ve gotten back my light.

I

Have

ME.

Cognitive dissonance no longer plays a part in this beautifully orchestrated mess I once called love.

I no longer question the validity of how much you may or may not be feelin’ me,

Who I am,

Or what’s real to me cause with being alone came something so profound…

My peace,

My peace,

MY PEACE.

I said peace to your anguish,

Peace to your despair,

It wasn’t mine to carry and since you thought I’d always be there,

I said peace to the heartache,

The indifference I felt in my soul,

Replaced the icy apathy you poured into my heart,

Filled it with the fire of love I had to re-grow,

And I let it burn…

I let the warmth of MY love thaw out pieces of me I hadn’t seen in forever

Came to terms with pieces of me that had to go up in flames,

Turn to jade,

So they’d never be lit back up again.

I came to know and love peace.

Cause when you broke me to pieces,

Peace pieced me back together since it was all I had left.
The creative mind of an Artist is not appreciated when so much attention is drawn to his grubby…
Tags: Life Lessons, Poetry On Medium, Life Lessons To Learn, Poetry, Lessons Learned

The creative mind of an Artist is not appreciated when so much attention is drawn to his grubby pallet. Rather the upshot…an Alluring Painting.

Dwelling on the shoddy facets of people impedes our perception of their good deeds, no matter how glaring.
The hospitals are full…
By: Bubbbles Media
Tags: Lessons Learned, Productivity, Personal Growth, Damn Good Advice, Mindfulness

in The Case of Curious Birds
I built cards playing game for minimalist people
By: Ricardo Sawir
Tags: Card Game, 1day1profitableproduct, Business, Minimalist, Lessons Learned

1 day 1 profitable product

Approach

I use different approach for this. I use pre order.

Marketing

Twitter and Instagram (both are my own channel).

Result

0 pre order as of 2020–12–26

May be not enough reach yet. Let’s see later.

Follow me on Twitter https://twitter.com/RicardoSawir
What I’ve Learned About Meditation in 2020
By: John Gonzalez
Tags: Mindfulness, Meditation, Mindfulness Meditation, On Meditation, Lessons Learned

I like practicing mindfulness meditation, which focuses on cultivating an awareness of my thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations. For years, meditation frustrated me. But as my beliefs about the practice have changed, I’ve meditated more consistently and felt better afterwards.

These are 5 beliefs I have about meditation that I didn’t believe in 2019. While etched in text, they’re not etched in stone. I’m excited to see how these beliefs change in 2021. This is a snapshot, not the whole story.
In Case Of A Cheque, Wait For It To Reflect in your Account Before Transferring Possession.
By: Mary Stella
Tags: Money, Fraud, Storyofmylife, Storytelling, Lessons Learned

Photo by Alistair MacRobert on Unsplash

In Case Of A Cheque, Wait For It To Reflect in your Account Before Transferring Possession.

My fiancé and I were running broke, so he decided to sell his desktop computer that he had brought from America. This could buy us more time living together before we figure out a source of income. The only other option for him, was to go back to America. The honey pot was running low. Since we were scraping off the bottom of the jar, selling assets was our saving grace, or so we thought it would be.

Being a custom built desktop, this was going to fetch us a good amount of money, so we posted it on one of the Kenyan online market platforms using my details. The next morning after posting it, we received a message from a guy called Ali. In retrospect, I’m thinking the con man went online and used a another person’s information to lure us in as a genuine buyer, smart right? Or stupid?

Back to the story, so Ali was quite the chatty guy, he did not even try to negotiate the price down, which is something we Kenyans do if given the opportunity. The price set for this desktop was quite high considering the Kenyan market value for it.

Ali the buyer explicitly stated that he was a “big guy” (either famous or rich). Conversations between him and my partner had a lot of ha-has at the end of every text. I hated that. I wanted this to be a simple business transaction with no ha-has or emojis. I did inform my fiancé that the conversation was becoming too friendly, hence causing me discomfort. I guess now he knows that someone can seem like a nice person and turn out to be a fraud, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Being the ‘big guy’ he is, Ali told my partner that we can proceed to finalize the deal by arranging how the desktop was to reach him. He told us that he was going to inform his bank to draw a banker’s cheque. We were to meet in an hour with his driver… I now know this was a lot of nonsense we were being sold on.

We were being rushed so much. He gave us an hour to get ready and choose a location to meet at. I suggested my bank at the local mall. That way, we could deposit the cheque first before transferring ownership of the computer to them.

A few days after the trade, I checked my bank and noticed that the money was not there. I contacted them and they informed me the cheque was not paid.I was perplexed. How was this possible?

We did not consider that a banker’s cheque could default, but it did. This left us borrowing money from friends and family to meet our bare minimum of needs. The deadline for paying rent was due and we were not sure where the money was going to come from.

Receipt of the message from the bank stating that the cheque was unpaid and to liaise with the issuer drained the blood from my face. On informing the buyer on WhatsApp, which was the platform he used to communicate with us, he blocked us immediately. That was it!
Lookback: My First Storyboard
Tags: Storyboard, Lookback, Marketing, Career Stories, Lessons Learned

The first video storyboard I ever made 🎉

We didn’t have the budget to hire anyone because all the money was being spent on animation. This was my big chance because I knew the product, loved writing, and I could art direct and storyboard it for the animators.

I needed to take a really complicated concept and distill it down to around 60 seconds.

Challenge accepted.

Background: The video needed to promote CSTAR — a cybersecurity score for risk. Think of it as a credit score for dodgy websites or providers. Scores are aggregated by their IT infrastructure, cybersecurity protocols + other factors.

Fun Fact: It’s still a Chrome extension today.

So how do you make that relatable? You bring it home.

Connect the risk to what “they” (the persona) cares about.

In this case, the cost of data breaches.

Next, I needed to explain how it works and what it means for the CEO and the CIO.

CEO — needs a report of what’s going on

CIO — needs to know what to improve upon

I also needed to convey the validity of the tool and that it wasn’t rubbish.

And to wrap it up in a bow, I needed to bring it back to the positioning statement with a small mention of social proof to show that others have already seen the light that is the CSTAR score.

🧠 What I learned:

- Working with animators is fun and it would later become a big part of my career going forward

- Get your positioning squared away before the video needs to be drafted (lots of scrambling with stakeholders)

- Providing design files + branding guidelines upfront to the animator will save you a lot of time. Something I still do today.

- You don’t need a fancy tool to storyboard. I made this one in Slides and still do that today :) makes it easy to share and collaborate with others

- If your video, like this one was, is going to be used on your home page make sure the design matches the website look and feel, or else it looks really out of place

- Make a shorter version to use on social or in prospect emails

- Actually use the video! Get the air miles out of it.

- Keep the script short. No flowery language or long-winded sentences

- Share the script with others across the org — engineers, marketers, product, sales — see if they hear and get what you’re saying since they know/see the product in their own special way

TL;DR

This was a great first experience storyboarding and I love that I was given the opportunity to do it. I learned a lot that I still apply to similar projects today.

Here’s the final version coming in at 67 seconds with intro/end title sequences :)

This is also available as a Twitter thread
Hopscotch
By: Greyson Arnold
Tags: Poems And Stories, Ex, Love Letters, Poetry On Medium, Lessons Learned

My heart used to play hopscotch on people’s hearts.

I would jump from person to person hoping I wouldn’t get hurt because I wouldn’t stay.

Each square was riddled with traps and barbed wire that I tried to ignore.

However ignorance deepened the scars-

Pretending each hop didn’t result in nails deeply burrowed within my bone marrow.

I moved from square to square hoping the next one wouldn’t hurt.

Until eventually, I collapsed.

I was lost and accepting scraps from any passerby.

Eventually, I felt myself picking myself up.

I pulled the nails out of the soles of my feet and stopped picking at the scabs forming around the oldest of wounds.

I, however, refused to move forward.

Terrified one step would result in more nails, chicken wire, or something worse than I had yet experienced

That is until, you came along.

You didn’t pick me up.

You didn’t drag me along.

You sat down beside me,

You listened to the stories behind each scar I pointed to,

And pretended you didn’t see the ones I ignored.

When I said I was ready to walk you walked beside me,

And when I need to sit down you plop down right next to me.

You try to make me laugh.

You whisper in my ear “I love you. baby are you okay?”

You brush your fingers over the healed places and remind me how strong I am.

You run your fingers through my hair and remind me I have to relax.

You have your own scars,

We pretend we don’t see them.

It’s hard for me to understand this sometimes

But I’m learning patience, you’re a wonderful example.

When you do mention your scars, it’s in passing.

A quick mention and move on

You never seem to wince at the stories,

You’re brave and unbothered,

But I can see the scars are deep.

Although currently healed there are smaller surrounding ones that others pick at.

They come back and poke and prod,

but I don’t want to do that.

I want to help you heal but I’m not sure how

You refer to me as the sun, so that’s the role I will take.

I want to shine light on the good parts of life.

I want to make you smile and laugh and I want you to enjoy my presence,

But I don’t want you to hide the hard things from me.

I want to assist

Even if it’s just listen

Or hold your hand.

So when I am rambling about my struggles and telling you each aspect of my past I don’t want you to be scared to stop me

When you have the desire to speak about yourself, Which I know isn’t often

I want you to tell me

I will stop.

I will pause.

I will listen.

You will have my full attention.

No judgement will be passed and nothing will change after I learn these things.

I want to know every piece of you.

I know your beautiful smile,

And I know your wonderful laugh,

But I also want to know each piece of your journey you will allow me to know.

And I will wait as long as it takes, because I love you.

And I’ve always hated hopscotch.
Lookback: The Paramore Posters
Tags: Paramore, Lookback, Music, Career Stories, Lessons Learned

That one time I made posters for Paramore because my college teacher said he “knew someone” at their label that he could share them with.

This was a point in college when I was really convinced I would and could work in the music industry.

I was going to a lot of shows in LA at the time. Shoutout to Chain Reaction, The Avalon, The Wiltern, and The House of Blues on Sunset (RIP) and networking as much as possible.

One of my teachers at FIDM noticed my obsession with this dream and offered to share my work with someone at Paramore’s label.

Stoked as all get out, I got to work.

I made a bunch of versions based on their Brand New Eyes album.

It was their much-anticipated follow-up to Riot.

It was high-stakes. Especially for a big fan like myself.

I kept thinking, here’s my chance.

This is happening for you. You’re getting your shot.

((((Narrator Voice — it was not her shot, yet))))

I did about 30+ versions and eventually narrowed it down to five.

I emailed them to my teacher and waited.

Nothing.

Because life is funny sometimes, this all shook out at the end of a quarter. So I never had a chance to follow up in person.

Meanwhile, I still went to shows and did end up working with other bands.

Lots of:

“Can I design your next tour admat?”

“Here look at this shirt designs I made”

“Can I help design your MySpace page?”

–––––––––––––––––

🧠 What I learned:

- Ask more follow-up questions

- I realized I just love the process aka making the posters vs. seeing them in the wild

- I started adding watermarks to my stuff just in case it happens again and someone uses it as their own without my permission

- Sometimes people don’t follow through, and that says more about them than you.

- Photoshop will rainbow wheel hard you when you make large print-ready posters

- It prepared me for the next thing

TL;DR — Nothing came of it. To this day, not sure if he even knew someone at Fueled by Ramen 😂

This was a huge learning experience for me. And it was okay that nothing came of it. I had fun making them. I mean, at the end of the day, I made posters based on one of my favorite albums of all-time, which I ended up using in my portfolio for years to come.

This one is my personal favorite 👇

It’s on my to-do list to get it framed for my office :)

____________________________________________________

🎧 Brand New Eyes
My Daughter’s Letter to Santa Reminded Me of the True Meaning of Christmas
By: Jessie London
Tags: Parenting, Relationships, Love, Christmas, Lessons Learned

My Daughter’s Letter to Santa Reminded Me of the True Meaning of Christmas

Photo by Cottonbro from Pexels

I love that my 11-year-old daughter still believes.

It’s completely innocent.

The excitement on her face as she watches Christmas Chronicles or Polar Express swells my heart.

So, the letter to the man himself is very important in our house.

Photo by Olya Kobruseva from Pexels

I don’t know what other parents tell their children about Santa, but I’ve always struggled with the idea of my children thinking that a stranger buys them loads of presents each year.

Once they were old enough to understand, I made the choice to explain that:

Mommy sends the money to Santa — he wraps and delivers.

I chose to say this for a few reasons:

Not all children will wake up to equal amounts of presents. I couldn’t bear the thought of my children thinking Santa ‘loved them less.’

I’m a single Mom. I work super hard all year round to pay for Christmas. I needed them to understand that the reason I sacrificed time with them to go to work was so that I could afford the things that they wanted.

Sometimes they ask for something that is genuinely too expensive. I need them to understand money and a ‘full size princess castle, with a car’ isn’t gonna happen!

So, back to the letter…

Photo by Nina Mace Photography from Pexels

It had been discussed and drafted many times.

Spell checked. Grammar checked.

Here it was. The final piece.

On pink paper, covered in stickers, glitter (awful stuff isn’t it?) and lots of little drawings.

My daughter would now read it aloud to the whole family as we sat in our matching PJs by the tree that I’d spent 2 days perfecting.

Dim the lights.

Raise the curtains.

She stood beaming and began…

Dear Santa, I hope that you’re doing really well and didn’t get Corona Virus. I didn’t but my friend Amy did and she’s better now so you can still go to her house. Mom says I’ve been amazing this year and I’d love the following presents: A laptop — I start big school next year so will really need one! SIMS 4 for my PlayStation A chihuahua teddy Puppy posters for my room A new doll with clothes and maybe even a house! Sylvanian Families

Photo by Negative Space from Pexels

All good so far I was thinking.

I’d even managed a new laptop in the sale and wrapped it with layers of paper, bows, and glitter (truly awful stuff).

And then she threw a curveball.

Something that broke my heart, brought me to tears, and reminded me about love and the true meaning of Christmas…

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

Finally Santa, because I’ve been really good this year. I’ve done home school through Covid. I wore a mask and washed my hands loads. I was brave when our dog died. I even got Star of Month at school. I was hoping for an extra special wish this year. Here it is:

My Christmas wish is for my Mom to not be so stressed all the time and to do less so we can spend more time together. This is my biggest wish of all.
5 lessons this year has taught me
By: Gorana B
Tags: Self Improvement, Lessons In Life, Lessons Learned, Self-awareness

Photo by Buse Doga Ay on Unsplash

I’ve been thinking about this year and what it taught me (and us) this past few days, and I realized that I’ve learned these important 5 lessons.

1. There’s no way it can be worse than this (or it can)

Just when you think in life that it can’t be worse, life show you it can. Bad things sometimes happen in waves and that’s totally ok. You shouldn’t talk about how it can’t get worse than something, because it can always get worse and you should sometimes just let bad things happen to you that you can’t influence, and then collect the cracked parts, patch them and move on, stronger than ever. Not to forget, you should seek help on the way from friends, family and psychotherapists.

2. Don’t be a part of something that doesn’t put a smile on your face (life is too short)

Life is too short for tasteless food, superficial friendships, “meh” relationships and acceptable jobs. Life is long enough for a dream job, even if you had to create it yourself, for the love you deserve and a friend you can rely on. Delicious food is too good not to be eaten, and you are a very valuable person to make sure you take or get everything you want in your life.

3. Not all friendships are meant to last forever (some are seasonal, some as needed, and some forever)

It was nice while it lasted, sometimes that is the best epilogue of a friendship. Not all friendships are made to last forever and that’s ok. Some are there for a certain phase of life, some for the season, and some for a lifetime. Remember that.

4. Bad things happen to good people too (always been, always will be)

Hard things happen to everyone, good, bad, young, old … We all go in the same direction and the sooner we realize that there is no way to avoid bad things and that living in fear is not life, but living, we will get a huge wind in our backs, to live life to the fullest today, because today is all we have.

5. “Move, you’re not a tree!”

Finally, my favorite call to action is the great Jim Ron:
My Reflection of 2020
By: Tony Yang
Tags: Lists, 2020, Reflections Of Life, Lessons Learned

Best not breath in the toxic fumes from the dumpster fire.

What happened this year?

There were many major events around the world. That said, I really only followed ones that had a direct impact on me (narrow-minded and selfish… I know):

A global pandemic decided that this is the year to test humanity’s ability to work together towards a solution while being stuck in their homes.

Various issues continued to plague the US: police brutalities, racial injustices/tensions, gender inequality, immigration uncertainty, bipartisan stalemates/shenanigans, and much more.

The US election ended in a nail-biter with President Trump losing to President-elect Biden in November.

I was more diligent with keeping track of more personal events:

I started trying to invest and manage my finances since March.

I graduated from the Biomedical Regulatory Affairs Master of Science (BRAMS) Program at University of Washington (UW) in June.

I developed a health-scare in August which lingered into early December.

I bid farewell to NanoString Technologies and started working at Fluke Corporations in September.

I am hitting a 4-year anniversary with my significant other in a long-distance relationship.

Final Thoughts: Despite it being a dumpster fire for the entire world, 2020 turned out alright for me.
3 Things I learned during this Pandemic
By: Michelle L
Tags: Pandemic, Lessons Learned, Pandemic Diaries

As for many people, this pandemic has been quite an experience that I frankly never want to repeat. Isn’t it crazy that this all had to happen during an election year (for the United States) as well? As we are continually dealing with these tragic and unprecedented times, I hope my top three things I learned during these past few months shine a light on someone’s else experiences too.

Your family and friends are a priority but YOU come first, always. This is something that I have personally struggled with for the past few years. I am sometimes defined as a “giver”, which is what my graduate school professor likes to say. I try to help others as much as I can because I find it very rewarding but the issue is I sometimes sacrifice my own needs to help out. If you are anything like me, helping others makes you feel good, but have you ever sat down and assess how you felt past that? Do you feel tired? Communities will always be divided, but have some fate that we will all come together (eventually). It will take some tough discussions and time for all of us to come together. Adventures can happen within your own homes and/or local community. These adventures could be from picking a new hobby and/or exploring your local community. I personally had moved in the midst of the pandemic, this opened a wide range of places for me to check out (with proper precautions taken). My move wasn’t really a spontaneous move but it was something that I am glad I did even though it took me away from my close friends and family.

I am sure that the pandemic has taught all of us some lessons, please feel free to share them below. Stay safe everyone! Happy Holidays!
Lessons I Learned from Getting Five Stories Distributed This Year
By: Erica Martin
Tags: Curation, Ｍedium, Lessons Learned, Writing

Then, in October Medium changed things up again, and made it possible for people to see more of the content published by the people they follow. That meant my earnings started going up again, even though I only published four stories that month.

Another story of mine was curated in October— “Organize Your Day with Evernote,” which I published in Writer’s Blokke. I was surprised by this one. None of my stories had been distributed since I wrote the first curated story in February.

And because Medium had switched to a new relational model, I didn’t even know about it until I looked at the stats and saw “Chosen for further distribution” at the top.
7 Signs a Life Lessons 2020 Revolution Is Coming
Tags: 2020, Life, Life Lessons, Love, Lessons Learned

7 Signs a Life Lessons 2020 Revolution Is Coming Rohat ·Dec 22, 2020

It has a been a testing year for all of us no one has been spared from it. Here is the list of 7 things I wish I knew on 1st January 2020.
Lessons behind Failure
By: Dr. Faisal Jamshaid
Tags: Failure, Failure Stories, Life Lemons, Failing, Lessons Learned

Lessons behind Failure

Unpacking the lessons behind failure is one of the best investments I’ve ever made.

It taught me how to experiment without fear and continually iterate towards better outcomes.

What I once viewed as my biggest failures I now see as my favourite outcomes and best life lessons.

‘Failing’ means you tried.

There’s a prerequisite to failing that society encourages and celebrates, trying. So why do we shame ‘failing’ — a direct result of trying?

Trying means that you’ve taken the first step, a step more than most.

And if trying means that you’re in motion, continually trying means that you’re accelerating, because every attempt compounds on itself.

Trying is the keystone in the pyramid of success.

‘Failing’ means that you tried.

‘Failing’ brings new iterations.

The perception of ‘success’ can halt further iterations.

Without iterating, you’re taking your foot off the accelerator; you’re giving competitors the chance to overtake you through complacency.

‘Failing’ on the other hand, breeds insight into the next possible iteration.

And, if you’re brave enough, you’ll try again.

Only this time, more confidently, intelligently and creatively.

Every iteration is a chance to see what works better, a chance to get closer to the desired outcome. Keep iterating.

Be willing to fail.

Many of us have learnt the uncomfortable lessons behind failure, but they choose not to experience it again.

They choose comfort over growth and inaction over further action.

Failing feels like crap, but it’s a feeling that only you can impose on yourself.

Some people see themselves as failures despite being widely celebrated as successes.

Others have the will to try and try again in the face of public defeat, viewing every setback as a positive learning experience.

How we view failure is the means to what happens next.

Try and see every attempt as an experiment — you learn to become impartial to the outcome.

If the experiment succeeds, it was a successful experiment.

If it failed, it was just the experiment, not you.

So, if you care enough to see the result, keep tweaking the experiment.

If you stop caring or reach a dead-end, start a different experiment.

Shifting your mindset to one of experimentation lightens the burden of failing, and opens you up to a world of possibilities.

Be willing to fail.
I Wonder About the New Year
By: Michele Thomas
Tags: Society, Illumination Curated, Poetry, Lessons Learned, Writing

Hope reflected in the green needles of the pine tree

Photo by Kristine Tanne on Unsplash

Sitting alone in my own space

Peering out at the landscape

Icy glaze on tree limbs drape

Reflecting on America’s fall from grace

Events move at a breakneck pace

On the news, disease, hunger, hate

Daily offerings on America’s plate

Hopeful of redemption in 2021

Days’ of Trump almost done

Will we have learned lessons

Taught in these last four years

Humbled by brokenness, strife, tears

Possibly rekindle our same selfish ways

While the people press on in a daze

My spirit senses hope in the New Year

The reuniting of families drawing near
Juggling Everything in 2020
By: Mags Thomson
Tags: 2020, Belief, Asking For Help, Help, Lessons Learned

I used to believe I needed to do it all by myself, that I could ask for help, but more often than not I would be quicker or better off doing things myself. For years it stopped me from finding the rest and space it requires to be truly creative and innovative, to really tap into my own brilliance. I realised that I’d never be able to accomplish my most ambitious dreams if I didn’t flip this belief and create a new one.

This year has been a steep lesson in asking for, and more importantly accepting help. I had to allow people to step up to the plate, and also allow them to drop the ball. I was always that person catching those balls, and it meant that I was exhausted and the people around me were not even noticing they dropped the ball. In 2020 juggling all those balls became more challenging than ever before, and before too long I dropped them all.

There I was, amidst all my dropped balls and with no idea how to pick them all back up again. Luckily, my husband and friends stepped up and started picking up some balls for me. They handed some back to me and held on to some others. They gave me the space I needed to build my momentum again. The more I allowed myself to forget about the balls other people were handling for me, the stronger I felt, the more I was able to show up as and for myself. It has really had a massive impact on my life, my business and my health.

It’s amazing what we can achieve when we change our perspective.

What old beliefs have you been asked to challenge this year?
Why songwriting is so important!
By: Joe Rambadt
Tags: Grieving, Learning, Storytelling, Songwriting, Lessons Learned

When I was a young boy I practiced all of the time on my little Casio piano that I received for Christmas one year. I did my best to formulate words and riffs into a listenable experience, while little did I know the songs were likely to be featured on funniest home videos instead. Songs with titles such as “Bald”, written about a man who needed a hat, were not rising up the charts to my surprise! As a result I lost faith in my ability to write lyrics and stuck solely to instrumental music and my favorite instrument of the time, the drum-set.

Fast Forward to the age of sixteen when I was sitting in my basement, feeling extraordinarily heavy and emotional. I picked up guitar for the first time in a “century” and began putting to words how I felt. A mere 25 minutes later I finished the first song I was ever proud of called “Whisper Softly in My Ear”, which is CREEPY SOUNDING I know! But please bear with me. I remember showing my father and mother that night, ecstatic that I had finally flipped the switch to a creative outlet I thought I would never have.

Fast forward three and a half years…to my father’s funeral. I played the song, about losing a loved one and always hearing them speaking to you, in honor of my father at his funeral service. Ever since it has been played at many funerals and events throughout my city and the surrounding area.

Why do I share this with you? Because it took feeling deeply than I had ever before in order for me to finally write my thoughts on paper. It’s not that I had needed skills to express myself, although I do think that is a factor, it is the confidence I had to pour out my heart on paper and share what I was feeling. This is without being concerned whether it was worthy of a gold sticker and a Rolling Stone review. Instead, I wrote for myself. I wrote to heal and process the mysterious emotion that appeared three and a half years premature. I wrote because I realized that as much as songwriting is a skill, it is also a feeling. It is an expression. And most of all, it is vulnerable.

Anyone can begin to learn the skill of songwriting, even using mathematics to please the ears and mind. The real challenge is to please the heart and heal the soul. That is what I discovered playing my father’s Gibson guitar that one night many years ago, and I challenge you to make this discovery as well.