Hanoi

Tired of being at home for so long and with cold, wet weather approaching, Ray blanked out some time from doctor's appointments to get away for a while. Ray's trip started in Hanoi, Vietnam just before Thanksgiving.

Ray took some time to visit the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology to do some undisclosed effort.

Of course Ray spent the first day walking and getting lost in the twisting streets of Hanoi. During this walking near a very large lake in Hanoi, Ray ran into a bicycle shop and inquired about renting a bicycle since he had been having trouble finding a reliable bicycle rental place online. Ray would be picking up a brand new, unused mountain bicycle on the next morning.

Ray picked up his brand new bicycle and headed out to ride the perimeter of West Lake a number of times - of course after having getting lost on the way there. And getting lost on the way back.

 
Another Hackathon

Ray finally got to another hackathon, the Cerebral Beach Hackathon.

Ray worked on a cellular automata smulation of homelessness with census tracts used as the grid. This allowed well known homeless count data to be used.

The intent was to wrap some artificial intelligence around the simulation to inform government officials of how to attack the homelessness problem.

Unfortunatelly the Kindo AI that the hackathon was sponsored by did not talk with Python. So some manual policies were tried and indicated that the homeless problem is unfortunately fairly "elastic".

 
Not A Duplicate

This is not a duplicate photo from the bicycle accident.

Ray was diagnosed with a squamous carcinoma in his gums and jawbone. The cancer being caused by the leukoplacia that Ray, his dentists, and his oral pathologists have struggled with since late 2017.

Nonetheless, the cancerous portion of the gum, jawbone, and lymph nodes were removed. The jawbone was replaced by a cutout from the lower leg bone (fibula).

Looks like Ray is on the mend again. The last eight months have not been kind to Ray.