Hanoi

After losing a lot of weight, Ray was tired of the cold weather in Long Beach , California. Thus he took off the Monday before Thanksgiving, when airfares are cheap, and fel to Hanoi.

Ray found bicycles to ride and a small lake to run around where many people where out doing Thai Chi and other exercises.

Ray rode way out into the countryside and got strange looks from people wondering "What is a foreigner doing out here".

Ray also got the chance to visit the main scientifica and technical university in Hanoi and had discussions with people about working together.

Hanoi is a great city to visit as Ray stayed in the old quarters and could walk and cycle everywhere and see strange sights and practice his limited Vietnamese who were happy to laugh at him but help him out also.

 
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.