Thailand Again

Tired of the cold and wet of Long Beach, Ray made his escape to Thailand and Cambodia. Besides escaping the cold and wet, Ray wanted the warm, dry of Thailand and Cambodia to go cycling, visit old friends, and make new friends.

Ray road rented bicycles on 18 of the 23 days (with 3 days of transfers and 2 in Bangkok canceling those days). Ray met up with old friends made during previous travels. And made new friends in Chiang Rai, Thailand and Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

This picture shows Ray on his way up to the Khun Korm waterfall outside Chiang Rai, Thailand.

 
Disaster Strikes

Ray was out cycling on 24 September when an oncoming rider was either not paying attention or assumed I would run off the road to accommodate him. I squeezed as far right as I could. But there was some sort of nasty accident.

I lost consciousness until I was being gurneyed into the ambulance. At the ER, I had a fractured pelvis, fractured scapula, broken rib, bleeding in the lungs, and bleeding in the brain.

The other rider was in the next bay over and he was in worse shape.

Update
I end up spending thirteen days in the hospital and then am discharged to rehab at home. Soon I am walking without a cane and by six weeks after the accident, I am on a bicycle again.

 
 

 

 
At CSULA

Ray continues to volunteer with senior design students at California State University Los Angeles.

Here Ray is helping the students derive the equations of motion for a satellite separating from the upper stage of a launch vehicle.

After the derivation of equations of motion, a Python simulation was written for the customer and the team pulled together at the end to produce a reasonable product for the sponsor.

 
Thailand

After the October passport and visa disappointment, Ray gathered his thoughts and took the month of December in Thailand anyway. He was able to meet a relatively new facebook friend and 11 year friend Tree in Bangkok. From there Ray spent the majority of time in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai. There he rented bicycles and discovered new brightly-colored orange and blue temples, visited past friends, and made a new friend.

After morning bicycle rides, Ray would spend the hottest parts of the day in the hotel air conditioning or at a digital nomad coffeehouse working away on Python scripts to analyze crime data or demographc data for a Long Beach city council candidate.

The picture shown caught Ray wandering around the Chiang Rai Sunday night market. The picture generated a lot of buzz with many comments to the effect of "Ray, you look so happy in that picture".

 
First Oxathon

The first ever Oxathon was held on 18 February 2021.

Oxathon - A hackathon of demographics, algorithms, and optimization.

Though Ray cannot attend hackathons in person these days due to Covid-19, the first ever Oxatahon was meant to replicate the hackathon experience in isolation. A number of projects were worked on throughout the day. The event had creative breaks for Red Bull and EDM music to keep the energy level up.

A summary powerpoint presentation can be viewed here.

 
Discovering Voter Trends

Mathematical models serve as a means to understand voting results in past elections as well as to try and predict the results of future elections. Many of these methods rely on demographic data, polling data, and voting district similarity data as well as past election voting results.

This effort shows the ability to match a graph convolutional neural network to past election results. The effort demonstrates a novel approach to selecting the structure of the graph architectures. Results of this effort point to the similarities between voting districts in a past election as well as to guidance on how to target voting districts for future elections.

Read more here.

 
Brother's Death (2019)

Ray was notified on Sunday 7 April that his brother had unexpectedly passed away on Saturday 6 April.

Apparently he was out bicycle riding and suffered a heart attack and collapsed. A passer-by found the body and Ray's brother was pronounced dead at the hospital.

This was a tremendous shock since Ray's brother had always got a lot of exercise and just in the last 5-8 years had taken up cycling and loved it.

Read full obituary here.

More about Ray's brother can be read here.

 
Crime Prediction

Crime prediction is a difficult task frought with issues of racism, "garbage in, garbage out", and the limitations of a model one uses to predict the crime levels.

In this effort, city of Long Beach crime statistics were used to train a model from the past twelve months of data and then predict the future six months of crime levels. The model was a system of second order oscillatory equations that could capture the ups and downs of crime. The model was matched to the previous twelve months of data to capture seasonal variations of crimeas well as the geographic impacts on crime.

A more detailed description of this effort can be read here.

 
2019 Climathon

Ray attended the CSULB Climathon for the second year in a row. Recall that Ray's team won the event last year and went on to try and get venture capital funding.

This year's Climathon was related to food insecurity. Ray had ideas and his makeshift team worked on it for a while until they abandoned the project near 10 pm. Ray continued on and presentd at 10am on Saturday morning and was rewarded with a $200 prize.

Follow-up comments suggested that Ray's ideas had some prospects and heis now in contact with various non-profit agencies to reduce food waste and hunger.

 
Where Now?

Where is Ray off to now?. Nowhere.

Ray went to Los Angeles International airport to start his trip to the MotoGP/2/3 races in Buri Ram, Thailand and then continue on for a first visit to the Philippines. Unfortunately Ray was not allowed to board the airplane because his passport did not have enough blank pages. The airline emailed photos of available space that Ray had in his passport to Thai immigration. But they denied the request (though Thai visa stamps could easily fit in the space available).

Ray turned around and went home feeling sad, depressed, and disappointed at the loss of attending another MotoGP race.

Perhaps this a sign of some sort.

 
Dresden

Ray also attended the MotoGP/2/3 races at the Sachsenring outside of Dresden, Germany. Ray spent a few days wandering around Dresden before the races and admiring all of the beautiful old architecture.

It seemed that Dresden was more relaxed than Amsterdam. Though not warm and friendly, at least people were more cordial. And it seems the population was more diverse in Dresden.

 
Cathedral of Speed

Ray recently attended the MotoGP/2/3 races at The Cathderal of Speed in Assen, Netherlands. It was during a heat wave in Europe and it was everything that one could do to stay cool and not sunburn while spectating the races.

Ray also went walking around Amsterdam and visiting museums. It was a fun trip but it reminded me of how many people smoke in the European countries.

 
Recent Pitch

Ray pitched along with his teammates for the development of a carbon footprint app to help reduce climate change.

The pitch was part of CSULB's Business Innovation Incubator.

This effort came out of the 2018 Climathon back in October. Since the Climathon, Ray's team has put together the pitch, the business plan, and the financial projections for the Innovation competition.

We'll know at the end of March whether we have advanced to the finals of the competition.

 
Smart Cities Hackathon

Ray participated in the Smart Cities & Future of Work Hackathon at CSULB from 8 February through 10 February.

The hackathon dealt with civic engagement, smart transportation, community safety, and the future of work.

The event was sponsored by California State University Long Beach and the Long Beach office of Innovation.

More can be read about the event here.

Unfortunately after duplicating the mta.net transportation process, we got stuck as to delivering mental health services and alerting social workers and law enforcement about mental health issues on the transportaton corridors.

Thus we regretfully abandonded the project and tried to have "take away" lessons for future hackathons.

Overall it was a great experience as I met up with teammates from last year's Climathon as well as some of Ruby's other friends. And met a man from FEMA and we hit it off with great professional discussions and will try to stay in contact.

 
Crime Aggregation

Sometimes you need a Red Bull to get you going in the morning.

Here I am aggregating and mapping crime statistics as shown in the next panel over. I'm using Python and some other tools to process the data and generate the interactive map.

The crime mapping process can be viewed here.

 
Crime Mapping

Along with demographic studies, Ray has been looking at the crime reports and crime mapping effort for the city of Long Beach.

Utilizing open source data, Ray put together a nice crime map which allows users to determine the police reporting district that they reside in and to view the past five years of crime incidents in their districts (as well as all other districts).

The crime mapping process can be viewed here.

There are plans to enhance the capability that Ray is working on now.

 
Carbon Footprint App

Ray participated with a number of CSULB students and other interested parties in the 2018 ClimaThon.

Ray's team won the Climathon competition based upon an application that allows individuals to evaluate and improve their personal carbon footprints.

The app gives an immediate view of a user's carbon usage and also has a rules-based artificial engine to suggest ways to lower a user's carbon footprint.

The CSULB Office of Innovation has picked up the app and we are in the process of making a business case for the app (loosely based upon the popularity of the FitBit hardware and apps).

Stay tuned for progress on the abilitity of individuals to reduce their carbon footprints and improve the earth's climate change outlook.

 
Checking Charities

Ray tends to look up charities and helping organizations when he travels.

Ray took the opportunity to visit the Destiny Cafe which is a part of Destiny Rescue, an organization fighting to stop child trafficking and sexual exploitation. Ray was not allowed to visit the main facility, of course, due to the need for anonymity in helping these victims.

Ray also visited the Good Shepherd Youth Center 40 kilometers outside of Chiang Rai, Thailand. This organization takes abused and trafficked women and provides them support and job opportunities to recover from their abuse (or trafficking). GSYC also supplies fair trade products for sale from the Fair Trade Long Beach organization.

 
F1 in Abu Dhabi

Ray followed his long time passion and attended the 2018 Formula One race in Abu Dhabi. It was the season ending race though all titles and championships had already been determined. The live experience reawakened in Ray the reasons for his addiction to F1 over many years: the sights, the sounds, the smells, the glowing red carbon fibre brake disks, and the insanely short braking distances.

 
Climathon Win!

Ray's team has just won the 2018 CSULB Climathon Hackathon. Ray proposed a personal carbon footprint app like a FitBit but for carbon footprint (rather than exercise). The diverse team took off and ran with it and the CSULB judges awarded us the first prize at the conclusion of the 24 hour hackathon. The event was a simultaneous global event occurring in more than 100 cities across the world.

 
Gerrymandering

Ray participated in a gerrymandering project that took place in San Francisco, California in the middle of March. The event brought together mathematicians and policy makers to study the application of geometry and computing to redistricting efforts in the United States.

 
Civic Summit

Ray recently attended the Long Beach Civic Innovation Summit meeting. There was a keynote speaker from Virgin Galactic as well as a diverse panel discussion on innovation trends and needs in Long Beach. Ray made some new contacts to try and work with.
Here Ray is shown with the mayor of Long Beach, Dr. Robert Garcia.

 
 
 
Technical

Dr. Raymund Manning was trained as an aerospace engineer and makes his living building environmental monitoring satellites for NASA and other governmental agencies. Ray worked on the EOS Aqua and Aura satellites that monitor the earth's environment and detect short and long term climatological changes in the earth's environment. These satellites support long-term global observations of the land surface, biosphere, solid Earth, atmosphere, and oceans. EOS Aqua collects information about Earth's water cycle, including evaporation from the oceans, water vapor in the atmosphere, clouds, precipitation, soil moisture, sea ice, land ice, and snow cover on the land and ice. Additional variables also being measured by Aqua include radiative energy fluxes, aerosols, vegetation cover on the land, phytoplankton and dissolved organic matter in the oceans, and air, land, and water temperatures.

Calling

Ray is working on applying technology tools to help the victims of domestic violence and human trafficking rebuild their lives. He works with Social Services Technology Solutions, a 501(c) corporation in the state of California, to use technology for the geographically-desireable distribution of resources to those in need. Ray has implemented a number of search/match algorithms that significantly improve the ability of domestic violence victims, victims of human trafficking, and childrens adoptions workers to locate resources and rebuild lives.
 
In 2008 Ray traveled with friends from Engineers Without Borders to build a preschool for orphans and refugees on the border of Thailand and Myanmar (formerly known as Burma). Ray considers it a life-changing experience and has since helped out Habit for Humanity in the local area and is trying to get a vocational training center built for Wat Opot outside of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Wat Opot is a refuge for throw-away children affected by AIDS/HIV - whether they are HIV positive or have been given up because their HIV positive parents cannot care for themselves or their children anymore.

 
Fun

Ray maintains an interest in artificial life, evolutionary systems, emergence, and systems that behave at the liquid edge of chaos. The author of various genetic algorithms, self-training neural networks, evolving cellular automata and artificial societies, Dr. Manning is currently trying to bridge the gap between his "dry" artificial life and true, "wet" artificial life.
 
Ray loves to ride bicycles of any sort, anywhere. On some of his frequent trips he will rent a bicycle and ride to see sites and meet new people.
 
Ray also has an addiction to Formula One racing and MotoGP/Moto2/Moto3 motorcycle roadracing. He has watched races at Laguna Seca in California, in The Czech Republic, and in Malaysia.

 
About

Ray is almost always on a bicycle. It doesn't matter what bicycle or what country, Ray is going to try and ride.

There is no end of the diversity of life and culture and people that you can see when you are on a bicycle and riding out in the middle of nowhere - places where foreigners have never been seen before.

It's always the kids who want to say "Hello" and smile at the strange foreigner on the bicycle. And that gives one a glimpse into the local life.