In these series, I will describe some of the steps I go through while building on an idea a friend and I had while attending the Seoul Lightning Network Hackathon. For now, only him and I are involved in this project.

For now, I will remain slightly vague on some of the details for obvious reasons, but hopefully one day we’ll be able to complete the picture by giving you more details.

For now, it is sufficient to understand that we want to build an app that will benefit from the fact that the Lightning Network allows for micropayments with extremely low fees.

To go from the idea box to a working product, many hurdles will have to be taken. I have never worked on such a project so I think it will beneficial to me to journal about this journey along my way. And hopefully, it will also be of benefit for other aspiring developers that want to embark on a similar endeavor.

For now, it will be a jotting down of notes, but I will reorganize it all as it takes shape.

Let’s go!

Setting up a LN Network Node on my Laptop

We’ve had the idea for a while, we had a couple of Skypes together, but to really get things going, one needs to use his hands and open up a terminal.

My first task was to get familiar with running my own bitcoin node as well as a lightning network node to interact with it.

I’ve chosen to use the BTCD implementation for the following reasons: (i) it was the standard option while following this tutorial and (ii) it is written in Golang which presumably is better to use than C++. Also, I use LND.

I have managed to finish Stage 1 of the tutorial. This means I have a running BTCD backend interacting with the blockchain, I have LND running which queries BTCD and I created 3 wallets for Alice, Bob and Charlie on the chain and set up their respective channels in the LN. Furthermore, I made a single-hop and multi-hop payment between those three.

Difficulties encountered while doing this tutorial:

• Using google is not the best way to find solutions to one’s problems. It turns out it is better to join the Slack where developers have already answered many beginner questions.
• Using simnet, there’s a bug preventing a new address from being created if there are no blocks yet (even though you need an address to generate a block) https://github.com/btcsuite/btcwallet/pull/602 one workaround is to set the mining address to a blackhole, and mine a couple blocks, then `newaddress` will work and you can swap it back.
• Instead of the above work-around (which seems to be temporary as it has already been flagged by the developers and a fix has been commited), I switched to Testnet. This adds the inconvenience that one needs to wait for blocks to be mined (simnet does everything instanteneously), but gives the advantage that I will be better prepared for the mainnet (using real money).
• When using Testnet, you cannot quickly create BTC to use in the tutorial. Instead, you can find Faucets where you can request for testnet BTC.
• I had to update to the last master to have access to btccl.

Stage 2 will be to work with the GUI Webinterface.

Hopefully see you soon.

Today, like already many times before, I feel a burst of motivation to do something with my life. I already am doing something with my life, and am overall very satisfied with my choices. I am happy with my job and I am excited about the family goals my wife and I have set and are pursuing.

Yet, sometimes, one wants more. Today is such as a day.

At this stage in my life, with the uncertainties inherent to a career in academia, I better put as much energy as I can in increasing my odds of finding a permanent job in academia. If simultaneously, I can increase my market value in case I ever have to find a job in a private company, that’s a welcome bonus. I think I’ve found the skills that can help me achieve this.

The first one is Machine Learning. It’s definitely something companies are looking for (let’s put aside the fact for now that many companies are interested in it because it’s popular rather than because they have a deep understanding why such tools would be useful for their company). The university I’m working in is investing a lot of money in building a center focused on Machine Learning. Professor jobs will certainly open up in the coming years in this field.

So that’s what I will focus on in the next few months. I will be journaling on this and is the focus of this Series.

• Take the Machine Learning class offered as a graduate course at my university
• Sign up for an online course
• Find a hands-on project that can be lead to a publication in my field
• Do a quick introductory project with Python

The second one is improving my Korean. It’s useful to find a permanent job in Korea. It’s also a good skill to have to apply for jobs back home as Korean companies are amongst the best in the world.

I’ve said it many times, but it’s always good to refuel the machine and get it going again.

• Sign up for regular Italki or Verbling lessons
• Self-study of grammar books (Sogang books probably)
• Make a video where I speak Korean
• Sign up for TOPIK test

The last one is working on the app I started developing during the Lightning Network Hackathon. Probably not the most useful way to use my time in the context of my physics research, but it’s definitely a useful skill to have no matter what happens in 2–3 years.

I will probably go back to these notes regularly while I journal my way to proficiency in Machine Learning.

Do you want to become proficient in Machine Learning? Why not taking this journey with me?

Credit: the image from this series comes from Upslash — Photo by Chris Ried on Unsplash

A first tutorial to get a feel of what Machine Learning is all about

Today, I will dive into the tutorial described on the Feedly blog.

The goal of this tutorial is to show you how to leverage the content of your Feedly feeds and boards to run machine learning and NLP experiments using the Feedly API and Colaboratory.

If you don’t know what Feedly is, it’s software that allows you to manage your RSS feeds. I used to use the Google RSS feed software, but when it got discontinued, I had to find an alternative and that’s where Feedly came into my life.

I must admit I don’t use it very often anymore for my research rather I follow a couple of cartoonists through there.

Anyhow, today, let’s follow this tutorial and adjust it to make a feed that contains articles that are related to my present research.

I will come back with lessons learned while doing this tutorial. Why not tagging along and doing it yourself?

PS: If you started using the tutorial yesterday, please update with the new notebook version. After a comment of mine, they updated one of the Dropbox links that wasn’t working in the initial notebook. I tested it out now, I could go through the whole notebook now. Next step, updating it to my own needs.