Showing results by author "Stephen Huff" in All Categories

This course provides a detailed executive-level review of contemporary topics in graph modeling theory with specific focus on Deep Learning theoretical concepts and practical applications. The ideal student is a technology professional with a basic working knowledge of statistical methods. Upon completion of this review, the student should acquire improved ability to discriminate, differentiate, and conceptualize appropriate implementations of application-specific ("traditional" or "rule-based") methods versus deep learning methods of statistical analyses and data modeling.

Awakening night upon night in a feverish chill, fresh from the throes of disturbing nightmares, one hapless human being ponders the separation of dream and reality. Within phantomic landscapes of half-slumber, he stalks nightfall with a violent, predatory intent, though he inevitably awakens uneventfully in his own home. Eventually, muddy feet betray the truth. Black River runs through the center of Pecan Groves, Texas. Lately, it floats.

When the constraints of the mission make it impossible to use electronics or cameras, they send him. His memory is eidetic. “Photographic”. His infallible mind is simultaneously his most blessed gift and his most devilish curse, because nothing is more haunting and vengeful than memory. His is a graveyard of murdered faces.

He is ruthlessly ambitious. He believes in selling people what they want to find a shortcut to the good life. He's not a thief, but he'll take anything he can get. He's not a killer, but he's responsible for countless deaths. The first day he shows up at your door, it's a party. The last day he shows up at your door, it's a funeral. A working man. Keeping the appointments of a lifetime. It's a living.

In this vision of the future, the most prestigious vacation money can buy is a trip to a corporate planet overgrown with a jungle wilderness. There, wealthy tourists gird armor and fantastically powerful weapons to hunt strange chimeras through an endless forest. These beasts are all genetically engineered to be fierce, bloodthirsty, and difficult to kill. Despite the benefits of their high technology, only experienced guides can lead their pampered clients safely through to the end of the game. Every year, countless bored tourists pay exorbitant fees to hunt terrifying synthetic monsters ...

He's a notorious corporate spy. His last job uncovered a disturbing truth long and deeply buried by the powers-that-be. Though his corporate enemies have kept him imprisoned by flying him endlessly around the world, he is neither forgotten nor alone. When a band of anonymous hackers finally locates him within his prison in the sky, they will stop at nothing to free him and expose his discovery. It's a hell of a way to travel!

In a dystopian future, humankind has lost its love of violence. Peace has so long ruled the land that we have lost all means of confronting the resurgence of a genocidal revolution, which threatens to reduce human society to a state of chaos and anarchy. The most vulnerable citizens face annihilation as they confront the revolution's inevitable success. Only one defense stands between them and oblivion. They are genetically modified warriors, bred and born to fight. They are Reapers. He has been biologically engineered to do one thing: fight for the survival of his people. Can one Reaper ...

A thousand years ago, stoic Norsemen built resilient ocean-going longboats from wood and iron. Through four centuries of conquest, in these robust vessels countless Viking adventurers set forth from homelands of ice and snow to claim victory or Valhalla along far western horizons. Cast into a vast, hostile ocean aboard a small longboat, a handful of stoic Norse mercenaries gamble their lives in pursuit of freedom and fortune. All are bound for horizons of history, inevitably destined to find their eternal home among sagas of the never seen.

Born to the street and abandoned by his paranoid, drug-addicted mother, a young boy struggles to evade vicious predators, who hope to exploit him, and insistent authorities, who hope to save him. His only ally is his extreme natural intelligence, and his only home is the public library. Daily, the noose tightens after his mother, his last link to childhood, goes missing. His future seems as bleak as the cold, hard streets. Then he meets Longbow. In a gritty, existential world rife with threats, a young boy fights to survive. One man has the power to save him.

When their yacht sinks just east of New Zealand during a round-the-world sailing trip, three survivors somehow manage to pile themselves into a single tiny life raft. Adrift on one of the wildest seas in the world, their struggle to survive is a desperate one, and their hopes for rescue dwindle daily. Many weeks later, a violent storm sweeps them into the frigid and dangerous Antarctic current, and they realize they will ultimately freeze if they are not rescued before winter comes. As their anger and frustrations grow, they know they must take matters into their own hands if they are to ...

While the vast majority perishes in quiet anonymity, a tour of any national monument quickly reveals countless names carved into stone. These names generally identify three classes of people; scribe, conquered and conqueror. Indeed, if anything, life is an endless series of contests, large and small, but these stone-graven records typically ignore the latter for the former. Too often, history overlooks the struggles of mundanity, which perhaps better define those who endure. Pause a reflective moment to ponder the future – anticipate all the boastful elite to be immortalized there. ...

Everyone loves a good joke, but nobody enjoys being subjected to the fun. Pranks are an especially childish form of delight, perhaps because they are the ultimate expression of prurient sadism, which we must disavow as civilized adults. We, the same civilized adults who teach our beloved youth the art of warfare while stockpiling an obscene surplus of thermonuclear weapons. Now that is funny! So, tease a guilty moment to titillate your secret sadist today. Giggling, it whispers. Of spoiled affluence and nothing better to do; of grotesque victimization that makes monsters from innocent ...

Bad things happen to the people that Pablo loves. Bad, bloody things. Indeed, his hapless path through life is littered with the human wreckage of lives badly wasted; of men, women and children inexplicably maimed and murdered. Though his presence is ever the common denominator among the many deaths that surround him, evidence never ties him physically to any of the crime scenes. One frustrated Texas detective believes Pablo is culpable after one fashion or another, but he can never prove his suspicions beyond reasonable doubt. When Pablo's threat becomes personal, however, he is hard ...

Several of the best human hypocrisies are immortalized in catechisms. We say “violence never solved anything” when history repeatedly teaches us otherwise, and once we prematurely labeled an entire, global war as “The War to End All Wars” long before we recorded its half-formed outcome. Dynasties fall. Empires rise. In marble, granite and concrete, we immortalize these events, large and small, and we celebrate the human beings named heroes there. Rightly so. Pause a moment before The Wall – let your finger trace names in stone. From pits of despair and summits of glory, they ...

Within realms of the unknown, superstition stalks. Primitives see god in a rainbow, but they also suspect a deadly serpent beneath every unturned stone. Ignorance and fear sometimes unite to inspire us or spare us, but more often this demonic duality serves to light the torches of enraged mobs. Indeed, history tells stories of witches burned alive amid great celebrations. We know these things happened. We also know witchcraft is a figment. Fearlessly now, step away from the staid, known world that shelters you. Venture into lands of conundrum and enigma to witness ciphered matters of mind. ...

Rascals, rapscallions, villains and varlets; all terms of a bygone era intended to describe the guy in the black hat, that perverse character of low virtue and strayed morality who forever ties the distressed damsel to cold, steel rails. Gasp! Within fictional fantasies, they are always guys and damsels, and they must wear black. In reality, we still mostly read about bad ‘guys’, but the women tend to fight back now, often with devastating effect. Tonight, the devil laces thigh-high boots over fence-net stockings before taking a turn through town. Be warned and beware. Of evil delight ...

Tabloids invite us to gorge ourselves on tales of epic personal failures, and so many of us eagerly oblige. Guilty pleasures, we savor these stories most satisfactorily with a garnish of sex scandal, a dash of fiscal malfeasance and a generous dollop of social corruption. Next, we expect a weeping dessert of shame and regret to follow. Afterward, everything ends in a dumpster or the backseat of an aging sedan before we stagger home again, sated, smug and full of improving condemnations. Cup your ears and shade your eyes now. Peer into the gloom of your neighbor’s windows to eavesdrop. ...

Champions come in all shapes and forms. The same is true of cowards. Most of us line up somewhere between these two extremes of potential, but none of us eagerly anticipate having to prove ourselves in a crossfire. In fact, most notable acts of heroism are not the results of well-considered, carefully laid plans. Rather, these are often spontaneous yet deliberate demonstrations of selflessness occasionally on display when normal human beings must confront life-threatening risk. Take a deep, calming breath now before you dare gaze into the face of death. Trembling, heed its heckling catcalls...

Disinfectants, detergents, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides and homicides – everything a human being needs to clear his or her lot and start fresh in life, clean and pure, and it all waits at the press of a finger. Some of us love a good disaster, but we watch from a safe distance and it always happens to someone else… somewhere else… never here. Never us. Distended bellies and skeletal children are always the misfortune of others. Stop and wonder why. Your preferred answer no doubt leaps easily to mind, but the truth is probably quite different, because pestilence comes in all ...

A silly titmouse once sang sweetly to describe love as “a many-splendored thing”. Perhaps this is so. For some. For others, love’s terrible spectacle shines in its many violent twists and unexpected turns. Each feckless angle of its affection or disaffection invariably leaves a disfiguring blemish that renders exquisite facets of character from alternating impacts of tragedy, disaster, triumph and ecstasy. Too briefly, desire’s artistry sparkles the amazed eye with a fateful brilliance before fiery passion fades to leave its victims cold and trembling in its wake. Steal a secret ...