Conventions and Airplanes - Nicolas Southern

Conventions

My last article I closed off saying that I am going to a convention. Well, that happened last week! It was a whirlwind of a week, but I had a great time. I got to meet a lot of people, many of the bigger players in the industry came by my booth and gave some great feedback on my product as well. I realized pretty quick that my gaming software isn't 100% to casino quality, but every single person said that I have some promise and to keep at it. I think a lot of them were excited to see a young fresh face in the industry.

They had a lot of talks/sessions as well, which I was able to attend with my exibitor pass. There seems to be a real push toward re-igniting the Class II markets in Indian Country, reasons being that the Class II gaming is typically exempt from any state or federal taxes, and the Class II games are typically more profitable for the casino. I think this is a great idea, and I hope that it comes to fruition. We already see a few of the bigger tribes in the US doing this, and I think it will only grow from here. I think that the Class II market is a great place for me to start, and I am excited to see where it goes.

I took a few days to recouperate, well I guess technically 1. I went to Sun and Fun on Saturday for a few hours, it wasn't quite as exciting as my first two times going but I was still able to look at some of the vendors. There was a booth for the Bahamas, that I see every year and I always think about going there.. maybe at the end of this year or early next year as my birthday present to myself. Sunday I went back into it, and started "yet-another-course" on Udemy which goes over machine learning and data analytics/science. I'd love to be able to gleam more insight on my software metrics, and start to see how patterns and trends can be used to improve my product. Plus, it's just really cool to be able to do that kind of stuff. I'd really like to have a generalized knowledge of mostly everything in the tech industry, even if I won't be using it in my day to day. I think it's important to have a broad knowledge base, and I think that's what I'm trying to do.

from sklearn.ensemble import RandomForestClassifier

# Import data and split it into features and labels
heart_desease = pd.read_csv("heart-disease.csv")

# Make the data
X = heart_desease.drop('target', axis=1)
y = heart_desease['target']

# Split into training and test sets
x_train, x_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(X, y, test_size=0.2)

# Instantiate RandomForestClassifier
clf = RandomForestClassifier()

# Fit the model to the data (training the machine learning model)
clf.fit(x_train, y_train)

# Evaluate the Random Forest Classifier (use the patterns the model has learned)
clf.score(x_test, y_test)

# Accuracy score
0.8524590163934426

In the coming weeks, I'll be flying back out to Texas for some business there. Pushing to get back to the east coast by the 15th or so to go meet a good friend in Charlotte. We've gone quite a few times to the White Water rafting facility in Charlotte, but it's been a few years and I'm itching to go back.

Update on my yearly goals:

Eat healthier -- I'll admit we've been splurging a bit at home. Lots of pasta and traveling to San Diego had us eating a lot of rich food. Glad to say we've had very little fast food!
Learn French -- I am keeping up on this! Duolingo is a great tool, it's gamification of learning really engages my style of learning.
Family relationships -- Not fully there, need to work on this
Introspection -- If anything, last week really helped my introspection. I feel a lot more confident in my abilities and my future.
OSCP -- I've put this kind of on pause. Traveling I've been a bit too busy to really focus on it. I'll get back to it soon.
Business Revenue -- It hasn't doubled, but it has increased so thats great! I have a feeling things in next few weeks will get a little rocky but will get back on track soon enough.

Until next time!