Benjamin Kamphaus's Blog
March 13, 2020
Wake of the Wanderer Novel Released
My novel Wake of the Wanderer came out this week! It’s available in kindle or paperback versions from Amazon.
Cover art by the talented Zhongxiu (Eric) He. The back cover blurb:
Hundreds of years ago, a self-replicating robotic fleet brought human embryos from Earth to the Vaskania system to establish a colony on the tidally-locked eyeball world, Vaskania Prime. But a mystery has confounded the settlers from their earliest days.
Cover art by the talented Zhongxiu (Eric) He. The back cover blurb:
Hundreds of years ago, a self-replicating robotic fleet brought human embryos from Earth to the Vaskania system to establish a colony on the tidally-locked eyeball world, Vaskania Prime. But a mystery has confounded the settlers from their earliest days.
September 5, 2019
Wake of the Wanderer Album Release, Novel Preview
Wake of the Wanderer hit all streaming and store platforms last weekend! You can find the main streaming links on the PatternShift website, or pick it up on BandCamp (embedded player below).
I’ve been pushing the PatternShift sound in a cinematic direction for awhile, and Wake marks a culmination of that effort. If you’re looking for where to dive in, but feel a bit reluctant to just hit play on a 24 track album, good first listen options might be The Needle:
I’ve been pushing the PatternShift sound in a cinematic direction for awhile, and Wake marks a culmination of that effort. If you’re looking for where to dive in, but feel a bit reluctant to just hit play on a 24 track album, good first listen options might be The Needle:
July 1, 2019
Announcing: Wake of the Wanderer
Wake of the Wanderer, the follow up album to Vaskania Prime and Rites of the Renouncer, will be released on September 6, 2019.
Wake of the Wanderer is set more than one hundred years after the events of Rites of the Renouncer. On a routine excursion, two Renouncers from Oneiri station discover a clue as to why their founder dissappeared so many years ago. While they and their fellow Renouncers race to unravel the secrets of the Dream World and its origin, the ancient powers that have been waiting inside it are starting to wake up.
Wake of the Wanderer is set more than one hundred years after the events of Rites of the Renouncer. On a routine excursion, two Renouncers from Oneiri station discover a clue as to why their founder dissappeared so many years ago. While they and their fellow Renouncers race to unravel the secrets of the Dream World and its origin, the ancient powers that have been waiting inside it are starting to wake up.
April 30, 2019
One Year of PatternShift
As of today it���s been one year since the PatternShift EP was released. I���m taking a moment to reflect on the past year of releasing music into the world, as well as���recently��� writing science fiction and producing my audiobook podcast.
With the first EP, my listenership peaked just over the one hundred count (split across several streaming services) by the end of that May (2018)��� mostly on Spotify ���and then started a gradual slump by mid-June.
With the first EP, my listenership peaked just over the one hundred count (split across several streaming services) by the end of that May (2018)��� mostly on Spotify ���and then started a gradual slump by mid-June.
March 17, 2019
Rites of the Renouncer Audiobook Podcast and Kindle Sale!
It’s been a month since I released the Rites of the Renouncer EP and accompanying novella. I now have the first two chapters up in audiobook form from my new podcast. It was important to me to make an audiobook version available (in addition to ebook and paperback) for accessibility reasons and also for the people who simply have a preference for audiobook. This was also part of why I opted to distribute the kindle version DRM free, so people who rely on screen readers would encounter less friction if they needed to export the ebook to a different format.
February 18, 2019
Rites of the Renouncer
My novella Rites of the Renouncer and its accompanying EP are out today!
Rites of the Renouncer by PatternShift The voyage from Earth to Vaskania Prime took more than a thousand years. When the embryo ship and its AI fleet arrived at the planet, its surface water was gone. After extensive terraforming and several failed generations, human beings can now live there, but something strange happens when they sleep. Without explanation they all enter the same Dream World.
Rites of the Renouncer by PatternShift The voyage from Earth to Vaskania Prime took more than a thousand years. When the embryo ship and its AI fleet arrived at the planet, its surface water was gone. After extensive terraforming and several failed generations, human beings can now live there, but something strange happens when they sleep. Without explanation they all enter the same Dream World.
February 2, 2019
Boosting Groundhogs
It’s that time of year again! Everyone’s favorite holiday, Groundhog Day! Where stats and probability nerds and the media unite to remind everyone that well actually poor Punxsutawney Phil is usually wrong. Luckily for us, we know about the innards of AdaBoost. If we can rely on Phil to be a weak classifier (insert hand-waving around actual number of samples and Phil being statistically different from random in performance), then we can put him in our ensemble.
July 14, 2018
Four Evocations EP Released!
Four Evocations Today I released my second EP, Four Evocations:
Four Evocations by PatternShift As usual, store and streaming services links are on the landing page.
A short note on releasing content in 2018 I’m currently working on a blogpost of what the experience of making and releasing music is like in 2018. I started notes and a draft post while going through the learning experience that was my first EP, but really didn’t feel it reflected much more than my own combination of inexperience, a bit of stubborness, and the corresponding follow up period spent feeling my way around in the dark.
Four Evocations by PatternShift As usual, store and streaming services links are on the landing page.
A short note on releasing content in 2018 I’m currently working on a blogpost of what the experience of making and releasing music is like in 2018. I started notes and a draft post while going through the learning experience that was my first EP, but really didn’t feel it reflected much more than my own combination of inexperience, a bit of stubborness, and the corresponding follow up period spent feeling my way around in the dark.
May 26, 2018
Boulder Deep Learning Meetup
I���ve stepped in to organize the Boulder Deep Learning meetup and get it off to a new start.
Welcome to old and new members! The relaunch will be focused on content that is:
technical in focus for skill levels from intermediate to current practitioners community driven diverse and inclusive Technical in Focus Not every talk has to be about or include detailed code, but the expectation is that the meetup is for and by people who are doing machine learning.
Welcome to old and new members! The relaunch will be focused on content that is:
technical in focus for skill levels from intermediate to current practitioners community driven diverse and inclusive Technical in Focus Not every talk has to be about or include detailed code, but the expectation is that the meetup is for and by people who are doing machine learning.
January 26, 2017
Notes on Bias and Variance
Bias and variance are, to me, the most important concepts in machine learning. Despite this, not many have a well-formed intuition about what they are. Why is this the case?
Bias and variance generally get discussed in the context of error sources. We can understand, for example, that if we try to model a relationship that has diminishing returns like house value to square footage, that if we use a linear model it will be good in some ranges and poor in others.
Bias and variance generally get discussed in the context of error sources. We can understand, for example, that if we try to model a relationship that has diminishing returns like house value to square footage, that if we use a linear model it will be good in some ranges and poor in others.
