Introducing Convolution Chronicles

What is Convolution Chronicles?

Convolution Chronicles is a personal blog that I started in May 2023 out of a desire to share what's been on my mind with family and friends. However, the spark came from taking a deep learning course called fast.ai and reading the course instructor's blog article "Why you (yes, you) should blog". Around the same time, I began to notice some gaps in my mother's digital literacy. So, I crafted a lesson plan to teach her a new skill or app each week and started giving her 1-on-1 lessons over Zoom screen share. The potential to help someone else's parents by putting these informal lessons into writing gave me the last motivational push I needed to set up this website.

Where does the name come from?

In starting a blog, I wanted the freedom to write about a perpetually evolving set of topics. I wondered how I could blend all of my different interests and types of writing into one blog. However, finding a name to represent this endeavor seemed impossible until I rediscovered a concept from my machine learning course: convolution.

In machine learning, convolution is the fundamental mathematical operation underpinning CNNs (Convolutional Neural Networks). But a convolution is also defined as the integral of a product of two functions in the field of mathematics. Concretely, a convolution blends two functions and expresses their overlap.

Thus, Convolution Chronicles is a publication featuring the "convolution" of all of my different, evolving interests in deep learning, healthcare, macroeconomics, and teaching.

What do you plan to write about?

You can expect to receive feature articles where I try to raise awareness about societal issues like the challenges of finding employment for people with disabilities. The topics discussed will vary from week to week. My current interests are technology, healthcare, science, and macroeconomics.

I also plan to write three types of tutorials:

• Tech tutorials for people like my mother who are in their later stages of life (roughly in their 40s to 60s) and have basic computer literacy but want to learn how to manage their digital lives more effectively. For the more experienced tech-savvy folk, be on the lookout because I will occasionally include a section with more advanced tricks!
• Productivity tutorials where I discuss my journey in discovering how to use new tools such as the Obsidian and Readwise and integrating them into the workflow of an economist and a life-long learner.
• Deep Learning tutorials where I share lessons and reflections from my deep learning journey.

Overall, between the tutorials and feature articles, you should expect to receive no more than one email per week from me.

What should I expect in the future?

My vision for Convolution Chronicles is to write articles that spark meaningful conversations, raise awareness about societal issues and help people live healthier lives through the power of the liberal arts and sciences.

That's the plan for now. But continue to expect the unexpected: this blog will always be evolving and the things I want to write about are bound to change as time passes.

In the spirit of sparking conversation, I encourage you to share your thoughts, feedback, and responses with me! It can be as short as one sentence and as simple as "I really enjoyed this podcast you recommended!" You can do this simply by replying to any of the emails you will be receiving.

Finally, thank you for embarking on this journey with me! If you'd like to stay up to date and receive emails when new content is published, you can subscribe here!

-Jony