Edge Of The World Part 2

[Benita Vandervoort]

Thesky was still cloudy, with no sign yet of the Sun breaking through. As we moved out west from the shelter of Puffin Island to the south, Bray Head to the north and away from the distant protective shelter of the Blaskett Islands, the swell increased. Along with the Force Two breeze, the water became choppy. Many a breakfast has been lost overboard on the way to the Skelligs to those lacking sea-legs.

I can never steam out to the isolated crags of the Skelligs without thinking of those early monks. The Roman Empire had fallen, Europe had sunk into the Dark Ages, organised society and civilisation fragmented and hundreds of years of chaos lay ahead. Only on Ireland was the learning retained, the early Irish Christian church retaining the knowledge embedded in religion and the skills of writing, illustration and teaching. They founded the Irish monasteries, centres of learning, and then as their number grew they travelled to Scotland, down through Britain and on into Europe, carrying knowledge and artistry and the ideal of scholarship with them, many of their later European sites becoming the great European colleges. The author Thomas Cahill described this as the time when the Irish saved civilisation and it was a time of importance for the country, prior to being a nation, and the time that gave Ireland the appellation of Island of Saints and Scholars.

Some of those men though, looked west, saw a lofty peak out where there was nothing and somehow decided it would be a good place to pursue the ultimate ascetic life, the thought that the peak was already partway to heaven surely in their minds. Regardless of belief, something about the insanity and heroism of that has always struck a chord. Woollen robes, simple tools and a willingness to face the Utter Sea. Surely this resonance must strike any open water swimmer?

Steaming out to the island took about 90 minutes. Heading for Skellig Mr, one passes the white guano-covered Skellig Beag, small Skellig. Skellig Beag is the second-largest gannet colony in the world after St. Kilda in Scotland, with about 30,000 breeding pairs, around 20% of the world population. Gannets, white with a yellow head and black wing-tips, are a large raucous seabird which feed by diving on fish from a height and can dive down to thirty metres. The repeated blows to the skull are the primary cause of their demise as they go eventually blind. They wheel and spin and cry in the air around the Skelligs and range far out over the sea in these very rich fishing waters.

The rib carrying swimmers from Portmagee zipped past us before we reached the island on our slower boat, and the Ballinscelligs Inshore Rescue rib with the remaining swimmers, the charity for whom the swim was being carried out were seen arriving from Ballinscelligs Bay.

As I waited I heard a call of my name, but assumed there was another Donal out there, it being a name rarely heard outside Ireland but quite normal here, (by the way Donal is NOT Donald, as a name Donal goes back at least 2,000 years). But we soon noticed that a small inshore boat carried my friends Liz Buckley (no relation but we call her my fake half-sister) Chairwoman of the Sandycove Island Swim Club and her boyfriend Padraig Leahy, both strong and experienced open water swimmers.

The first group was soon off, heading north-east to swim anti-clockwise around the island. And shortly thereafter I was off the boat into the water, turning to wave at Dee and then off. The calm protected water of the south-east of the island slipped past. Tim was nearby in his kayak, the other boats moving to the outside.

Underneath the water was deepening shades of grey-green. As we approached the northern-most point of the island, the waves of the open ocean swell were readily apparent even to a cursory sighting, crashing onto the reef.

I passed through the foam, an arm length from the reef, the water rising ahead of me as I swam up the hill of the swell. Then a left turn and along the north side. The boats moved a long way out, as did the large majority of the pack. Dee later told me it became very uncomfortable on the boat at that point as they were only bobbing along at swimming speed, the swell and chop buffeting the boat.

Along with the Sun directly south, and the distance out from me as I continued on ahead,any photography became very difficult. I sought a line along the north shore, against the tide also, where I would be in closer but not so close that I was caught in every wave reflected of the island, trying to find a balance that would mean I was in rough water that was combined from both sides, but not swimming too wide or close. I like rough water, as many experienced open water swimmers do, for a short swim like this. It adds a certain frisson and liveliness to a swim.

This water was rough, certainly not for inexperienced swimmers. I stopped to take a few photos from a borrowed waterproof camera. (Did I tell you I lost another camera to the Sea only a week ago, thanks to bloody shore anglers fishing into the swimming zone at the Guillamenes?).

The water on the north side was also colder, my internal thermometer again telling me that it was about twelve to twelve and half degrees. But the Sun was directly overhead in front of me and the shots were poor. I swam on, gradually south-west, passing the deep cut of North Cove, the older steps that were the original peak access line, visible far above in glimpses, now no-longer used. Occasional jellyfish of different types passed underneath.

The old Lighthouse is over 110 metres high. Three hundred and sixty feet up. That was some wave, surely one of those rogues that we now know exist in deep water. As I crossed Seal Cove, beneath the new Lighthouse, the water calmed and as I rounded the south-west corner, it flattened out and ahead was Cross Cove.

Many applications today need edge computing. However, due to privacy issues, the need for real-time responses, and lack of network connectivity, applications are often compromised. A similar position supporting edge computing comes from the argument around network scalability. The cost and latency for network backhaul can be problematic, especially when addressing the massive data sizes in our data-driven world.

Processing requirements to handle the data-driven world are quickly outpacing the capabilities of existing and projected systems for both raw sensor and generated analytics. Not only is the volume of data increasing exponentially, there is also a dramatic increase in the algorithmic complexity to analyze the data required for application performance. Low-SWaP (size, weight, and power) budgets are already a recognized requirement for edge AI applications, such as drones, IoT devices, and wearables.

In the previous edition of this blog series, we discussed a centralized computing system (the cloud) is not scalable, especially when network throughput is severely limited or when the user application requires a near real-time response. The best approach is to leverage computing power that is available locally, in the sense of latency, available throughput, or similar measures. Simply stated, the overhead of moving data to centralized compute can be best minimized by processing the data locally. The energy and time used for data transport can be used for AI processing itself. This is the essence of edge AI.

Today, edge AI solutions are distributed. Typical solutions consist of a processor integrated with the sensor(s). From one perspective, the centralized computing is scattered spatially in a way that relaxes the overall network storage and peak bandwidth. This approach allows IoT devices to operate in environments where network connectivity is highly variable, and even degraded.

The level of decentralization does not need to stop there. For example, using a new dispersed computing paradigm, we can opportunistically move AI models to data, rather than data to AI models. The size of an AI model is many orders of magnitudes smaller than the sensor data (e.g., kilobytes or megabytes for the AI model, compared to petabytes of sensor data) and so the latency and network bandwidth can be radically reduced for edge AI. In this dispersed AI paradigm, the AI inference can happen on the sensor platform or on the network infrastructure. In the near future, this paradigm can support on-chip training for one-shot-learning and federated AI learning.

Our research has shown advances in network architecture search, parameter quantization, and pruning have afforded neural network models to below 100kB. To put that into perspective, the average smartphone image is about 3MB assuming iPhone 6s Plus with 12MPixel camera. That means, in the time you can upload your selfie to Instagram, our edge AI system can resolve 30 different AI models that are best for your particular environment.

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A riverside nature trail providing access to viewing, fishing and canoe launch areas, as well as a river's edge trail. The Amicalola River trail system has been constructed at the riverside turnout, on the north side of Highway 53 as it crosses the Amicalola west of Dawsonville. Complete with handicapped parking and easy river access, the platforms are ADA compliant and are part of a trail system that extend from the parking area and existing platforms downstream to Edge of the World Rapids, one of the most picturesque-and challenging-stretches of whitewater in the entire region.

This is a fee user area: Each person ( age 16+) must posses a valid hunting license, fishing license, or Georgia Lands Pass to enter this property(Even if you're not fishing or hunting). There is no kiosk to pay onsite, must be purchased online at: gooutdoorsgeorgia.com

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