I’m particularly pleased with the photo of myself on this blog. I normally look a bit odd on photos but this one was taken about 2 days into a new job for an id card. I still had the new job glow. I was relaxed, tousled haired and the future lay ahead bright and clear. I look happy. So I thought I would upload it into Microsoft Cognitive Services Emotion API to get the confirmation that was indeed 100% happy.

I am shocked that even at my most happy I only achieve 92.8% happiness. My British reserve clearly means that I hold back 7% for that neutral stiff upper lip feeling. There are flickers of other emotions with contempt peeking out. Where does that come from ? It’s a new job. Surely contempt should only be registering when I’ve been there a month or two. I uploaded an uncropped image of myself a few months previously and I was registering about 3% fear . The only difference is that the very top of my head was visible that time. I’ve clearly got a very fearful haircut.

Is there a serious point to this? Probably not but it is my first foray into machine learning and as a professional software developer it certainly won’t be the last. I’m pretty fascinated about it. I hope I can start to register 100% happiness when I get into it more. At least 95% – come on!