The first nights of the week were spent getting CUDA set-up on my fresh machine (it does work now!) Tonight was spent _actually_ implementing something -- data loading and rudimentary training of my neural network. So I am finally taking a closer look at Keras. I have to say, it's a really cool framework! Very clean and tidy so far. https://keras.io/
Ha! Day 2 of struggling with cuda, and I think I have finally won! Turns out I actually didn't have to compile or hand-install anything on Ubuntu 18.04. Just follow these steps: https://askubuntu.com/posts/1036265/revisions
Revisions to How do I Install CUDA on Ubuntu 18.04?