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It’s debatable whether or not frequently posting here has improved my writing. I suspect not so much, given that I mainly write micro-posts here. But I have found myself speaking more clearly than I use to, and I’m wondering if posting here has help that in some small way.
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Ok, I’m probably the only person that feels this way, but I not a fan of all the “yearly wrapped” things that apps like Spotify and now Pocketcasts are offering. To me it just shows how much of your listening behaviour that’s being tracked (the degree to which I’m concerned about this varies from app to app). Besides, I’m not sure how much I’d like to know about my revealed listening preferences. I think I’d like to leave some room for “mystery” (read, personal denial) in that domain. 🙂
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Playing around with location services in a Flutter app. Pretty straight forward getting something up and working, which is something I like about Flutter, but I wish Dart was a better language. I mean it’s fine, but it’s not a language I can fall in love with.
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The weather has been cycling between summer and winter all week. A few days ago it was 33°C and I had the AC on. Today it’s max 18°C and I’ve got the heater on. For someone still recovering from Covid-19, the weather’s not doing any favours.
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Two things occurred to me after reading the Stratechery weekly article about ChatGPT.
First, it might be a good time to read Gödel, Escher, Bach again. From my last read of it — which was ages ago — I do remember something about how a (theoretical at the time) advanced AI systems would not have the same level of determinism as a traditional computer. The conversation may feel natural, but it may include factual inaccuracies. This was a theme that seems to run through from the weekly article as well.
Second, I wish I did better at AI in university. It was the only subject that I almost failed at. At the time, once I got over my disappointment, I sort of waved it away with the expectation that AI would not be a predominant part of the software development industry during my career. How wrong I was. 😬
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Made a telemedicine call for the first time last night (I caught Covid-19 and developed an ear infection) and I’m quite impressed by how pain-free the whole thing was. Doctor called up, asked a few diagnostic questions, and sent through a perscription via SMS. Whole think took a few minutes.
I wonder if it would work for perscription renewals as well.
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And after one last 15 hour flight, I’m back home. And I get to stay home for more than a week. After almost a month living out of my suitcase, I’ve been looking forward to this.
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Went on a tour to see the Hoover Dam this morning. What an impressive feat of engineering.
Equally impressive was the bridge where the first shot was taken.
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The amusing — and quite frankly, obvious — thing about everyone moving to Mastodon and the Fediverse is that it demonstrates that you don’t need to include a frickin’ blockchain to every system designed to be “distributed.”
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🎵 Twenty Four Hours from Café Del Chillia
Effectively intermission music but I have found myself liking it. I do, however, think that with just a few tweaks it could be much better. Changing the base line so that it no longer clashes with the melody, for example.
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Follow up to this post about Kindle books that are only available in the US. Apparently it’s not enough to just be in the US, with a suitable IP address. I think you’ll need an actual US postal address. What a shame. This is not a problem with real books. 😞
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I think there’s safety in saying that this year’s Microblogvember was tough, what with all the travelling and inability to come up with something decent for the prompt. While it was fun, I think I need the break. Until next year. 👋 #mbnov
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I usually eat two or three cans of tuna for lunch a week. And yet, I still don’t really consider myself a fish eater. Why? What needs to change before I can tell myself that yes, I eat fish? Do I have to eat actual fish? Must I eat fish for dinner? What are the rules here? #mbnov
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Flight home from the US is next week. I’m hoping for an uneventful trip. The news is not cooperating though. 😏
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I use to be quite religious in putting two spaces after a full stop. The only exception was when I’m writing on Micro.blog, since it keeps the character count down. But now, I’ve been noticing this trend extend to other time I need to write in a web browser. #mbnov
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Dynamo-Browse Running With iSH
Bit of a fun one today. After thinking about how one could go about setting up a small dev environment on the iPad, I remembered that I actually had iSH installed. I’ve had for a while but I’ve never really used it since I never installed tools that would be particularly useful. Thinking about what tools I could install, I was curious as to whether Dynamo-Browse could run on it. I guess if Dynamo-Browse was a simple CLI tool that does something and produces some output, it wouldn’t be to difficult to achieve this. Continue reading →
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I heard the best way to get motivated to do something is to say to yourself “do it for five minutes and if it isn’t working out, you can stop.” I’ve tried it and it works. Sure, you may stop, but usually you’ll just carry on with the task. #mbnov
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State election today. Number of people making their commitment to the process quite early. #mbnov
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Massive delay to my flight on the weekend. What was originally a morning departure is now an evening one. But I think the new itinerary actually works out better than what it was so I’m actually quite happy about it.
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Revived my silly little online finska scorecard and gave it a new domain name: finska.fun. This is in preparation for the summer, where playing a game or two of finska is becoming a bit of a ritual. #mbnov
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I’ve been approaching Microblogvember by taking the prompt and writing a post around it, which results in posts that are a bit forced. A better way might be to write a regular post that includes the prompt. That way I retain my usual relaxed attitude towards posting here. #mbnov
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You’d think I’d have a post with the word update in it. I use “update” at work all the time: apply this update to update the database and push the update. But racking my brain over the last hour or so, I couldn’t come up with an update with an “update”. #mbnov
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📺 The Computer Programme (1982)
Discovered from reading this Ars Technica article about the history of ARM. Was commissioned by the BBC in the early 1980’s to teach the British public about home computers. Found it to be quite charming.
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Back home from Canberra. But only for a few days and then I’m off to the US. Should be good but I’m not looking forward to that 14 hour flight across the Pacific.
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I hate days that involve airports or air travel in any capacity. Not so much the actual flying part; that’s all fine. It’s just all the things around timing or rendezvous that give me such anxiety. Very tricky thinking about anything else.