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The 80/20 Rule; Or, The Issues With AI

Tue, Dec 19, 2023 | 1400 Words

The 80/20 rule in software development says that the final 20% of a project will take 80% of the total time to build. Algorithmic tools are designed to make life easier. The new raft of AI systems is a great example of this; tools for translation, image creation, text generation, and more that allow laypeople to do a whole bunch of stuff they never could before with ease and simplicity.

Recommendations Should Be Useful

Sun, Oct 15, 2023 | 1300 Words

Reccies should satisfy the following criteria: An understanding of the recommender and recomendee’s contexts. Personal experience with the recommendation. Experience with relevant alternatives. Without this they’re about as useful as tits on a bull. A friend asking for “good industrial tunes for while I’m filing TPS reports” is an easy suggestion to make if you both go to the same gigs. You have shared history in the relevant topic, you know the context (genre, purpose, etc), and you’re probably going to suggest stuff that you’ve at least heard.

2023 In Gaming

Sat, Sep 30, 2023 | 2900 Words

It’s weird to be writing about a review of a 2023 yearly goal when it’s only September but I’ve surprised myself and completed this one by the end of the third quarter. While last year was the year of reading, I wanted to set my focus on something new this year and I picked gaming. It used to be one of my biggest passions until I was about 22 and the onset of schizophrenia coupled with the anhedonia-inducing antipsychotics really curbed my love of the pastime.

Context In Context

Sun, Sep 3, 2023 | 1700 Words

Understanding context is incredibly important. Without it, you might end up saying the following: “You have depression? You should try meditation.” “I’ve just started, but I think we should rewrite the whole frontend in React.” “Hotels are too expensive, we should make an app where people can rent out their houses instead.” On their own, these aren’t bad thoughts to have; we’ve been presented with a problem and our natural inclination is finding solutions.

Abstractions Aren't Reality

Mon, Aug 28, 2023 | 1700 Words

Recently I posted about GIS and why I love it, and I hope one of the major takeaways is that GIS is a field based on mapping abstractions onto the real world and a great way to quickly discover the complexities and difficulties inherent in doing so. This post is a lot wider than GIS, but we’ll use it as a leaping off point. Coastline Paradox One of my favourite examples of why mapping abstractions to reality is Hard™ is the coastline paradox1.

What Is GIS And Why I Love It

Mon, Aug 14, 2023 | 2100 Words

I’ve always loved Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a branch of technology. I’ve worked with them in a professional capacity for about 8 years and had a focus on highly specialised data analysis and manipulation using GIS for over 5 of them. Of course, describing it succinctly and interestingly is one of the unanswered hard questions in the field. And getting non-GIS IT people to understand what makes it such a specialised sub-field of computer-booping can be difficult, especially when you want to capture the vagaries and complexity inherent in the subject.

Work Task & Time Tracking

Sun, Jun 18, 2023 | 1200 Words

A lot of people, especially developers, that I know or have worked with have issues keeping track of what they need to do and how they’ve spent their time. We have tools galore like Jira and GitLab that are supposed to manage our tasks but never really hit the spot just right. Especially in environments like consultancies where you need to track time against projects and clients to ensure correct billing this can get even harder.

New Monitor Setup

Tue, Mar 21, 2023 | 500 Words

I’ve talked before about making personal computing more personal and did this in a fun way with my Saitek Flight Switch Panel [1, 2] and have being enjoying it greatly. There’s been another part to this too. Since last year I’ve been hunting through local verge/bulk rubbish collections for old monitors and found four to add to my setup. A week ago I finished my collection and set up all the cables and adaptors and now my desk looks like the following:

Mohawk Instructions

Wed, Feb 8, 2023 | 1600 Words

I’ve been rocking a mohawk as a haircut for over seven (7) years now and it always gets a heap of positive comments. Random people always come up to me to say “hi” and tell me they love my hair and families and tourists ask if I can pose for photos with them. I originally did it as a way to get over my social anxiety; I was always afraid and paranoid people were staring at me and having a mohawk meant I knew they were but for cool reasons.

ChatGPT & LLMs as Knowledgebases

Mon, Jan 16, 2023 | 1400 Words

Large Language Models (LLMs) are in ascendance today. Only 3 years ago GPT-2 was released to the world and everyone was quite awed by its capabilities. Its ability to auto-summarise and answer questions based on finetuning was mindblowing compared to previous attempts, but this model was quickly eclipsed by the release of GPT-3 (2020) and now the ChatGPT interface (2022). Let me preface the rest of this post with a notice:
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