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:
We joke about the “graphic design is my passion” creations users built when given choice in the 90’s and 00’s. From Windows Media Player skins and custom operating system icons + themes to Myspace and GeoCities pages, so much of what people created could easily be seen as a collection of horrendous Frankensteinian monsters that were each welded to others.
But that doesn’t mean it was bad and the more I reflect now the more I want that choice and personal freedom back.
Reccies are at the bottom if that’s what you’re after.
I’m a big reader.
Especially science fiction/cyberpunk, especially queer themes, especially stuff that’s a bit weird.
Before I go any further I want to give a huge shoutout to @shmouflon, my great friend and co-CEO at ScorpInc. She got me back into reading when we first started chatting about 7 years ago. I’d been a voracious reader as a kid but it dropped off after high school.
Author JL Peridot publishes One Nice Thing, a beautiful Monday email with one nice quote or picture and it often ends with a small question or thought for personal contemplation. Previously I’ve used them for prompts in my journal and she recently she posed the following:
How would you describe your sense of style?
It’s something I’ve been thinking about recently, because I’ve always wished for my personal style to be:
There’s a lot of things to say about the Polium One. I don’t think any of them positive? I wanted to say a few things that don’t seem to be talked about elsewhere.
Manufacturing Numbers Going off the Polium Pass section of their Medium post we can see for the first year they will only be producing 10,000 consoles for the people who partnered into this. So you’ll have a maximum of 10,000 other people to play with across the world?
One of the things that’s helped me a lot in my career as a developer is understanding the cost of my work (or work I want to do) in the wider business context.
I’ve also seen a lot of developers, especially on the more junior side, not understand certain business decisions or have difficulty making an effective case for their suggestions. This is a primer in understanding what stuff costs and should give you insight into how to better present your ideas.
I finished the above journal recently. A hardcover, dot grid, A5 Leuchtterm1917 notebook. It’s been with me for nearly five years, but I finally did it. I had never finished a journal or notebook before this one, so there’s a palpable sense of succes and joy.
I’ve always been a lover of stationery, especially paper and notebooks. I have such a collection of beautiful pieces from all over the world; from handmade pieces by friends or small batch traditional workshops, to tie-in pieces from my favourite fandoms, to even just nice plain ones I’ve collected on my journeys or been gifted by loved ones.
Original comic credit to @shenanigansen, modified by me.
The Early Years Back in the 90’s the dominant web browser was Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. While there was initially competition from NCSA’s Mosaic and Netscape Navigator, Microsoft’s decided to abuse its dominion over personal computing (via the Windows operating system) and they cornered the web browser market almost entirely by bundling their browser with every install.
This anticompetitive behaviour led to lawsuits from competitors including AOL, who claimed that Microsoft violated antitrust laws by bundling its web browser software to push Netscape (AOL’s popular browser before Microsoft got involved) out of the browser market share.
I know I don’t post a lot of personal life stuff, but it’s been a big weekend.
To be more accurate, it’s been a massive weekend, a huge prior week, and a big few months leading up to it.
But all the stress and organising and backup plans and workarounds lead to an amazing ceremony (and a killer reception/after-party) where I married the love of my life, Nikki.
Nikki and I got married at Queen’s Gardens, a lovely public park near where we live.
The Ship Of Theseus is a thought experiment proposing “if every part of an object is replaced over some period of time, does it still remain the same object”? The version of the thought puzzle concerning Theseus was discussed by Plutarch and talks about the Athenians preserving the ship upon which Theseus returned from Crete. Stored in the harbour, it rotted and decayed over time and so each part was slowly replaced so that it would not fall apart.