Instead of vertical format, which classes might tend to be presented with, you rewrite your concepts and smaller shots, especially when there’s a lot of information filled out to you lecture. This might be really good for understanding how to better study, especially when you go back to memorizing things for an exam and you Have to get better at the studying part of studying prepare for an exam
I did a really big re-write of my contacts in my personal rolodex, which I covered as part of a blog post I wrote recently. I was thinking about dissecting this further and exploring what next avenues to do with that. I was super curious what other people had to say about this topic, but it led to further discussion about how it relates to sales and marketing for their business. Or focuses on a specialized tool, like Monica. I have a few notes about this that I could also share as well.
In other news, my sleep has been destroyed again by springing forward for Day Light Savings, and I can’t seem to get to bed at a consistent hour. And I’m out of shape, as proven by running and biking again. Going full speed after stopping for a long interval was not a great idea.
Notable of the week
Gleam - Gleam is a friendly language for building type-safe systems that scale!
Running on the battle-tested Erlang virtual machine that powers planet-scale systems such as WhatsApp and Ericsson, Gleam is ready for workloads of any size.
I went through the language tour, and for the most part, it was straight forward. I learned about tail calls as recursion is used for looping.
Results are another thing I can’t really grapple with yet. As well as the left-handed arrow syntax for use, but I’m sure if I work with some Erlang, it will make more sense.
When designing from the ground up, create small, atomic components that can be combined into bigger components. Using biology as a guide, the complexity is organized into molecules, organisms, then pages. Templates are also used as layouts for those pages.
My mind has been wandering into thinking about how to stop the short-term, quick release, distraction hobbies. It’s a hard addiction to break. Very likely this will be a longer journey than a month of my “year of renewal”.
We rush because we’re late. We also rush because we want to move quickly away from discomfort. We rush to come up with solutions to problems that would benefit from more sustained consideration. We rush into obligations or decisions or relationships because we want things settled.
I’ve caught myself in a rush of “what is next” rather than ask myself “where am I at”. It’s this pull of not wanting to know how bad things are. Like what’s the status of my health? What’s the status of my relationships? My family? My obligations? Instead, I find myself numbing out, distracting away from the real problems. Of course, it’s not a rock bottom. It’s a functional state of just bearable enough to see where I’m at, then go back into my doomscrolling activities. It’s not healthy.
To counter this, I’m placing some mindful practices. Sprinkle them where I can. I started a new note called my North Stars, or guiding principles. They help me with heuristics in choosing one things over another. Like producing over consuming. Engagement over distraction. Little mantras that can help me escape the distraction loop.
Through Sunday, the life-threatening storm dumped over 7 feet of snow at Donner Peak, an 8,000-foot summit in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, the weather service said.
USA Today
My mom used to use a rolodex to keep track of her customers. She owns a hair salon, and she kept a single index card per customer with their name, phone number, and how often they visited. The analog solution made it simple to keep track of these customers, but the biggest pain was retrieving that information.
While I don’t run my own hair salon, I wanted to have my own version of the rolodex. Some people call this a personal CRM, but I never liked the marketing and sales analogy as that’s not the relationship I have with people. In Obsidian, I have a folder called “Rolodex” where each note has a person’s details, like a dossier. Through other notes, I’ll record interactions I’ve had with that person. Not every interaction of course, as that would make the system far too tedious.
A sample of an entry in my rolodex
I imported my contacts over from Google Contacts. I created a script to take a Google sheet export of those contacts and tidy up the information. Of course, I still have to go through and delete contacts who are actually not contacts. And I don’t mind having “weak” contacts as it helps color my notes a lot more when I had a one-time collaboration with them. Also, since Obsidian is bi-directional, I can connect people to each other.
I generally keep a map of contacts in a “map of content” or index of specific groups, like co-workers, activity groups, and close friends. This allows different connections to form for each segment type. Like periodic check-ins. For closer friends, I’ll reach out at least once a year if I have their birthday. Or remember I have to ask when their birthday is.
1-bit Large Language Models (LLMs) focuses on the innovative approach of quantizing model parameters to ternary values to achieve efficient performance comparable to traditional 32-bit models.
We explored the rationale behind moving towards smaller, more efficient LLMs, driven by environmental, economic, and deployment considerations, and the potential for these models to operate on consumer hardware.
Through analogies, we illuminated how quantization and stochastic quantization work to maintain model performance despite reduced precision, akin to summarizing a vast collection of books into single sentences that capture their essence. These discussions underscore the balance between efficiency and performance in the evolution of LLMs.
Yuzu - Switch emulator (and hot on a lawsuit w/ Nintendo, although. the case could be weak because you have to bring your own encryption key)
Summary: The podcast transcript explores the concept of intentionality in depth, as discussed between the host and their guest, Serena Collier. Intentionality is presented as living life with purpose, direction, and a conscious choice to pursue what one truly desires. It involves having taste, standards, and a vision for what one wants their life to be, alongside the determination to achieve it despite potential setbacks or failures. Practicing intentionality means creating a personal set of standards and desires, and actively making choices that align with those standards and desires to shape one’s life according to one’s personal vision. It’s about making deliberate decisions rather than going through life passively, and it requires resilience, tenacity, and a willingness to confront challenges and discomfort for the sake of personal growth and fulfillment.
None of us know what will happen. Don’t spend time worrying about it. Make the most beautiful thing you can. Try to do that every day. That’s it.
— Laurie Anderson
I hope everyone’s winter has been going well. This is typically the time we throw on additional blankets. The family enjoyed a Christmas tree this past January, and it’s been our signal for a warmer, cozier time. We may throw on a feel-good movie for good measure.
To be honest, I was scared to start again. I left in silence, leaving the last part of a 7-part series go unpublished. It has been silently published on my website, in case you care to go back to the archives. And I’m afraid I let everyone down by going silent for 5 years (seriously 😳). But another part of me wants to reach out, say hello, and tell the world what I’ve been up to. I miss the intimate space and the replies I would get from you, dear readers. Maybe in the future, I’ll make a Discord server or a forum. But alas, there’s only so much time in the day for starting new projects.
🧹 Housekeeping
I’ve made some major updates to my website. Last year, I did a major rewrite to make publishing as seamless as possible. I’ve had a lot of configuration issues in the past with my Jekyll project, and rather than futzing around with yet another Ruby manager, I’ve moved myself over to Astro.
The other reason for making updates to my website is it feels like my attempt at reclaiming space I willingly handed over the past decade with social media. I like the tiny web circles, like my friend’s Discord server and other blogs. By that same token, I love carving out my own Internet space.
As such, I’ve been hammering on additions that make my personal space feel more at home and less of a microblog you shout into the air with countless other quasi-anonymous people.
Curations: In my mind, a curation is a collection that has been personally selected for a topic or theme. I think of it beyond listicles, where I can dive into other thoughts as I’m describing my favorite book, movie, or favorite creator. There’s much to explore.
Now: I have added it to the now-list page. A Now page is what you’re up to now. Here’s mine. However, if you want an update, I’ll email it in this newsletter.
Projects: I’ve been busy updating my projects so they are all consistent.
Writing: I’ve been experimenting with different formats. Today I Learned (TIL), Weekly Notes, Website updates, and things that I’m learning. I’ve noticed I like a mix of short-form and long-form, and I’ll continue to publish regularly now my website administration is a lot easier to handle.
Logs: In case you didn’t know, I’ve been putting all of my media consumed in one place. At least the things I keep track of.
I won’t be as extensive in future newsletters about my housekeeping updates.
📣 Personal Note
I left some of you wondering about my father and his health issues. He’s back home and still recovering. We’re visiting him once a week, and things are slowly progressing. I will give you more updates when I have them.
As always, feel free to reply. Share something you’ve been up to this winter. Send pictures of your favorite captured moment of 2024. That’s all for now. 👋🏽
There isn’t much to update. This has been a slower week for me.
I’m thinking more about making small spaces online, and I’m thinking more
holistically about what that philosophy means to me. As well as gathering examples.
If you run a small website, reach out to me about how you’re treating your small
communities and how others can benefit.
Rachel Roddy condenses everything she has learned about Italy's favourite food in a practical, easy-to-use and mouth-watering collection of 100 essential pasta and pasta sauce recipes.
Debra is the author and illustrator of many award-winning picture books including On the Day You Were Born and Miss Alaineus, A Vocabulary Disaster. In addition to her well- known talks on creative process, Debra’s innovative "Book Events" build a community’s creativity through projects that start with a story.
As a kid, I love reading the classifieds in the SF Chronicle. It was an interesting time to see it in the advent of Craigslist. Of course, this is by no means an alternative to Craigslist. It is hardly a place for others to add classifieds. This is more like a personal space I can add a wall for you to tear a piece of paper like on those coffee shops for finding a gardener. Except it’s more specific to my own tastes.
In the coming months, I plan to add much more to this. It’s like a personal ad system that probably has better click through rates (jk). I loved Metafilter’s ads since they were more tailored to their audience. This is not a paid sponsorship or ad board. I don’t get paid for this, at least for now. If I do in the future, I’ll be sure to put my disclosures in the classifieds.
If you have any classifieds you want to share, feel free to email them to me. I’ll review them personally for now.
And maybe in the future I can add a “missed connections” section. I love easedropping on people’s first time dates, which have been plenty this past year. I plan on writing some short stories about them in the future.
I have been making major website updates, and I’ve written about a few of them,
including curations, classifieds, and my migration over to buttondown. I’m both scared and excited to write again on a monthly basis, or at least that’s the cadence I want to build. For more about website updates, I’ll do another post soon. I’ll leave now for what’s actually happening with me.
Since the last update, I’ve bought my suit for my upcoming wedding.
I’m still reading How Infrastructure Works by Deb Chachra, although it’s taken a back seat to The Tools by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels. It’s one of those can’t put down books for me.
There has been a Reduction in Force (RIF) at my current company again, and while prospects for the future are high amongst the upper staff, it does breed some not-so-great sentiment around the mind and the office. I’m not in full panic and find a new job mode. But I do feel saddened for the people who have been let go.
I have an undisclosed project that I’m working on the side, but I don’t want to reveal any details until it’s final. I have a problem with talking too much, and not working on that project.
As for the things that have been interesting me as of late, I’ve been using Perplexity AI for about half of my searching needs, and it’s been extremely helpful for the research type tasks I’ve been investigating.
I’ve been pretty active with the website updates. I thought it might do me a little good to start adding a short changelog to the website. This sounds like it will be different than my now page.
Around the Website
Re-arranged the tags so it is better formatted in-line with the published date
I’m also coming up with more ideas of what to do next. I’m thinking about doing a microblog inspired by Linus’ stream. I’m getting inspired from “From Jason” Where Have All the Websites Gone and how he thinks we should trade in our linktree links with things that we like on the Internet. Hell, if I think about my own patterns, they used to be on curated link aggregators.
Episode #171 of Have You Heard podcast: The Damage Done - There’s a large discussion happening about public education right now, and teaching to the Common Core. It’s not pretty, and makes me think hard about sending my kids to public schools
I tried talking to ChatGPT today and using voice as an input. While learning Mandarin might not be there yet (the AI voice doesn’t recognize tonal languages as well), I can see it being good for my Spanish.
