Life maintenance
:relieved:
I bought a new 12-inch skillet and some clothes. My old skillet has needed replacing for years, and I hope having a new one will at least temporarily motivate me not to procrastinate on cooking. My wardrobe has also needed replacing for a while, so it’s good to have that ball rolling.
Math
😎
Next I’m learning math for a couple of months. I’ve been looking forward to this project because my spotty, truncated math knowledge has been a boulder in my path to the kinds of technical work I’d like to do, or at least a large pebble in my shoe. This week I’ll start with a brief review of the prealgebra I relearned a while back, then move on to algebra. I plan to make extensive use of flashcards, since they’ve worked so well for shorthand. To put myself in a math mood, I’ve been listening to Ian Stewart’s excellent In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed the World.
AI
🙂
I installed some more chatbots on my computer. Simon Willison’s LLM tool makes this easy for several of the well-known models. They’re slow on my computer but still usable. And compared to FreedomGPT, these are much more flexible and better supported. There’s also an older model I want to try called GPT Neo that’s behind the weird and funny philosopher dialogues on the SymposiumStream Twitch channel. That one has been harder to get running.
Movies
🙂
To continue winding down my Netflix DVD queue, I returned to my AI movie project with the classic Tron. I had never seen it, and I think the surreal visuals would have had my childhood self enthralled. Now, thanks to this movie, I have a much better context for understanding synthwave art. The story itself was a bit thin, but it’s interesting to think about all programs someday being intelligent agents and forming their own societies, especially if they treat the existence of humans as an article of faith.
