Weeknote for 9/3/2023

Posted on September 3, 2023 by Andy

Math

😐

I tracked down my notes from earlier generations of this project. That’s about all I gave myself time to do. This week I’ll make any flashcards I’m missing from prealgebra.

AI

🙄

I spent too much of my week struggling with chatbots on my computer. At any given moment I was either failing to prompt my way past Llama 2 chat’s confusions and false refusals or failing to compile the necessary llama-cpp-python package to install an unrestricted version, among other models. Maybe it’s a sign I should wait until I’ve gotten somewhere on math!

Nature

😎

I took advantage of the cooler weather to explore more new parks. One of them was a Monarch Waystation, a field with plants monarchs need for food and breeding while they’re migrating. That park also had a house for mason bees made by a Girl Scout.

 

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Weeknote for 8/27/2023

Posted on August 28, 2023 by Andy

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.

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Weeknote for 8/20/2023

Posted on August 20, 2023 by Andy

Life maintenance

😐

I didn’t fix my sleep schedule, but I did take a break from pushing myself to work on things. This week I’ll do some invoicing and look into some purchases that have been waiting.

Productivity

🙂

My flashcards for Gregg Shorthand are working better than I expected. Each day’s review is only taking 5 to 15 minutes, and I’m actually using what I learn in my blog drafts, which I write in shorthand for practice.

Writing

:thinking:

I continued some research on plotless narratives. My impulse is always to probe the boundaries of whatever I’m learning about. So while I love the books on writing craft I’ve been listening to, when I hear that X or Y is essential for an effective story, I wonder. On this question I’ve been focusing on the idea of plot and collecting categories and examples of stories that minimize it. So far I’ve found slice of life, vignettes, sketches, and whatever is covered in Narrative, Interrupted. I’m looking forward to studying some of these at some point. Chekhov comes up a lot, so I might start there.

TV

:head exploding:

I was caught completely off guard by “Subspace Rhapsody,” season 2 episode 9 of Strange New Worlds. It’s a polarizing one—I’ve seen some angry comments. But in my opinion, it took what could’ve been a gimmick and made legitimate science fiction out of it, in the process advancing several character arcs. You’ll think I’m exaggerating, but it truly gave me a new appreciation for the characters, the cast, the show, and the power of music. It affected me so profoundly I spent a rather weird day or two with raw emotions floating at the surface, and I’m still pondering the episode a week later.

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Weeknote for 8/13/2023

Posted on August 19, 2023 by Andy

Art

😐

I learned Blender’s basic interface from the first few chapters of Blender for Dummies. That’s as far as I could get in a week. I maybe could’ve gotten into some modeling with Learning Blender’s more tutorial approach, but I felt a little more at home in the other book. While I may not have created any art, I did benefit from the thoughts Blender sparked on how I could design my information modeling software. But I do want to come back to 3D modeling before too long.

Writing

:thinking:

The Science of Storytelling felt like a kindred spirit. Will Storr took all the ideas about psychology that have accumulated in my mind over the years and used them to explain the shape of stories we find compelling. And it got me to ask questions like, what’s my sacred flaw that could be challenged if I were a character in a story—my fundamental strategy for maintaining control of my life?

Life maintenance

😐

This week and the next are for my seasonal housekeeping, the time when I catch up on my maintenance. But this week is really for taking a break and hopefully fixing my sleep schedule.

AI

😎

Simon Willison’s talk “Catching up on the weird world of LLMs” is a good explainer on ChatGPT and similar bots (video, annotated transcript). In an engaging, accessible manner he outlines the history of the technology, its issues, and things you can do with it. Simon’s blog is one of the sources I follow for AI updates and commentary.

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Weeknote for 8/6/2023

Posted on August 6, 2023 by Andy

Art

🙂

I did the first few exercises in Presto Sketching. The first two were for confidence building (shown last in the Instagram post), and the rest were basically warm-up. This week I’m trying out 3D modeling, but I’ll try to keep doing sketchnote exercises here and there.

 

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Writing

😎

I carried on with creative writing by listening to the fantastic How to Tell a Story by storytelling organization The Moth. The audiobook is read by the authors and includes clips of storytellers from their events. It did inspire me a little to think about what stories I could tell from my life. Talk Like TED came next and complemented the Moth book by covering one context for storytelling.

Productivity

🙂

I set up an Anki flashcard deck for Gregg Shorthand, starting with an imported one someone shared. So far the studying has been easy, and I think it’ll be a better approach than laboriously creating sentence writing exercises for each new set of words.

TV

🙂

I revisited my childhood with the Lindsay Wagner Bionic Woman. I’m taking advantage of the final couple of months of the Netflix DVD service. So far I can say the acting is a bit awkward but has its moments, the writing is pretty good, and they make an effective use of music. It gives the bionic powers an almost mystical feel. But I’m still in Jaime’s origin story on The Six Million Dollar Man, so I don’t know what will be different about her own show.

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Weeknote for 7/30/2023

Posted on July 31, 2023 by Andy

Writing

😎

To wrap up this iteration on creative writing, I listened to Matt Bird’s excellent Secrets of Story and turned my attention to short stories. Those are the kind I expect to write, so I found a book on writing flash fiction (Fred White’s Writing Flash) and researched short story collections to study.

Art

🙂

The next two weeks I’m switching gears to visual art with sketchnoting and 3D modeling. This week I’ll do some exercises from Ben Crothers’ books Presto Sketching and Draw in 4. Next week I’ll dip my toe into Blender.

Work

:raised eyebrow:

I’ve learned that my next two months at work are extra crammed full of work. I feel that at this point in my productivity development I can handle it, so this discovery didn’t generate the dread it might have before. I’ll try not to let my workload interfere with my personal projects.

Video games

🙂

I’m nearing the end of The Stanley Parable. It’s reminding me how long I take to play games, especially when I only play in small bites during dinner. I was also playing through two different versions, the original and Ultra Deluxe, which was well worth the impulse purchase. The whole set is an interesting and amusing metafictional satire on video games.

 

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Weeknote for 7/23/2023

Posted on July 24, 2023 by Andy

Writing

😎

I collected my story ideas and found a literature textbook to study. The story ideas were random ones I’d recorded in my notes apps the past few years. They tend to be about social thought experiments, bizarre science fiction and fantasy concepts, and explorations of my frustrations with other stories. But my conversations with chatbots this year have shown me my stories don’t need to be anything weird. It turns out I’m also curious about real people’s everyday lives.

The textbook is Writing and Critical Thinking through Literature by Heather Ringo and Athena Kashyap. I was looking for a free one that would refresh my memory on the basics of narrative so I’d have a loose template or checklist for planning my stories. I believe this one will do the job nicely.

Productivity

:thinking:

The practice method I tried for Gregg shorthand last week was very time consuming, so this week I’m trying another one using flashcards. One thing that’s already helping is the set of guidelines I created for sizing and spacing my shorthand words on the dot grid paper I use for writing. It frees my mind from that uncertainty so I can focus on remembering the strokes and joins.

Food

🙂

Watching a video game got me to finally try bubble tea. I made it my drink for Sunday lunch. I asked the barista for something basic, and she recommended a brown sugar milk tea. It was interesting and good but a little intense. I liked the tapioca pearls though. I foresee many return trips to explore their menu.

 

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Weeknote for 7/16/2023

Posted on July 16, 2023 by Andy

Productivity

:thinking:

I decided to try improving my schedule tracker in Google Sheets rather than moving it to Notion. I was convinced I’d move it, but then I didn’t want my Notion to become unusably slow from a ballooning database. I’ve set up recurring productivity iterations, so I’ll probably get back to developing the tracker in early November.

I made a practice plan to make faster progress on Gregg shorthand. Each day (ideally) I’ll create exercises from whatever needs work from my blogging or the Gregg book or a list of common words and practice writing them using spaced repetition. My dream is to someday zip across the page like this.

Writing

😎

This week starts my much anticipated (by me) creative writing project. I’ll spend two weeks getting my feet wet in various narrative activities. And yes, some of them will involve chatbots. To prepare myself I’ve been listening to Victoria Lynn Schmidt’s very helpful Story Structure Architect.

Nature

🙂

On a walk with Jeremy after one of the storms of last week, I took some cloud photos like I used to do. A while back clouds like these inspired an ongoing quest to AI-generate a vintage-looking tropical drink ad that popped into my head.

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Weeknote for 7/9/2023

Posted on July 11, 2023 by Andy

Productivity

🙂

Starting on another iteration of productivity system improvement gave me a burst of productivity motivation. I returned to a normal sleep schedule, cut out background distractions to improve my focus, and used countdown timers to limit my open-ended activities.

But most importantly, I set my agenda for the iteration by making a list of my current productivity challenges and some potential solutions. This was so helpful that I’ll probably make it my standard practice. I also started a related side project for improving my research process, also with a helpful challenges list.

This week I’m looking at how I can implement my schedule tracker in Notion.

Health

:grimace:

I lost some hearing in one ear for a day. I woke up Monday with my left ear sounding muffled. Usually that clears up in a few minutes, but this time it stayed that way for hours. My version of worrying is planning, so I started mentally adjusting to a future of worse hearing.

But I was able to see the doctor in the afternoon, and there was nothing else wrong with me, so he recommended antihistamines and prescribed a steroid in case it got worse. But evidently it was just a eustachian tube issue, because after the antihistamines my hearing was back to normal the next morning. And now I know what a sinus rinse and nasal spray are like.

Nature

😎

I had another muskrat close encounter. We were both a little surprised.

Posted in Health, Nature, Productivity, Weeknotes | 1 Comment

Weeknote for 7/2/2023

Posted on July 3, 2023 by Andy

Programming

:thinking:

I reviewed my Agile sources for their advice on project initialization to learn how requirements fit into the Agile lifecycle. They fit uneasily, it seems, since Agile enthusiasts like to keep specification informal and minimal, but the authors agree you do need an initial high-level requirements conversation. So I made progress on my notes, which is my perpetual struggle, but not with enough momentum to feel the need to continue this iteration, except unofficially. I’m more interested in addressing the productivity issues that came up during the work.

Productivity

:monocle:

Now I’ll spend a couple of weeks on my productivity system with a side trip into my research process. I’ve been keeping a list of topics to look into for this iteration, but since two weeks feels very short these days, I’ll have to be selective.

Games

🙂

I returned to video games with The Stanley Parable. I’m playing during dinner like I used to. It’s been years since I really played anything. But I’ve been in the mood to branch out in my media, and I was tired of avoiding spoilers in video essays that discussed that game. It’s an interesting one, though I’m still working out the author’s point.

Nature

😎

In my third muskrat sighting spot, I found not one, but three out on land. Normally I see them in the water and only one at a time. These were having breakfast along the path I was walking and didn’t mind at all that I was there (until I stepped on a twig). It was a nice welcome back to the woods after hiding inside from the wildfire haze all week.

Posted in Nature, Productivity, Programming, Video games, Weeknotes | 2 Comments