I recently read the book series referred to as the “Bobiverse,” that tickled my nerd fancy so much that I had to write about it. While I really loved the book, that is not what I’m going to write about, instead, like a good dork, I’m going to scratch the singular itch that was left lingering throughout the series. I will try not to go too much into detail, but I would recommend giving it a read if you are worried about spoilers. more...

I recently had an epiphany about the mixed image of success that I project and why it is so confusing from an outsider looking in. I’m writing this to turn my inner monologue outwards in the off chance that someone else has experienced the same thing, but also to help others understand where I’m coming from. I haven’t had a long history of success with women, but I’ve been in enough situations where women were competing for my attention that my standards were unrealistically high, and my game unfortunately low. more...

After googling the definition of Life and I was a bit disappointed to find that the best definitions were anchored in functions we associate with life, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why this made me sad. “the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.” Setting aside the use of a word to define itself (in this case “animals and plants” are synonymous with life and “inorganic” is just another way of saying “not living. more...

They say that it isn’t good to think about profound things when you are feeling down, but I’m going to break the rules and attempt to dissect my unhappiness and lay it bare. I’m doing this because I know I’m not the only one who experiences internal conflict and I think by writing about it I can not only show people that it is normal, but perhaps help someone else reason their way out of it. more...

When it was announced not too long ago, GPT-3 set a new standard for the size of an AI model at a whopping 175 billion parameters, and an estimated cost of at least $4.6 million. Ever since the first closed beta examples started showing up, it has been blowing people’s minds and causing everyone to think about what is next. One of the best things about programming (and open source in particular) is that everyone can play and have access to everything they need to build cool stuff. more...

They say that it isn’t good to think about profound things when you are feeling down, but I’m going to break the rules and attempt to dissect my unhappiness and lay it bare. I’m doing this because I know I’m not the only one who experiences internal conflict and I think by writing about it I can not only show people that it is normal, but perhaps help someone else reason their way out of it. more...

When most people hear the end of work, they might picture the world looking glazed over and staring at the television with a bag of cheese puffs in their hand making an occasional nasal laugh. So why am I so excited for the end of work? The reason is that while I do believe the future will be that way for some, I think the vast majority will have a much different experience. more...

I’ve been going back and forth for a little while with my sister about trying to recreate a seitan ginger beef dish from a restaurant that we like in Vermont. It is a little tricky for me since I’ve never done a seitan beef before and because of the whole low FODMAP thing, but I finally decided to give it a try. After substituting pretty much every ingredient in the recipes I found, I finally created what I lovingly refer to as insomnia beef, since I associate eating it with not being the least bit tired (probably because of the high protein content and the cocoa nibs I threw in). more...

I recently reached inbox zero on GitHub for the first time in a long time. A while ago I got freaked out by the possibility of people stealing my secret keys through CI and I disabled my CI tokens on my zillion GitHub repos. It was all broken windows from there. Before I knew it my GitHub was a graveyard of packages with out of date dependencies that I had no time to update. more...

I think it is safe to say that a lot of people like dumplings 🥟- and more safe to say that they are too complicated and time consuming for most people to make themselves (yes, you could order them but that is besides the point). I realized I could make dumplings by dipping the protein in a thick batter instead of wrapping it. batter dipped dumplings The benefit was this was a little bit easier, however, it still required an action per small food piece. more...

I just did some dehydrating exercise in the sun, so this will be what amounts to some pontificating shower thoughts. But you already clicked on the link so you might as well read it. While trying to solve the knapsack problem I got to thinking about the realities of maximizing utility. Since I am a software engineer and engineering is just building tools to maximize utility, I let my mind frolic down that sweet sweet rabbit hole. more...

All of my open source projects start with trying to build something, getting frustrated, saying in my head “I wish I could just do this,” then obsessively investigating what it would take to be able to “just do this.” Sometimes this inspiration comes on a work project, but more often, it comes when I am working on a side project, or playing with some new open source thing. My first example of such a project, was when I was working on an investment project called Herd. more...

Remember when I mentioned that cooking with discrete ingredients has side effects? Well, in reality, all food has side effects, they are just drowned out by the popular proportions of everything that are hard coded into the common foods that everyone eats. When you start experimenting with specific ingredients, you throw that all away. Suddenly, you will find yourself rapidly trying to diagnose something with Google and fix it with another ingredient that you normally eat all the time. more...

I love open source. I love to imagine writing code a certain way, trying to find something that does it, failing to find said thing and building it. I love publishing it and watching people use it. I don’t love maintaining it, I don’t love the thought of having to improve it with the responsibility involved with making sure those improvements don’t break anything for anyone using your thing in a way you didn’t intend it to be used. more...

Yesterday I had an idea. Congratulations me, now there are two options, I can: Take the red pill - see how deep the rabbit hole goes Take the blue pill - be blissfully ignorant of whether my new idea will work The free spirit I am, has lots of trouble with #2 because I am insatiably curious and hate myself. But I recognize that I need to learn how to do this, or I will spend my life jumping from rabbit hole to rabbit hole like a prairie dog. more...

After graduating with my BS in Computer Science, AI moved to side project status as I took a job as a Full Stack Software Engineer at Pivotal Labs. The side project years of my AI life made slow progress. I managed to play with some algorithms that one time when I was trying to learn golang. I eventually implemented my logic gate pool genetic algorithm as part of a more ambitions side project I called thoughtnet. more...

I recently got a good review at work and it helped me start to course correct a dangerous internal narrative. For the last year of projects I’ve been on, I’ve heard: “you are a genius, but you have to work on your communication” – which in my brain translates to “we need to soften the blow of this feedback, but you are a piece of shit to work with” Truth is, when you hear something enough times, you start to believe it. more...