Recent content on VorpalHex's Brainspace
TLDR # I don’t let LLMs write content. Sometimes I do use them for feedback and editing, especially regarding reading level. When LLMs do write content, it appears in a special widget that indicates the model and time of generation. LLM generated images are watermarked as such, with model and generation time. They aren’t used as cover images for a post. I do use LLMs for coding parts…
I was traveling through the dark woods. I had started my journey alone, but as is natural I fell in and out of various groups and with various companions. At times I camped alone, and at times the campfire was loud with merrymaking and good company. As I traveled through the swampy part of the woods, I began to have a regular set of companions across my travels. We traveled during the day and made…
We can’t help it. We’re browsing the internet innocuously and some article grabs us: “Jim Carrey Sickened by Will Smith’s Oscar Win Standing Ovation.” One article quickly becomes ten more. We quickly find ourselves on social media embroiled in arguments about the latest JK Rowling tweet. The arguments beget more arguments. Hours pass without us noticing. We turn to…
A toolbox is your collection of tools to solve a problem set. Most people own a literal, general purpose toolbox. Some people own several toolboxes, specialized for solving specific domains. I refer to this as the toolbox metaphor: a collection of different tools for solving problems. Though I frequently use the toolbox metaphor when talking about skill building, it applies to the tools we use to…
A guide rail is the thing that keeps a tram or roller coaster on the right path. It limits the carriage to a single correct course of action. If the tram or roller coaster is not following the guide rail, something has gone wrong. A guard rail is the thing along highways and other roads. It keeps you from going into danger. It doesn’t dictate your path, but it blocks off dangerous paths.
When I was an amateur hiker I frequently thought to myself that I should be the one who walks in front of the pack. After all, I can hike very quickly. I can easily take the lead and move the entire group quickly through the landscape. As I said, I was an amateur hiker and was both foolhardy and well over-estimating my skill. As any experienced hiker will tell you, this is a terrible idea. Hiking…
I have a problem when it comes to data - I have too much of it. I’ve been burned multiple times by losing access to some piece of content that was online. I’ve also lost data to a cloud provider changing policies, locking my account accidentally or having their own data loss. So I took it upon myself to own and backup all my own data. So far that’s actually gone really well, and…
So you’ve spent a long day hiking through the woods. You’re tired, hungry and want to eat something other than granola. It’s getting dark and it’s getting a bit cold. You find a small clearing and remove any debris before creating a small campfire. It’s just some big sticks and tinder, no need for a roaring flame when it’s just you. You put down your bag and…
Most everything I’m about to say here is obvious to someone - but the sum of it is (hopefully) not obvious to everyone. This is kind of a catch-all of the little advice that’s too small for its own entry but still useful. None of these are “life hacks”, just sane advice. Grooming # Use a real facial cleanser when you shower and wash your face daily. The exact brand and…
It was a pretty nice day, all things considered. Summer had just started but the weather wasn’t too hot yet - a bit muggy in the swamp where the cabin was, but not bad. Robert swished the last of his clean water in his canteen before taking a swig. Joe called out from the kitchen “Hey, starting on the last box of poptarts, we need to go raiding soon.” Jane looked up from her…
We often hear people talk about wanting to find their true selves, or to be their authentic self. This often coincides with a big life choice like leaving college or going on a months long road trip. Life gets too confusing and you just need to align with your own internal truth through some mystical, journey-like experience. This mindset isn’t foreign to most of us. When our life…
The esp32 is a small 32 bit realtime microcontroller with 160mhz of processing power, several megs of flash and last but not least, bluetooth and wifi that’s available for about $6 a pop and can be programmed using both the Arduino language and MicroPython . Today we’ll be going through the setup procedures including how to flash firmware, getting your code onto it and the available…
Photo by Josh Appel on Unsplash If you ever find yourself the victim of an internet scam, the first thing to realize is that it’s ok, and you are not the first nor last person to fall victim to a scam. Scammers trick millions of people successfully, and though it can be embarrassing, it’s important to take some steps after being scammed both to recover your money and more important to…
One day, Jules was a respectable married woman with her life in order and a well furnished NYC apartment that could of been featured in a Crate & Barrel magazine and the next day she was not. The intervening event between those two days, that Tuesday that she stopped by her apartment to get her chia and flax seed lunch smoothie she had forgotten, she walked in to find her husband balls deep in her…
I regularly use the crockpot for larger cuts of meat, and it’s fantastic for both pork and beef. I’m going to show the process I used for a pork tip sirloin roast (think large tenderloin with a nice fat cap), but the same general method applies to other cuts and even beef as well, though you may want to change up the seasoning a bit. First we need to get a pan ripping hot. I like to…
Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash So in case you haven’t read the news lately, apparently there’s a pandemic going on. Whether you’re sitting on a stockpile of toiletpaper and scarfing down freeze dried peas, or pacing panickedly hoping you can still find at least a napkin to wipe your butthole with, this seems an appropriate juncture to talk about sensible preparedness, isolation…
Photo by Anna Earl on Unsplash Moderating a community is more like gardening than it is like engineering. It’s an art of balance and having a light touch rather than having an iron will and designs for the future. Formal moderation is important for some communities and entirely unneeded for others. When a community decides to have moderators, it should begin by having community standards.…
The TS80 is a portable, somewhat finicky Chinese manufactured soldering iron which is powered over a USB-C port. It heats quickly, holds its temperature very well, is extraordinarily handy and is one of my favorite soldering irons to date. If you’re still using an old corded unit and you’re like me and frequently doing small amounts of soldering in weird places, I encourage you to pick…
Photo by Dominic Romero on Unsplash Think of the most manipulative person you know. You know, the one who spreads rumors to create drama, or the person who knows just how to press your buttons to get you to do something you don’t really want to do unwittingly. It’s pretty easy to get a sense that the things these people do - even if they don’t result in any harm - are bad. They…
Cover Photo by Devin Edwards on Unsplash We’re surrounded by binary choices in our world: the light switch is on or off, we can have a glass of wine or not. We oftentimes want to apply this idea to other situations: our friends like us or not, our work is good or bad. The truth is very few things are actually binary, and almost everything in the world exists as a composition of states - in…
Debate not fighting # All debates are arguments, not all arguments are debates. We aren’t here to address mindless shouting or simply attacking the other person. In a debate each side has a specific claim they’re trying to defend and advance, and is putting forward evidence for their side or rebutting evidence on the other side. Why debate? # When two people disagree, why should they…
Coming from the perspective of a Windows user, Linux may seem entirely alien under the surface. Windows favors a batteries-included, gui driven workflow where programs tend to be all inclusive. Linux favors a command line driven workflow, where only the basics are available, and programs are small and meant to be chained together. The Kernel # This disparate approach is due to many differences,…
So my office lamp is in an awkward location behind a sofa. Instead of re-arranging my office furniture like a sensible person, I decided instead to just install one of those cute $20 tp-link plug that let you toggle stuff via a smart app. Of course, it turns out that the smart app takes an eon to load and I only have my phone on me about half the time. So the answer of course, instead of…
Hello again world! Blog 2.0 is launched. This was a move from Jekyll to Hugo using a tweaked hello friend theme. Specifically I: Removed the byline (all posts are by me) Fixed the trailing dash after date Fixed short blog post content not being displayed on post lists Other little tweaky things More important, the old blog required some git commands to submit new blog posts. That was fine when I…
I’m going to give a theory on why people tend to be afraid of failure, back it up with some anecdotal evidence and then give a recommendation on how you should react to failure in general. Why we fear failure # When you’re in school and you go to take a test or do homework, the general understanding is that you either pass or fail. It’s a binary choice that once made, is mostly…
There are several different strategies for versioning releases. I’ll cover a few of them quickly. Semver # {major}.{minor}.{patch} (or to be a bit more clear) {breaking}.{feature}.{fix} Add in a new feature? Do a minor bump. Change an API? That’s a major. Pretty common, pretty easy, well supported. The Git Hash # This is my preferred strategy and one I use for the iris chatbot. Since…
Spent the weekend at Pax which was amazing but came back to some disappointing news. Pax South # Pax South was amazing. It always strikes me how friendly Pax is, despite being a massive event. The crowd is really kind and it’s an awesome experience. Lots of great games (especially Indie) games coming up. Looking forward to Dreadnought especially. Lots of great merch as always, including…
Everyone has read a blog post that starts with a grand claim such as “MyLatestDB is the fastest database ever!”, or more than likely, “LatestHatedTech is the worst thing ever made ever.” It’s probably pretty obvious the issue with this and instead of ripping apart this approach I’m going to recommend a better one. My goal here isn’t to be exhaustive, but…
I was recently on a comic website and was struggling heavily with their poor UI layout that made navigating pages quite painful so I wrote a tiny tampermonkey script to add in WASD style navigation. This particular site has both between issue and in-issue Previous/Next, so there is a “next page” and a “next comic” button. For compatibility this is written as an ES5 IIFE…
So one of my big focuses in a lot of my projects is less about open sourcing my code (though that’s important) and more about open sourcing my underlying data. To be honest most of the time while I like my code, it’s not really all that special - just about any competent developer could reproduce something close enough. What is special is my data which enables my project. This idea of…
This blog isn’t all that interesting tech wise, but I wanted to take a moment to cover it for those with a passing interest. It’s a jekyll core with a very hacked on midnight theme, currently using jemoji for the :heart:s, :poop: and :laughing:. Code is styled with the very fancy and very awesome Fira Code font so that things like this are a thing: 'use strict' ; const myFunc = (...…
Oh, why, hello there good sir and/or madam. This is awkward because I’ve just started this blog and have a whole lot of nothing to discuss but wanted to have a blog post up to test some styling and other features. Also I think the feed is still broken :broken_heart:. Anyways, please kindly ignore and/or disregard this blog post as you see fit, or rather, I prefer you to.
This blog has been around a few years and will hopefully continue to be around many more. It’s evolved from a strict blog to a general corpus of knowledge. It contains tidbits on programming, hardware, cooking, philosophy and just some of the tools I like. It’s much less about any topic then it is just a pared down slice of what’s generally bouncing around in my head, with a bit…
GPG # C28F4A38C9B37840A04E8D5FB23C8C611F13808D , expires 2024-03-07 Email # <me>at<thisdomain> IRC # vorpalhex on Libera, sometimes other places Twitter, Mastodon, Fediverse, etc # I don’t use most social networking with any consistency. If you come across me feel free to say hi. Donations and Mentoring # I believe in donating frequently to tools I use and open source in general. Drop me an…