Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • 2024 Week 5: Status and Photos

    I found myself in a funk, so to speak, for much of last month. A freak cold front slammed the area and sent temperatures plummeting into the negatives Fahrenheit. A friend came to visit, and while our time with him was fun, I couldn't relax the way I normally would. This was combined with work pressures and my wife beginning her next semester of classes. It was difficult to find chances to decompress the way I like to: exercise, socializing, and engaging in tech hobbies.

  • The existential horror of being transgender

    I contend all these articles, whether explicitly or implicitly, are about being transgender, and that's because they're more broadly on the subject of feeling and/or being understood. I think a lot about problems related to being understood, and not super surprisingly, they're all largely informed by the experience of being transgender

  • Plan for New Life

    I don't like my life at war, but who does? I think of something to do if we really lose the war or life becomes really hard. Then starting a new life is a good idea, but what does it mean? Maybe, just lose your home, retrurning the SIM - which is a part of a modern human being's identity - to the cellular provider, and start living off the grid.

  • Random Thoughts on Self-Identity

    Back in 2013 (the last year I worked, at a library), I got a new boss. She was awesome, and she was the boss I *wish* I would have had all that time. By then I had already transitioned and was wearing goth clothing to work, something I probably got away with since I was always in the back area doing tech stuff. Our particular department was small, so we all knew each other decently well, which was nice since I actually enjoyed my coworkers quite a bit. So it wasn't unknown that I was into gothic rock, darkwave, and industrial music. I mean if me listening to it in my office wasn't a clue, then the black dress and gothic corset probably was.

  • Worst case scenario...

    After a long day at work i am on my way home with a mind clouded with worries, i decide that its best to make a quick stop at the pub to get at least a somewhat clear thought.

    As i walk through the door and get a glimpse of the regulars i head straight to the bar and ask the barkeeper for a strong coffee and a glass whiskey. I turn into the general direction of the next group of regulars and begin to talk:

    "You know... sometimes the shit hits the fan right in the worst possible moment. My wife and i had planned a trip with our son to Vietnam, the homecountry of my wife. Its very important for her because i never had visited the country before and since we had married five years ago there was always some shit (like a global pandemic) that had prevented us from doing so. So far that her relatives are starting to act funny. Well, this year it was planned, my wife will fly with our son on thursday, i myself will fly on 03 March for work related reasons. Well, so it was planned...

• Games

  • RC Character Options

    So the idea back then was that instead of choosing a species separate from class, like choosing Dwarf Fighter, you’d just choose “Dwarf” and you’d get your class abilities that way.

  • d12

    A d12 is so good for creating rolls that are isomorphic to weirdo d6-with-exception situations.

    What I mean is that if I want a one-in-six chance of one thing, but otherwise a 50/50 chance, a d12 is great. Or, if I want a one-in-six chance and in that case a 50/50 chance, a d12 is also great.

    Because a d6, if you remove one of the six outcomes and make that special, that leaves five sides and five isn’t very divisible with two or with anything. But with d12 if you remove two sides you get ten left and that’s great for splitting into two.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Are we seeing diminishing returns on large larguage models?

    Bla bla bla.. I'll ignore the introduction to LLMs since everyone knows what they are. Even my mom asked me about them. The question I want to propose is: are we seeing diminishing returns on large language model scaling?

    The key observation that kick started GPT-2 evolving to GPT-3 was that with Transformers, the model performance scales linearly with the number of parameters. This is unlike the previous vision models where doubling the number of parameters would only give you an limited improvement in classification accuracy. GPT-4 basically confirmed this observation, a larger GPT is indeed better. And this is scary, if the only thing stopping us from achieving AGI is how much compute we can throw at it. Then we will build AGI as a natural consequence of our technological progress. Very soon if trends continue.

  • To RC from 5e

    Our group is considering switching from 5e to Rules Cyclopedia.

    The way I’m selling it is like “Oh, no, it’s absolutely gonna suck. Most of the things that were good in 1e, 2e and RC, we’ve already been using in our 5e game via house rules, so we won’t really be adding anything good or cool. And things like that ghoul fight we had today? In 5e, a ghoul paralyzes you, you’re out for ten rounds but eot save ends. And they only have one paralyzing attack per round. In RC, those ghouls have three chances per round to paralyze you, there’s no eot save ends, and the paralysis lasts for 2d4 turns—each turn is a hundred rounds!

    And the system is way fiddlier and more complex in many ways and less streamlined.

  • HF Antenna in the Attic

    I made a new antenna back in August and it's time to write about it. I began the project because I was not very pleased with my antenna on the balcony. It had some parts close to the ground (and stuff made of metal), some parts inconveniently high up (barely reachable with a ladder), was not cut to the right length, and had a feedpoint outdoors. I wanted something more properly constructed, with convenient access, and the possibility of future modifications. The solution was to put an antenna in the attic.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • What's Coming in Benben v0.4.0

      So first, ignore the previous posts about porting Benben to Common Lisp. I'm now confident that it can continue to be written in Crystal without worrying about threads and such. So uhh... yeah *Jedi mind trick hand wave*

  • Programming

    • Some Random Things

      First, pick your algorithm well. Some are bad, especially old ones from when computers were not very powerful.