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· One min read

English​

Nexus: A connection or a series of connections linking two or more things

Nexus: The concept of "nexus" refers to a business having a sufficient physical presence in a state, which requires it to register and pay taxes in that state. If your S corporation has a significant presence or does a substantial amount of business in California, it might establish nexus there, obligating it to comply with California tax laws. - "ChatGPT"

· 3 min read

My use case is to have the llm query my personal conversations & other digital activity with questions like:

  • Tell me what were the major events in my relationship with X hehe during Feb-Oct 2023?
  • What have I learned from that period? Aka what mistakes that showed up then I make less, if any, in my relationship with Y based on our Telegram conversations?

My understanding is there are at least these ways to solve this problem:

RAG​

Very standard RAG - which I have yet to do still.

Chunk the messages. For example each chunk is a message [chat name, time stamp, author, message] Embed all these chunks, finally ask the question, embed the question, get relevant chunks, add them to the prompt, get the answer.

Fine Tuning​

If the goal for the fine tuned model to reply as I would, or be able to simulate my contacts, then simply feeding all conversations as linear text makes sense. Also actually never did this, so a good idea to try.

Fine-tuning algorithm ideas:

  • A sliding window of 100 messages trying to predict the 101st message.

My hypothesis is that its not aligned with the goal. The goal is to remember facts. So the fine tuning should be done by feeding the model very limited information about prior conversation so it could not simply emulate the style of the person we are predicting a response for, but rather remember the actual message they sent.

Algorithm ideas:

  • Pre-process all messages and classify them as important / not important. For the not important ones figure out a class of it, maybe we want to query how often we talk about class C, without the details of the conversation, because its not substantial.
  • Alternative pre-process: Find batches of related messages and summarize them into a single text chunk, with possible quotes and references to original messages.

Thoughts:

  • Sliding window might be perfectly fine for remembering. The way to decrease the loss on the test set is to remember the messages. So if you run it often enough - it should remember all the messages. You can have a very short sliding window - even of 1 - the message you are trying to predict, and the prompt would be [chat, time, author] -> message. In a sense the followup algorithm is more of an optimization.
  • Would be interesting to benchmark different approaches
  • I am also sure someone did this already TODO find posts / papers on this topic

· One min read

I always thought that the expression "high five" is spelled "half five". What a dumb ass I am. Now that I know the spelling - the phrase finally makes sense to me! I am now also pretty sure I have heard the phrase "low five" - which should have triggered a review in my head about my inner "half five" notation.

Mini word play epiphany: Context: My friend is about to return to the Bay They: I miss home, it sucks here Me: Welcome back Alternative: Well, come back!

· 6 min read

Since Diagrams: Show Me has gotten popular, first the Plugin, now the GPT, I have been meeting with more people - people reach out to me suggesting to work together, to chat, to discuss something.

[Autocompleted by copilot] I have been trying to be open to these interactions, but I have noticed that some of them are not going anywhere. I am not sure if I am doing something wrong, or if it is just the nature of things. I have been thinking about what to do about these interactions. [tab complete ended]

Copilot is annoying - its like propoganda that skips the thinking process alltogether. It appears as if you though it. This is a very basic observation. It is also a roast on your own thoughts and continuasly reminding us that the machines are about to take over. I read what it output and think - fuck, that might have been roughly what I would think - I just didn't have enough time to think that yet. Its a little undermining devil always 100s of tokes ahead of you.

Continuing original thought after disabling copilot.

Most new contacts don't go anywhere. I have gotten more agressive with filtering who I meet with, but the main filter is basically how much do you want to meet? Are you opened to us laying more cards on the table before hopping on a call? People usually are. During the call people sound excited, with next steps to take roughly planned out.

I met with a pharmacist who wanted to create diagrams for doctors which they can use as references when diagnosing / performing some procedure / administering treatment. Like build your own chains aka sweet greens having print outs showing how to make different stock salads glued above the prepped ingreedient trays. Great fucking idea! We talked, I made a couple of suggestions, basically criticising their current approach, they left saying they will reach out back to me in a week or two.

Months have gone by. I will never hear from them again. What happened? I am not invested enough to find out.

Next. Friends of my family and parents of a good old friend of mine. Reached out - want to sell / build a team making eterprise AI solutions. I have suggested they focus on sales. Said I am interested but it will be hard to afford me at this time. I only sell out for a high price as I am fortunate enough to have little responsibilities in my life and be sitting on a minor stash from the previous ludicrous rental of my skills.

I suggest they talk to my brother about sales. I let the brother know. Nothing happens as far as I know. We spent an hour talking. Maybe more. We were totally fine spending 3 people hours on this - and also totally fine to not have any followup actions.

Similar frustration comes up when I realize how little I postprocess on the entertainment in my life. I want a movie. At best I will discuss this with a friend. At best. Most of the movies / shows I have watched by myself - and you won't see any reflection there. I have been trying to break that habbit lately by messaging self on telegram with a short review on the movie. You will say - well movies and shows is when I try to enjoy the moment, relax - let the fucking screenwriters worry about breaking that shit down into pieces and spitting it at one another [I mean it in the best possible way, spitting is fun]. The problem is - this is a pattern that just shows up everywhere I look in my life. And I have a feeling this shows up in most people's lifes. This reminds me of the sick system essay / blog post my friends introduced me to suggesting my relationship was a sick system, but thats another story. The point is - we jump from meeting to meeting, from movie to movie, from task to task, thought to tought, X to Y, not X, reflect(X) |> ideallyPersist, Y. The interactions have a dead end because for them not to, we need to reflect, figure what do we want to do - do we choose to continue or do we choose to put a period. Either way, my strong belief is we should reflect. Without the reflection piece I believe I have went on with my life with this thing nagging me - yes, that thing, is totally happening, you did well, there is still a chance it will flourish. Wrong. It died. Silently. Without dignity. As my brother and I would say in the end of a PUBG or Population One match spent looting and then dying in our first and last encounter of the match with the winner - "besslavnaya katka". Yes, this analogy is "podtianutaya za ushi", but I don't give a fuck - its my blog. Yo.

There is a whole other question of why we don't reflect. Why I don't reflect. Its tedious, its not a habbit. People around us don't do it, so its not culturally engrained in us. [Hook] to pull more thoughts.

So lets reflect. Jesus I almost missed this step. See what I am talking about!! This is what I have to deal with all the time.

I don't allocate time to reflecting post doing something. This prevented me from critically thinking about my next step. Changing this behavior is hard - any habbit is hard to aquire, and this one is one of the all encompasing, almost life philosophy ones. This class of habbits is the hardest in my book. I am slowly making strides in the right direction. The whole blog idea - is basically that - reflecting in written form. Allocating time to think. Thinking with the help of a canvas to prevent magical thinking, improve idea recall etc etc.

What can I do to reflect more?

  • Set this as one of the year goals? This year I will reflect the shit out of my activities. Again. Don't over do it.

    • I had versions of this - go write it out (tomorrow, its already late, enough of the reflecting and thinking how to improve this process)

  • Reflection is triggered by a thought provoking activity. Today I started reflecting with the movie Dune 2. I started writing down my thoughts on the movie. I don't even remember how the thought of this article came about

    • So when down - do a provocative activity
    • Next - do nothing - meditate fucker - that next movie, game, [distracting activity] wants to eat you alive, it wants to keep the sick system running, it wants you busy. Take a pause. Do nothing. This has worked for you many of times. Is one of the main suggestions from your therapy sessions.

  • Write a program to help me with this post activity reflections? Motion assistant should be a good fit for this

· 2 min read

I came up with an idea to schedule a message that would be sent to yourself from a known number after a specified amount of time.

For example, let's say you're about to meet someone and you want to receive a provocative message on your CarPlay after you meet them, they would notice it and you can use that for a variety prank scenarios. It could be a message from a pre-named contact (a fixed service twilio number), like "Hey, what are you up to?" or "Thank you for leaving your number with me yesterday, I had a great time." This prank can add some excitement to your interaction and spark a funny conversation.

You should always disclose after the fact that it was a prank, and generally think if the prank is appropriate for the situation.

Implementation​

  • Create 1-2 service accounts on twilio. One to message with commands and another to send the scheduled message to yourself. 2 if you want to keep a 'clean' number for the prank so you could also open the conversation on your phone and show the full history to the person you're pranking, otherwise the fact you scheduled the message will be visible.
  • Evaluate if twilio's workflow builder is powerful to implement the whole thing. If not, I belive you can deploy a javascript script to twilio to handle the scheduling and sending of the message.
  • When the 'command' number recieves a message
    • Parse it: schedule 10min "Hey, what are you up to?" and schedule the message to be sent to yourself in 1 hour. or help to get a list of commands.
    • Schedule
    • Prank responsibly!

Alternatives​

· One min read

The idea came to me when designing, and redesigning and redesigning the Airtable base for my dad's car business.

I have desined the schema. Then tried to actually run through the flows and see how it would work. Then I realized some flaws in the schema and redesigned it. Then I tried to run through the flows again. And again. And again.

What if an LLM were to generate plausible fake usage? It would be a great way to test the design of the schema. It would help uncover flaws faster and more efficiently.

Product - Airtable extension that generates plausible fake usage given a base.

· 2 min read

I have built a small utilty for myself to help me go to bed on time, its been helping me so far. I distributed it on GitHub bra1nDump/kill-my-mac, try it out and let me know if this helps you too.

kill my mac and let me sleep​

  • I want to got to bed at a consistent time for health, productivity, and social reasons
  • When I don't go to bed early, chances are I am coding / watching something on my mac
  • The system suggestions to 'go to bed' are too easy to ignore, I tune them out magically

How it works​

  • Your computer will be shut down during hours 12am - 6am
  • 1 hour and 10 minutes before the sleep hours start the computer will warn you, if your sound is on
  • Open an issue if you want a feature to customize the sleep hours

How does it actually work?​

  • It installs a LaunchAgent that runs shutdown-job every minute
    • You can find the agent configuration here ls ~/Library/LaunchAgents
  • shutdown-job.sh
    • If computer is already asleep (uses pmset), do nothing
    • If close to sleep hours, warns the user
    • If in sleep hours, shut down using apple script osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to shut down'

Alternatives:​

References:​

· 7 min read

Porridge with sides

Inspiration: Repeat trip to Taiwan Porridge in Cupertino: https://maps.app.goo.gl/BwiSEV3XsVqxoUFH8

I loved:

  • How simple and flavorless the base is: its just rice and water
  • How savory the sides are: pork, bok choy, cucumber salad
  • The texture of the tofu noodles - they were very tender and pleasing to chew, unlike any other noodles I've had
  • In general I'm a sucker for mixing things together to taste for each bite, and this dish is perfect for that

My friend and I have been trying to meet more people and just in general socialize more, so we've been inviting people over for dinner. We would pick a recipe from one of the blue apron ones left from previous tenants. We wait for the guests to show up and then cook it altogether. Usually 4 max 6 people show up, this time we maxed out what the invites and pretty much everyone showed up with a crazy turnout off 12 people. I'm glad we pick this recipe because we had a lot of independent dishes that different people could be working on in parallel. Anyways posting this recipe here because I'm trying to get in the habit of posting written content, and I have already prepared the recipe section of the post to print out and give to people who came over.

Congee

https://www.ediblecommunities.com/recipes/the-best-congee/

4 servings ½ cup medium-grain rice

Maybe do a sweet-potato version?

Instructions

  • Prepare a steamer. Cut in 1 cube inch pieces. Steam sweet potatoes for 15 minutes.
  • Put the rice in a large pot. Add water to the pot. The more water you use, the thinner your porridge will be. I start with a 12:1 ratio—so six cups of water for this amount of rice—but if you like a thicker porridge, you can use as little as an 8:1 ratio.
  • Bring to a boil and then lower the heat to a slow simmer. Stir the pot every so often so that the rice doesn’t stick to the bottom. After about fifteen minutes, the rice will look fully cooked. After half an hour, the grains will plump up to about five times their original size, but the mixture will still be fairly watery. After about 45 minutes, the porridge should reach a smooth, silky, creamy consistency. That’s when you know you’re done. (It’s a forgiving recipe. If the congee looks too thick, add some more water and let it cook down for a few more minutes. If it looks too thin and soupy, just cook until it thickens some more.)
  • Combine the sweet potatoes with the congee. Should not be seasoned - sides are heavily seasoned (hopefully).

Pork

https://yireservation.com/recipes/congee-with-minced-pork/

½ LB minced pork 1 slice ginger ½ tbsp Salt and pepper ¼ cup water 3 teaspoons sesame oil

Prepare the pork by mixing the minced pork with all the pork ingredients except the water. Add water slowly to the pork while stir the minced pork with a spoon in the same direction. Stop adding the water when the pork becomes lighter and well incorporated with water.

Bok choy

https://www.madewithlau.com/recipes/stir-fried-bok-choy See website - has best instructions with videos

(8 servings) 2 lb baby bok choy (larger bok choy works too) 4 clove garlic 4 tbsp corn oil 1 tsp salt 1 tsp sugar 1 tsp chicken bouillon (optional)

Instructions​

  • Peel away each individual stem, and toss them into a bowl of large water

  • Scrub your fingers along the bottom of each stem closest to the root. Dirt usually accumulates here.

  • Rinse under running water.

  • Drain the bok choy (1 lb) in a colander, and lay them flat onto a towel. It's important that we dry them before stir-frying.

  • We'll be trimming the bok choy by cutting the stems in half length-wise.

  • We can also optionally separate the leaves from the stalk. Sometimes my dad prefers to cook the stalks first, and then the leaves.

  • Heat the wok on high heat for 2-3 minutes.

  • While the wok heats up, we'll mince some garlic (2 clove).

  • Then, add corn oil (2 tbsp) until the oil is shimmering, or forming ripples across the surface.

  • It's important that the wok and oil get sufficiently hot.

  • Add the minced garlic, and then the bok choy stalks a few seconds later. Then, add the rest of the bok choy.

  • We'll be cooking everything for 6-8 minutes. We're looking for the stalks to soften a bit and the leaves to turn a more deep, vibrant green.

  • Right before we finish cooking, we'll add our salt (0.50 tsp), sugar (0.50 tsp), and chicken bouillon (0.50 tsp) (optional).

  • Especially for the salt and chicken bouillon, it's important to add this at the very end before plating, since they'll instantly start causing the bok choy to release moisture.

To stop the bok choy from overcooking, we'll want to transfer them onto a plate immediately.

Cucumber Salad

https://farahjeats.com/recipe/easy-asian-cucumber-salad/

Persian cucumbers Salt Sesame oil Light soy sauce Sugar Rice vinegar Chili oil Sesame seeds

Instricutions​

  • Rinse and slice one end of the cucumber at an angle.
  • Continue slicing at an angle. Slices should look more oval than round. Thickness should be up to preference.
  • Add to a bowl/container and sprinkle 1/2 tsp of salt.
  • Mix that well and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes to draw out the water.
  • Drain the water and give the cucumbers a quick 10 seconds rinse before returning back to the bowl/container.
  • Add sesame oil, light soy sauce, sugar, rice vinegar, chili oil and sesame seeds.
  • Stir until well combined and serve. Enjoy!

Extra credit​

  • Sweat the cucumbers – Season the sliced cucumbers in a bit of salt and refrigerate for 20 minutes to 1 hour, then drain the water. The salt will draw out the excess moisture from the cucumbers – effectively “sweating” them – which leaves the cucumbers crunchy. This helps to prevent the salad from ending up in a pool of liquid with a watery dressing.

Tofu noodles

ChatGPT - wasn't able to find plain recepie

"Tofu Shirataki" noodles or "Tofu Noodles"

  • Rinse: Open the package and rinse the noodles thoroughly under cold water. This step is important to remove the liquid they are packed in, which sometimes has a strong odor.
  • Boil: Boil the noodles for 2-3 minutes. This helps to further remove any unwanted taste and improves texture.
  • Dry and Sauté (Optional): To give them a more noodle-like texture, after boiling, drain them and then sauté in a dry pan for a few minutes. This step dries them out and improves their texture.
  • Seasoning (Optional): While these noodles are great plain, especially as a side for congee, you can lightly season them with salt, soy sauce, or a dash of sesame oil if desired. However, if you prefer them plain as you mentioned, feel free to skip this step.
    • I think sesamie oil will work great!

Shoping list

Produce Section​

  • Sweet Potatoes: 2-3 medium-sized (optional for congee)
  • Baby Bok Choy: 4 pounds
  • Persian Cucumbers: 9-10
  • Garlic: 8 cloves
  • Ginger: 2 slices
  • Green Onions: a small bunch
  • Shallots: 2 medium-sized

Rice & Grains​

  • Medium-Grain Rice: 1 cup

Meat Section​

  • Minced Pork: 2 pounds

Refrigerated Section​

  • Tofu Shirataki Noodles / Tofu Noodles: 4-5 packages
  • Kimchi: 1-2 jars

Oils, Vinegars, & Condiments​

  • Sesame Oil
  • Light Soy Sauce
  • Rice Vinegar
  • Chili Oil (Optional)

Spices & Seasonings​

  • Chicken Bouillon (Optional)
  • Sesame Seeds
  • Pork Stock Powder

Cooking Oils​

  • Corn Oil

· 2 min read

Life is fucking difficult. Writing philosophical shit does not really have much meaning to it apart from sentemental value to the writer and validating the reader's human condition. Thats literally it. Writing should be more technical informational for any other kind of usefulness. I am saying very obvious things and I don't really give a fuck. I have been so frustrated with myself for not writing that it is currently 3:24 am and I was just thinking how important it is to wind down before sleep and that.

I should literally setup some automation to kill my screen at a certain time. Like when wind down notification is recieved 45 min before sleep a count down has to start for 5 minutes to wrap shit up commit push whatever but it has to be an actual hard dead line. Electronics has to die. Or I will without ever becoming good at anything because of never figuring out my sleep schedule. At least thats what I will tell my monkey brain.

I love monkey brain the phrase, it so well describes the dumbness but inventivness of our neural network. Look at me and my fancy words I am so fucking smart oh yeeesss. Also I missed typing ... I am not using voice control wich I probably should rn. But oh well health is already put on a back burner when this is happening in the middle of the night. Things need to be logged. All things need to be logged. If things are not logged we are missing history. And not knowing history for nations leads to war and not knowing history for what you are seeing on your fucking screen what you are doing physically or online or in the bran :D leads to my life. Thinking the same shit almost every single fucking day. Just being stuck in a loop. And this is not only my experience. Literally everyone has to be this way [edit: definetely not the case]. We have to commit to certain patterns, its just a question of healthiness as well as variability within those patterns. I need to calm the fuck down why did I dricnk that stupid coffee today ... . How many works is this this took me 10 minutes to write. I think I am done. Attempt 2 2 go 2 bed.