I listened to part 1 of the Acquired Podcast on the history of Google. Outstanding and nostalgic. I was a super early google user, thanks to a mention on slashdot on the late 90s. It got me thinking: what if… What if I travelled back to 2005 with my current knowledge, what would I do? What online business would I build? I was thinking about SEO and authority sites, based on the Acquired podcast episode on google. ...
After a long holiday where you eat like a pig and exercise not at all, how do you get back on the path? You must cut calories and get the body/brain used to the new regimen as fast as possible, e.g. avoid backsliding. Firstly cut all junk food and processed foods. Next, cut carbs. Then cut calories to below maintenance. All while exercising daily, as close to normal as possible. Don’t feel like going to the gym? Who the hell does? Fine, walk 5km. Lift at home. Get that body moving. Strain those muscles. ...
I created an archive of all official releases for Quake II (Quake2): Quake II Official Archive It complements my Quake Official Archive and Quake III Arena Official Archive. It seems that the Quake2 era circa (1998) was perfect for the wayback machine and almost all Quake2 files were archived. This Quake2 archive is the most complete of the three archives. The main files missing are a few solaris dedicated server releases, and these may or may not be “official”, more research is required. ...
I found and acquired a copy of the monograph: Public Knowledge, Private Ignorance, Patrick Wilson, 1977. From the first chapter: Scholars and scientists engage in attempts to make contributions to a public body of knowledge about the world. They do not work simply to increase their own private understanding of the world, nor simply to increase the understanding of their co-workers in a specialized branch of inquiry. Their work is incomplete until they have made their results public, available to anyone, now and in the future, who can understand and make use of them. ...
I read Samuel Arbesman’s “The Half-life of Facts” yesterday. Good book, great even. I’ll be reading more by Arbesman. One section got me thinking about LLMs, chapter 6 titled “Hidden Knowledge”. It is about how there are breakthroughs sitting in plain sight, in public hidden knowledge. For example, disparate facts spread across fields that need to be unified. “Hidden knowledge takes many forms. At its most basic level hidden knowledge can consist of pieces of information that are unknown, or are known only to a few, and, for all practical purposes, still need to be revealed. Other times hidden knowledge includes facts that are part of undiscovered public knowledge, when bits of knowledge need to be connected to other pieces of information in order to yield new facts. Knowledge can be hidden in all sorts of ways, and new facts can only be created if this knowledge is recognized and exploited.” ...
I have been thinking of coding up some more elaborate prompt scaffolding for writing projects. I guess I don’t need to. Today, I watched: I Got AI to Write a Book with One Click, and It Was… It’s a great video. It uses Make connected to models via OpenRouter. It’s you’re classic code-free workflow tool, but for prompting LLMs. It starts with a sequence for developing the story outline, then uses the outline to create 3 outlines of chapters in parallel. ...
I re-read Mark Manson’s “Subtle Art” yesterday. I enjoyed it more this time than the first time through back when it was released. I guess am more ready to hear it. A part that that really clicked with me was on struggle. It’s a piece I used to mention often, but I guess I’d forgotten recently. We all struggle. Struggle is growth, it’s life. But, we can pick our struggle. ...
I just finished “He’s Not Lazy” by Adam Price. Good book. Read more pre-emptively I guess. Preventative maintenance. Lots of things I need to remember, especially in the heat of things when thinking turns off. The most important being that any “fight” with a teenager is probably about power and you will lose because they will go further. They have less to lose. “However, there is one type of conflict you should learn to avoid: a power struggle. Without even knowing you, I can predict who will win the next one: your teen. He will always win. That’s because he has so much more at stake than you: He’s fighting for his independence. He will best you because he’s willing to go to any length to win—screaming, swearing, embarrassing you in public, whatever it takes.” ...
I’ve been working on trying to acquire hardware for the “Old Desktop PCs for Learning” project for my eldest. We have a few bits and are hoping to get a few more. It’s harder than I thought. I guess the e-waste initiatives are working. In the old days, there were tons of old hardware out there in hard rubbish and in peoples garages. Anyway, once we get a good base stock of hardware we need workshop projects to work through. ...
My eldest is getting interested in PCs and building his own desktop system. Cool. I did that around his age and it was a lot of fun. A thing I did was I acquired many old systems from people (e.g. hard rubbish) and cobbled together my own little LAN of 286/386/486 systems running Linux. It forced learning in both hardware and OS/software and was a lot of fun. I was thinking we could do something similar. ...