Category: Daily Journal

I have a tradition I started some years back of posting at Midnight on the 1st of the year. It was on Twitter for ages, but Twitter having turned into what it is, I went with Bluesky this year. Since those can’t quite be embedded yet, here’s a screenshot and a link to it:

I’m not one for massive public resolutions. I honestly believe the best resolutions are ones you make to yourself and keep to yourself. When I quit smoking almost 12 years ago now, I did so cold turkey, at my choosing, and kept it to myself until I made nearly a year.

On the other hand, I firmly believe in taking the end of the year as a time to take stock and reset. To take the long, wide, and deeper view of one’s life and see if what is should continue to be or needs to evolve. Dates, times, all these are arbitrary. That we conclude a year or begin a year weeks after the solstice and in the middle of Winter is a fluke of following in the footsteps of those that came before, not some universal constant we’re hewing to. And yet, that agreed upon resetting of the calendar, that renumbering from one, is a good excuse to reset in the other bits of a life. To continue forward aware of the forward flow of things, and, though willing to look backwards, not binding one’s self to the consequences of what came before.

Happy New Year. Let’s see what another spin around the Sun has in store for us all.

Inputs

1: It’s January 1st, which means it’s all college football, all day. Wisconsin lost a heartbreaker to LSU, but looked closer to the promise of Luke Fickell than at any time before, in a game that was, at most, a very early Spring game. Here’s hoping more exciting things are in store for the local kids.

Meanwhile, at the time I write, the Rose Bowl is a good game, with Michigan’s defense stepping up to the challenge against Alabama. Should be a good, if oddly long, game. And then Washington and Texas, I expect, will be the polar opposite of a brawl, with every indication they’ll score with abandon.

2: Yesterday was filled with NFL games and an unfortunate loss for the fantasy team against what turned out to be a buzz saw of an opponent. Still, a solid year for Team Calvinball, and I’m excited to watch football with nothing at stake but entertainment (and a rooting interest in the Buccaneers).

3: Watched various YouTube videos to fill in the day, including the farewell from Tom Scott. Tom had presaged this ahead of his stepping away from regular efforts on his personal channel, but it still feels like the end of an era. Tom’s (like the guys who run Practical Engineering, Smarter Every Day, and the Brothers Green) was one of the voices you could count on to make the complex and intricate seem approachable, and who was willing to take all the time in the world to bring aspects of the world to his audience. Thanks, Tom, and best of luck in the next endeavors.

Projects In Progress

I don’t talk about my resolutions, but I do expect one outcome from keeping to them to be better progress here. So, we’ll see what happens. For now though, should be back to it mañana.

Final Friday of the year, so we’re gonna keep it light today. No huffing, puffing, moralizing or moaning on about various and sundry. That’s what Monday’s for! (I kid, I kid.)

Inputs

1: The main event today was the Sun Bowl. I’m a pretty big Notre Dame football fan, owing to my being introduced to watching football by my uncle, and being taught to watch Notre Dame first and football in general second. Great game from a team of backups and second choices at many positions, with a restructured offensive line protecting the second string quarterback to a stellar performance.

2: I’ve been reading through Defector’s year end roundups and a favorite of them is the “What Our Families Thought Of Defector” series. It’s easy to see writers and columnists as autonomous voices, opinions in ink and inches¹Or these days mostly pixels and ems, but metaphors die slowly., and forget the human behind the words, and the network of people within which they exist. I love that Defector wears its humanity on its sleeve and in its prose, that it isn’t afraid to be a collection of powerful voices rather than a monolith with a house voice and style. Congrats to another year to the best sports writing on the internet or anywhere else.

3: The MST3K Marathon! As is tradition, especially in the upper Midwest of the show’s birth²One of the few things I’ll give Minnesota full credit for., MST3K is running their episode marathon at the close of the year. It’s free, go watch some classics from Tom Servo, Crow, CamBot, Gypsy, and your choice of jumpsuited hosts³I’m a Joel man, myself, but they’re all great hosts, Brent..

Projects In Progress

Mostly didn’t do a thing today. It’s the last Friday of the year. Ease off the gas a bit, bud.

Notes:

• 1
  Or these days mostly pixels and ems, but metaphors die slowly.
• 2
  One of the few things I’ll give Minnesota full credit for.
• 3
  I’m a Joel man, myself, but they’re all great hosts, Brent.

I went down to the UPS Store and had my fingerprints taken. It was an odd experience, both psychically and physically. They have a presumably high tech scanning system that was repeatedly foiled by its inability to present a reasonable UI to the worker, the legal requirement that they, not I, place my own fingers awkwardly on a sheet of glass, and the need to take an oddly large number of scans. And then doing so at a place where most people drudge to ship packages or check PO Boxes, like some secret alternate existence of the same liminal location, a dual place like The City and The City. Some privatized privacy pryer. Records collected for you wholesale.

Anyhow, weird experience, and only the first two of the seven labors of Callimachus. Next up: traipsing to an unmarked door in the first 45 minute window in the first week of the new year where I can prove an absence through historical reckoning. Bureaucracy is a sort of magic spell. A recipe of labors. Let’s keep cookin’.

Inputs

1: On the ocean of recommendations, I watched Saltburn. Which I’m very glad was via streaming, alone, and not among others or in a public viewing.

I have a significant level of empathic twinge to me, so watching awkward takes a lot of effort. I must have paused the movie two dozen times, screwing up the nerve to delve further into the experience. Mostly that’s Barry Keoghan, who is insanely talented and yet makes me uncomfortable to watch, just from his sheer force of presence.¹Or sort of anti-presence? He’s got a way of being the polar opposite of a person, in that he feels like a negative space occupied by a character. It’s mesmerizing and uncomfortable and incredibly effective. Add to that Richard Grant, who in my mind only ever plays someone on the verge of or actively experiencing a manic episode, plus the weight of posh judgment throughout and the aural distance of the accents, and it was beautiful, uncomfortable, and an experience to behold. Also, as everyone recommends, go in cold.

2: Caught the latest edition of Why Is This Interesting, which covers AI and Chain Of Thought Prompting vs Standard Prompting, in which an AI is given a more thorough instruction set to follow through rather than asked an open prompt, leading to it showing its work and more accurately arriving at an answer.

WITI looks at it through the lens of Japanese hospitality and the culture of “omotenashi”, which involves “(B)ringing your full, authentic self to serve a guest and doing so in a humble, non-ostentatious way. It is about a lack of pretense and showing no expectation of reciprocity.” The article points to a Nikkei article about the practice and how it can inform AI.

I tend to think of it more along the lines of being asked, as in educational settings, to show one’s work. While that instruction in school can feel like an imposition, an extra weight of baggage around providing an answer to a problem, what it actually does is flense open the work of arriving at that answer, so that logical or mechanical inconsistency can be seen in situ rather than obfuscated beyond the veil of the result.

Beyond this, it focuses the attention on what is often the more important result in many situations, understanding how to draw a conclusion from inference, logical reasoning, and specific effort to find a result, rather than the sheer value of the result itself.

Regardless, that AI models drawing from neuronal connection and trained on human outputs find benefit from human tasks of stepping through problems is a curious insight.

3: Bowl Week continues apace, so watched a bunch of background football with no rooting interest nor emotional attachment besides the general ennui of watching the denouement of another season of college football. It’s the end of a number of eras, the ellipsis to close out the year, and the victory lap before the victors take their lap. Here’s to college football. May we enjoy what remains before the curtains fall and the band plays us out.

Projects In Progress

Webapp: Still poking at headless CMS systems, seeing if I can make ’em bark.

Notes:

• 1
  Or sort of anti-presence? He’s got a way of being the polar opposite of a person, in that he feels like a negative space occupied by a character. It’s mesmerizing and uncomfortable and incredibly effective.