Early September Check-In

I don’t have all that much to share, but I wanted to do a “check-in” since I haven’t posted in a while.

  1. Been busy with IRL stuff, which I won’t get into much, since it isn’t anything all that pertinent to this blog. I’ll mostly just say that I am working a bit on my career, my relationship, and myself. The first two I will pass over to write about, but as for working on myself, I am mostly just trying to do more things - even if those things take me out of my comfort zone. One major thing I have a problem with is commitment, and so a bit of this comes into play as well. I am still trying to get a bit more involved in the community, and contribute to projects or events that benefit the collective. Some of these are proving to be surface level, while others a bit more impactful. Regardless, the journey itself is beneficial for my self improvement, albeit a bit exhausting at times when I find myself just wanting to relax and do nothing.

  2. I think I’ve written about this before, but my relationship with AI is a bit complicated, or maybe even hypocritical. I think there are a lot of issues with it, both the industry itself, and the impacts it has on society. But even though I say that, I have found myself using it here and there for various things, and I can’t deny the potential benefits. The main project I have been using it for is my Amalgam project (a board game I am developing, in case you’re not tracking), which I have been relentlessly trying to get digitized for years now.

    1. Previously, I was trying to get this digitized into a web application, as it seemed the most accesible - but recently I have taken another crack at it with a different approach: creating a local client using the Rust programming language. This has surprisingly proven quite successful so far, Basically, the Rust programming language enforces the AI agents (I only use the free models, so it can be quite tedious working on things in small increments via the browser) to work more meticulously. The language throws errors when compiling if there are small issues, where the javascript of the other applications would let it slip through the cracks.

    2. Since I am working with an actual client and not a web interface, I (or I should say the AI agents) have a lot more control over the architecture, and can divide everything up into chunks that behave and interact more reliably. my first step was to extract the actual gameplay rules into a super simple game engine, that operated outside of any sort of GUI or CLI. Then I have CLI and GUI clients that interact through a layer. Honestly, it’s all far past my programming capabilities, but the AI LLMs seem to be doing a halfway decent job getting this functional so far. So I am hoping that maybe, just maybe, this time will be the time that I get something more usable. My biggest win is really the fact that I have the standalone engine working with the rules already complete and clean. So worse comes to worse, I can use that game-engine to pass to other LLMs if needed.

  3. My journey to learn Spanish, as anticipated, hit a bit of a roadblock. I stopped keeping up with the 5 Spanish verbs per day, as I was hoping to do. But all hope is not lost. I have been getting a Spanish word of the day in my email inbox, and I have been keeping up with reviewing them each day. It’s not much, but at least I haven’t abandoned it completely. I am still trying to see what I can do to continue the journey, as I don’t want this to be another abandoned goal, as per usual. I am thinking through options to go forward with, but I think essentially I need some sort of structure. Probably, I will need to actually commit more fully and pay for a Spanish tutor or something, as there are no Spanish language classes near me. But the whole ‘self study’ thing has always proven troublesome for me to stick with. It’s probably time that I bite the bullet and spend some actual money to pursue it more fully. I still don’t know what that is for me yet, but if it’s something I want to pursue (and it is), I think I need to find a more structured path. My one worry with it though is that I am already loading my schedule quite a bit, and I don’t want to spread myself too thin. I need to be realistic in my goals to what is feasible. Essentially I want to push myself to commit to my goals and improve myself, but I also need to ensure that my goals are realistic and attainable for my current circumstances.

  4. Also, I have been busy and haven’t kept up with my reading trend, but my wife and I finally decided to start our “book club”, and I think our first book is going to be 1984, by George Orwell. So hopefully that goes well, and I am excited to do that with her. Neither of us have read it before, and its a reasonably short book to start off our book club to see how it goes.

Peace!

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