Excursions

A fascinating read — instance when ML application is generally positive.

The goal is to better understand these ancient games and their role in human societies, to reconstruct their rules and to determine how they fit into the evolutionary tree of games that has led to the games we play today. They call this discipline archaeoludology.

The researchers have ambitious plans for their incipient science. They say the new techniques of machine vision, artificial intelligence, and data mining provide an entirely new way to study ancient games and to build a better understanding of the way they have evolved.

Cursive writing is fun. Cursive writing is difficult - not everybody’s cup of tea. I was to learn cursive writing.

These statements are mutually exclusive.

And the journey begins! 🤞🏽

A really great article summarizing the perils of files and writes and file systems. And also on why exactly consumers should care. Especially, the below excerpt on cost of data corruption is bang on.

(…) if we look at how consumer software works, it’s usually quite unsafe with respect to handling data. IMO, the key difference here is that when a huge tech company loses data, whether that’s data on who’s likely to click on which ads or user emails, the company pays the cost, directly or indirectly and the cost is large enough that it’s obviously correct to spend a lot of effort to avoid data loss. But when consumers have data corruption on their own machines, they’re mostly not sophisticated enough to know who’s at fault, so the company can avoid taking the brunt of the blame. If we have a global optimization function, the math is the same — of course we should put more effort into protecting data on consumer machines. But if we’re a company that’s locally optimizing for our own benefit, the math works out differently and maybe it’s not worth it to spend a lot of effort on avoiding data corruption.

Nope.

These articles keep getting churned out every few months — and the frequency might even be on the rise. I always wonder why don’t we ask this question - “have we hit peak blogging”? Why can’t podcasting be made more mainstream?

“It definitely won’t be taped at a library where janitors are walking around, yelling in the background of each episode.”

Absolutely bullshit. Weren’t we convincing more people to write what they want? Encouraging them to open their mind, blog more - not think about readers? What’s so different about podcasting?

What if there existed a social network designed for decency? The only intelligence it would have is sentiment analysis that would identify - and subsequently hide or delete - the posts with rants or vile responses. Wouldn’t it make the timeline bearable for many?

There was a time when I used to diligently write a short story every week. I wanted to attempt writing a fictional story of every genre. I was even considering completing a book in the genre I eventually enjoy the most. I always wished I could write humor better. I feel mystery comes naturally. But, detective? Ah. I came across this short story that I wrote more than a year back and boy I remember I struggled a lot writing this.

I want to start writing short stories again. I need to start going back to my writing prompts. I enjoyed that weekly habit of mine — it was a nice getaway from the grinds of daily routine. I miss that.

The consumption of days of content does not lend the satisfaction that an hour of creation can.

I picked up this book just as a filler — something I read in between when am in no mental state of anything serious. Or something that will make me think. Or will make me sad. So I had very little expectations going in. And the book met my expectations to the T. It wasn’t terrible. But I don’t think I will remember any part of it after even a month.

I have now given up on many “memoirs” which are nothing more than essays on varied topic. I have realized that they simply don’t interest me. Especially humor ones. Fact that I could sit through and complete this book is in itself a surprise for me.

One thing that might have worked in favor somewhat is that I listened to this book rather than reading it. I think the experience must have been a tad better. Because ..uhmm.. Ellen. But the content just was too patchy overall. Some essays were brilliantly written. They talked about some nice little ideas. And with Ellen’s easy-on-ears style of narrating, they made me laugh. Some even made me think. Her journal entries while on beach or her thoughts on having (not?) kids, to note a couple, are damn funny.

Others, however, - and there many to be frank - were terrible. Her haikus or bucket lists were just horrible. I don’t even know why were there in the book. They weren’t funny. They had no reason. They were just .. there. Wish if the chapters that weren’t funny at least made me learn something about Ellen’s life. Nope. Didn’t do even that. Few had just 4-5 words. Not something I enjoy - sorry. Even when I have very low expectations.

All in all, this is a terrible memoir, okiesh essay collection, a breezy audiobook. You can listen through it completely over a long drive. You won’t miss a thing while you place and collect your order at a drive through. Don’t pause. Don’t replay. Just let it play on through your drive.

Content gets 2 stars. Ellen gets another star. However, I don’t think I will pick up another of her earlier books any time soon though. Or any of the essay/memoirs. I am done with this genre.

Clouds can spread gloom - but the rain that follows brings out all the colourful umbrellas. The time’s always cheerful.

Every now and then, I spend some time selecting that one good wallpaper for my lock and home screen. And it never is easy. Recently came across this wonderful app - Vellum which has some great selection of wallpapers. I know this is a personal preference, but a nice little app.