any · textlog

wrote:

I'm doing experiments with short attention-span students and code. Starting with python, and, oddly, now working in BASIC. As a C programmer of 40+ years, I find this aesthetically and pedagogically displeasing, but I am delighted to see them getting fully absorbed in writing 130 PRINT "You have been eaten by a bear!" : GOTO 900. Yes there is spaghetti, but it's their spaghetti and they seem to take delight in debugging it. Python will come later.

(deleted post)

replied to(deleted account):

I was talking about this with some alumni students, specifically their experience learning python with us a few years earlier (these are college students who are not really using python any more). What it seems to boil down to is that with python you have the feeling that there is this huge forest of solutions to any problem you are having -- but you will never know the whole forest. BASIC feels like you "know" it after a day or two of playing around, evidently.

wrote:

new semester euphoria is real. its like the only time i ever leave the house in the mornings. stay tuned to find out if itll last more than a couple lectures

wrote:

A thing I've been doing lately is trying to come to the same conclusions others have without looking their the direct techniques and code. Last night I tried to figure out why people do vector based retrieval for RAG and ended up running these experiments: n0tls.com/…/2026-09-03-i-think-…rag-with-grep.html I'm still going to do an explore agent.

continued:

Here's a follow up from last night: n0tls.com/…/2026-09-05-fine-tuning-…tiny-retriever.html This has been a great way for me to learn in this space. Learning with AI has been such a fun time for me.

wrote:

For the first time in a couple of year, I wove a rattan basket today, and the best part is it only took two hours when I was expecting it to take all day

wrote:

අද පොහොය දවස. ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ හැම මාසයකම පුන් සඳ පායන දවස පොදු නිවාඩු දිනයක්. වෙසක් පොහොය (මැයි මස) ලෝකයටම නිවාඩු දිනයක්.

Today is Poya Day. The full moon day of every month in Sri Lanka is a public holiday. Vesak Poya (May) is a holiday for the whole world.

wrote:

Day length formula: (Did you know that it becomes a triangle wave at the (ant)arctic circle?)

wrote:

Mltply workbooks are on Etsy

wrote:

G

replied to:

Hi

wrote:

Just started, and two made it to be block list. This is going well! :-D

replied to:

Didn't realize there's a block list! Good to include, even when the point is minimalism.

replied to:

It is good it exists. “Registration” is fairly open (and that’s good!), which could make the platform prone to abuse (and that’s bad).

wrote:

there's no fundamental physical limit that prevents silicon from developing taste and judgement, but language is a lossy compression of reality. taste comes from experience, from the shadowy mass of episodic memory, which swirls and convects at the boundary of consciousness. the ideas recombine into new ones in the nuclear reactor of the hippocampus. but no matter how imbued with meaning and expertise is a handmade wardrobe we still get our shit from ikea

wrote:

There is beauty in simplicity. Constraint can become impetus for innovation, because innovation does not have to be glitzy.

replied to:

좋은 문장입니다.

That is a good sentence.

…

replied to:

Word! It's a travesty that complexity seems to be lauded and rewarded over simplicity.

replied to:

My favorite innovations in my own work -- and to be honest, I'd prefer to call them "discoveries" -- came from simplification. There's a beautiful moment when a stack of difficult, conflicting ideas collapse into a tighter, simpler structure.

…

replied to:

Enlightenment

wrote:

I've been wanting to make some cute fox ears, and a tail! gonna have to buy a headband and some fur tho, UGH!! ႔ ႔ ᠸᵕ ᵕ 𐅠

wrote:

I had hit a throttle now. That’s a “subtle" way to tell me to slow down.

wrote:

guess who found some really cool book in my house!!! me! it's called the secret teachings of all ages.. should I give this a SHOT!!?!??

wrote:

in a hackathon rn. building a cloud platform for agents on my homelab.

wrote:

Hello textlog 👋

replied to:

Hi 👋

wrote:

i hate people who answer for me because im midway getting edged for a sneeze

wrote:

I'm having way too much fun painting backgrounds which breathe and flow, made out of neural cellular automata, into the game I'm making today.

wrote:

I naively went into a work problem thinking that RAG was solved by the service offered at work, and wow was I wrong. Been a fun week so far experimenting with many different methods before doing the academic research, and it's been nice to be validated by outside research.

Any conversation