Tom Lieber's Microblog

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Sep 16, 2023

What a delight. A new album from Dengue Fever. 🎵

Sep 7, 2023

What I do is, I cancel every automatic update request, accidentally spot a news article about a “clickless” 0-day exploit being patched in macOS, then I manually trigger an update.

Sep 1, 2023

My Steam Deck 🎮 needed a charge and I couldn’t find its usual cable, so I plugged it into the USB-C hub that I use for my laptop… and the peripherals just worked. 😯

My game appeared on my monitor, the audio played through the speakers, and my keyboard even worked.

Why had I never tried this!

Sep 1, 2023

When I write code that I know has noticeable limitations, I used to denote them with TODOs, but lately I’ve been writing them as disclaimers instead. Like instead of:

// TODO: Make this work for multiple cameras.

I’ll write:

// This only works for one camera.

I think it’s a good thing to write only the code that I need right now, but noting the limitations with TODOs made it feel like a liability. It also probably gave the false impression to my teammates that I intended to add unneeded features that I really didn’t.

Aug 16, 2023

Imbroglio’s current Izu mode was such a satisfying nut to crack. 😌

Jul 10, 2023

Currently reading: The Pathless Path by Paul Millerd 📚

Jul 8, 2023

Magna-tiles on a Saturday morning

Jul 6, 2023

Currently reading: A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine 📚

Jul 6, 2023

Who remembers Branch? 😃 Maybe they still have the code around and can fill this Twitter-shaped void.

Jul 6, 2023

Yesterday, I wrestled with insecurity about a design I’d proposed at work. I played Anima on headphones and paced by my desk until I didn’t think the people working nearby could take any more, then I moved to an empty conference room. I think I believe it’s the best option again?

Jun 25, 2023

Me, staring at an LLM answer: “Hmm. Was the training data that contributed to this answer based on sponsored content?”

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Jun 8, 2023

Introducing Chat Notebooks: Integrating LLMs into the Notebook Paradigm

What a time to be alive.

I think I’ve used more OpenAI credits in the last hour than I have over the last month. 😂

Jun 5, 2023

I just created a Google Doc from Mathematica. I feel unstoppable.

May 30, 2023

Today I wrote a quick little post about exploring JSON REST APIs in Wolfram Language.

I wouldn’t have thought that Mathematica would be such a great environment for manipulating JSON, but its built-in dataset query APIs and table renderer are just good!

May 28, 2023

People think that when they turn their eyes from the earth to the sky they see the heavens.

The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka 📚

May 28, 2023

ChucK continues to shine. 🎵 Today’s find: a real-time audio mosaic that plays audio clips from another source (in this case, A Day in the Life by The Beatles) whose features match the audio from the microphone.

May 10, 2023

The latest draft of my Wolfram Language tensor math article is up! I get into function minimization (kind of important in ML?) and pack in several cool purpose-built visualizations that take only a few lines each.

I’ve already drafted the next few sections and there’s fun stuff coming up… 😎

May 10, 2023

Elmo can do no wrong… except the Happy Dance. My kids will not abide it. They yell, “No Happy Dance!” as soon as Elmo learns something new. I don’t know why.

May 6, 2023

I just posted a massive new update to my tensor programming article draft, with an expanded introduction, a worked neural network example, matrix equation pretty-printing, and several gorgeous plots! This article is proving exceptionally fun to write. :)

May 3, 2023

I have a big ol’ writing project planned for exploring fundamental ML concepts in Wolfram Language.

When I’m trying to get work done, I use JAX, but when I’m trying to understand and visualize, I prefer to work symbolically. This article is going to demonstrate why. :}

Read the first section today!

May 2, 2023

Look at how dramatically Wolfram is rebranding. In their own marketing email, they introduce the company’s primary product as “Wolfram Language—the language behind the Wolfram plugin for ChatGPT.”

Apr 30, 2023

My workflow is nascent, but this is the snippet that allowed me to drop that last Mathematica notebook into my site template with no modifications:

Export["body.html", EvaluationNotebook[], "HTML",
 "CSS" -> None,
 "FullDocument" -> False,
 "GraphicsOutput" -> "PNG",
 "ConversionRules" -> {
   "Title" -> {"<h1>", "</h1>"},
   "Section" -> {"<h2>", "</h2>"},
   "Subsection" -> {"<h3>", "</h3>"},
   "Text" -> {"<p>", "</p>"},
   "Input" -> {"<pre>", "</pre>"},
   "Item" -> {"<li>", "</li>"}
   }]

I follow that up with cat head.html body.html tail.html > index.html.

By default, Mathematica turns all those cell types into <p> with classes like “Title” and “Section”, but once I switched to the semantic equivalents, they just worked.

I still haven’t figured out how I want to do margin notes, or how to wrap lists in <ol> or <ul>, or how to embed text versions of all the inputs that it renders as PNG—but in this case I felt that perfect was the enemy of good!

Apr 29, 2023

First they trained ChatGPT to answer questions with Wolfram Language, then they built a library for making your own functions available.

I’m excited about Mathematica again!

As a warmup for publishing more, I upgraded my contrastive representation learning notebook from PDF to beautiful HTML.

Apr 27, 2023

I’ve been noodling on one to the tune of “Let It Be”:

When my planet’s spice is in trouble
It’s time to train a new army
Seeking words of killing
Like Muad’dib

Like Muad’dib
Like Muad’dib
Like Muad’dib
Like Muad’dib
Seeking words of killing
Like Muad’dib

Apr 12, 2023

These could be exactly the same oil and I don’t care. The containers are SO much fun.