Writing with LLMs
I listened to a podcast where an author spoke about using agentic AI to make a writing "team". He had beta reader/critics responding from specific perspectives, another grammar LLM, and an editor LLM - he'd pass drafts back and forth between them like they were people as part of the process.

I have a couple of paid LLMs - Microsoft CoPilot for 365 as part of a subscription, and Perplexity (I have a 3 month free trial program). I started playing with them to see how they could benefit.

I was trying to research a science-fiction book I'd read as a teenager, I only knew the name of one of the races in book, and tried Gemini, Perplexity, ChatGPT and CoPilot. Only ChatGPT pulled up the book title and author, along with a summary - and this was the free ChatGPT version.

I assume that's more a function of the training library, not the LLM itself.

Then, I tried giving them outlines of plot ideas to write - Gemini came in last, the others were comparable. As a last task, I asked them all to write a 500-word short story about an astronaut stranded on Mars, with elements of the story Robinson Crusoe on Mars and The Martian.

ChatGPT felt more nuanced, CoPilot even used the names of the sources in the story. Perplexity felt like a direct-to-dvd version of "The Martian" that you'd see one on of those free channels on Roku.

I think I'll use CoPilot when writing, I like the idea of training it on my own documents and having it easily identify my writing style and body of work out of the box.

posted Sun, 14 Sep 2025
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Proxmox 9 is out!
All historical lessons about early upgrading of systems notwithstanding, I saw the release announcement for Proxmox 9.0 and decided to be one of the bleeding-edge adoptees. I moved my primary workload to my secondary server, ran:

apt update
apt upgrade

Then, update /etc/apt/sources.list, change all references of bookworm to trixie, then run

apt-dist-upgrade

All went well, no issues so far. Already at 9.03...

posted Thu, 07 Aug 2025
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Down Again
I spent last week down with Covid. 2 days of high fever, followed by increasing energy. The one side effect this time? My sense of taste is off. A bear claw tasted like barbecued pork. Spicy mexican food tasted bland - they had mouthfeel but no flavor.

I can't wait for this to go away.

posted Sun, 27 Jul 2025
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Writing again
I've been on a writing binge, scheduling 1 hour blocks of time to write. Not edit, but to sit down with a spiral notebook and a Bic pen and write. No going back, no strikethroughs, just running with an idea and seeing where it takes me.

I realized my other attempts at writing have been heavily narrative - then again, they were nanowrimo efforts in 2014-2016. Trying to include emotions into the narrative makes for much easier flow and makes for better fiction, from what I've learned in this new experiment.

I like writing on paper with a pen, when I use a computer it's too tempting to edit as I go and break the creative flow. Or, to change the formatting and structure as I go. Better to let the words flow and edit later.

With my penchant for technology, gadgetry and toys, it's nice to eliminate the distractions and create with the lowest common denominator, a 45 cent notebook and 20 cent pen.

posted Sun, 20 Jul 2025
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"Return to Industry"
I've read articles chronicling Microsoft's latest round of layoffs. The headline reads "Microsoft to axe "thousands" of its sales staff".

Microsoft is continuing to "focus on building high-performing teams and increasing our agility by reducing layers with fewer managers"

I suppose that's better when they reported that hundreds were "returned to industry", as reported by Microsoft's Ministry of good.speak.

posted Thu, 19 Jun 2025
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No EV
I tried, I gave up. I bought a BMW I3 in 2023, while I was working from home. I installed a 20 amp 208 circuit in my carport, so I could charge my car at home, and all was well.

I started commuting a couple of days a week, a long commute - 75 miles each way. That was just enough for me to need to charge to get home. At first, I tried public chargers - roughly half of the chargers I tried failed to start charging, were broken, or in one case, the charger snapped off one of the plugs at the end of the car port, which is about a $3000 part!

I did love the car, it was efficient, quirky, well engineered. Surprisingly roomy for 4 people, albeit with front-opening rear doors.

I got sick of range anxiety, worrying about not having a spare tire, and wanting something with more room and bought a hybrid gas vehicle. Now I don't have to obsess over range, my electric bill will go down, and so far my best gas mileage was 52 MPG in freeway driving.

posted Sat, 31 May 2025
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Dead Flex
My Fitbit Flex 2 died after 10 years of use. Looking at the options out there, I miss old tech like that.

The interface is 5 LEDs and it notified through a series of 5 colored LEDs and vibrations. Subtle, discrete, and it didn't demand your attention unless it needed it.

I don't need a touch-screen wrist-sized tablet, I want an adjunct that enhances my phone.

posted Fri, 21 Mar 2025
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Kindle Downloads
I read that Amazon is removing the ability to download books to your PC - after 2/26/2025 you'll only be able to download to your Kindle over wifi.

I spent last night sorting through 800+ kindle books on the web page and downloaded most of them to my computer, then imported them into Calibre - my ebook manager.

I'll probably look for non-DRM ebooks moving forward, there are some other ebooks in the space now. While I'm using the Kindle app on my iPhone and a physical Kindle, it might be nice to look at a third-party reader. I've seen a couple of F/OSS Android e-book readers that look interesting.

posted Fri, 21 Feb 2025
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Global Switch Day
It's global switch day, a day to consider switching from siloed, private, for-profit networks to open networks.

I'm already on Mastodon through tilde.zone, have a lemmy account through sdf, started playing with pixelfed, hadn't heard of friendica. I've got some time and and empty house on a rainy day, think I'll start playing with federated, open networks.

To be quite frank, I need to stop doom-scrolling Twitter for my mental health.

posted Sat, 01 Feb 2025
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enn eff ess
Woops! I've created the last several VMs in my proxmox cluster on an NFS share instead of locally. Surprisingly, nothing broke.

posted Tue, 14 Jan 2025
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