What I've Been Up To Lately (or, blog posts to come)

I've been doing a lot of different things in the past few months, and have a growing pile of not-quite-publishable draft posts about them.

This post is a list of those things, and a promise to myself to write some of them up! I'll add links to this post as I publish more. The list is too long - that's part of the problem.

Topics include:

AI, AI, and more AI

Practical Deep Learning for Coders (part 1) study group

I did this with some folks at the Recurse Center from february to april 2025. Fascinating stuff, and writing about it would be a great excuse to revisit and review.

TL;DR: Doing actual ML training and inference is much more approachable than we have been led to believe. You don't need an advanced math background, and there's a ton you can do without relying on the big commercial models.

Also: is it a cat?

Study group: ARENA chapter 3, LLM Evaluations

I worked through ARENA chapter 3 with some folks at the Recurse Center in May 2025. We did it as an intensive 4-day project. (Spoiler: 4 days is not enough, but we did a lot.)

This was my first real stab at learning something practical about the fascinating and crucial (and much broader) field of AI Safety. I'd love to do more.

"What are LLM evaluations?" Broadly, a process for measuring the performance and "behavior" of big AI models. There are lots of kinds of evals, but the focus here was on evaluating model safety and alignment (ie, do they do things we might consider harmful?).

Programming with assistive tools

One or more posts about each of the following:

  • Cursor (been using this a lot). It is both great and frustrating.

  • Aider. TL;DR: promising, had some UX issues, easy to spend $$$$ (or vast amounts of time with a cheaper model) doing basic stuff.

  • Copilot in Emacs: getting it running and quick impressions

People tell me I should try Claude code; haven't yet.

Music gear projects / Pedals, pedals, pedals

Updates to my DIY pedal projects as I make progress.

I started to learn the basics of circuit design and simulation using KiCad.

Steep learning curve but looks like it does everything I might want. Including PCB design, which I've never tried!

One or more posts about:

  • Biggest Yak Shave I've ever done: my job search automation tools. This is largely an excuse to get good at leveraging AI in 3 ways: code using assistive tools; use LLMs to generate content and do research; and maybe use a few techniques from the Practical Deep Learning course (vast overkill but fun).

  • Job Searching While ADHD. Notes on how I stay organized; probably mostly about my giant interview prep checklist. Thoughts on what's worked for me and what hasn't.

Music

  • The Revolution revisited: Prince's first famous band was not just Prince.

  • "Who's the best little kitty cat?" A very simple song I tossed off. I'll post it when the recording is ready.

  • Sucking less at lead guitar

Other stuff

  • Hypnotherapy. Thoughts on my experiences so far. I haven't posted much really personal on this blog, I tend to keep it light; unsure how public I want to make this.

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