I’ve wanted to record some casual reflections on my experience learning and getting better at Mandarin Chinese, particulary as someone whose productive language skills (namely, speaking) far outpace the receptive skills (listening). When learning a language, there’s a point when your command of it reaches an operational level, such that you can make your way through casual, day-to-day conversations. While graduating to this range of proficiency represents a significant milestone on the path towards mastery of the language, it also brings a new challenge: you can no longer have high confidence about exactly how much you understand of what is being said....
Early Thoughts on Prompt Engineering
My initial reaction to the term prompt engineering was skepticism that anything of the sort could be called engineering. Having now spent a bit of time using LLM AI to produce a solution to a small content generation problem, I’ve arrived at a few takeaways, some of which have pushed me to be less dismissive of this notion. ...
Engineering Values
I was recently prompted (perhaps by a voice in my head) to come up with my own set of engineering values. What follows is surely incomplete, but it arrived with an odd clarity. ...
Mindfulness and Chess
There is something about mindfulness meditation that relates to the game of chess and what it takes to play the right move in any given moment. Checkmate sunset, @jachymmichael I came upon this idea while struggling through one of chess.com’s many puzzles and questioning the utility of practicing them. The puzzles on chess.com present the solo player with a single board configuration and ask the player to find the next best move for whichever color’s turn it is....
On the Efficacy of Vegan Marches
I wonder if these marches manage to convince enough people to reduce their meat consumption to offset the ill will that they possibly sow. While wandering around in London’s Piccadilly Circus neighborhood, I stumbled upon what I later learned to be the National Animal Rights March. A sizable gathering of colorful and impassioned people, young and old, were marching down the street with signs and banners, advocating greater sensibilities for the treatment of animals and a wholesale prohibition on the consumption of animal meat....