Until recently, my AI usage has been limited to ChatGPT and a bit of Midjourney. No Copilot, no Claude, no nothing.
The most serious thing I’ve used AI for, was getting ChatGPT to give feedback on paragraphs for new blog posts, and Midjourney to help create featured images for blog posts.
The few times I’ve tried using AI (read ChatGPT) for programming related stuff, I very quickly got frustrated with the lack of quality in the responses. To be fair, I’ve mainly wanted it to create Clojure code, and Clojure’s niche status and very different syntax are likely the main reason. That, and the fact that ChatGPT is the “wrong” tool for the job.
Anyway, I’ve acquired some hardware to build a local AI, including a second-hand Nvidia RTX 3090 with 24Gb vRAM, and I thought I’d document and share my progress so far.
I have started a journey to disentangle myself from Big Tech — at least partly. So far, I’ve avoided boarding the Facebook train altogether (including Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok). And after finishing the book “Careless People” by Sarah Wynn-Williams (recommendable by the way), which describes her experiences from inside Facebook, my JOMO choice feels even better. Apparently, friends and family still invite me to their birthdays using alternative (old-fashioned) means 😅 You know, like phone calls, SMS, and sometimes even face-to-face — weird!
Simple Storage Service or S3 Cloud Object Storage is a versatile and cheap storage. I’ve used it for invoices, contracts, media, and configuration snapshots, among other things. It’s a perfect fit when the object key (or what many might think of as a filename or path) can be used as a unique key to retrieve what you need — and doing it from Clojure is no exception.
While doomscrolling on LinkedIn the other day, a comment linking to an article/essay about what to expect from the newly inaugurated U.S. president and his administration caught my eye.
I’m flipping through my quest log to reflect on the trials I’ve faced recently. Most improvements to the Clojure-based Jekyll clone focused on making the blog navigable.
I ventured far and wide on my Clojure Jekyll adventure right after the last check-in. Then, fatigue (and life) caught up with me, and I had to set up camp for a little while.
The other day, I went on a little side quest and officially released my fork’s changes to the Liquid templating library Wet 💧.
We need electronic devices — like phones and computers — that we can trust, but with everything happening right now, America doesn’t exactly inspire trust.
A little while ago, I was presented with an old 2016 blog post by Ricardo J. Mendez on Planet Clojure titled Complexity is the mind-killer. Planet Clojure occasionally resurfaces older posts when their ‘updated timestamp’ is refreshed, which is likely what happened. While not always ideal, this time, I felt lucky. 🍀
