I enjoy reading history books, though it typically leaves me feeling infinitely small in the zeitgeist of human history aka the universe. There's been approximately 108 billion humans on this Earth (according to Chat GPT), and a number several magnitudes greater of total mammals (Chat GPT refused to get specific). Since synapsids broke off from reptiles and started on the evolutionary high way to developing LLMs (Dimetrodon isn't a dinosaur, but actually my great-grandpa?) there have been generations and radiations of so many layers and layers of creatures throughout the epochs that eventually gave us humans and golden retrievers and elephants without scrotums.

I found Liam Drew's I, Mammal: The Story of What Makes Us Mammals endlessly fascinating as he took me through the stages of evolution that led to nipples and middle ears and brains. Every time he explained how one of our mammalian traits could have developed - like hearing, and being able to survive out of water without oxygen - it made so much sense. Like, well, yeah I can see why that trait led to a higher success rate than other animals without it.

There were also lots of good titbits of a lighter nature. Like, apparently sperm were first observed by the person who invented the microscope. He didn't even let anyone else have a go first.

The chemistry of genes and hormones also was insightful. Apparently in one experiment with rats - who usually press a lever to be rewarded with food - were given a lever that resulted in baby rat pups being pushed out the chute. All the rats did not press this lever, except the group that they dosed with oxytocin triggering hormones and those rats pumped that lever until they had twenty babies at their feet. That explained a lot.

While I now feel even more miniscule, I do feel less like I am at the top of an evolutionary tree, or even a leaf on a branch. On timescales of millions of years I'm basically overlapping Napoleon in comparison to Dimetrodon. I am essentially background noise.

Tonight I attended a meetup for Australia's preeminent online bargain finding website. It played out how I expected it would. Chow negotiating a deal with the owner of the barcade for better discounts on the free dinner. Me briefly interacting awkwardly with strangers from the internet, then taking advantage of the unlimited play on the pinball machines partly to avoid conversation and partly to learn how to tilt machines without being penalised. I did ask a few people the small talk question I prepared in the car. What's the best bargain you found? Only one person had an answer. I focused mainly on the Wheel of Fortune pinball where I successfully solved two puzzles, GIANT PANDA and UNSALTED CARAMEL. Solving puzzles results in a delightful multi-ball period.

On Wednesday evening I walked with Mum and Nash around the Torrens after dinner. She was complaining about dealing with call centres and hard to understand people. I mentioned that AI and voice synthetization would probably replace those employees within a few years, and potentially my own job as well. After I extolled the benefits of generative AI some more she asked what I would do as a job if AI replaced my current one. I answered that I would pivot back to being an author and writing stories. I don't think AI will take over that for a while yet.

And yet... I finished the draft of my latest story a few months ago which gave me great satisfaction. And I workshopped it after making a return to writer's group where I also received good feedback to help improve it. All that is left for me to send this story to publishers for the small chance of it being published. And I have procrastinated that step more than any other in the process of writing it. Much of this procrastination time has been used to upskill myself in Generative AI.

Submitting stories is so hard because that's the point you lose control of them. And that's the point the feedback loop can stretch to such lengths that the whole hobby feels unfulfilling. Programming in React means you don't even need to refresh the page to see functionality changes. A short story can take months to get rejected. That means a thread is running in your brain for all that time. You can try to ignore it, but it's there.

But getting stories accepted is more fulfilling that pushing code or even running serverless function apps. You have to try and submit, even though rejection will come. And what better time to learn how to handle this fear, when AI is coming for our day jobs.

Saturday started with a nice walk up Brown Hill with Alex, featuring views over the city and an excited dog.

And ended with watching the 36ers being demolished at home, where I also did not get close to catching a packet of noodles from cheerleaders led by a giant chicken.

Technically it ended with a Zooper Dooper and Luka highlights with Tim, but I didn't take a photo of that.

I started this day having no idea how to implement an Azure hosted AI chatbot that used Retrieval Augmented Generation to incorporate my organisation's data into its response.

By the end of the day, I still have no idea how to implement it, but I'd done it!

Less than three days after professing to having implemented a semantic search with a generative AI front end without any idea how I'd done it, I found myself in a conference room delivering a Powerpoint to about twenty people with authority on the same subject.

This wasn't actually bluster! If you stumbled upon this article due to keyword searching... Since Monday I not only learnt to understand RAG, Semantic Search and hosting models in the cloud a lot better, but I even implemented a Flask UI for one! That's how fast things move in the world of AI in 2023. Or perhaps a sign of how simplified some of these cloud services actually are thanks to the actual geniuses working for the AI and Cloud giants who I admire greatly. Also technically the AI generated the Flask UI for me.

I rode my bike home exactly 160 minutes before sunset. The weather was perfect. Blue skies, a couple of wispy clouds, golden light. I rounded the corner under the King William Bridge and into a panoramic view of beauty. Rowboats cutting through the water. Vibrant grass. Glass buildings shimmering. Water features bubbling. People out enjoying an afternoon beside the Torrens. It was nearly offensively beautiful. What right did I get to pedal my way through a scene like that. I mean the smell wasn't fantastic, but other than that, I felt blessed.

Currently, my favourite coffee in Adelaide based on taste is The Grind in the central markets. They are a treat, as the price is now $7 for a large flat white which must be noted contains a lot of shots of coffee that you will feel after sipping.

We filled up two backups with fruit and vegetables after that, for about $19 (which for future reference was quite good and would have been double at the supermarket).

Then we went to the supermarket and spent a lot of money on groceries like frozen berries, sugar free soft drink, and a royal flush of dog treats.

There's a lamb surplus in 2023, so lamb legs are now much cheaper by volume than excellent tasting coffee. Lamb is a good meat, but a pain to roast as it takes a long time. Today I experimented by searing it in a frying pan with salt, pepper, olive oil and garlic at about 11am and then putting it in the slow cooker on top of a cup of chicken stock and a few sprigs of rosemary. It was ready about 6:30 and I have to say it turned out extremely well for something I put very little effort in to. I even made a wheat-free gravy out of the leftover stock and some chickpea flour and despite being lumpy that was easy cooking too.

In more uplifting news, I reworked the irrigation so that the tomatoes will get sprinkler water now.