Chris Gammell's Analog Life

I have been referring to LLMs as “a/the dummybox” in casual conversation, but just found out that Neal Stephenson calls them “clankers” and I may have to switch to using that.

Despite my best efforts, I sometimes glance at LED based devices and think “Oh, I shouldn’t leave that on, it might burn out” (like an incandescent bulb).

An entire generation slowly learning to RTFM in order to finally, once-and-for-all, prove that stupid LLM wrong

I am Jack’s raging imposter syndrome…

Just bought a second Mac Mini M4 for my other bench (sigh, black friday deals).

Trying out Gemini 3 for a website project I’m working on and while I appreciate being able to follow the steps its taking, the “thinking” aspect where it talks through and confirms/denies logical elements feels uncanny for some reason.

Sea turtle

Blue footed boobie

For a while when consulting, I trained myself to write a troubleshooting log into my daily journal, using it as a conversational partner about all the things going wrong.

Crimson-crested Woodpecker

Anhinga

American Pygmy Kingfisher

Note to self: Do better notes-to-self in the future.

Giant River Otter

Proboscis bat

White fronted capuchin

Galapagos penguins

How old is the airplane I’m currently on?

Flamingo

It is delightful to watch an animal playing just out of the sightlines of another group of humans and imagine how many animals have been near me in my life and I never knew it (in the “these animals have no interest in hunting me” manner of speaking)

Sand Piper

Heron

As an American traveling, I have become very aware of how Americans sound when traveling…and thus have tried to sound less American whenever traveling.

I don’t miss reading the news

Globally available, decent-to-high-end bathroom fixtures makes a bit of a monoculture when traveling.

Watching my parents interact with technology has come a somewhat anthropological exercise.

The nice thing about centralizing all your dev boards and SIM cards and SD cards is they’re all together in the same place so you know where to find things.

Found out last night that Vimeo is likely being bought out by private equity (specifically the group that bought and worsened Evernote and Meetup).

One of those extremely niche books that I’m going to see on OTHER engineers’ shelves and know we’re going to get along…

I told people on episode 707 of The Amp Hour about the ‘small web’ and how I am joining the fray much later than others.

It’s amazing thinking about how different my web browsing experience is thanks to ‘algorithmic steering’.

Tim from Wait But Why already writes with an “everyman” quality (or at least “everynerd”).

“Well hey, self, you’re using this to post thoughts and photos and links, you should probably think about going back onto that Instagram platform!

I know Gridfinity isn’t some devious plot by filament companies to sell more product…but maybe it should be?

Did the Amazon seller hawking “fluttering candle” LEDs think I wouldn’t notice?

Design obsessed folks: Wow, Apple just makes the most beautiful everything, here’s all my money, you can do no wrong iOS logo designers: If you say so…

Listen, I know it’s an m3 screw, but literally stepping on Allen wrench that’s the right size as I’m headed to find a tool that will work with it….feels like fate, right?

Despite my interest in 3D printing, I often get hung up on larger/stronger designs that would benefit from some off-the-shelf components.

Almost certainly there’s a metaphor in here about the messiness of hardware development, but I’m much too busy picking up shrink tubing to be able to make it

As a corallary to this morning’s post, nothing focuses in on what really matters like showing the demo to other people.

Nothing focused in on the “oh I haven’t implemented that important feature” quite like getting hardware ready to take for a live demo

Great video today from Laura Kampf about her inner dialog when making new videos and starting new projects.

Found out today that the North Carolina zoo is one of the largest “natural habitat” zoos in the country at 500 acres.

It has been a decent chunk of time getting this blog migrated and operational.

This is the 3D printing equivalent of a tickle at the back of your throat during flu season.

I’m overdue to get back to this tiny layout project

I have been doing a bunch with 3D printing and DIN rail lately.

Two of my favorite folks from The Zephyr Project (Ben and Fabio) started a new Zephyr Podcast.

Despite the darkness of the overall story, all AI / LLM applications eventually make me think of The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer from The Diamond Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age

New 3D printer setup that integrates spools into the side of the wire cart and moves the printer from the bottom row to the top.