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       Autumn
       September, 21 2023
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       Written on my iPad, directly connected
       via SSH to my gopher server 
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  If you had a chance to follow my posts in time, you might
  have learned two things: 
  
  (1) the date of my posts is not always when I wrote them:
  this is because it often takes me more than one day (and
  sometimes weeks) to complete one. This one is not an
  exception: the date is 21 September but today is the 30th,
  and honestly I don't even know where the hell these nine days
  have gone;
  
  (2) probably due to how seldom I journal, I often focus on
  periods of time rather than single events, and again this
  post won't be an exception.
  
  So, autumn started more than one week ago now and once more I
  feel like time is passing way too fast. I find it so fucking
  disappointing when I think about all the things I wanted to
  do and did not complete or even start. For example, 4 (four!)
  months ago I started what I thought was going to be a super
  useful review of Fediview [1] (with the idea that more than
  a search/recommendation algorithm in the fediverse we need
  more knowledge about how such algorithms work so we can have
  full control over what we run, and that starts from reviewing
  in detail what each is doing).
  Well, long story short, I promised I would have shown the
  post to Fediview's developer, and now (four months later) I
  still do not have that article ready. How's that possible?
  
  Another thing that pisses me off is when time passes so
  quickly that I barely have time to enjoy being with my kids.
  I usually see them for one week every month, which includes
  their school, my work, their sports, and one (or two if we
  are lucky) weekend. This week my youngest was ill, so we
  managed to spend some more time together... Still, I am not
  looking forward to this kind of event to enjoy my stays
  more... And anyway I feel like I just arrived here and in
  two days I am already going to leave.
  
  So, was I idle in the meantime? Well, I don't think so. Work
  has been super demanding - but I believe in a nice way. I
  mean, I did not have to work nights, but there always was
  something to do and we are seeing the results of it. I have
  finally started to jot down not just my thoughts but also
  some code about Ch35t, which is satisfying even if I think I
  am still quite far from anything which could be of use to
  anyone (but that's ok, I am not rushing it). This week alone,
  I fixed many things in my place -let's say that if mozilla.ai
  does not work I have a future as a plumber- and emptied my
  garage so I could lend it to a friend (not just a friend, the
  kid who was sitting next to me the very first day of primary
  school!) who is currently living in a limbo between moving
  from one place to another.
  
  Also, and let us not underestimate this, I am preparing my
  bolognese sauce for tonight's dinner. THAT will finish so
  quickly that time will seem to pass by faster :-)
  
  Other things I am happy about:
  
  - I have some more Ch35t updates ready! It is the first time
    I am working on an actual format rather than just a piece
    of code, so I am quite excited about the new things I had
    to learn
  
  - I am playing with the 1GPU/1day neurips LLM challenge [2].
    I personally do not love LLMs, but I think this is quite
    interesting as its aim is to show what you can get by
    fine-tuning a pre-trained opensource model with a limited
    amount of resources. That's IMO a good step towards making
    these tools more available to people
  
  - I am gonna meet a friend today who is going to bring me
    some swag from ESC [3] :-)
  
  - In two weeks we'll have a workweek in London! This is going
    to be the first time I meet some new teammates in person
    and I am looking forward to it
  
  - Dinosaur Jr are going to play in London this November. I
    was listening to their album Where You Been 30 years ago,
    from my walkman, on my last day of high school... 
  
  
  Aaand that's it. The unloading might have not made me feel
  faster... But definitely lighter! 



[1] https://fediview.com/
[2] https://llm-efficiency-challenge.github.io/
[3] https://www.endsummercamp.org/