Life update (10/05/2024)
[check out this post on my personal page, where it looks better]
Despite what yesterday’s heavy post might imply, I’m in a good mood. It’s half past eight in the morning on a Saturday and I’m the sole technician on duty at work, but it just happens that when today’s shift ends, I’m going on an eight days-long break. Once I return from the break, I’ll only have to work for seven days longer until I go on vacation from the 23rd of October to the 28th of November. I’m going on vacation because I’ve been made aware recently that my company (which is the Basque health service) will no longer pay unspent vacations as long as one has worked for longer than six months (three months in some cases). I’ve been working since November of last year, so I’ve accumulated plenty of off days.
However, I’m covering for a shitty guy who for the last five years or so has only worked for a couple of months at the most before he went on another medical leave. Saying that he “worked” is very generous, because he’s utterly useless when he isn’t actively sabotaging the department. His problems, we all suspect, are of the mental variety. Not the fun kind either. Anyway, I’ve covered plenty of his leaves, and every single time, he has returned without informing anyone. I would come to the office only to find the motherfucker sitting at his desk pretending that he hadn’t just fucked over the one who was replacing him: after all, I won’t get paid for the day I come to work if he’s already there. It was even worse one time when he ended his medical leave on a Friday afternoon without bothering to check if he worked that Saturday, which I covered for him as we had no idea he had returned from his leave. My boss had to deal with HR; otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten paid for that Saturday.
Anyway, that shithead has been on a medical leave since October 31st of last year, and some nasty stuff happens if you spend more than a year off (I suspect that he would have to be monitored by social services), so we are all expecting the guy to appear shortly earlier. Likely on the 30th. By then, I’m on vacation, but if it turns out that the guy returns to work, two things may happen: if my boss doesn’t extend my contract, I’m simply paid for the unspent vacation, but my workplace may call me to work the following day for a new contract, so I wouldn’t enjoy any proper vacation in November (just that uneasy time in which I have no clue what’s going to happen). If my boss extends my contract (I’m not sure if there’s a valid reason for him to do so), I will get paid for my unspent vacation time, but because my vacation time is tied to the previous contract, I’ll have to return to work immediately. Best scenario for me is if the shithead remains on a medical leave, because I’ll get to enjoy a month of paid vacation without worrying about my work calling me back in.
I must mention that I hadn’t gone on vacation before. I mean ever. My work experience is full of holes; nobody would hire me for my curriculum vitae at this point, unless they’re looking for an experienced IT guy. I spent about half of my twenties as a sort of hikikomori, having given up on society and life. I had awful experiences at most of the jobs I endured back then as well, which convinced me that I wasn’t cut out for working full-time (or even part-time, in some places). I’m thirty-nine years old, and unless something weird happens this month, I’m about to enjoy my first periods of true relax without expecting the horrible calls one gets from such companies, like getting woken up any random workday, even on Saturdays, and asked if you can be at the office an hour later. If you refuse, they may erase you from the lists that you have taken exams to be featured in, so you have no choice but to agree.
Anyway, enough about work. Recently I’ve watched two impressive first episodes of new animes which I highly recommend. First of them is Uzumaki, based on the manga of the same name by horror legend Junji Ito, which was Ito’s attempt at figuring out how to make spirals as disturbing as possible. The trailer spoils some of the great images from the first episode, so it’s better to go in without knowing much. In fact, the following clip of the first episode is the only one that isn’t particularly spoilery in that regard.
Finally an anime adaptation does justice to Ito’s style, including the choice of black-and-white.
Then there’s Dandadan. All I knew of this manga is that it follows the adventures of a UFO nerd and a ghosts nerd, and that it was wild as heck. Apart from that, the author had belonged to the creative team led by Tatsuki Fujimoto, author of Fire Punch and Chainsaw Man. Last night I watched the first episode of Dandadan’s anime adaptation; it turned out to be one of the wildest first episodes of any anime I’ve ever seen. You can tell that loads of talented visual artists and animators have worked on it. Here’s the intro.
I have no idea why I haven’t read the manga already; after all, I consume an ungodly amount of isekai series, some that are barely passable, so I could have easily have made space for this one. With such a high-quality anime adaptation, though, I’d rather get through its first season without spoiling myself.
I have checked out very little anime this year. Shame on me. There’s always at least a couple of anime series worth following each season.
Apart from that, I’ve been very invested in developing my Python app neural-narrative, that allows the users to chat with characters controlled by large language models (right now only Hermes 70B and Hermes 405B are programmed in, because they’re uncensored and don’t sound like helpful assistants). I got the idea of doing this throughout my experience with roleplaying in Skyrim with Mantella, a system that also uses large language models so you can talk with the characters. However, Mantella’s system annoyed me with the fact that the bios of all the NPCs are mixed together when you’re talking with several at the same time, which meant that a character’s secrets ended up being known by everyone else. It became a bit ridiculous to hang out with Alva, a vampire from Morthal, only for every new person I spoke to when Alva was involved to immediately realize that she was a bloodsucker.
My system works quite well currently: handles talking with any number of characters at the same time, it generates random worlds, regions, areas, and locations, it suggests interesting situations and dilemmas inspired by your conversations, and lets you travel from place to place. It even generates a travel diary of sorts when you move from area to area, involving whatever followers you have brought along. I wouldn’t have developed this system so fast if I wasn’t relying often on the preview version of OpenAI’s Orion model, which is fucking insane: sometimes I just have to present it with relevant code from other sections of my app, tell the AI what elements I want a new page to include, and it generates a perfect system on the first try. I’ve only had it fail once at a programming task, in a way that wasn’t my mistake for not including enough references. I’m kind of glad that I’m not working as a programmer these days, even though I trained for it and was my original goal, because I can’t imagine what sort of future human programmers are going to have when large language models are bound to surpass them all in the next few years.
I originally intended to program this system in order to post wild stories on my site. It just happens that, one way or another, I always end up going for the kind of wild smut that I don’t want to show to others. The AI is fully uncensored and I love to take advantage of that. I’m trying to figure out a way for the system to suggest less formless stories. The inclusion of interesting situations and dilemmas generated by the AI is one of those ways I’m trying to work on that.
Despite what yesterday’s heavy post might imply, I’m in a good mood. It’s half past eight in the morning on a Saturday and I’m the sole technician on duty at work, but it just happens that when today’s shift ends, I’m going on an eight days-long break. Once I return from the break, I’ll only have to work for seven days longer until I go on vacation from the 23rd of October to the 28th of November. I’m going on vacation because I’ve been made aware recently that my company (which is the Basque health service) will no longer pay unspent vacations as long as one has worked for longer than six months (three months in some cases). I’ve been working since November of last year, so I’ve accumulated plenty of off days.
However, I’m covering for a shitty guy who for the last five years or so has only worked for a couple of months at the most before he went on another medical leave. Saying that he “worked” is very generous, because he’s utterly useless when he isn’t actively sabotaging the department. His problems, we all suspect, are of the mental variety. Not the fun kind either. Anyway, I’ve covered plenty of his leaves, and every single time, he has returned without informing anyone. I would come to the office only to find the motherfucker sitting at his desk pretending that he hadn’t just fucked over the one who was replacing him: after all, I won’t get paid for the day I come to work if he’s already there. It was even worse one time when he ended his medical leave on a Friday afternoon without bothering to check if he worked that Saturday, which I covered for him as we had no idea he had returned from his leave. My boss had to deal with HR; otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten paid for that Saturday.
Anyway, that shithead has been on a medical leave since October 31st of last year, and some nasty stuff happens if you spend more than a year off (I suspect that he would have to be monitored by social services), so we are all expecting the guy to appear shortly earlier. Likely on the 30th. By then, I’m on vacation, but if it turns out that the guy returns to work, two things may happen: if my boss doesn’t extend my contract, I’m simply paid for the unspent vacation, but my workplace may call me to work the following day for a new contract, so I wouldn’t enjoy any proper vacation in November (just that uneasy time in which I have no clue what’s going to happen). If my boss extends my contract (I’m not sure if there’s a valid reason for him to do so), I will get paid for my unspent vacation time, but because my vacation time is tied to the previous contract, I’ll have to return to work immediately. Best scenario for me is if the shithead remains on a medical leave, because I’ll get to enjoy a month of paid vacation without worrying about my work calling me back in.
I must mention that I hadn’t gone on vacation before. I mean ever. My work experience is full of holes; nobody would hire me for my curriculum vitae at this point, unless they’re looking for an experienced IT guy. I spent about half of my twenties as a sort of hikikomori, having given up on society and life. I had awful experiences at most of the jobs I endured back then as well, which convinced me that I wasn’t cut out for working full-time (or even part-time, in some places). I’m thirty-nine years old, and unless something weird happens this month, I’m about to enjoy my first periods of true relax without expecting the horrible calls one gets from such companies, like getting woken up any random workday, even on Saturdays, and asked if you can be at the office an hour later. If you refuse, they may erase you from the lists that you have taken exams to be featured in, so you have no choice but to agree.
Anyway, enough about work. Recently I’ve watched two impressive first episodes of new animes which I highly recommend. First of them is Uzumaki, based on the manga of the same name by horror legend Junji Ito, which was Ito’s attempt at figuring out how to make spirals as disturbing as possible. The trailer spoils some of the great images from the first episode, so it’s better to go in without knowing much. In fact, the following clip of the first episode is the only one that isn’t particularly spoilery in that regard.
Finally an anime adaptation does justice to Ito’s style, including the choice of black-and-white.
Then there’s Dandadan. All I knew of this manga is that it follows the adventures of a UFO nerd and a ghosts nerd, and that it was wild as heck. Apart from that, the author had belonged to the creative team led by Tatsuki Fujimoto, author of Fire Punch and Chainsaw Man. Last night I watched the first episode of Dandadan’s anime adaptation; it turned out to be one of the wildest first episodes of any anime I’ve ever seen. You can tell that loads of talented visual artists and animators have worked on it. Here’s the intro.
I have no idea why I haven’t read the manga already; after all, I consume an ungodly amount of isekai series, some that are barely passable, so I could have easily have made space for this one. With such a high-quality anime adaptation, though, I’d rather get through its first season without spoiling myself.
I have checked out very little anime this year. Shame on me. There’s always at least a couple of anime series worth following each season.
Apart from that, I’ve been very invested in developing my Python app neural-narrative, that allows the users to chat with characters controlled by large language models (right now only Hermes 70B and Hermes 405B are programmed in, because they’re uncensored and don’t sound like helpful assistants). I got the idea of doing this throughout my experience with roleplaying in Skyrim with Mantella, a system that also uses large language models so you can talk with the characters. However, Mantella’s system annoyed me with the fact that the bios of all the NPCs are mixed together when you’re talking with several at the same time, which meant that a character’s secrets ended up being known by everyone else. It became a bit ridiculous to hang out with Alva, a vampire from Morthal, only for every new person I spoke to when Alva was involved to immediately realize that she was a bloodsucker.
My system works quite well currently: handles talking with any number of characters at the same time, it generates random worlds, regions, areas, and locations, it suggests interesting situations and dilemmas inspired by your conversations, and lets you travel from place to place. It even generates a travel diary of sorts when you move from area to area, involving whatever followers you have brought along. I wouldn’t have developed this system so fast if I wasn’t relying often on the preview version of OpenAI’s Orion model, which is fucking insane: sometimes I just have to present it with relevant code from other sections of my app, tell the AI what elements I want a new page to include, and it generates a perfect system on the first try. I’ve only had it fail once at a programming task, in a way that wasn’t my mistake for not including enough references. I’m kind of glad that I’m not working as a programmer these days, even though I trained for it and was my original goal, because I can’t imagine what sort of future human programmers are going to have when large language models are bound to surpass them all in the next few years.
I originally intended to program this system in order to post wild stories on my site. It just happens that, one way or another, I always end up going for the kind of wild smut that I don’t want to show to others. The AI is fully uncensored and I love to take advantage of that. I’m trying to figure out a way for the system to suggest less formless stories. The inclusion of interesting situations and dilemmas generated by the AI is one of those ways I’m trying to work on that.
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