push buttons, turn knobs, pull levers

Introduction to AI and Large Language Models (LLMs)

This is a high level intro to LLMs that I’m writing for a few friends that are new to the concept. It is far from complete, definitely contains some errors and is a work in progress. Warning This is a work in progress and a living document. Language models, or LLMs, are a type of artificial intelligence that can generate text based on a given prompt.

Fun with Makefiles - Dynamic Menu Generation

Dynamic Menu GenerationThis reusable snippet will generate a menu of targets from the Makefile. It will use fzf if it is installed, otherwise it will use a numbered menu. #### Dynamically Generated Interactive Menu #### # Error Handling SHELL := /bin/bash .SHELLFLAGS := -o pipefail -c # Name of this Makefile MAKEFILE_NAME := $(lastword $(MAKEFILE_LIST)) # Special targets that should not be listed EXCLUDE_LIST := menu all .

MBA Washing

MBA Washing” refers to the phenomenon where individuals, often with a strong theoretical or academic background but limited recent practical experience, adopt and reinterpret industry-specific terminology and cultural movements.

This reinterpretation is typically influenced by their academic learning, recent literature, and biases towards larger enterprise perspectives. As a result, the original intent and practical effectiveness of these concepts, such as DevOps or Platform Engineering for example, may be diluted or misrepresented.

Fixing AMD CPU Scaling on Fedora

Recently, after replacing my home server I noticed that the CPU (Ryzen 7600) was only scaling between 3000MHz and 3800MHz, which is the base and the first level boost clock of the CPU. I was expecting it to scale down to as low as 400Mhz when idle, and up to 5.17Ghz on boost.

Open Budgeting - Subscriptions & Licences

Budgeting for Subscriptions & LicensesTransparently tracking my financial expenses spent on subscriptions and licenses. I’m doing this in the interest of exploring subscription fatigue and to help others who might interested in doing similar. Recurring Expenses Expense Cost (Yearly) Category Required/QoL Want To Cancel/Replace Usefulness Satisfaction Frequency 1Blocker $12 Security/Privacy Required No Critical High Yearly 1Password $55 Security Software Required Yes Critical Medium ^1 (Was high before v8) Monthly Amazon Prime $85 Utilities QoL Yes High Medium Yearly Apple iCloud $54 Backup Software Required No Critical High Yearly Apple Music $130 Entertainment Required No High High Yearly Aus.

Energy, Sustainability and Deployment Frequency

Deployment / Delivery Frequency

I often end up needing to advocate for more frequent delivery/deployments with clients.

There’s the usual benefits commonly discussed such as improved feedback, reduced risk, well understood processes, maintainable dependencies etc… however what’s often missed entirely is how it relates to the health and sustainability of the team.

Zsh Configuration and Plugins - Part Two

Zsh Configuration and Plugins - Part two You can find the first post in this series here. FunctionsMany of my functions start out as aliases and then I convert them to functions when I need to add more functionality. You can find these in 9-function.rc. pdfcompress () { gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -dSAFER -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.