Random update, incluing Gallifrey One
Mar. 2nd, 2026 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shivverDespite having a bunch of things I've wanted to talk about, I haven't posted in a while. Various reasons for that, but mostly it's me not setting aside time to do so. So, here I am, forcing myself to finally write something.
I feel like I've been wasting a lot of time playing computer games for the past month. I've been really hooked by Against the Storm, which is a roguelike city builder, which sounds impossible but they made it work very well. Previously, I'd been playing Shattered Pixel Galaxy, an actual Rogue-like (meaning, it's actually like Rogue, one of my favorite games from back in the day; the word "roguelike" no longer means "like Rogue"; games that are actually like Rogue are called "traditional roguelikes") for quite a while, but then finally picked up AtS after having bought it years ago, and it's just been my obsession. Gallifrey One interrupted it and I didn't pick it back up when I got back because I was concerned that I would get obsessed again, but then I finally did and was proven right. Sigh.
The sad thing is that around the time I started playing AtS, I also finally broke down and bought Baldur's Gate 3, which I've wanted ever since it came out but wasn't going to buy it at its $60 price point. I got it on sale and started playing it, but AtS co-opted my brain and I haven't gone back. I'm hoping to finish the current AtS run and put it down and get back to BG3.
But that only explains where the leisure time is going. I don't think I've mentioned that my husband and I have started looking for jobs, so, well, yes, we have and that's taking up a bunch of time. We're kind of on-the-fence about wanting a job, as we're comfortable enough to retire now but a couple more years of income would really make things good, but we have to actually look because we want to collect the unemployment insurance that we've been paying into the system for thirty years and it stipulates that you have actively look for work.
So, we've been spending our days sending out loads of applications and getting nothing back, and it's quite disheartening. This is the state of the tech industry right now, with employers thinking that AI will do everything for them. They don't realize that you still need qualified people to work with the AI, or it will spit out terrible stuff. Well, to be fair, some are starting to realize it, but at quite a cost. A friend of mine went to an interview for a contract position and he realized that the job was to fix the mess that the company's AI had created.
I did have an enlightening chat with a friend who leads a development team that has pivoted to using AI, and he recommended learning how to work with AI. His big piece of advice was that AI works best if you focus on doing one small thing at a time and then put it together later, rather than having it create the whole thing. In other words, tell it to design an axle, then design a tire that will fit onto the axle, then design a framework that will hold two axles, etc. If you instead tell it to design a car, you'll get a mess of axles and tires that no one can use.
So, I sat down and started playing with ChatGPT, to learn how to ask for things and how to refine things. I started first with feeding it my resume and asking for a rewrite, and it returned some rather pleasing results, in that it didn't just pepper the resume with adjectives and adverbs like I've seen on so many resume services site. (I just love seeing these sites recommend that instead of calling yourself a "software quality assurance analyst", I should call myself a "dynamic software quality assurance analyst".) The AI suggested excellent rewords and synonyms for what I had, but didn't completely rewrite it, and most importantly, it didn't add any lies. I am planning to take its suggestions and work it into my resume, as opposed to just copy/pasting its version. That's where you get into trouble, because AI makes a lot of mistakes, and if my resume lies, that's my fault for not catching it.
The second thing I did was see how I could use AI for my writing. Not to write my stories, but to review and critique them. I fed it the first few paragraphs of my most recent story (the bowling one), and then later I fed it one of my earlier drabbles, and for both, I asked for critique and suggestions. And, I have to admit, I was rather disappointed. For both of them, it listed the strong points, and then made a couple of suggestions, saying that they would make a particular thing stronger, but in both cases, the particular thing was not a point I was trying to make. In fact, for the drabble, it would have completely shifted the emphasis of the piece.
Which is why I firmly believe that it's crucial to review critically everything an LLM AI gives you, because at its very core, all it's doing is choosing words it thinks are related to words it already knows, and doesn't actually understand them.
Another thing I did was to find a poorly-written fanfic and feed it to ChatGPT to see what it would say in its critique, and interestingly, it did not say anything bad about it. It listed the fic's strengths (and in at least one place, listed one of the more annoying parts of the piece as a strength) and then listed ways in which it could improve, but did not point out weaknesses or say anything was wrong, other than typos and punctuation errors. I know that most public-facing LLMs are restricted from negative interactions, to try to prevent depression and suicide, but this makes it rather useless as a critic for me. I don't need sugarcoating or whitewashing. I need someone to tell me what I'm doing wrong and why it's wrong.
The last thing I did was related to that weird comment I got on one of my fics. I suspected that it had been AI-generated, so I fed the story to ChatGPT and asked it to write an over-the-top comment about it, saying how wonderful it was. Its response wasn't identical, of course, but it was very similar, including gushing about how colorful and alive Constantinople was, using the phrase "I am unwell", and asking for more. ChatGPT did not put it in all caps, though.
I then gave it the weird comment and asked it if it thought it was written by AI, and it said no. It gave a list of reasons, including that AI wouldn't have written it in all caps and that it didn't have any repeating phrases, which is apparently a hallmark of AI responses, but the very first reason on the list was that AI would not have included details from the story itself, such as the description of Constantinople.
Know thyself, ChatGPT. Know thyself.
Anyway, next steps is to play around with Lovable, which is an AI for designing software. Not writing software, as what it does is allow a designer to tell it what they want and it creates the starting point, the working wireframes, and then that can be given to a development team to make it into the full application. My friend (different friend who also uses AI to develop) suggested creating a simple idle game in Lovable to learn how to iterate on an idea.
I'm still playing in band, of course, and having a really tough time trying to keep the drum beat steady in "Peggy Sue", but that's not what I'm talking about here. Well, maybe a little. I'm really enjoying this Buddy Holly medley. I don't get to do rock drums very often in this concert band.
gloryjean posted about the Doctor Who Fan Orchestra starting up again, and so I signed up! I haven't played clarinet in a couple of years, so I guess I better start practicing. The suite we're playing is called "Fifteen" and includes Fifteen's theme (as well as a request for contrabass clarinets, of course) and music from "Finetime" and "Joy to the World". Eeee!
I usually do a separate post about Gallifrey One, but this time it's just part of this post. It's not that Gally isn't exciting anymore -- it is. It's that we're approaching it a lot differently than we used to. Back in 2016, we were deep into the fandom and we'd never been to Gally, so it was the most exciting thing ever! We were meeting the Doctors and companions and talking about the most important thing in our lives! And then in 2023, that happened again as Gally returned after the pandemic. But now, honestly, we've seen most of the celebs already, and my passion for meeting the new ones has cooled. For example, I was excited to see Millie Gibson and her panels were awesome, but I didn't feel the need to get her autograph and talk to her in person. Also, I've decided I really don't care about photoshoots. I never look at the photos again, so why buy them?
I find that I'm now much more interested in the events, both the celeb interviews and the discussion panels, and I definitely enjoyed those. In Pete McTighe's panel (he's the writer of "Lucky Day", "Praxeus", and "Kerblam!"), the interviewer said something to the effect of, "With Doctor Who going on hiatus, rumors are abound that you're going to be the next showrunner." He (the interviewer) hemmed and hawed a bit as he tried not to ask the obvious question of "Do you know what's going to happen to the show?" and finally said, "Do you have any opinions on that?" Pete replied, "Doctor Who already has a showrunner."
I also enjoy getting to meet the people involved in the show. I made the rounds to get my Magic cards signed: Matthew Waterhouse, Sarah Sutton, Mark Strickson, Freema Agyeman, but sadly I didn't get to Jo Martin. And, in another Pete McTighe story, I got to ask him about something that I suspected in "Lucky Day".
Though, first, I told him, "My husband told me to tell you that 'Lucky Day' is a brilliant, amazing episode and it's terrible and I hate it!" and he replied, "I've heard that a lot." :D But then I said, "I wanted to ask you something about it. Conrad's dialog to Ruby right after the reveal is reminiscent of Lance Bennett's dialogue to Donna in 'The Runaway Bride', in which he insults her behavior and intelligence." To which he replied, "Yes, I suppose so." Then I said, "But, I also noticed earlier on that the closed shop that the Doctor and Ruby were in was Chez Alison from the same episode. Was that a deliberate foreshadowing of Conrad's betrayal?" Unfortunately, he said no. (Aww, I thought I was being so clever!) He said that when they were setting up the set, he was given a list of names that were approved for him to use, and he chose that because "The Runaway Bride" is his favorite Christmas special, and that he and his partner had in fact just watched in at this previous Christmas. My favorite, too! So at least we got to share that.
And lastly, my old boss attended his second Gally, so it was great to see him again. I'm of course happy that he fell so hard into DW, just like I did, but now Gally is helping us keep in touch. It's great.
And that's about it. We're still cleaning out the house and garage, and have two dump loads, a Goodwill run, and a tech-recycling run scheduled for the next two weeks. We're also starting to plan what we're going to replace the back deck with (possibly a sun room!), but that might get pushed back because the heating broke today. Luckily, it's not too cold anymore, so we can weather it for a little while, but we're not happy about having to spend on that right now.
I shall now wander off in my warm fuzzy socks.
I feel like I've been wasting a lot of time playing computer games for the past month. I've been really hooked by Against the Storm, which is a roguelike city builder, which sounds impossible but they made it work very well. Previously, I'd been playing Shattered Pixel Galaxy, an actual Rogue-like (meaning, it's actually like Rogue, one of my favorite games from back in the day; the word "roguelike" no longer means "like Rogue"; games that are actually like Rogue are called "traditional roguelikes") for quite a while, but then finally picked up AtS after having bought it years ago, and it's just been my obsession. Gallifrey One interrupted it and I didn't pick it back up when I got back because I was concerned that I would get obsessed again, but then I finally did and was proven right. Sigh.
The sad thing is that around the time I started playing AtS, I also finally broke down and bought Baldur's Gate 3, which I've wanted ever since it came out but wasn't going to buy it at its $60 price point. I got it on sale and started playing it, but AtS co-opted my brain and I haven't gone back. I'm hoping to finish the current AtS run and put it down and get back to BG3.
But that only explains where the leisure time is going. I don't think I've mentioned that my husband and I have started looking for jobs, so, well, yes, we have and that's taking up a bunch of time. We're kind of on-the-fence about wanting a job, as we're comfortable enough to retire now but a couple more years of income would really make things good, but we have to actually look because we want to collect the unemployment insurance that we've been paying into the system for thirty years and it stipulates that you have actively look for work.
So, we've been spending our days sending out loads of applications and getting nothing back, and it's quite disheartening. This is the state of the tech industry right now, with employers thinking that AI will do everything for them. They don't realize that you still need qualified people to work with the AI, or it will spit out terrible stuff. Well, to be fair, some are starting to realize it, but at quite a cost. A friend of mine went to an interview for a contract position and he realized that the job was to fix the mess that the company's AI had created.
I did have an enlightening chat with a friend who leads a development team that has pivoted to using AI, and he recommended learning how to work with AI. His big piece of advice was that AI works best if you focus on doing one small thing at a time and then put it together later, rather than having it create the whole thing. In other words, tell it to design an axle, then design a tire that will fit onto the axle, then design a framework that will hold two axles, etc. If you instead tell it to design a car, you'll get a mess of axles and tires that no one can use.
So, I sat down and started playing with ChatGPT, to learn how to ask for things and how to refine things. I started first with feeding it my resume and asking for a rewrite, and it returned some rather pleasing results, in that it didn't just pepper the resume with adjectives and adverbs like I've seen on so many resume services site. (I just love seeing these sites recommend that instead of calling yourself a "software quality assurance analyst", I should call myself a "dynamic software quality assurance analyst".) The AI suggested excellent rewords and synonyms for what I had, but didn't completely rewrite it, and most importantly, it didn't add any lies. I am planning to take its suggestions and work it into my resume, as opposed to just copy/pasting its version. That's where you get into trouble, because AI makes a lot of mistakes, and if my resume lies, that's my fault for not catching it.
The second thing I did was see how I could use AI for my writing. Not to write my stories, but to review and critique them. I fed it the first few paragraphs of my most recent story (the bowling one), and then later I fed it one of my earlier drabbles, and for both, I asked for critique and suggestions. And, I have to admit, I was rather disappointed. For both of them, it listed the strong points, and then made a couple of suggestions, saying that they would make a particular thing stronger, but in both cases, the particular thing was not a point I was trying to make. In fact, for the drabble, it would have completely shifted the emphasis of the piece.
Which is why I firmly believe that it's crucial to review critically everything an LLM AI gives you, because at its very core, all it's doing is choosing words it thinks are related to words it already knows, and doesn't actually understand them.
Another thing I did was to find a poorly-written fanfic and feed it to ChatGPT to see what it would say in its critique, and interestingly, it did not say anything bad about it. It listed the fic's strengths (and in at least one place, listed one of the more annoying parts of the piece as a strength) and then listed ways in which it could improve, but did not point out weaknesses or say anything was wrong, other than typos and punctuation errors. I know that most public-facing LLMs are restricted from negative interactions, to try to prevent depression and suicide, but this makes it rather useless as a critic for me. I don't need sugarcoating or whitewashing. I need someone to tell me what I'm doing wrong and why it's wrong.
The last thing I did was related to that weird comment I got on one of my fics. I suspected that it had been AI-generated, so I fed the story to ChatGPT and asked it to write an over-the-top comment about it, saying how wonderful it was. Its response wasn't identical, of course, but it was very similar, including gushing about how colorful and alive Constantinople was, using the phrase "I am unwell", and asking for more. ChatGPT did not put it in all caps, though.
I then gave it the weird comment and asked it if it thought it was written by AI, and it said no. It gave a list of reasons, including that AI wouldn't have written it in all caps and that it didn't have any repeating phrases, which is apparently a hallmark of AI responses, but the very first reason on the list was that AI would not have included details from the story itself, such as the description of Constantinople.
Know thyself, ChatGPT. Know thyself.
Anyway, next steps is to play around with Lovable, which is an AI for designing software. Not writing software, as what it does is allow a designer to tell it what they want and it creates the starting point, the working wireframes, and then that can be given to a development team to make it into the full application. My friend (different friend who also uses AI to develop) suggested creating a simple idle game in Lovable to learn how to iterate on an idea.
I'm still playing in band, of course, and having a really tough time trying to keep the drum beat steady in "Peggy Sue", but that's not what I'm talking about here. Well, maybe a little. I'm really enjoying this Buddy Holly medley. I don't get to do rock drums very often in this concert band.
gloryjean posted about the Doctor Who Fan Orchestra starting up again, and so I signed up! I haven't played clarinet in a couple of years, so I guess I better start practicing. The suite we're playing is called "Fifteen" and includes Fifteen's theme (as well as a request for contrabass clarinets, of course) and music from "Finetime" and "Joy to the World". Eeee!I usually do a separate post about Gallifrey One, but this time it's just part of this post. It's not that Gally isn't exciting anymore -- it is. It's that we're approaching it a lot differently than we used to. Back in 2016, we were deep into the fandom and we'd never been to Gally, so it was the most exciting thing ever! We were meeting the Doctors and companions and talking about the most important thing in our lives! And then in 2023, that happened again as Gally returned after the pandemic. But now, honestly, we've seen most of the celebs already, and my passion for meeting the new ones has cooled. For example, I was excited to see Millie Gibson and her panels were awesome, but I didn't feel the need to get her autograph and talk to her in person. Also, I've decided I really don't care about photoshoots. I never look at the photos again, so why buy them?
I find that I'm now much more interested in the events, both the celeb interviews and the discussion panels, and I definitely enjoyed those. In Pete McTighe's panel (he's the writer of "Lucky Day", "Praxeus", and "Kerblam!"), the interviewer said something to the effect of, "With Doctor Who going on hiatus, rumors are abound that you're going to be the next showrunner." He (the interviewer) hemmed and hawed a bit as he tried not to ask the obvious question of "Do you know what's going to happen to the show?" and finally said, "Do you have any opinions on that?" Pete replied, "Doctor Who already has a showrunner."
I also enjoy getting to meet the people involved in the show. I made the rounds to get my Magic cards signed: Matthew Waterhouse, Sarah Sutton, Mark Strickson, Freema Agyeman, but sadly I didn't get to Jo Martin. And, in another Pete McTighe story, I got to ask him about something that I suspected in "Lucky Day".
Though, first, I told him, "My husband told me to tell you that 'Lucky Day' is a brilliant, amazing episode and it's terrible and I hate it!" and he replied, "I've heard that a lot." :D But then I said, "I wanted to ask you something about it. Conrad's dialog to Ruby right after the reveal is reminiscent of Lance Bennett's dialogue to Donna in 'The Runaway Bride', in which he insults her behavior and intelligence." To which he replied, "Yes, I suppose so." Then I said, "But, I also noticed earlier on that the closed shop that the Doctor and Ruby were in was Chez Alison from the same episode. Was that a deliberate foreshadowing of Conrad's betrayal?" Unfortunately, he said no. (Aww, I thought I was being so clever!) He said that when they were setting up the set, he was given a list of names that were approved for him to use, and he chose that because "The Runaway Bride" is his favorite Christmas special, and that he and his partner had in fact just watched in at this previous Christmas. My favorite, too! So at least we got to share that.
And lastly, my old boss attended his second Gally, so it was great to see him again. I'm of course happy that he fell so hard into DW, just like I did, but now Gally is helping us keep in touch. It's great.
And that's about it. We're still cleaning out the house and garage, and have two dump loads, a Goodwill run, and a tech-recycling run scheduled for the next two weeks. We're also starting to plan what we're going to replace the back deck with (possibly a sun room!), but that might get pushed back because the heating broke today. Luckily, it's not too cold anymore, so we can weather it for a little while, but we're not happy about having to spend on that right now.
I shall now wander off in my warm fuzzy socks.
