Yutlii

M.Sc Electrical Engineering student. I like writing about whatever comes into my mind. Rather not many pictures. Currently very into AI.

[yutlii]

Journal on Kindle

I have a relatively old kindle and I love it. I was thinking about ways of how to make it more useful and today I came up with this idea:

How about write my journal in it? I have a paper journal that I love, but I can't take it with me all times. I do take my kindle with me almost everywhere though. Unfortunately, the kindle doesn't have a text editor unless Jailbroken and I don't want to jailbreak my kindle. So I came up with this idea:

I will use the highlight feature to fill up each day. So it is also a way to track the habit. I could probably have customized the book even more, by adding cute pictures, holidays, birthdays and so on. This is the first draft and I am very happy.

Does anyone else thinks this is useful? The .mobi file is here if someone has interest.

If someone is interested how I made it. It is not hard but required a lot of steps. You can follow almost the same steps for creating any kind of book for the kindle. Sometimes I make some study notes this way.

Create the list of dates in Excel and exported it as .txt.

Copy the contents of this file in Word and add Title (2024), Heading1 for months and so on. It is very important to use the styles instead of just setting font size, since the kindle creator works better with it. Here is where you can get creative.*

Open the .docx file in kindle creator, see if it looks good. Since my file was very simple, it looked perfect at the first try. Export the book as .epub.

Put the .epub file in Calibre, convert it to .mobi. In the conversion screen you can change some metadata and most importantly, the cover.

Now just send the .mobi file to your kindle in your preferred way. * Not necessary step, but when adding images, it helps a lot to set the size of the paper to the size of the Kindle screen. You can do it on Layout > Margins. Set all margins to 0 and in the "Paper" Tab set the height and width to those of your kindle (12 cm x 9 cm for mine). This way you have a rough idea of how big the images must be. Also, don't bother much about the font and the font size. Just make sure you're using styles, because the Kindle Create will change the fonts anyways since they are fully customizable in the kindle. If you are ok with not being able to change font size in the kindle and prefer something more static (useful if you have lots of images and equations), it is also possible to export the file as .pdf and send the pdf to the kindle. If the Paper size was correct nothing will look too small.

[yutlii]

I absolutely love walnuts and I could not resist taking a bite before taking the picture. 😋

[earlgreytea68]

Okay. It's time for an AI rant.

My nephew is 13 years old. Whenever he writes a paper for school, I check it over and fix all of his mistakes for him. He said to me, "Maybe I'll proofread your paper for you in exchange," meaning one of the scholarly articles I write for work. I said, "Cool," and gave him the file. And he said, "Well, this is full of errors! See, you always say you have a lot to correct on my stuff, and look at all the stuff you got wrong!" And I said, surprised, "What? Where?" Because I'm sure there are typos in the draft I sent him, but not, like, that many.

And then he pointed to the screen and said, "Look at all the blue and red lines you have."

And I said, "Yeah, but those are wrong. Like, those are blue and red lines I'm ignoring because the computer is wrong." And then I paused and added, "You know you can't proofread a paper by just looking at the red and blue lines, right?" And he gave me the blankest look, because that clearly is EXACTLY what he thinks. And it became even clearer suddenly why, whenever I correct something on his paper, his immediate reaction is, "It didn't have a blue or red line."

There's a very good reason for that: THAT'S BECAUSE THE COMPUTER ISN'T SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT IT WAS WRONG.

I am so tired of being sold the idea that computers are better than humans and so we should just outsource everything to them, which is clearly the lesson my nephew is absorbing in U.S. middle school. COMPUTERS ARE NOT BETTER THAN HUMANS. Like, maybe they are better at humans at crawling through rubble to find people trapped inside. They are also better at preserving things in a searchable format. Things like that. Very limited circumstances.

I don't want to sound alarmist but everything I hear about people using generative AI freaks me out. It's not just that I'm freaked out by people being like, "I use it to write novels!" (Although I don't see how they do, I have tried to have it write fiction for me and the output was truly terrible.) But I recognize my bias around creative writing and so no one needs to credit my views on artificial writing. But! Other things are alarming, too! "I use it to brainstorm x, y, or z." But...why? Why not just...use your own brain...to...brain...storm? The computer doesn't even have a brain to brainstorm with! And you might be like, "But it comes up with things that my brain would never think of!" So would other people! You could also brainstorm with other people! Or even through Google to see what other people have thought before you (not AI). Please don't belittle the wonder of thinking.

I just feel like the marketing around generative AI boils down to "Wouldn't it be easier not to use your own brain to think about things?" Everyone. No. It would not be. Please just trust me on this. I'm not just an old person who is out of touch with technology or something. I promise. USE YOUR BRAINS. IT WILL BE OKAY.

[yutlii]

How do you pick your next book to read?

I just finished reading Jane Eyre. I didn't absolutely loved it, but the book has many scenes and quotes that makes it unforgettable.

My goal is to start reading more classics, and Jane Eyre was the first one I finished. The next classic on my list is To kill a Mocking Bird, but when I started reading it I felt very exhausted.

Because of that I decided to make a pause of the classics for now. However I always like to have something to read (helps me with sleep), so I picked a non-fiction book called How Not To Die by Michael Greger.

Usually, I have many books in my list, so I don't have problems picking what to read. I also never read two books at the same time. My strategy to never get overwhelmed of reading is alternating between a "hard" book and an "easy" book.

By hard and easy, I don't mean the contents, but rather the vocabulary. Easy books for me are (most of the time) books published around last 20 years. The vocabulary of modern books is easier to grasp and I can focus on the content instead of having to look-up words every minute.

If I feel like reading something very easy I would take some modern romance with less than 200 pages or so. Romance is aways the easiest for me, because the setup relates more with reality. The story also has few characters that gets introduced slowly.

Fiction on the other hand introduces many families, religions, cities and situations in the first chapters in order to setup the environment. Even if the vocabulary is easy, I still find it very hard to read fiction. Even harder than Non-Fiction books.

I loved fictions as a teenager, but for the reasons mentioned above I haven't been reading it much these days. And since you need a time to get settled in the environment, the story always goes waaay too long.

Most of the good fictions covers multiple thick books. Think of DUNE and Game of Thrones. I suppose that is also the reason big companies are creating new stories in those already settled fictional worlds rather than risking creating new movies for different fiction book series.

I would like to know how other readers pick their next reading.

How do you pick your next read?

Intersect between books "easy" and "hard" to read

circle between genders (romance, fiction, than sci-fi, non-fiction, classic)

intersect between long books (or series of books) and shorter read.

Don't even think about it, just pick next book in the list.

After finishing a book, have pause and read nothing for some time.

Voting ended onJun 24, 2024

[yutlii]

Today I went hiking, with some friends :) We did almost 30 km and now I am exhausted. So finish the day with a bit of YouTube, junk food and Stardew Valley. Tomorrow is a new Monday

[yutlii]

I would like to apply for a scholarship, but I can't avoid this huge impostor syndrome. I had really bad grades in my bachelors.

Of course I had excuses for that. The fact that I am studying in a foreigner language. And also the fact that I work since the third semester and fully support myself financially since the fifth.

I know that the scholarship should be there for people like me. At the same time, It freaks me out that they want above average grades and extreme extracurricular activities.

I have some extracurricular activities and below average grades. But it is extremely hard to do everything and be everything. Sometimes I have the feeling that scholarships programms is only helping the people who doesn't really need it.

I know people who have an infinite amount of money saved given by their parents, never had to work in their lives and get scholarship because their notes are great. Also know people who works their asses off because they have to fulfil visa requirements or whatever, and got their scholarship rejected.

I am not sure if those are isolated cases. But they definitely don't help with my impostor syndrome.

[yutlii]

Programming

Today is Programming day. I am not very excited about it, since it is going much harder and much slower as I expected. But we have to Work...

I am developing a website using Mudblazor. UI Is done but I can't show it here cause it is a private project. Now I have to connect the DB with the UI. The functions that interact with the DB are also ready, so all missing is the logic connecting both. And at this moment I realized how much my UI sucks, hahaha. But Blazor and Mudblazor are very interesting, I am also enjoying programming with c#. I tried developing games with it in Unity before, and it is a nice language. I mostly work with Swift because of my job, so I am happy to try something I can use outside apple environment since most of my devices aren't even apple. I have an iPhone and that's it, my laptop is a windows, android tablet, kindle, WSL, Xiaomi Band (nor very smart). I'll try any old tech you give me.

For those wondering how I can develop with Swift without a Mac, I do have a Mac from work, but it is not my personal Laptop and I don't have anything personal there. All my games and university stuff is in my Windows laptop.

[thepromiscuousfinger]

[elbiotipo]

I think one big reason why we don't consider the stars as important as before (not even pop-astrology anymore cares about the stars or the sky on itself, just the signs deprived of context) is because of light pollution.

For most of human history the sky looked between 1-3, 4 at most. And then all of a sudden with electrification it was gone (I'm lucky if I get 6 in my small city). The first time I saw the Milky Way fully as a kid was a spiritual experience, I was almost scared on how BRIGHT it was, it felt like someone was looking back at me. You don't get that at all with modern light pollution.

When most people talk about stargazing nowadays they think about watching about a couple of bright dots. The stars are really, really not like that. The unpolluted night sky is a festival of fireworks. There is nothing like it.

[yutlii]

I am almost finishing the book (I am a very very slow reader). The English was quite hard read for me but by the middle of the book I started enjoying it.

I love quoting passages that I like, and since this is a quite lengthy book, I have too much of them. I couldn’t pick a favorite, since what I consider my favorite or what I even consider worthy highlighting strongly depends on my mood of the day. Here is a rather cute one:

„There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and the feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort“

As beautiful as it sounds, it also brings sad memories since the moment she says it is after some sad event.

[study-core-101]

enough of pretty aesthetic notes, i want messy, shitass handwriting, chaotic notes only you can understand

[yutlii]

I have no idea how to get started with this one, but I love seeing LEDs shining 🚨✨

[liones-s]

one of the biggest things I can advocate for (in academia, but also just in life) is to build credibility with yourself. It’s easy to fall into the habit of thinking of yourself as someone who does things last minute or who struggles to start tasks. people will tell you that you just need to build different habits, but I know for me at least the idea of ‘habit’ is sort of abstract and dehumanizing. Credibility is more like ‘I’ve done this before, so I know I can do it, and more importantly I trust myself to do it’. you set an assignment goal for the day and you meet it, and then you feel stronger setting one the next day. You establish a relationship with yourself that’s built on confidence and trust. That in turn starts to erode the barrier of insecurity and perfectionism and makes it easier to start and finish tasks. reframing the narrative as a process of building credibility makes it easier to celebrate each step and recognize how strong your relationship with yourself can become

[yutlii]

A clear mind needs a clean body, so I am starting the day with this breakfast.

[yutlii]

Cosine Similarity, Clearly Explained!!! I realized quite quickly I needed some basic mathematics background for the paper I was reading and of course my search is “whatever I don’t know clearly explained”. This guy is amazing, he saved me on my Image Analysis exam by explaining things extremely slow, but not in a boring way. Josh Starmer my hero!

[yutlii]

Some thoughts on this image generation by AIs.

Just imagine I am a client and I really like the style of some artist. I go to this artist and order a painting from them. They are benefiting from me. So, imagine I can't order from this artist directly for whichever reason. Maybe he is too renowned and the prices are high. Maybe he comes from across the seas and the shipping would be unreasonable. I am also not satisfied with having a digital version. Maybe we don't speak the same language and even online the communication would be hard and uncomfortable. To illustrate my example, I will use Picasso as the dead artist I can't order from. At this point, the option I have is to go some other artist. Someone who is just starting, someone who does it as a side hustle and doesn't charge as much, or some local or family artist. I would make the inquiry:

"A portrait of me in the style of Picasso"

I believe it is a general consensus that all art is a mash up and that this artist, thus copying the style of Picasso, is still doing an original piece of artwork, since Picasso never painted a portrait of me. It is those small artists that AI is killing. Is not the Original artists that are already selling lots. Unless you are extremely passionate on art or interested on a very small nice and author, it is also probably not the artist you are putting in the prompts that is being damaged the most. Since they were famous enough for you to remember their names. And we can go forever discussing that those artists are doing exactly the same as AI by getting inspired in someone else's art, without consent most likely, to make their own creation... But that is not the point. The problem is that all that happened to quick for those people to react, since many companies are already using AI prompts instead of real artists. I also find a bit unfair to compare it with industrial revolution, where thousands of people did lost their jobs for the machine. Yes, people did lost their jobs and suffered, but the transition, thus quick, was still much slower than this time. DALLEE was released in 2021. 3 Years is barely the time of a Bachelors degree and most students fear changing their studies after only one year in the course. What about people who lived their whole life of art and now have to consider a carrier change, how hard it must be for them? Thanks for reading this very long text. I would love to know if anyone read this long, so please react.

[yutlii]

I have a project about actual measures to protect artists from the new AI image generators. I just started reading the first paper on it, and it is quite a long one. The paper is from last year (2023) thus, there are not much YouTube material I can rely on. I have a really hard time reading papers usually, and I hope I will stick to this one. I’ll bring updates if I can understand something and if it is interesting of course.