First Post!
hey guys look I made a blog isn't this awesome...
Recent Posts
Black Phone 2
Finally saw Black Phone 2 like an hour ago.
Originally the plan was to watch the first movie in preparation for the second then go watch that one when it came out, but after seeing the first movie it kind of got put on the back burner. Really wasn't a fan of the first one if I'm being honest, it just felt too cheesy. But the movies about to get out of theaters so it was time to rip the band-aid off.
Anyways, the movie rocked. Actually jumpscare city. They got me so bad it was humiliating, there were multiple points I was just tensed up waiting for the jumpscare to come and get me.
Easy 4 star movie, enjoyed it a lot. Girlfriend said there were a bunch of homages but idk man it was pretty scary and thats good enough for me.
Chocolate & Coffee festival
Went to the Chocolate and Coffee festival yesterday (Saturday). It was packed, the parking lot for the expo center was completely full, we had to park in the Northrop Grumman parking lot nearby and walk.
The actual festival was okay, there were a bunch of people and stalls but most of them seemed low-effort. My personal favorite was the Weird Brothers Coffee booth. They had a barrel aged coffee that I tried it was weird as hell. The coffee smelled like whiskey and had a whiskey-ish after taste as well, it was actually really cool. They also had one that they artificially flavor and that one was okay as well, it was served cold though so it was harder for me to gauge the taste.
Chocolate-wise, there really wasn't much. There was this one booth selling chocolate bars they sourced from Nicaragua for like $20 a bar, it tasted like normal chocolate to me so it was pretty ridiculous. I ended up just getting a pack of aeropress filters for my moka pot. Which led to a much different tasting coffee when I tried it, I think it's because the filter makes the pressure cap raise before the actual coffee starts pouring out of the spout but idk.
It was $20 a person to get into the event though, so factoring that in the whole event was just okay. I probably wouldn't go back, but it was fun as a one-time thing.
Thanksgiving + AI
Been like 10 days since my last post, nothing much has happened since. Worked for 4 days then just prepared for my mock trial in my Law and Ethics class.
Thanksgiving in a few days which rocks, my favorite part of the whole thing is getting to eat the leftovers for like a week afterwards. I hate turkey though, maybe it's just my family but it's always so dry and hard to swallow. Big fan of cornbread and cranberry sauce (jelly) though.
Recently I've kind of reached this point with AI where I'm so sick and tired of the fear mongering and the god-like praise I just dgaf anymore. I'm not sure what it was like when other technologies blew up that simplified everything, but man this is something else. The argument that AI can think creatively is dumb imo. As long as these models are trained on pre-existing human creations then it will never be able to stray from the limits we as humans have. Also I like AI as much as the next guy but can we stop saying they'll take our jobs like it's inevitable? If companies were not soulless and actually cared about humanity like they all claim to do, they would view AI not as a cheap alternative to a human worker, but as a tool that strengthens one. Companies like OpenAI or Anthropic trying to subtly hint in their marketing that their products are "Junior level SWE's" are very blatantly trying to de-humanize the workforce and create this rivalry of man v machine. Mark my words this is how the robot uprising starts...
Christmas Break
Did 3 finals, 2 on Monday 1 on Tuesday and they were pretty light.
Studied like it was gonna be D-Day but I had good professors this semester so all the exams were pretty fair, but my robotics class was something else. Took a Robotics course with the hopes of getting to tinker with robotics and get some "real-life" code application practice but day one the professor is Like
"Yeah we won't be touching a robot lol did u guys seriously think we would?"
Like ummmm yes man the course description literally says it takes place in the robotics lab and we use robots, how about you update the description instead? Anyways the course was pretty stupid, he would go off about equations, theorems, and concepts all fundamental to understanding the movement of robots and how to conceptualize them. Which is fine and stuff but we would learn an equation, not even know how it applies or what it does, then move onto another equation with random variables. It was a horrible learning experience. We were also supposed to get 8 assignments, of which we only actually ever got 3, and 2 projects (we got 1). The saving grace was the exams tbh, the midterm and final were super light math wise as long as you knew the formulas. Everyone in the class was stressing but I lowkey destroyed that exam. Pulled out with an A+ on the midterm and am pretty confident I'm getting the same on the final. I think where everyone messed up was trying to understand the concepts and the reason why certain variables were in the formulas. I just opted to read all the slides and then try to do the assignments without any references, once I got it down I just stopped and called it. I really enjoyed the material in the class so I'm pretty disapointed in the experience, but I guess it is what it is.
I'm just glad it's winter break. Pretty boring semester all things considered, I'm really excited for my classes next semester though, especially compilers.