[benzesandbetter]

I started playing around with GPT-3 and it led me down the rabbit hole of NLP and Transformers. I'm kind of blown away by these tools and what they're capable of, particularly when woven in with the other languages and tools I work with. It brings back the feeling of curiosity and exploration from my very early days of programming.

A couple weeks ago, I started exploring Pu Erh. I ordered a few different teas from white2tea and got a little gong fu set. So far my favorites have been 2018 "Flapjacks" and and the 2022 "Pretty Girls". I just ordered a few others from Yunnan Sourcing which should be arriving any day. This is after years of only drinking matcha. I still start my day with a good sized matcha ~3-4g which seems to smooth out the effects of the Pu Erh nicely.

Somehow a late-night Amazon shopping session led to me buying an Ocarina. It's been a lot of fun leaning a new instrument, particularly one that's melodic and super-portable. The first one I picked up is a "Night by Noble", which is great for the money (~$35) but only hits its higher notes when played pretty loudly. So, I just ordered a Polygon from STL Ocarina which from what I've read has a mellower high-end that can be played more softly. I make up different melodies when I'm out and about, and then record loops and hooks on my Akai Force in my studio at home.