Reflection

I had the following general objectives:

1. Secure better paying work to increase financial security.
2. Lose weight so that I am an attractive prospect.
3. Continue high-level fundamental research to increase the probability of creating post-life value.

I haven’t really secured better paying work, but the flexibility in the work I currently have has allowed me to have some success in politics. I currently have three different leads to potentially better paying work, but my existing work that has kept me afloat is drying up rapidly. I find myself putting £10 a week into the Lottery because for a short time it allows me to dream about a financially stable situation. My advice to people regarding the Lottery is “it’s statistically better to invest into yourself”, but we’re in the wrong environment for it.

Whilst I haven’t fully reverted back to my old diet, my current diet is stalled. There is a person in a similar situation I am actively seeking to team up with, because we have overlapping ambitions.

In terms of legacy, I am working hard on this. A few days ago I saw humanoids operating in a way that I am both excited and shocked to have occurred so quickly. I wanted to be part of this directly, but I cannot claim to be - in fact, I thought it was 10 years away. I may need to rethink what my legacy will be.

I think the previously stated objectives still hold well, so I will keep them.

Recap

Previously I planned the following:

• The following tasks:
  • Get the new GPU into my desktop
  • Migrate away from old laptop

I migrated to a new laptop, but never got the new GPU up and running. In fact, I had completely forgotten about it.

• I plan to complete the following hardware:
  • Linux core
  • Linux PDA

I keep dancing around this topic, but with the price of RAM, I can’t find a way t make a product that people would pay for.

• I plan to complete the following software:
  • Linux distribution (automated)
  • Lightweight container alternative for low-RAM systems
  • RP Pico Linux compilation process

I gave up on the Linux distro, but will revisit it again. The lightweight container system I slowly work on in the background because it will enable several cool projects. The Pico Linux compilation I gave up on because I couldn’t secure the Linux chips cheap enough - they gave me false hope on these.

• A web-browser based Python code runner

Still a super cool project with a working example, but haven’t had time to continue this. The lightweight container project needs to proceed this.

• Experiments with a humanoid in a simulator

I did a little work on this but ran out of time.

• Complete modular storage

I can’t even remember what this was about!

• Diet
  • <1500kcal a day
  • Track calories
  • Switch away from carbs
• Exercise
  • Daily walks

These have failed, but need to be worked on.

• RoboCup
  • Control module (robotics)
  • Humanoid robot prototype design
  • Prepare materials for qualification

The control module project I never got more time for. I didn’t get the help I needed to work on it and it became infeasible. I did prepare the materials for qualification and was successful, but we didn’t get support to attend the competition this year.

Some additional activities:

• Ran an election campaign successfully
• Built an ESP32 based watch running Micropython and sipping at power
• Begun experimenting with agentic systems, building a reasonably fast CPU-based LLM system

Forward

Going forwards, I think I will simplify my objectives.

• Diet & exercise - I have 10 months to get myself into fighting shape.
• Reading - I want to get through more of my books, I have a collection that most would be jealous of.
• Lightweight container - This is important for several projects to move forward.
• Humanoid motion - I need to get caught up here, or I will be left behind for sure.
• Portable electronics - I want to keep pushing down this path, I think now is the right time for this.

Until next time.

Reflection

There is somebody I know that is going through a tough time, but I don’t speak to them regularly. I was thinking to myself “what advice would I give to this person if given the opportunity?”. I think the advice I would give is “plan and take actions today that lead to the path of the best version of yourself”.

Maybe I should head my own advice.

Firstly, what possible future version of myself do I want to see? I think my view on this has been relatively consistent:

1. To be financially secure (not necessarily rich), such that I am not living hand-to-mouth.
2. To start a family and have children, and to offload my learnings about the world unto them. I believe that it is fundamentally important that we remain invested in the future past our own life-span. It should go without saying, that I would work to secure the children’s future also.
3. To invent or create or build something that has value past my lifetime, such that my name is not lost to history.

Given those objectives, I need to make a few changes to my current path:

1. Secure better paying work to increase financial security.
2. Lose weight so that I am an attractive prospect.
3. Continue high-level fundamental research to increase the probability of creating post-life value.

Those are well-defined and clear objectives.

Recap

I planned and was able to do the following:

• I so far plan on attending the following activities/events:
  • Local parish voting on the 18th September
  • Meeting with family

I additionally did the following:

• A lot more health-based check-ups
• A web-browser based Python code runner (almost complete)
• Rebuilt the website from scratch due to a server issue
• Ran a workshop, including the preparation of many talks
• Experiments with simulators
• Experiments with Python GUIs (and discovery of their flaws)
• Produced a book
  • Taking an old book scan and modernising it (OCR, LaTeX, editing)
  • Publishing the book
• Designed a modular storage module (needs to be printed)
• Built out a concept for open-source publishing of political materials

I was not able to do the following:

• The following tasks:
  • Get the new GPU into my desktop
  • Migrate away from old laptop
• I plan to complete the following hardware:
  • Linux core
  • Linux PDA
• I plan to complete the following software:
  • Linux distribution (automated)
  • Lightweight container alternative for low-RAM systems
  • ESP32 Linux compilation process

Forward

I want to carry over the following items (with changes):

• The following tasks:
  • Get the new GPU into my desktop
  • Migrate away from old laptop
• I plan to complete the following hardware:
  • Linux core
  • Linux PDA
• I plan to complete the following software:
  • Linux distribution (automated)
  • Lightweight container alternative for low-RAM systems
  • RP Pico Linux compilation process

Extend existing tasks to the following:

• A web-browser based Python code runner
• Experiments with a humanoid in a simulator
• Complete modular storage

And add the following new tasks:

• Diet
  • <1500kcal a day
  • Track calories
  • Switch away from carbs
• Exercise
  • Daily walks
• RoboCup
  • Control module (robotics)
  • Humanoid robot prototype design
  • Prepare materials for qualification

Build System

This site still relies on an old bash script to recursively build the site and build the RSS feeds, and it’s pretty ugly. One of the things I intend to do is to switch to a python based system, which will allow for things such as multi-threaded building, caching, building just the changed files, etc.

Python Cells

One of the things I have seen on other sites is “Python cells”, but the implementations have not been amazing. I have been working on creating something based on Brython that allows code to be run directly in the browser.

It is already working to some extent:

There are still a series of outstanding tasks, though:

• Code required to get the cells working should not be visible.
• Un-hack the implementation and fix re-run bugs.
• Statically compile the code and results, and only offer the live Python cells if operational.
• Allow resetting of cells.
• Dependant cells should indicate that they need to be re-run.
• Dependant cells should re-run all previous changed cells.
• Allow for modified code to be saved in some way.

It means that in theory, people could change the code on the site itself and see the results. It could make for some amazing demos and learnings!

Container System

Instead of running all code directly on the server, the idea is to run super lightweight containers when they are required in order to perform a task. It would enable some cool concepts:

• There could be more containers on the server available than can actually be run simultaneously, but they are shutdown when not in use to save resources.
• Experimental code could be run more easily and safely without potentially compromising the entire server.
• More dynamic content could be generated and embedded into pages, such as live stock trackers and other “widgets”.

There’s a few things I want to experiment with but have not been able to, due to the nature of the site:

• Share the resources of a connected system(s), enabling the server to have access to greater resources than exist directly on the server itself. An example could be a GPU on a desktop machine that is made available for processing by just being connected to the server, rather than being local. Another idea has been to share files from a non-server disk with >1TB of space, rather than the small 20GB SSD that this server offers.
• Different types of experimental chat systems, such as video chat or custom encryption.
• A web page converter for small devices that allows them to render a web page that they couldn’t otherwise interact with. Imagine, for example, an ESP32 using my site as a proxy to browse Youtube or Reddit, when the available RAM would tell you that the device has no business doing so.
• Access to my personal music library from anywhere (login would be required).
• A portal for publishing and searching published content for niche concepts.

The point is that all of these things collectively running all of the time would sink a cheap VPS, but loaded as and when needed, could provide a cool experience.

To make this run, the idea would be to have a small kernel (originally Linux, but considering also NetBSD) boot via qemu with a small set of pre-built tools. Initial experiments with Linux have shown that ~128MB of RAM would be needed, but I believe I could get this down to ~32MB of RAM or less per virtual machine.

Questions

I have my been using my trusty Pandoc Highlight Filter for quite some time, complete with it’s own internal mini plotting library. The issue is that I now want to do projects which require much more complex plotting, and I don’t really want to extend it further. For example, I have been thinking about doing some simulations and 3D projects, but the tools are holding me back. Do I continue to try and self-host/write all of my site’s tooling?

The hero images have a somewhat ‘sexual’ nature to them, which at the time I thought was a “my site, my rules” idea which I stand by, but has since made me hesitant to share the link to others. My ability to express myself against censorship, is in turn, meaning that I self-censor when wanting to share content. Where is the middle ground?

Multiculturalism

In 1997, a foul creature was elected to Prime Minister, named Tony Blair. Amongst his many shitty ideas (including an illegal war into Afghanistan and Iraq), was a new immigration policy:

According to Home Office statistics, the total number of migrants coming to the UK for more than one year rose from 326,100 in 1997 to 582,100 in 2004 while the net inflow (which accounts for emigration) increased from 46,800 to 222,600 (see Figure 1). The Government Actuary Department predicts net immigration to continue at 145,000 individuals per year. The foreign-born population living in the UK now totals 4.9 million, or 8.3 percent of the population.

This article was written in 2007. In 2019, the population born outside of the UK totals 14%. As they settle, these adults also have children. It’s not unreasonable to believe that quarter of these people have had at least one child in the UK since 2019, as mostly working-age adults (and therefore fertile) tend to migrate. This also only accounts for legal migration. We have zero idea regarding illegal immigration.

I would like to give more recent data, but the 2021 census data is delayed by a year now as they continue to ‘massage’ the data. I would not be surprised to learn if 20% of the UK’s population is born outside of the UK, and less than 70% of the population being able to identify as white-British (the native indigenous people).

With so much of the UK’s population being dual-nationals, or their parents are dual-nationals, how many of them will stick around and fight when the going gets tough? Or, as we saw in Ukraine, will the dual-nationals flee? Bare in mind, a significant number of these people consider the Union Jack to be a racist symbol, how many of those people would fight under its banner?

Look at London for example. In 2019 it was estimated that some 37% of the population are migrants. These are people who likely have no allegiance to Britain, when the bombs start dropping they are on the first flight out. The nation’s capital is filled to the brim with people who have no national unity with the UK and would not fight for it. Hell, they may even turn on Westminster if they thought it could benefit them personally.

Perhaps Angela Merkel, the German leader that allowed for some 1+ million Syrian refugees into Germany alone, has an interesting point to make in 2010:

Speaking to a meeting of young members of her Christian Democratic Union party, Merkel said the idea of people from different cultural backgrounds living happily “side by side” did not work.

She said the onus was on immigrants to do more to integrate into German society.

“This [multicultural] approach has failed, utterly failed,” Merkel told the meeting in Potsdam, west of Berlin, yesterday.

Mitigation

What can we do?

Obviously the answer is not to kick all immigrants out, law-abiding people who have settled in the UK now have a right to stay here. What we can do is slow down net migration and tackle the issue of national unity. We need to ensure that migrants understand, respect and want to adopt our values, such as freedom and equality of opportunity. They must be able to speak the English language, understand our history, and have some form of loyalty.

We need to prevent the forming of closed-off communities. These areas can be found quite easily, the local schools teach in languages other than English, the local signage is in languages other than English and more generally, the local population is predominantly immigrants. In these places, we often see the adoption of rules and culture as practised in their home nations, such as Sharia-law.

People may be concerned that this appears to be somewhat racist - to which I say this: If the Country of origin has such great culture and values, why is this person choosing to migrate here? What is is about this Country that they are attracted to, and what can we do to ensure that value is not lost? Bare in mind, many of these people move to the UK to escape an ideology, only to have it applied to them in some sub-nation based in the UK.

Guess who agrees with me… That’s right - Tony Blair, the creator of these issues. Amongst many brain farts he had to address these issues:

Blair writes: “In this report, we make it clear that there is a duty to integrate, to accept the rules, laws and norms of our society that all British people hold in common and share, while at the same time preserving the right to practise diversity, which is fully consistent with such a duty.

“Without the right to, for example, practise one’s faith, diversity would have no content; but without the duty to integrate, ‘culture’ or ‘faith’ can be used as a way of upsetting that basic social contract that binds us together.

“Government cannot and should not be neutral on this question. It has to be a passionate advocate and, where necessary, an enforcer of the duty to integrate while protecting the proper space for diversity. Integration is not a choice; it is a necessity.”

Finally, we need to address the elephant in the room. The reason why we need so much migration is because we have an ageing population. As medicine gets better, this problem only gets worse. Firstly we need a well funded pension scheme even at the cost of higher taxes. Secondly, we need to encourage local people with British values to have children with British values, therefore concentrating national unity.

If anybody has any other ways to address these concerns, I will be most definitely willing to hear them. I can say for certain that unless we do something to cement our culture and values into the population, there will be nobody left to fight for them.

Location

Some will now know that I have moved from New Zealand back to the United Kingdom. It’s been quite some time since I have been back on British soil and of course I miss family and friends.

The main reason for moving was due to money. COVID ¹ has meant that in every way possible there is now no funding available, and even if I could get hold of money, I would need so much more now due to inflation and a coming recession. The idea of being caught out in New Zealand during a recession is not funny at all.

I’ve now moved back home where I can essentially get my costs down, but still having little to no money is not much fun at all. Everything I own is now on its last legs, from my laptop, to my phone, to my clothes, to my drives. Everything should have been replaced at least two years ago and is running on a wish and a prayer.

Work

The intention now is to complete my PhD remotely whilst picking up some light work to pay the bills. This isn’t the best arrangement as I won’t be working in something related to my field and I won’t be getting paid nearly what I am worth. That said, it could be worse.

I am now starting to seriously consider starting some automotive company, where we would sell after-market parts. I have experience in embedded and autonomous electronics/robotics, I spent some time working in the automotive industry and I have somebody I can work with whom has experience in fabricating parts for high-end vehicles. In theory, our combined knowledge is quite a good pairing.

I suspect as the recession comes, the only people with disposable income will be young adults living at home with “boy-racer” vehicles, and in the next few months we could theoretically be well positioned with at least one product to fill that market.

Until then, I look for a part-time job that takes no more than 2-3 working days out of the week, can be done remotely (doesn’t pay enough for travel anyway) and is somewhat interesting to me. If I get in a low enough wage bracket I won’t be taxed and I won’t have to start paying back my student loan just yet, which given the state of things I will never end up paying it back anyway ².

General

It still feels unreal being back home after so long. In some ways it is great, and in others it’s a little depressing. I had setup somewhat of a life and home over in New Zealand, with friends, belongings, routines, etc. I had to leave that all behind and start again.

I continue with the promise to myself that this will in the near future pay off quite well, but like many things, it takes its toll.

Over the coming weeks I plan to come back with some articles soon.

Current

Why discuss this? Well, I want to hold myself accountable in my daily life. Recently I was thinking about writing on the topic of motivation, perhaps even depression, but actually I realised the real topic of interest was accountability.

In the following I will discuss some major points within my personal life and discuss how they are progressing.

Going Forwards

My largest failures appear to simply be the inability to hold myself accountable. I start something but tend not to finish it.

I read an article recently regarding daily journals - whilst I have no real interest in journals, the idea of writing something daily is interesting. I am thinking this could even make an interesting thing to public publicly. My thinking is to have the following format:

1. Brief - A few sentences on what is in my head currently.
2. TODO - A list of items I want to achieve that day, along with time estimates.
3. Debrief - Discuss the number of tasks that were achieved, how accurate the estimations were and write some notes about what is in my head regarding the next day.

Starting with today, I will attempt to write a daily brief to attempt to introduce greater self-accountability into my life.

Analysis

Using the story from Wikipedia, I will break this story up with various elements of commentary.

Jack, a poor country boy, [..]

We start our story with a poor Country boy. This is a children’s story, and most children tend to be poor, and being from the ‘Country’, this is a ‘simple’ boy. Whilst this is somewhat relatable, it is also happening “somewhere that is not here”.

trades the family cow for a handful of magic beans, [..]

We have all seen a young man make poor investments, thinking it is actually a good long-term investment. It’s obvious to most that the swap of a cow for some magic beans is obviously a poor trade. There is no reason to think they are actually magic at all, and in fact Jack has been conned out of his family’s hard earned cow. Some random stranger simply claims they are magic, and Jack being young and gullible, believes they are.

Worth noting at this point also is that Jack is made aware they are somehow magic, but not in how they are magic. If he is aware of the reward possible, he is definitely not aware of the risk.

This story could just end here, where Jack returns home, tries to grow the beans, finds out they are fake and has no path for recourse. The stranger could then skip town with his new cow and sell it on the market at quite a profit.

Instead, this story takes quite a different turn.

which grow into a massive, towering beanstalk reaching up into the clouds.

We are led to believe that Jack did not know how this magic was going to work. The beans could have killed him, or instantly rewarded him (likely as he expected).

In some recalls of this story, Jack goes home to tell his mother, who tells him off and throws the beans out of the window in frustration. This would be much more relatable to a young man, hence why I believe this version of the story is somewhat popular ¹.

Jack climbs the beanstalk [..]

We have this investment that already cost the family their cow, and when he goes to evaluate his investment (by planting it), it turns out it requires more investment. This is most definitely relatable. Everybody has seen somebody or themselves buy something which they thought was a good deal, but then later requires further money or time to get any real value out of the investment. Sometimes this pays off, but often you would have been better off paying more.

Jack, like many young men, does not see this problem initially though. Instead of a bad investment, Jack instead sees a problem to solve, an adventure. What he at first thought was a simple investment, has now turned into a challenge.

Note that in some versions of this story, he has already been scolded by his mother. Given the option of swallowing his pride or taking a risk to prove himself right, he chooses to try and defend his pride: “Look mother, I was right to swap the cow after all!”.

and finds himself in the castle of an unfriendly giant.

This climb, not described well here, is really dangerous. Jack could lose his life with the objective of reclaiming his pride, at the cost of a cow. How many young men out there have lost their lives in meaningless pursuits, for little or no apparent value?

Is his pride over one badly invested cow worth such a risk? During the time this was written, in the 1700’s, a cow was a massive investment. It would provide milk each day, which could either be used for its fat, protein and calorie content, or sold to others. It could even be stored for harder times by churning it to butter, or creating cheese. If the cow was to die, they would eat the cow. This cow could make or break the family’s ability to eat, and he just swapped it for some seemingly worthless beans.

It’s actually now worse than this, not only do they not have a cow, they now have a massive beanstalk up to the clouds. This would cast shade on their crops, potentially damage the land or property, and wreak havoc when it falls.

It now gets worse still, once Jack makes the dangerous journey to the top, he finds an unfriendly giant. Jack in his poor investment has now brought danger in many forms to his family.

The giant senses Jack’s presence and cries,

Fee-fi-fo-fum!

I smell the blood of an Englishman.

Be he alive, or be he dead,

I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.

There is no denying now that this has been a very poor investment so far. Not only have the family lost their cow, they now have a deadly giant to contend with. For this we can thank Jack’s want of a quick-win to shortcut to success and Jack’s childish sense of adventure, that throws danger out of the window.

Outwitting the giant, Jack is able to retrieve many goods once stolen from his family, including a bag of gold, an enchanted goose that lays golden eggs and a magic golden harp that plays and sings by itself.

Jack apparently outwits the giant, but if we’re honest he gets incredibly lucky. Jack will now go on to learn the wrong lesson: to take enormous risks without considering the possible consequences. It’s exactly this kind of thinking that causes so many young men to go on to repeat their risky actions despite only barely making good of them previously. We call this survivor bias, and the luck eventually runs out.

Want a real world example? According to one study, one third of all lottery winners go bankrupt. People with the high risk habit of gambling (which statistically is a poor choice), have this awful habit reinforced by their winnings. They go onto take part in other high risk behaviour, such as poor investments, and the go on to become bankrupt.

Even if Jack is able to escape the giant at this point, it would only be rewarding this high risk behaviour. In the future he is likely to do something of similar risk, and lose everything he gained. There is an old British saying: “easily given, easily lost”.

Jack then escapes by chopping down the beanstalk.

Jack is aware he is currently in large danger, so decides to chop down the beanstalk. For all he knows, the beanstalk falls and crushes his family or himself to death. Again we see Jack take enormous risk to both himself and those around him.

The giant, who is pursuing him, falls to his death, and Jack and his family prosper.

An incredibly lucky escape. It’s entirely possible the giant could have survived the fall, or thrown down a ladder. He clearly knows what and Englishman is, hence why he knows the name and smell. This is not his first time visiting the ground below.

Whilst Jack and his family seemingly made a really good investment here, it is only by shear luck they got away with this. Jack put himself and his family in very serious danger multiple times within this short story, yet he now becomes a hero, because he undid all the things he did wrong, and somehow made a profit in the end.

If this story were to continue, Jack would likely go on to make other poor investments. I’m sure people for miles around will know that a guy named ‘Jack’ will buy anything at any price you put the word ‘magic’ on. After so many ‘magic shoes’, ‘magic seeds’, and other types of apparently magic objects, Jack has either once again badly invested his fortune, or pursued another high-risk adventure which this time may have resulted in death.

Discussion

For such a simple story, there is a surprising amount of depth here. As a child I was unaware. Jack seemed somewhat like a hero, but in reality Jack was reckless and will likely lead his family to misfortune in the future.

I don’t want to tell children “be boring, don’t have adventures”, but I also don’t want to see children running in-front of cars or trains, taking high risks for the possibility of some reward. Maybe the child bounces off the train/car and receives some massive payout due to health and safety, but more than likely they will die.

I believe it is important we foster a sense of adventure and curiosity in children, but we should also teach them to think critically and learn from their mistakes. When a child takes a high risk and it pays off this one time, we should still make them consider the alternative likely outcome where the something bad happens.

The family member and I went on to discuss how during modern times we are missing such stories, and that new ones may never be created. Stories are told in modern times, but I suspect none of them (at least the ones I know of) will survive hundreds of years.