2023-10-14

Urgh! Here we are again. Another disgusting mood I can’t shake. I’m starting to think that there’s something seriously wrong with the way that I’m doing weekends.

I mean it’s no real coincidence, how many data points do I really need? Every week is sort of the same. I spend Wednesday and Thursday night looking forward to a drink but abstaining. And then when I get to Friday night I reach a certain level of “ah fuck it”.

I once heard that alcohol is really just borrowing from tomorrow’s happiness. I like that idea. That nothing comes for free. Feeling good now comes at the expense of feeling worse later. At least when it’s chemically induced. Whilst not entirely true, I think the problem is that at the moment I have very little in the way of self regulation and self control. I can’t just have a beer. If I have a beer, suddenly it’s three beers and reaching for a long pour of whisky.

This weekend, I reached for the CBD oil and I think I’m remembering why I don’t do it all that often. Whilst fun for the night, the whole next day, my stomach is empty, everything sort of hurts and I just feel like I haven’t slept at all. Not a great combination for a day spent with the kids.

But let’s loop back to the idea of doing the weekend wrong. If weekends make me miserable, why do I keep approaching them the same way and thinking that the next one is going to be different?

Why do I delude myself into thinking that I can have a nice weekend on the couch. Have a beer. Watch a movie. I can’t do it. Even if I wanted to. I can’t switch my brain off like that. I need a run or something in the middle. But also there’s the reality of family life. Again, the kids are always up at 5:55. If the kids are up, the dog is up. The dog needs feeding and then immediate fuss and cleaning up after.

Why do I insist on torturing myself by hating all the adults in my house for making me spend two to three hours of solo parenting before they can surface. It doesn’t feel fair. But why do they care about fair?

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2023-10-13

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2023-10-17

What distinguishes you from other developers?

I've built data pipelines across 3 continents at petabyte scales, for over 15 years. But the data doesn't matter if we don't solve the human problems first - an AI solution that nobody uses is worthless.

Are the robots going to kill us all?

Not any time soon. At least not in the way that you've got imagined thanks to the Terminator movies. Sure somebody with a DARPA grant is always going to strap a knife/gun/flamethrower on the side of a robot - but just like in Dr.Who - right now, that robot will struggle to even get out of the room, let alone up some stairs.

But AI is going to steal my job, right?

A year ago, the whole world was convinced that AI was going to steal their job. Now, the reality is that most people are thinking 'I wish this POC at work would go a bit faster to scan these PDFs'.

When am I going to get my self-driving car?

Humans are complicated. If we invented driving today - there's NO WAY IN HELL we'd let humans do it. They get distracted. They text their friends. They drink. They make mistakes. But the reality is, all of our streets, cities (and even legal systems) have been built around these limitations. It would be surprisingly easy to build self-driving cars if there were no humans on the road. But today no one wants to take liability. If a self-driving company kills someone, who's responsible? The manufacturer? The insurance company? The software developer?