Ernesto Aldana

Botanical sculpture of a woman at Atlanta Botanical Garden

Did some walking in ATL this weekend.

The summer I tried to (vibe)code in @julialang.org was also the summer I used @vscode.dev and, after about 8 years, I think I'm ready to leave Emacs. It was a good ride.

I just started with Suzuki's recordings of Bach cantatas. Will report back next year when I'm done.

Nothing marks the end of the summer as the line in the Starbucks drive thru

Dressed up this morning to be part of the set design at graduation. Congratulations, new Clemson graduates!

Ok I got access to Perplexity's Comet. It's a browser so I'm not expecting (too) much, but we'll see...

Has anyone tried it?

There was A LOT going on in my life last October, so I was not paying a lot of attention to the news, I guess.
I vaguely recall that the physics Nobel Prize was given to AI, but I somehow didn't register until recently that the Chemistry Nobel was **also** given to AI research (and to Google!!!!).

My daughter loves rainy days because she gets to use her blue-and-yellow umbrella.

I, for myself, got to use some old, beaten-down, waterproof shoes that I don't really like and even hurt a bit.

Highlighted text: "then something is very broken and you need to think hard about what went wrong"

Trying to solve an HPC (computer) issue and came across this in one of the @julialang.org fora:

Life, right?

Normally I ignore the suggested tracks because the sequence rarely makes sense (combining different genres, including instrumental, etc.). But sometimes (like now), everything's a mess so I just embrace the chaos. A random mid-opera recitativo right after an indy rock track, sure why not?

There's a big tradition in our family: every time a parent has to travel a kid gets sick

Everyone seems to love football(s) in Alabama 🐊

Less than a month before classes start. Ok, this is it. Final stretch. Good luck everyone! 🙃

I want a BluRay player so I might buy a PS5.

-Notes on self deception

Oh yes, Thomas Paine's and my favorite Chipotle:

Kid learned the word "why". This is fun 😁

I've been using perplexity to essentially learn how to code in Julia (or to ask for help translating my R code to Julia). I also use it as enhanced search for data and literature questions.

Today I tried Claude. disappointed. More words, less substance.

Maybe I'm just a terrible prompter.

Not just you. Fubo (Spanish PKG) solved my problems last year but since TUDN left it's just a mess. I have Vix but you can't always tell what games they'll stream

Living room stereo playing a Johnny Cash record

Down time after a rather long day

Savoring the 30-40% of academic summer left after a couple of dramatic years (job market + moving and new job).

Treasury will now track and publish employment numbers by census tract, poverty rates w/ before/after comparisons, median family income changes, demographic data, rent burden as a percentage of income, and homeownership rates.

It seems that the new rules for Opportunity Zones™ come with new data generation. Good news for research (and also transparency).

(Screenshot from The Promote newsletter)

Never fails

From time to time sports give you stories like this. Just keep working hard, doing your thing, get fired, keep working away from the spotlight, come back, get your first trophy after 239 races, then keep going. Big congrats to Nico!

Google photos reminded me that a year ago I took a very poor selfie, which became my University ID photo 😅

Well, I'm impressed. My R function takes a few minutes to run what my (likely very poorly written) Julia function accomplishes in a tenth of a second. @julialang.org

Well... today the boss released over 5 hours of "new" music I'm here for it

Same thing in Clemson. Ventured to take the dog out for a walk, but then hurried back in after taking a look at the sky.

Recently learned that English-speaking folks are calling huitlacoche "corn truffle" and I'm impressed

Just found an error in some code I wrote more than a year ago. Yay me! (I guess)

Back to using R on Emacs after a full year of Rstudio. If nothing else, I like some variety in my keyboard shortcuts 😉