I am in the enviable position where I’m building a game for work! The goal is to make the conversational experience we’re creating feel more engaging, so the idea was to build a memory palace of the character the user is talking to, that the user accompanies the character around. This character is controlled by an llm, and the experience is supposed to be a reflection of the conversation and not the other way around… so I built a system where the location of the character and its movement is controlled entirely by the LLM. It was so much fun, and the first time that a demo I did for work elicited joy :) We have to abandon it because we got rid of locations entirely to cut scope (product iterations amirite) but I am really proud of what we came up with in the first place. Maybe I can use this elsewhere.
Since my last weeknote (two weeks ago) where I was stressing about interviewing people, I have interviewed exactly zero people. I will do more this week, I promise!
The BIG thing that happened this week is that I finally threw a Christmas party. Lots of new friends showed up, and I did feel a little overwhelmed, but more people than I expected came early and really made themselves at home. I loved having people in my house, and I loved that my house could hold so many people. I think this is going to be a biannual event - the next one will possibly be in May :)
Some data
4: days to plan party
9: instamart orders made during the course of the party
16: bottles of wine mulled
29: Number of people who showed up (including me!)
Parties need
Dec 13th to 14th was the Echoes of Earth festival. I’ve always thought I won’t enjoy it because it felt like a combination of woo and electronic music, both of which are not my thing… but I decided to check it out anyway to accompany a friend who was doing festivals after 7 years and wanted the company.
I’ve gone to a few concerts alone now, and it’s a very different experience from going with people, or even a group, so I was pretty nervous about going with a friend. I had fun, but I do think that if I had stronger opinions about what artists I wanted to see or experiences I wanted to have, I would have been frustrated. I am the most extroverted/group hang person I know, so this is a surprising development. There are eight of us going to lollapalooza next month and eleven of us going to bandland, so how this plays out remains to be seen.
The week after echoes was packed. I had a social obligation every single evening (and I went to the office a few times). At some point my brain said “no more!” and stole alone time from sleep time. It was holiday season the week after so that week was mostly about catching up with everyone who was leaving town. And thankfully this week has been much better with the lack of social obligations. I only have the hangs I’m making happen myself.
In the last 14 days, I’ve slept over at other people’s houses for three nights! This was overall a good thing because these people live halfway to the office. But it did illustrate that I need to leave more clothes in my car.
I’ve been trialling fractional EAs since that’s a service that seems to be popular and available. The problem with both Crew and faff is that they take too long to do the tasks you want them to, and it’s truly another task to manage them. With faff in particular, there’s too much noise, not enough synchronosity and urgency when necessary, and simply not enough things get done the way I expect them to. I expect an EA to add to processes in my life, not replace them. So far, this is not happening.
Last Saturday at indie web club, we had nineteen (19!) people show up, even though it was a technical session! I’m so proud of everyone who shows up and makes an effort to be a part of this.
Last Wednesday, all of the Obvious alumni in Bangalore met up! It was so cool seeing people I haven’t spoken to since the pandemic. In a way, we’ve all done very different things after moving on - but in other ways, we’re doing very similar things. Lots of people discovered they live in the same 800m radius around Indiranagar. I want to be friends with some of these folks again.
No major updates to report, except that after the party I remembered what a hangover feels like :)