Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 1048)
Hello Everyone!
A late start, The LLM dilemma, Coding is hard, Talking to dogs & Musings on underground dwellings!
Alright, I better write something here before the day drags on much longer. I awoke some time ago but have since then only managed to nurse my cup of espresso and stare bleary eyed at the screen as I shook off the mental fog. Having slept in... it is definitely much later in the day than when I have been waking up but at least it is the result of being up late working... rather than sleeping in just for the sake of doing it.
A while back I had canceled my subscription to an advanced LLM (large language model) that I had been using for my coding projects. I had canceled it for a number of reasons but in the time since then I have failed to find an alternative platform. Heck, I even reached out to a private company and offered to beta test their platform but so far all I have heard is crickets in response... which is not surprising since I did not anticipate a response for many weeks if not months... if at all.
Anyways, over the last month or so I have been piddling with a few coding projects and not having access to that LLM platform (or at least the portion of it rich in advanced features) I have been floundering around a good bit. To explain that some lets just say that some of my coding projects have grown quite large and 'copying and pasting' such large files and scripts is a recipe for aggravation and wasted time because the LLM just cannot keep that much relevant information in its 'chat memory' to be capable of grasping (let alone helping with) the project... or projects as the case might be.
So as the saying goes 'they have me over a barrel' in regards to having to continue using their service... to get my projects further along than they are. Long story short there is that... I reached a point last night where I just could not take all the 'floundering around' anymore and renewed my subscription so that I could make some damned progress at more than a snail's pace!
One thing that I have learned from the entire experience is that regardless of my ideas and data being farmed from my interactions with the LLM... I am entirely frigging dependent on it in regards to coding. Just to clarify I struggled for decades with pretty much anything and everything related to coding... even though the concepts and implementations were often quite clear... so having such a tool as an advanced LLM ushered in the opening of a flood gate behind which there were decades worth of ideas swirling. In other words it was/is an exhilarating process to see some of those ideas come to life.
Well, I must have given myself too much of a 'pep talk' because I wound up working on coding projects for somewhere in the ballpark of the last eight hours without 'coming up for air' during the majority of it. Do not worry... I will not bore you with all the fun details because I think that I have written enough about technology for one day! I mean that in both the 'doing the coding' sense and the literal sense because I did have to tinker with a lot of documentation as well.
The experience was a fun one even though I had a heck of a time not getting stuck on all the nuances of the project... so instead I just focused on hammering out the 'bulk' of the work... knowing that I will need to fine tune it later. Honestly, the 'fine tuning' part is usually what gets me on such projects because I get them to a point where they need real coders to look at them... and help me locate and squish the final bugs!
Oddly enough my endeavors with technology often mirror my real life somehow since much like I do with the latter I do with the former... I try to do/live it the way that I want. Much like the obstacles and challenges created in by my own lifestyle choices... the coding projects follow suite. I probably would not have it any other way so go figure but some of the weird correlations betwixt the two make me chuckle... which is something I should do more of... much more often... now that I think of it!
On a similar note. Overall, I guess that I am doing 'well enough' and although I often grow consumed by my hobbies... I also take the time to pet the dogs and more often than not talk to them. In other words I stop to smell the proverbial roses whenever I can and although I call them hobbies... it always seems like there is much more to it than that and my endeavors are in no way futile... to me... even when they prove fruitless by any conventional measure.
Alright, it is growing late here and I either have to press on through or call this entry good enough. Since I am already well past my 'routine' posting time frame I may as well try to peck out a few more words and see what emerges from there. I drank a bit too much espresso and got so hyper-focused on my coding projects that now I am feeling way too awake for this time of the evening.
Something that keeps nagging at me lately is how much I want to explore all my underground house options but keep it on a very small budget so I guess an 'underground tiny house' is what I am thinking of with it. Which although sounds a bit too 'cave like' for me... the heating and cooling expenses become a non-issue. Also it is worth mentioning that I am in no way picturing a bunker or any crazy stuff like that. Sure it could serve as a great storm shelter but I want it to have a lot more character than some drab hole in the ground.
Ideally, I would want one portion above the ground at the top, one entrance at a lower level from the side of a hill... preferably the side not facing the direction the storms come from. I also keep picturing a lower level as a kind of basement (if you can have one in an underground dwelling) where I could maybe have a hand-pump well for water and some side rooms to act as root cellars for vegetables and such.
It is kind of funny because out of all the dwellings and buildings that I have sketched before... I have done very few that had any kind of underground aspect to them. Perhaps I should take that as a sign to do some sketches and see what I can come up with for an 'economical below earth dwelling' that either will not wreck me on labor or be so overly complicated that it defeats the intended purpose.
The one thing that I keep going back to with myself is how those giant culvert pipes give a lot of square footage at a cheap cost per square foot... at least compared to traditional materials. There would be a lot of cutting and welding work involved but whoa that is nothing compared to how labor intensive any kind of traditional construction is... not to mention how labor intensive the nontraditional ones are as well!
As far as building my own good housing goes it is 'no small feat' to pull off with limited resources and such... so having done that enough times now... I really want to avoid it if I can. Hence the reason that I have been considering various avenues to maximize the rapid creation of 'floor space' (like the culvert) and minimize how much effort I have to actually put into it all labor wise.
Okay, I better wind this entry down now and keep it short and sweet. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
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Great post - it sounds like you and I have read or explored some of the same permaculture writers. My wife wants me to dig a root cellar in the near future.
I'm actually thinking about digging a sunken, "raised bed" to grow certain crops during the hot summers here.
Is BARD AI not fine tuned enough yet to support the segment of code you are working with?
Thanks. Yeah I have explored a lot of writers but mainly lean into experience with most stuff.
I did a dug out bed in NC once. It had panes of glass covering the top at an angle. I just dug a rectangle trench in a way that it would get the best sun and then did a clay filled dry stack stone wall around it. The wall's construction accommodated the tilt for the glass and it worked well enough. It's point of failure was that I did not dig it deep enough.
Ha! Bard cannot even come close to keeping up. I tried and tried but it just is not where it needs to be.
I have seen people making houses from big storage containers, if you could bury one of them it would make a nice storm shelter or bury half of it.
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Yeah, they do not do all that well underground without lots of reinforcement. Better off doing it with a culvert pipe with something like a ten foot diameter.
Great blog i have tons to catch up hehe wish i found it sooner
cheers brother!
Thanks and Cheers!