In Chicago, we have an API where we can get pricing updates every 5 minutes. I recently set up my AC (largest power draw) to cut off when the price goes above a certain threshold.
I don't have long-term data yet, as I just implemented this about 6 weeks ago, but last month's bill was 10% lower than the previous month and the same month the previous year. I'm looking forward to seeing the results over time.
I've been trying to think of what other automations I can try out when the price gets high. I thought maybe shorter light timers for automated lights, but all of our lights are LED, so the savings isn't really worth it.
Many times the battery costs more than the savings, even if you charged it up for free, say at a mall or mcdonalds or something. If there was a large savings the utilities provider would be doing it already. Well that's also why people are looking into cheaper energy storage solutions.
I'm going to disagree with you although I'm not an expert so you might be right.
My understanding is that there are large savings available theoretically at the grid level but the capital to build it is limited and the grid interconnects to make it work are limited.
So globally there are huge amounts of battery storage being added to the grid but this is bottlenecked by capital and grid connections. Oh and land/planning permissions.
Long story short, house level battery storage may be worth it for some people
I had a trash-80 in the early 80s and used to copy BASIC from magazines, and then in the mid 90s I bought a book with a CD in it that taught me how to set up perl-based e-commerce store, which I set up for my mom's retail shop. Neither of those got me interested in programming.
The event in my life that got me there was around 2000, when I bought a Cold Fusion 4 book off of a street vendor - literally on Wall Street - and I spent my evenings building an intranet that replaced the Access database that my company shipped and merged across the country every Friday.
That's when I got hooked, and started building my career (and hobby).
Not sure if something like Scratch would have gotten me there (LOGO definitely didn't) - but I imagine the level of comfort I had with computers at a young age kept me in the vicinity that eventually got me there.
I always love hearing from other people who started with computers by typing in basic from magazines.
For me it was a TI 99/4a and typing in code got me completely hooked on programming. Whether it was a game, a 4 bit cpu simulator of some sort (memories are vague) or a word search solver didn’t matter. It all felt magical.
Logo did nothing for me. It never gave me that sense of satisfaction that I got from writing in basic or assembly.
This really made me think about what got me interested in programming and I have no idea. In HS, I had a Physics teacher who had a TRS-80 (Model 3, I think) and he would let us use it during Lunch for whatever. But I was already interested at that point. We had a "programming" class where we programmed some kind of computer in some unknown language, but again, I was already interested in programming before then: that was just the outlet.
To your point I think I'll adjust what I was saying a bit. I was definitely interested. I always thought it would be cool to be able to program. There was good media to make it intriguing from afar. But I had nobody in my life to help me understand.
My mom did a great job making sure I always had a computer but she didn't know enough about them to help.
Elementary school put us in front of them and taught us how to type and let us play oregon trail and print shop, but that wasn't it. And my high school has us programming in Pascal. Meh.
When I was in my 20s, in a new city, working to pay my own way I found the determination needed to teach myself. It absolutely helped that the internet was becoming this wealth of information for the self-taught. That was my launch pad. I definitely think everything else helped get me there
It reminds me of something I've always wanted as a coder but never cared enough to implement, which would be a verbosity switch.
I see the full multi-paragraph comments in my codebases and get annoyed but also feel like the additional context helps improve the llm results over time because that history helps it know what's been tried and removed in the past. It's additional context for the system that improves with context.
The feature I want in the code tool itself (for me) is to adjust how verbose the comments are so I can read "just code", then "terse comments" then "full comments" then "full comments with historical context" (including fit commits and ticket references) and finally, full-on literate programming. And I'd like to switch between on the fly as I read through the code.
I think this is something we could actually produce with llms, and I feel the ability to switch between these modes would help the llm as well.
Sometimes I just need to see what's being done. Sometimes I need to know why. Sometimes I need to know what's been tried. Never always all of these things. And expecting to find this context in git comments doesn't feel right either.
What you want can be accomplished with an extra doc, call it the Log, where the llm appends things tried, lessons learned, failed experiments etc.. while leaving the comments as terse accurate snapshot of the current state. I've been using this log pattern and it works well.
I've been seeing the misspelling of the past tense of lead (led) incredibly often in the past couple years. It's clearly confusing that lead is an actual word, so it may seem right and likely doesn't get caught by auto-correct, although I assume grammar correction should catch it.
As a near-fifty year old who has been making sourdough for 6 years, makes homemade mayo with a grated garlic clove and freshly squeezed lemons every couple weeks, and keeps a stash of fine cheeses readily available for all occasions - I'm with the 4 year old. White bread, 2 slices of american, butter - it's hard to beat the sheer comfort, texture, flavor, gooeyness, and simplicity of the classic.
They bother with that effort when eating other things, but they keep it simple and go kraft-and-white-bread when making a grilled cheese. They're essentially saying, "While I love putting a lot of effort into cooking most things, when it comes to a grilled cheese, simple and cheap wins out."
They are feeding butter grass, they are way past the point of no return
/s
I think some things taste a lot better when you are so conscious about every ingredient and preparation. For sourdough and cheese I always prefer the good ones, what can I say.
There is a middle ground that isn't so pretentious.
I still need it to have bacon, parm, and a side of tomato soup. I toast it in a pan to avoid crumbs. Everything else beyond that point truly is another sandwich.
My wife recently reminded me of something I made for her while she was sick last winter - Grilled cheese on sourdough (with roasted garlic mixed into the cheese) toasted to a crisp and cut into croutons for a home-made tomato soup.
The guy at Egghead Software who would let me play battle chess for hours.
Of course there are millions of them online these days, but that face-to-face interaction with the local officanado was a different thing. It wasn't a forum. And oddly, it wasn't a library either - it was a place of business - but it didn't feel like one in those moments.
Nerding out with a local stranger over a movie or a game or a band was something very different from what we do today. It was a different way for the local nerds to shine, while making a living adjacent to the things they knew so well.
The quality of your local nerd has also likely decreased substantially. Being a nerd used to be a lot more work. Now, if you're having a face-to-face interaction with a local aficionado there's a high chance you're just interacting with a walking TTS version of Reddit.
The classic nostalgia version of this is the opening of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" (1982). Ridgemont Mall in the movie is the Sherman Oaks Galleria, which has appeared in at least 12 movies, and is still operating as a mall.
There's still some record shops if you know where to look. Physical media is making something of a resurgence including with GenZ.
I was half joking with a friend that I want a everything-middle-aged-man-store open weekends (and maybe 5-8pm thursday/friday) that carries a hodge hodge of physical media, used hobby kit and maybe serves espressos/teas, does hair cuts.. and maybe do some basic EV car maintenance like tire rotation/annual state safety inspection.
Some place I can take care of needs and also enjoy some wants.
Most definitely. I'm fortunate to have four record shops in my neighborhood, and I make my way to them every couple months. Along with some friends of mine, we trade off hosting record-listening parties a few times a year.
I love that vinyl has remained relevant. I believe that's true because of the record shop experience. It's one of the few places, besides maybe a cocktail bar, where you can expect to converse with a local expert at length while they're simply doing their job.
Perhaps it matters where you grew up. I grew up in LA and was a young in the Bay Area. I experienced none of what you describe and I was often in shops. Me and a friend would go to Rhino Records near Westwood. I understand it was a legendary record store. But even being there wasn't particular social. The only hang-out shop was Epicenter Zone in SF - but that was specifically intended to not be like your usual shops, which weren't social venues.
I think it has to be a somewhat smaller sized shop with the same 3 staff on rotation for the social thing. Applied to both my video store and game store in the 90s early 00s.
Yep. Streetside Records in Kansas City, not that Tower Records crap.
Employees got to put on whatever music they wanted.
I should ask my friend who worked there—but there was a lot of fun they had with that. Perhaps, with their musical selections playing on the store speakers, they were even trolling some customers from time to time.
(I know they enjoyed playing John Foxx's single "Endlessly" when Ann Lassley was in the store since it sounded like Foxx was singing her name.)
I worked at a mall chain video store in the 90s. We’d play Star Wars on the mall facing screens which would inevitably bring people in. Sorry, it’s out of print. The employee recommendation endcap always contained quirky and unique titles as well.
I've been maintaining a personal calorie tracker (keeps me entering), and using claude for entering meals has been the perfect experience.
One of my favorite features has been giving a recipe url and having it figure out the calories for that recipe with line-by-line entries for each ingredient. Then it keeps the extracted recipe in markdown format for the next time I want to make it.
Substitutions are also great - "I'm making [such and such recipe], but with half the sugar."
One of the others has been "I had a meal a couple weeks ago at [x restaurant], can you enter that again for right now?" Having the long-term context for entry has been excellent. And a related one, where I upload a photo of the menu, and say which menu items I'm eating and it puts together an estimate for the calorie count.
I lean heavily on a long auto-compacting claude code session for all of this. I have a UI for graphs, history, and simple entries, but claude's been my favorite means of entry by far
I also appreciate the social break my brain seems to need in order to keep socializing. I'm an introvert but also social, so I love to talk to friends and hang out - but I still need that 5 minutes to just stare off into space and recharge before I jump back into the fray.
I quit smoking about 15 years ago, but still vape - and I remain a huge fan of the easy excuse to step away for 3-5 minutes and just zone out, or change from a large group to a smaller 2-person conversation outside.
Even back when we could smoke in bars, I would still sneak outside from time to time to settle and recharge.
Security questions have always been ridiculous, but I'll especially never understand how "favorite [thing]" ever made it to production anywhere. "Favorite movie" can change multiple times in the same conversation.
I don't have long-term data yet, as I just implemented this about 6 weeks ago, but last month's bill was 10% lower than the previous month and the same month the previous year. I'm looking forward to seeing the results over time.
I've been trying to think of what other automations I can try out when the price gets high. I thought maybe shorter light timers for automated lights, but all of our lights are LED, so the savings isn't really worth it.