https://ghvsted.com/Recent content on GhvstedHugo -- gohugo.ioen-USFri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/i-dont-believe-in-prayers-but-i-am-glad-you-prayed-for-me/Fri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/i-dont-believe-in-prayers-but-i-am-glad-you-prayed-for-me/Ricky Gervais - my favorite standup comic - has a bit where he talks about not believing in prayers. Yet, when any of his family is ill, people tell him they’ve put him in their prayers. Even though he won’t cancel the chemotherapy because prayers were offered up on his behalf, he acknowledges that the prayer is a nice gesture. [—-] I’ve been thinking a lot about friendships recently and I’m starting to realize that a true indicator of a solid person is one who makes nice gestures.https://ghvsted.com/blog/on-streamlined-learning/Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/on-streamlined-learning/I love to learn. It’s like a constant in my life, a thread that weaves through the fabric of my daily routine. At any point in time for the past 6 years, I can point to a topic, skill, or field I am actively learning about or trying to break into. From learning to program and tinkering with programming languages to learning to strum the guitar; from learning to engineer sounds, to learning to coax notes from the saxophone and clarinet; from learning the intricacies of systems programming to learning the complexities of neuroscience; and more recently, from learning to construct electronic devices to learning the mechanics of rockets and UAVs.https://ghvsted.com/blog/proof-of-linear-independence-in-vector-spaces/Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/proof-of-linear-independence-in-vector-spaces/A set of vectors \( {v_1, v_2, …, v_n} \) in a vector space is said to be linearly independent if no vector in the set can be written as a linear combination of the others. Think of each vector as a direction in space. If a set of vectors is linearly independent, it means that none of these directions can be reached by walking along the others. Each vector adds a new dimension or direction that is not covered by any combination of the other vectors.https://ghvsted.com/blog/twenty-two/Fri, 06 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/twenty-two/I turn 22 today It’s fascinating to think that in a room with 70 people, there’s a staggering 99.9% probability that at least two individuals share this same birthdate. I feel profoundly thankful for the privilege of witnessing yet another 365 days pass. The past year has been intense for me in many ways, but I’ve come to appreciate the intensity. I took really big swings this year & while not all of them yielded the desired results I realise that being able to take such swings is a privilege I deeply acknowledge and I’m grateful for I’m especially grateful for resilience - or what Nassim Nicholas Taleb would better describe as ‘antifragility’.https://ghvsted.com/blog/synergy-for-social-progress-entrepreneurship-capitalism-and-government-policy/Sat, 16 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/synergy-for-social-progress-entrepreneurship-capitalism-and-government-policy/This essay is a longer, earlier draft for a competition I participated in but did not win! Enjoy! The trio of Entrepreneurship, Capitalism and Government policy plays an important role in allowing for mobility between various socio-economic classes. By leveraging the strengths of each element and implementing complementary strategies, we can achieve a more inclusive and prosperous society. According to the World Bank (2008a), more than 1.4 billion people worldwide live in poverty.https://ghvsted.com/blog/oh-what-an-awful-party/Sat, 26 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/oh-what-an-awful-party/I consider myself to be highly strategic and meticulous. Recently I experienced some unexpected setbacks. These recent setbacks - amidst their reverberations - have proven to be profoundly impactful. I’ve been confronted with a poignant realization: I do not have it all figured out. The humbling truth is that my vision & plans - although meticulously crafted - are not infallible. My life is now in a new phase — one defined by uncertainty, and a renewed curiosity about what the future holds.https://ghvsted.com/blog/beyond-plateaus-retros-as-tools-for-growth/Fri, 02 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/beyond-plateaus-retros-as-tools-for-growth/During my time at Alpaca, we frequently encountered a substantial volume of API requests each day, sometimes reaching up to a billion. Operating at such a scale, it was almost inevitable to encounter peculiar and unexpected bugs. What fascinated me was the engineering culture that fostered support rather than blame when someone caused a bug in production. Instead of being hounded for mistakes, we were encouraged to tackle the bug and implement a fix as quickly as possible.https://ghvsted.com/blog/metamagical-themas-the-prisoners-dilemma-computer-tournaments-and-the-evolution-of-cooperation-may-1983/Mon, 01 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/metamagical-themas-the-prisoners-dilemma-computer-tournaments-and-the-evolution-of-cooperation-may-1983/I Recently revisited Metamagical Themas & picked up from where I stopped [It is not a material you can -or frankly should- consume at once]. As with the previous metamagical themas post I should add that This blog post is a [barely] refined collection of my [AI-assisted] study notes, similar in style to my Voidpaper newsletter where I publish notes on other people’s research - the ideas are not my original ideas.https://ghvsted.com/blog/march-2023/Fri, 07 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/march-2023/March was an interesting month, but also a bit lazy. Unfortunately, some of that laziness carried over into April, which is why I’m writing this retrospective now. Highlights Teal: Things are going great with Teal! We finished designing our dashboard and started developing it. I’m super excited about what we’re building and still feel excited about the project. Met someone new: I met someone new through Instagram, and we got close pretty fast.https://ghvsted.com/blog/metamagical-themas-waking-up-from-the-boolean-dream-or-subcognition-as-computation/Wed, 22 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/metamagical-themas-waking-up-from-the-boolean-dream-or-subcognition-as-computation/Metamagical Themas has been on my reading list for a while. It recently resurfaced on a Twitter thread discussing the capabilities of modern LLMs [& arguing that they generate original content instead of “balderdash”]. In particular, chapter 26 - “Waking Up from the Boolean Dream, or, Subcognition as Computation”. Intrigued by this claim, I decided to read the entire chapter to get some more context. The result of my reading is this blog post, which is similar in style to my Voidpaper newsletter where I publish notes on other people’s research - the ideas are not my original ideas.https://ghvsted.com/blog/february-2023/Tue, 28 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/february-2023/Pheeww, Febuary has been a month of mixed but underwhelming experiences. In this post, I highlight some of my experiences during the month. Highlights Tosin: One of the best parts of this month was having my sister Tosin back home for a couple of weeks. Carbon: I saw the first cut of one of the Carbon videos and really liked it. I can’t wait to share it with the world once it’s done.https://ghvsted.com/blog/stuff-i-dont-like-about-netflix/Fri, 03 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/stuff-i-dont-like-about-netflix/Over the past few months, I have noticed my usage of Netflix has increased. I typically watch Netflix on my Macbook using a Safari browser. While I love that Netflix exists to fill those 10, 15-minute breaks when I am having lunch, there’s just some stuff I do not quite like about using Netflix. I list some of them below: Content I have seen before still gets recommended to me Movies and shows I have previously seen still show up on “My List” — It would be nice to have them move to a separate category.https://ghvsted.com/blog/carbon-log-2/Tue, 31 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/carbon-log-2/We did it. We shot the first 2 videos for Carbon. On the night of the 27th, the day before we shot for Carbon, Chinenye & I spent a few hours on a call, tensions high, trying to figure out what one of the videos should be about. We had that planned previously, but we had realised that some people who were meant to show up wouldn’t be able to make it anymore & our plans needed to change.https://ghvsted.com/blog/january-2023/Tue, 31 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/january-2023/I decided to start doing monthly retrospectives instead of waiting till the end of the year [and making failed attempts] to write a year in review. So here goes nothing. Highlights Produced the First Two Carbon Episodes: I created the first two episodes of the “Carbon” series, a project that I have been working on for some time now. If you’re interested, you can read my previous Carbon Logs to get more context on what Carbon is.https://ghvsted.com/blog/carbon-log-1/Fri, 20 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/carbon-log-1/I spend an unhealthy amount of time on the internet, While most of that can be attributed to my day-to-day job of being an SWE, I still manage to spend my free time lurking on HackerNews, Youtube and more recently, Instagram. I love the internet. One of my favourite YT channels is Cut! Towards the end of 2022, I had the idea to create something. Something that includes a YT channel like CUT tailored to a young African audience.https://ghvsted.com/blog/deeply-unsatisfied-but-i-guess-its-ok/Sun, 04 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/deeply-unsatisfied-but-i-guess-its-ok/I feel deeply unsatisfied! I’m starting to make peace with this innate feeling of unsatisfaction — not only to obliterate the guilt that accompanies it but also to embrace & possibly exploit it. If I were to describe this feeling in more detail, I would say it felt like an unlimited-kilometre sprint. For as long as I remember, I’ve always had this feeling of deep dissatisfaction. As soon as I hit one goal, in the exact instance, I hit the goal, I start thinking and taking actionable steps towards achieving some more prestigious variation of the goal I just hit.https://ghvsted.com/blog/exploring-mmap-in-go/Sun, 24 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/exploring-mmap-in-go/During the week I stumbled upon an experimental implementation of memory mapping in the Golang standard library, package Mmap. I decided to explore the standard library package and dig deeper into the concept of memory mapping — This article is the product of my exploration. In this post, I’ll attempt to answer some questions I initially had & assume the reader will have about MMAP. What is Memory Mapping? Memory mapping is a mechanism that maps a region of a file from disk to memory allowing read and write operations on file [contents] by simply accessing the address of the mapped memory.https://ghvsted.com/blog/notes-on-ownership-in-rust/Sat, 23 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/notes-on-ownership-in-rust/For a while, I have been lazily picking up the Rust programming language! Despite being a gopher, I’ve always admired Rust from afar. I started learning about it a month and a half ago! I started out reading THE BOOK — by the rust team and solving Excersim exercises whenever I could afford the time. For the past two weeks, I’ve been on chapter 4 of The Book — Understanding Ownership!https://ghvsted.com/blog/the-glitch-and-notes-on-digital-beings/Sun, 10 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/the-glitch-and-notes-on-digital-beings/He had just installed the patch. He lay on his bed as he took a walk along the Miami beach, feeling the cool breeze. Since regaining consciousness, He randomly relived the glitch. When installing the patch he relived the glitch happening in a loop, at the speed of light. It was strange for him particularly because he could distinctly identify it was a loop & he was only just getting comfortable with the concept of time, as we know it.https://ghvsted.com/blog/lets-raise-a-glass-to-a-failed-venture./Mon, 28 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/lets-raise-a-glass-to-a-failed-venture./TLDR; I almost started a business, it wasn’t successful. I burnt over $1000, almost slipped into depression & lost a friendship. Raise? Writing this post is quite hard, to be honest! However, I feel It’s important to document this and put it out there for my future self. I’d just moved back to my parent’s house for a retreat thing I do towards the end of every year, through to the beginning of the new year.https://ghvsted.com/blog/distributional-reinforcement-learning-terra-incognita/Sun, 02 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/distributional-reinforcement-learning-terra-incognita/My foray into the world of reinforcement learning may[or not] have been caused by the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon. I’ve been interested in machine learning(ML) for as long as I can remember. However, my interest in ML sits collecting dust alongside a host of other unbid interests. A while back, while learning more about ML on a high level I discovered the field of reinforcement learning. Reinforcement learning(RL) uses the concept of rewards to enable agents to make intelligent actions.https://ghvsted.com/blog/borge-the-library-of-babel-originality./Sun, 26 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/borge-the-library-of-babel-originality./I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library — Jorge Luis Borges Recently, during one of my recurring adventures down internet rabbit holes, I discovered the library of babel. I think it’s super cool. I am fascinated by it, I mean, I’m writing a post about it. TLDR; The library of babel contains every single book, song, written stuff that exists and could ever possibly exist.https://ghvsted.com/blog/twenty-feelings/Sun, 28 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/twenty-feelings/I just turned 20! I feel blessed, a little sad and scared all at the same time. I took a look at an old journal and saw a couple of goals I was supposed to achieve before I turned 20 that are still unaccomplished — I feel a little sad. I received an email from a cool company, moving me to the final stage of their interview process. Was this another futile interview process?https://ghvsted.com/blog/embracing-the-chaos/Tue, 02 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/embracing-the-chaos/I like to make plans. Not the type of plans you make knowing you wouldn’t execute. I make plans hoping to execute them. I love structure. I’ve noticed I tend to gravitate towards situations that are more likely to provide some level of structure. I love, love, love the feeling I get whenever I make plans — not just whenever I make plans but when I see other people do stuff in a structured manner.https://ghvsted.com/blog/what-happens-when-you-go-get-a-closer-look-at-the-internals-of-go-modules/Sat, 08 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/what-happens-when-you-go-get-a-closer-look-at-the-internals-of-go-modules/Whenever you need an external module while working on a project in Golang, You go get it — By running the command go get <pkg-name>. Unlike in many other languages, Go does not have a central software registry or package manager (like NPM for JavaScript, Maven for Java) where modules can be accessed from and published to. Whether you are just getting started with Go, running your first go get command or are a veteran, understanding what happens behind the scenes when you run the go command is important.https://ghvsted.com/blog/notes-on-kubernetes-admission-controllers/Sat, 19 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/notes-on-kubernetes-admission-controllers/Before a request is sent to the Kube-API server, some sort of client-side validation occurs. During this client-side validation, Kubectl validates requests and ensures that bad requests[ bad resource names, malformed image names, etc] do not go through to the API server. After the client-side validation, requests to the server are then authenticated. The authentication aims to ensure that the user making the request has the right to access that cluster.https://ghvsted.com/blog/notes-on-kubernetes-services/Tue, 08 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/notes-on-kubernetes-services/This is the first article in what I intend to be an X? part series on various kubernetes[k8s] concepts. This article/series is aimed at folks new to the world of k8s, looking to gain a simplified knowledge of some of the fundamental concepts of Kubernetes. The Need For Services According to the official k8s documentation, Kubernetes services are an abstract way to expose an application running on a set of Pods as a network service.https://ghvsted.com/blog/a-deep-dive-into-gos-context-package/Wed, 08 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://ghvsted.com/blog/a-deep-dive-into-gos-context-package/The Go context package was developed to make it easy to pass request-scoped values, deadlines, and cancellation signals across API boundaries and processes. Thinking about Context in non-technical terms(“the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood”) for a start could help us better understand Context as used technically. The context package comes in very handy when working with servers, making HTTP requests, and a host of other activities involving goroutines.https://ghvsted.com/about/blogroll/Sat, 22 Aug 2015 06:28:26 -0700https://ghvsted.com/about/blogroll/This is a list of some blogs/publications I follow closely & enjoy reading. Aeon Magazine brandur.org Farnam Street Jeff Kaufman Slate Star Codex An Algorithmic Lucidity Eli Bendersky’s website Chidi Williams The Overflow Paul Graham Zack scholl Fatih Arslanhttps://ghvsted.com/about/bookshelf/Sat, 22 Aug 2015 06:28:26 -0700https://ghvsted.com/about/bookshelf/Here is a list of some of my favourite books. I haven’t completed reading some of the books here(& I don’t think I would), I am currently reading some. For a more up to date list, check my goodreads. Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, The Bed of Procrustes Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by Clear, James.