Ben's Blog
- Biography
- Productivity
- uBlock - My uBlock Origin filter list
- Daylio - My preferred journaling app
- Tailscale - Easy WireGuard mesh network, lets you easily SSH into different computers from anywhere
- MacOS Ergonomics
- Mac Mouse Fix - Lets you use third-party mouse buttons to control stuff (e.g., moving between screens with side buttons and showing Mission Control with the center button). FOSS, source code is on Github
- Rectangle - Lets you snap to parts of your screen. Also FOSS, source code is on Github with a pro version for $10
- Dotfiles - Repository for all of my dotfiles (various Bash commands and aliases, Vim configuration, etc.)
- Learning ML / Self-Driving / Robotics
- Geoff Hinton Coursera Course (2012) - Doesn’t get as much attention as Andrew Ng’s course but in my opinion is superior in explaining concepts behind neural networks, especially for people motivated by the biological analogs.
- Coursera Self-Driving Specialization - I did half of this before I started working at Tesla and found it useful
- ML Template - My basic template for starting ML projects, similar to PyTorch Lightning or Fairseq
- Uses Omegaconf for config management
- Also check out this project which uses Hydra for config management
- Mine only supports launching jobs locally and on Slurm clusters at the moment, since that’s mainly how I train models
- Hobbies
- Goodreads - My favorite books
- Lichess - My lichess profile
- Codeforces - My Codeforces profile (warning, very inactive)
- PCPartPicker - My PCPartPicker profile
- Media
- Cool Youtube Videos - A YouTube playlist of random videos I thought were cool
- Lofi Work Music
- Other Lofi Work Music
- Tools
- 3D Printer
- Don’t use Creality, even though it is cheap you will never get back the hours of your life wasted priming it before every print
- I’ve had good experiences with Prusa i3 (both RepRap and MK3S+), Octoprint is a must
- Power tools
- Mitre saw, drill, sawzall, and jigsaw are from Dewalt
- Drill press and bench grinder are from Wen
- Keyboard: At one point I was trying to force myself to use an ergonomic keyboard, but after a few months of using it I had a suspicion that it wasn’t making me type any faster and was actually making me have more errors. So now I mainly just use an Apple keyboard. I have some numbers about my typing speeds for some different keyboards near the bottom of this page.
- Editor: For scripting I use Vim. My Vim setup is in my dotfiles repository here. But for most projects I currently use VSCode.
- 3D Printer
- Misc
Keyboard speed test results
- Apple: Apple Magic Keyboard (Wired)
- Mechanical: Das Keyboard Model S
- Ergonomic: Perixx Periduo-406
| Keyboard | Trial | Words per Minute | Errors per Minute | Adjusted Words per Minute |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple | 1 | 97 | 2 | 95 |
| Apple | 2 | 99 | 1 | 98 |
| Apple | 3 | 88 | 5 | 83 |
| Apple | 4 | 103 | 3 | 100 |
| Apple | 5 | 92 | 2 | 90 |
| Apple | Aggregate | 95.8 +/- 2.6 | 2.6 +/- 0.7 | 93.2 +/- 3.1 |
| Mechanical | 1 | 87 | 4 | 83 |
| Mechanical | 2 | 90 | 5 | 85 |
| Mechanical | 3 | 87 | 3 | 84 |
| Mechanical | 4 | 89 | 1 | 88 |
| Mechanical | 5 | 90 | 3 | 87 |
| Mechanical | Aggregate | 88.6 +/- 0.7 | 3.2 +/- 0.7 | 85.4 +/- 0.9 |
| Ergonomic | 1 | 95 | 1 | 94 |
| Ergonomic | 2 | 80 | 1 | 79 |
| Ergonomic | 3 | 92 | 3 | 89 |
| Ergonomic | 4 | 85 | 3 | 82 |
| Ergonomic | 5 | 101 | 0 | 101 |
| Ergonomic | Aggregate | 90.6 +/- 3.7 | 1.6 +/- 0.6 | 89.0 +/- 4.0 |
Here are some quotes that I have found interesting.
Why do people have to be this lonely? What’s the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?
Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
But who can say what’s best? That’s why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.
Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
Training is nothing, will is everything - the will to act.
Batman Begins
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
James 1:2-4
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Frank Herbert, Dune
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
Philip Larkin, Aubade
In battle, in forest, at the precipice in the mountains, On the dark great sea, in the midst of javelins and arrows, In sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame, The good deeds a man has done before defend him.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
I’ve been using this photo as my Github profile pic for a while now. It’s actually a photo of an exhibit I saw at the Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C. sometime in college. I’m not sure if the artist intended it as such, but it stuck with me as the simplest expression of my philosophy of life - that humans can find meaning, belief and happiness in the depths of absurdism by making a choice to do so.
