Real data
How hard could it be? A story about running your own AI models. Episode 3.
Monday morning, 9am. I just got to the office. I go get myself a coffee and see Carlos having one in the kitchen.
“Hey Ricardo, how was your weekend?”
“It was good, thanks. I went to visit my in-laws in Guadalix de la Sierra. I love being in the mountains. What about you?”
“Not much. So… how’s the project with Fran going?”
“It’s good, we started running a daily report, it has room for improvement of course, but Pawel is investigating things and running some experiments.”
“Who did you say?”
“Pawel, the new intern. Have you met him?”
“Not yet.”
What does good look like?
How hard could it be? A story about running your own AI models. Episode 2.
After the project got halted on Monday, I spoke with Juan the next day and asked if we could test with some of the open source models hosted on AWS, and he agreed that if we kept the data within our own accounts we could make use of it. He only asked me to tell him which models we use, to be safe. I made some changes to my initial code and had a running report by end of day. It passed Juan’s check. I sent the new report to Fran and kept working on some of my other team duties.
That was two days ago. This morning I have an early meeting with Fran and Pawel, who’s starting today. I’m excited to see what sort of fresh ideas he can bring in. I don’t know if I’ll make it in time though. I’m stuck in traffic. It’s bad today but not totally horrible, just normal bad. I rarely take the car to work, but I have some errands to do later and I need it.
Starting from scratch
How hard could it be? A story about running your own AI models. Episode 1.
The last couple of weeks have been hard at work, we had some layoffs, which really sucks, the company’s future isn’t too bright and leadership is trying to come up with ideas about how to fix things. After I had breakfast with the colleagues this morning, I went back to my desk and received an email from the VP of engineering. I was being assigned to a new project together with the support lead, and a meeting was scheduled at noon that day.
The things that wouldn't exist
On September 4th I shipped version 1.0.0 of “Rudra Drum Learning” to the Apple and Google stores. It’s an important milestone for me, the first commercial product of my new company, Aeris Nova. I’ve worked as a contractor for many years, but this year I ended up building my own product. It wasn’t a premeditated decision, it just kinda happened.
The craftsman is dead, long live the craftsman
Someone I respect recently posted on X that “software craftsmanship is over, the industrial age of programming is here.” At first I was horrified, I wanted to push back, but I think they might have a point.
If you look up “craftsman” in the dictionary, there are two definitions. The first is a person who practices a trade or handicraft. The second is a person who is skilled in a craft.