Here records Raye's life, stories, and thoughts from July 23, 2023, to July 28, 2023.
I have been wanting to summarize the first half of 2023, but unfortunately, the idea has been lingering in my mind without being implemented.
This week hasn't been very pleasant. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were consecutive days of being in a slump, like a person stuck in a quagmire without any straw to grasp.
So I started to recall why I wanted to keep records and what I have recorded. I still remember that I started blogging in my sophomore year, using hexo+Github Pages.
However, it seems that I have updated the most on Jian Shu, "Ping Shui Jian Ren" (https://www.jianshu.com/u/7b4cb9cdc0c8). I wrote a total of 160 articles there (although Jian Shu is now just a personal blog website).
The first article was written in November 2018. At that time, many of my classmates didn't know how to do experiments, so they searched online and found a detailed step-by-step guide written by someone with the ID "Ping Shui Jian Ren." Later, I found out that it was actually me 🤣.
I have also written many random essays. Maybe they didn't mean much at the time, and I thought I would remember these random thoughts frequently, so it didn't matter if I didn't write them down. Fortunately, I did write them down, allowing me to reminisce.
In my weekly blog, I want to express myself as truthfully as possible, recording my feelings, whether they are optimistic, pessimistic, or angry.
Just for one day, when I look back, I can understand how that person lived at that time.
Life is like a journey in the opposite direction, and I am just a traveler. But I hope that I can leave more traces in this journey.
🏃🏻♀️ Running#
After finishing the weekly report last Sunday, I went for a run. It had been a long time! (Actually, there was an event, and I procrastinated until the last day to start running 😓).
It had been a while since I last ran ten kilometers, and I was exhausted. I couldn't continue running a few times and had to walk slowly instead 😭.
But I still enjoy this feeling, having a clear goal, competing with myself, challenging the limits of endurance, and enjoying this sense of emptiness.
🎬 Chang'an Thirty Thousand Miles#
I finally went to see "Chang'an Thirty Thousand Miles." It was nearly a three-hour viewing experience, and I have no regrets. It completely filled all my fantasies about this period of history.
In terms of plot arrangement, I feel that it is somewhat similar to "The Invisible Guest." Both rely on one person's narration and constantly remind you that time is running out, leading to a twist at the end.
But my real insight is not about that. When I left the cinema and was on the subway, I felt that there were some things that needed to be written down, so I wrote this:
"Chang'an Thirty Thousand Miles"
The first perspective in the movie is an eagle, confirming the existence of "Assassin's Creed: Chang'an."
If you want to write about Li Bai, you can't just write about Li Bai. You have to write about Gao Shi, who knew him well. You have to write about Li Linfu, who envied him. You have to write about Du Fu, who admired him. You have to write about Guo Ziyi, who was grateful to him. You have to write about Xuanzong, who didn't like him.
I really like looking at Li Bai's life from Gao Shi's perspective:
Du Fu was too young, more of an idol worshipper.
He Zhiqing was too old, the great eagle's wings were broken, unable to bear the weight of the blue sky.
Wang Wei was too cold, although the world was noisy, the passion had long gone cold.
Li Bai's life truly reflected Jiang Jie's "Listening to the Rain": "In my youth, I listened to the rain on the top floor, with red candles dimming the embroidered curtains..."
But when you first learn that a knife can do more than just create delicious dishes, that it can also collapse magnificent buildings like the Yellow Crane Tower, and that the Twenty-Four Bridges will eventually be pierced by the blades of rebel soldiers, you realize that winning a smile with a thousand gold is ultimately a joke.
The water in the south of the Yangtze River is too gentle; the snow in the north of the Great Wall is too cold.
Gao Shi is lucky. There are too many people who grow old waiting for that opportunity.
Liu Yong, waiting for that opportunity, lived in poverty and was ordered to write poems.
Du Fu, waiting for that opportunity, mourned in his cottage in Chengdu.
Lu You, waiting for that opportunity, dreamed of iron horses and icy rivers in Cangzhou.
Gao Shi finally seized his opportunity. Seeking a good price for jade in a box, he waited for the right moment to wield his spear while on horseback.
Zhao Ke wore a magnificent fur robe, and the Wu hook gleamed in the snow. The silver saddle shone on the white horse, swift as a shooting star.
👀 QTX Exhibition#
I was mainly curious and not very fond of blind boxes and trendy toys, but I still wanted to take a look 😃.
I didn't take many photos; I was more focused on getting freebies (just by following or posting a note on Xiaohongshu, I could get gifts like woven bags, postcards, and small toys).
Here are a couple of photos I really like, although I can't afford them anymore 😅.
☕️ AGI Tea Party#
I had a chat with the members of the reading club about AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). I realized that the experts were well-prepared, and my own perspective and scope of thinking were indeed narrow. For example, I haven't actively thought about and discovered many applications related to GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) 😑.
Here are a few takeaways and points for consideration:
- If AGI representing artificial intelligence truly surpasses humans in the future, will it be able to predict individual behavior through "psychological history"?
- Is there a "Turing test" equivalent that can distinguish true artificial intelligence (depending on how this question is defined)?
- Why does GPT's reasoning ability increase even when constraints are removed? https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/BI-QB2Jf2dtUpTeqNK9QvA
- Can multimodal inputs truly evoke emotions in GPT?
- Is GPT's innovation ability really stronger than that of humans? Does it have the ability to abstract problems from real life and build disciplines from scratch?
⚙️ Raycast#
I have been following Raycast for a long time, but I haven't used it as my main tool until recently because the "paste" clipboard manager kept crashing. So I reluctantly started using Raycast as a launcher.
Raycast has a great interface design, and its plugin ecosystem is well-developed. I also want to write an article about using Raycast for productivity (I'm starting another project 🤣).
I initially wanted to try the pinboard plugin, but I quickly discovered a problem: it doesn't autocomplete existing tags. So I thought about trying to develop my own plugin.
I have to say that Raycast's documentation is great, and plugin development is quite simple. Local debugging and compilation are smooth https://developers.raycast.com/api-reference/user-interface/form.
However, I flipped through the documentation for a while and still couldn't find the functionality I wanted to implement 🫠 (I wonder why the plugin author didn't include it).
One solution is to provide a dropdown list (but then new plugins cannot be added).
<Form.TagPicker id="tags" title="Tags">
{tags.map((tag) => (
<Form.TagPicker.Item key={tag} value={tag} title={tag} />
))}
</Form.TagPicker>
I opened an issue about it https://github.com/raycast/extensions/issues/7709 and hope there is a solution.
💭 Rest and Reflection#
I reread Randy's article about meditation in Thailand https://lutaonan.com/blog/7-days-meditation/.
I also have this feeling that when I put aside what I'm currently working on and do some physical labor, such as hand-washing clothes or sweeping the floor, I can feel a sense of relaxation from my soul and gain new ideas.
This is really useful, but unfortunately, I sometimes get too lazy to persist, such as not being able to finish writing this insight 🐧.
📺 TV Series & 📖 Reading#
"Welcome to the Kingdom of Kings." Although I know it's a drama about a domineering CEO, I couldn't resist because the male and female leads are too good-looking~ Based on my experience of watching the first two episodes, it's much better than domestic Mary Sue and domineering CEO dramas. The characters are not expressionless (at least their eyes have something to say), and several scenes made me laugh so hard that I had muscle cramps in bed, hahaha.
"Abandoning Chang'an." I just started reading this book this week. It has given me a new understanding of the history of the An Lushan Rebellion during the prosperous Kaiyuan era. For example, Li Linfu, although he had a silver tongue, managed to maintain a prosperous era for 16 years. Zhang Xun, who had to eat human flesh to survive while firmly defending Suiyang, preserving the Jianghuai region, and being forced to eat human flesh. There are too many stories. When history turns a page, it also turns over the lives of countless people.
📮 Newsletter#
From now on, all my records will be automatically synchronized to my personal channel, https://t.me/RayeJourney.
But I will also excerpt some of them and put them on my blog:
- https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Xx4y1d7CC "Chang'an Thirty Thousand Miles" scored full marks for the composition.
- https://book.douban.com/subject/36328704/ "Tai Bai Jin Xing You Dian Fan" is Ma Boyong's new work. It hasn't been released on WeChat Reading yet, but it's worth reading.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1J6Ou4q8vE "Matchstick Man vs. Mathematics," it got me all fired up!
- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/61292150/breaking-down-a-batch-in-pytorch-leads-to-different-results-why This question is interesting. PyTorch's linear implementation has some optimizations, which can lead to different results when calculating different batches.
- https://www.justgoidea.com/2023-049 Building your own life OS management system is worth thinking about.
- https://run.chensoul.com/ You can use this open-source page to build a running presentation website. It looks great!