KFCblog - July 2024

Life

I had an absolutely fabulous time vacationing in one of the most beautiful places on earth, the Maldives (that's pronounced mal-deeves, not mal-dives, for my fellow Americans). The high temperature every day was a perfect 89 degrees Fahrenheit, and even at night, it only dipped to 87 degrees. Interestingly, if you visit in February instead of June, the temperatures are still the same: 89/87.

The journey was quite the adventure: a long flight from Chicago to Doha, then to Male, and finally a seaplane to our destination. It was expensive, but thank goodness for Marriott Bonvoy points! Despite the travel and cost, it truly is heaven on earth. The ocean was stunning, the scenery breathtaking (including an underwater restaurant), the food incredible, and the people were fantastic. I highly recommend adding the Maldives to your bucket list!

Sports World

The Boston Celtics won the NBA Championship, their 18th championship. In the NHL, the Florida Panthers won their first; after taking a 3-0 lead against the Edmonton Oilers, they held on to win in seven!

Carlos Alcaraz came through and won the French Open and is on a collision course with both Jannik Sinner and Novak Djokovic in Wimbledon this week. Bryson DeChambeau pulled out a great victory at the US Open.

The US (and Brazil!!) fell out of Copa Americana with Argentina, Canada, Uruguay and Columbia remaining. In Euro2024, the Swiss almost beat England for a semi-final berth, falling in penalties. The semifinals there are Spain, France, Netherlands and England.

19 Days to Paris 2024 Opening Ceremonies.

And, lastly, maybe the greatest, unexpected comeback in sports history (how's that for click bait?)

Hello, World

June was a great month - besides my great trip to the Maldives, I actually got some work done. The major feat was some replanning on some of our core applications we've built (these are applications that will debut in Milano Cortina 2026, not Paris 2024). We've tweaked our strategy a bit, made a bold decision to erase some technical debt, and have started to really turn the screws. Although the Milano Cortina Games are still 19 months away, the first major tests for many of our applications will be at test events in early 2025. Heads down, a long way to go still...

I also spent a little fun time with LLMs and coding. I found it excellent both at debugging (Hey, here's my debug long can you tell me why I'm getting the time zone wrong?), as well as generating test data (Hey, can you generate a broad set of test data that would give me great coverage of my code paths?) It's been quite helpful - better than an intern! Even if you're not a coder, try it the next time your trying to do something clever in Excel!

Caught My Eye

An incredibly popular, mindless, no-point website/game called One Millions Checkboxes.

Do you want to get a feel of a big city before you visit it? Try CityWalks

Now that the summer is here in Chicago, I've had my bike out a lot. Here are a few great recommendations for long-ish rides around Chicago. My son and I are going to do the long one later this month.

The first fully AI generated advertisement that covers the birth of Toys-R-Us (yes, it still exists)!

To make good use of the incredible spend on AI infrastructure, someone (besides nVidia) needs to figure out how to turn it into revenue! Like $600B worth!

Are you tired of Wordle? Here's another simple daily word game - 23 Words.

Nuclear fusion has been 20 years away for 50 years. Here's a layman's understanding of what's going on and what to expect. Remember, video telephone was "coming soon" from th 1964 World's Fair until Facetime (2010) - now we can't think of the [WFH] world without it.

Ever wonder why milk jugs have concave circles on their sides? I don't anymore.

The Play Library from the Library of Singapore takes any public domain work and turns it into a text based adventure game through a ChatGPT interface. I chose The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Receiptify is a simple little app that logs into your Spotify (or Last.fm) account and gives you some stats on your top tracks - in the format of a restaurant receipt(??).

You may have heard about old European towns selling homes for one euro. Here's a look at how it has worked in parts of Sicily.

I Bought This: I was looking for something cheap with not awful quality for when I work out. Thirty bucks with coupon.

Closing Quote

"At the beach - time you enjoyed wasting, is not wasted." -T. S. Eliot