Posts on SaltyTron

AI Parallels

Tue, 12 May 2026 22:25:13 -0700

AI, (that is, the latest iteration of AI in the form of large language models,) has been called so many things, from “spicy autocomplete” to “the next industrial revolution”. At some point, I felt it’d be interesting to catalog an (inexhaustive) list of the comparisons I’ve heard so far as a way to explore how to think about and understand the technology.

Spicy Autocomplete

The thinking goes, that these AI tools are essentially just sophisticated autocomplete engines. Similar to how you can start to type “I hope this email” in an email app, and have it pop up the text “finds you well” as a suggested completion. What this comparison nails, is that this is actually exactly how LLMs work. You feed it a context of words, (or tokens, rather,) and it will spit out the next word (token) that is most likely to be correct. Feed everything back through the LLM, and you get the next word. Repeat until satisfied.

Concerns, Continued

Sun, 23 Mar 2025 16:05:42 -0700

A little over a month ago, I wrote about some of the concerning developments from the new administration leading the U.S. Even just since then, a lot has been happening. This is an update on some things that have been happening in the areas of concern that I mentioned before. As a quick reminder, these are the things that I found most concerning at the time, (with some updates to wording):

Concerns and Distractions

Fri, 21 Feb 2025 20:00:00 -0800

We’ve Been Here Before, but Not Entirely

When Trump lost the 2020 election and, instead of conceding, tried to overturn the result of the election, culimnating in the seditious riot at the capitol on Jan. 6, we narrowly escaped a crisis. Now, because eggs were expensive, or people thought Trump cared about Palestine, or whatever reason, we’ve decided to give him another go at it. Now, a lot has been happening in the last several weeks, a combination of deeply concerning developments and things that seem more like distractions at this point. This post is my attempt to summarize what I see as the most concerning.

Steinbeck: The Only Story

Fri, 06 Dec 2024 19:25:51 -0800

The recent murder of the UnitedHealth CEO has become a focal point of conversation the past several days. It’s shocking that a murder would receive as positive of a reaction as this one has. I will not condone the act of violence that took his life, as violence is rarely the answer, but thinking about the untimely death of a person so disliked reminded me of an eloquent monologue that John Steinbeck gives as the narrator in his book, East of Eden:

Why Presidential Candidates Care About Some Votes So Much More than Others

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 22:41:16 -0700

There’s a ritualistic flow to each election cycle: the two political parties jockey over who will be their presidential nominee, then coalesce around the winner; the nominees craft their platform to attract a broad set of voters; and inevitably, at some point it becomes very important for the candidate to take a position on fracking,– wait, what? Fracking? That sounds like a pretty niche issue. Why is it such a big deal for a presidential campaign? Well, it just so happens that fracking is a big deal in Pennsylvania, and sorry, their votes matter a lot more than yours, (probably, depending on where you live.)

Tech's Vision of the Future

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 00:00:00 -0700

At Tesla’s “We, Robot” event, Elon Musk took the stage and pitched a vision of the future that included parking lots converted into parks thanks to robotaxis, and humanoid robots that were both our servants and friends. Much of the press coverage was about how the product reveals were lacking in detail and how the robots were actually controlled by humans, but the biggest takeaway for me didn’t have much to do with how much of the presentation was real vs how much was vaporware that is a decade or more away.

New Blog Generator

Sat, 05 Oct 2024 17:00:16 -0700

While writing and publishing the last few blog posts, there always seemed to be something wrong with the platform that I had to debug. A lot of it had to do with how my “simplesitegen” project was being installed and invoked in my hacked-together, automated blog deployment pipeline, but whatever the issue was, it was something that needed to be fixed in order for me to continue blogging. When faced once again with issues running custom-built blog generator, I decided to go back and investigate some of the off-the-shelf options I had forgone earlier in my decision to build my own static site generator.

Cobble Build Automation

Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I found myself looking for a particular type of build automation tool, only to discover that such a tool does not exist. That got me thinking about how such a tool might be implemented. After tossing ideas around in my mind, some basics started coming together, and I soon found myself building the tool I thought was missing.

What I ended up with was Cobble: a fast, flexible, monorepo-aware build automation tool. I’ll explain a little about my journey towards deciding to build something new and Cobble’s philosophical approach to build automation.

Biking Monterey Bay

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Biking Monterey Bay

As usual, I ended up with no real plans as Labor Day was imminently approaching. I would have loved to have just gone out on a road trip, (I do enjoy wandering,) but the last thing I wanted to do was drive in Labor Day weekend traffic. So, I started thinking about a bike trip. You can cover fairly long distances on a bike, and when paired with transit, gives you a lot of options. This would be my first multi-day bike trip, so I decided to go somewhere a little more local. I ended up going from Santa Cruz to Monterey, then to Salinas. I haven’t written here for a while, and I had a few interesting takeaways from this trip, so I thought I’d write a trip report.

Book Club: The Armada

Sat, 10 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Book Club: The Armada

I’ve never been much a history buff. Mostly I think it’s because my mind just doesn’t retain knowledge about time periods and events very well, so learning about history seems to be a Sisyphean endeavor. Over time, however, I’ve come to realize something that may have been obvious to others all along, which is that learning and retaining historical information comes a lot easier when you already have some context in your mind that you can connect it to. (Really, this applies to all learning.) That’s why, when I started to read The Armada on a recommendation from a friend and realized I was reading about late 16th Century Europe, I got excited. I had only recently finished the first book of the Wolf Hall trilogy, a work of historical fiction that takes place only around fifty years prior. Not only did I have a fuller backdrop to learning about the Spanish Armada, I also found some interesting parallels to that time and today. I think 16th Century Europe is fascinating, especially in the context of today’s world.

Financial App Progress

Sun, 13 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been tinkering now an then on a financial application. It started as a way to learn a new programming language and play with some architectural concepts for software applications, but now every time I think, “I should really start keeping better track of my finances,” I proceed immediately to, “I should work on that financial app I started…”

There are certainly plenty of apps out there that will help you track your finances, whether it’s a desktop, web, or mobile app. I have not tried them all, but I have issues with many of them. Mainly, I think it would be really cool if there was some modern, open-source financial app that gave people basic financial tracking and reporting.

Crystal Springs

Sun, 25 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A blog is like a gym membership: it’s a lot easier to start than it is to keep up. Things have been busy, so it’s been a while, but this blog is not dead, yet. More updates will be coming soon.

I moved recently, and although it was not very far, (a 15 min drive away,) I found myself in a place with a different set of closest parks and nature preserves. I thought I’d scope out Crystal Springs Reservoir a bit more closely as a walking or biking destination. Crystal Springs is a beautiful reservoir in the middle of the peninsula. Water activities are prohibited in the reservoir, which keeps the water clean, and as a result the reservoir retains its crystal blue color. The walking and biking path next to the reservoir was crowded, but the scenery is hard to beat for an area that is so close by. I took some photos, and used one as a reference for this digital painting. I’m still working on getting color and lighting right. Even in simplified illustrations, it’s so easy to make something look wrong with bad lighting, which can go underappreciated if it’s not something you have tried yourself before.

First Post on Rust

Sun, 17 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I didn’t intend to go three months without a blog post, but there’s been… a lot going on. This one is about the Rust programming language, and I hope to make it the first of many.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and I found myself with more time at home, I decided to look into a language that I had heard a bit about, and was curious to explore. I was intrigued by Mozilla’s effort to help create a modern programming language that makes it easy to write fast, secure, and stable code. It is often described as a systems programming language, which I tend to associate with embedded systems or core software libraries, so I wasn’t sure if I would find an immediate opportunity to use Rust in one of my own projects; however I soon found that Rust is useful for all kinds of things. I started using it in a financial desktop app I’m tinkering on, for which it has been very effective, and I would not be surprised if Rust eventually finds its way into many server applications.

A Career Transition

Sat, 17 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

You may have noticed that I’ve been spending a bit more time on social media, or that I’ve had time to participate in things like Inktober, perhaps even more than what you would expect during a pandemic where staying at home is the popular thing to do. That’s because a couple weeks ago, I left Tableau/Salesforce, and will soon be joining a robotics startup in the bay area called Dexterity.

Tableau, (and now Salesforce, since the acquisition that completed earlier this year,) is an incredible place to work, and you might be curious as to what motivated me to make a change, especially in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Tableau is indeed a special place. It has a culture of collaboration and transparency, and especially after spending a couple of years at Amazon,– who’s culture I would describe as being close to the opposite to Tableau’s– I felt like I had found a home at Tableau where I was surrounded by people who were interested in helping each other rather than only looking out for themselves. Tableau is also a place where you can contribute to building a great product, and then go to your company’s conference where you’re surrounded by users of that product who express appreciation for what you do. It’s a place where you have opportunities to ask direct questions of senior leadership, even tough ones, (and this hasn’t changed with the Salesforce acquisition.) I think Tableau, (and now Salesforce,) is also a company that practices the principle of doing well while also doing good, and though not perfect, is one of the more ethical and altruistic companies out there.

Inktober 2020

Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I’m going to be creating an ink drawing per day for inktober. I’ll update this post with a new drawing each day.

Oct. 1 - This is Fine Pirate

Oct. 2 - Sail into the Sunset

Oct. 3 - Paying a Visit

Oct. 4 - Don’t… move…

Oct. 5 - Power Up

Oct. 6 - Break Time

I didn’t get around to creating a drawing today. I decided to do inktober because it motivates me to draw more, but there’s no sense in stressing out about maintaining perfect adherence to the schedule.

Blog Update: Comments

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Statically generated sites are great for blogs, because for the basic blog, there is almost no dynamic content. The biggest exception is comments: if you want users to be able to write comments on posts in a user-friendly way, then typically you’d have a form that they can enter comments into, and those comments would be stored in a database somewhere. With statically generated sites, there’s no database, so comments need their own system for storing information. Fortunately, there’s a fairly good open-source solution for providing an end-to-end experience for comments: Discourse.

Some Project Updates

Sun, 09 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Well, COVID’s been going on for some time now, and has put a hold on anything social, but it has given me time to work on some projects that I had otherwise been neglecting, (this blog being one of them.) I thought it’d be a good idea to give an intro and update for some of the things I’ve been working on recently.

Digital Painting

A little over a month ago, I bought a cintiq for digital painting, and I’ve been working on improving my skills. I was very much into art growing up, and thought that maybe I’d work in a creative industry where art was part of my work; but engineering hobbies and schoolwork, followed by an engineering career, have made it difficult for me to spend enough time painting to get as good at it as I would like. Over time, the majority of my artistic endeavors have been designing holiday and birthday cards. As sad as I am that I haven’t been able to apply my art skills in a more professional way, it’s somewhat liberating to be approaching it again from an amateur position. It quells the desire to throw almost every finished work away because it doesn’t measure up to my expectations. I may write more about this topic in another post, but for now, the island painting above is representative of where I currently am in my painting endeavors. I’m hoping I’ll be able to create some quality scenes and character drawings over time.

What this Blog is Made of

Sun, 24 May 2020 00:00:00 -0700

I’ve been wanting to start up a new blog for a while, now. I was thinking maybe I’d do an art blog, or perhaps an engineering blog. At the very least, someting a bit more focused and presentable to the general public. When it came to thinking about how to publish the blog, though, it became clear that dealing the blogging platform was one of the biggest obstacles to actually doing it. I’ve typically used WordPress in the past, but over time it has become apparent that it has some limitations that make blogging more difficult than it should be. I’ve never really had success finding a theme I feel good about; and once the site is up, I have to deal with an endless barrage of spam comments that somehow make it through the Akismet spam filter even though they have a gazillion links in them or are selling pharmaceuticals.

This is my Blog

Fri, 22 May 2020 00:00:00 -0800

What is SaltyTron?

That is a good question. I was playing around with names in an attempt to find something that sounded cool, wasn’t heavily in use already, and had an available domain name. I was originally had the intent of starting an art blog, (there may be some of that here in any case,) and I thought “SaltyTron”: sounds slightly mysterious, indicates perhaps a reference to Tron the movie, which was an imaginative blend of art and technology, I can at times come across a bit salty, and I both live in and originate from areas that lie next to large bodies of salt water. So there you have it: SaltyTron.