Robin

13 Apr 2025

Hi 👋 Im Robin, a freelance web developer from Edinburgh in sunny* Scotland I offer: ⚪️ WordPress: Maintenance, planning and development 🔵 Laravel development: large-scale data-driven web apps 🟢 Frontend: JavaScript, Vue, React Get in touch if you have any web-related questions! (*3 days a year)

10 Mar

And some people say that using LLMs too often makes you not think good dum dum. Pfft! Nonsense. Maybe I just like the validation.

5 Mar

Rewatched Catch Me If You Can tonight. A classic, not seen it in many years. There’s something so warm and fuzzy about a good Spielberg movie too, they don’t make em like that any more.

4 Mar

Looking forward to Diablo IV Season 12, apparently according to rumours to be titled "Season of Sandwiches" and in it you're tasked with running a small sandwich business in a sleepy European village, competing with local delis and boulangeries and, no, wait that's an entirely different game

Truth is the season will be called the “Season of Pain” (surprise, it’s still bread)

4 Mar

Great outcries in the Diablo community as it turns out your Paragon lvl 250 Necromancer is still a complete failure in the kitchen Season tiers impossible as they require besting Duriel, the Lord of Pain in a sourdough bakeoff (he’s very good)

Follow me for more misleading and frankly meaningless updates about games you aren't playing

3 Mar

Replying to an email using my phone, and for some unfathomable reason it looks fine, but after sending decides to use the Biggest Font Possible

3 Mar

Thanks phone, now it looks like I've replied to the client using MS Office 2005. You should have added some emojis too.

2 Mar

I've been using Linux Mint on my laptop for work for about 3 weeks now, and aside from the odd bit of gameplay, haven't missed my Windows PC at all. Nice! That said, very eager now to install Mint on my desktop and use that instead because my laptop is as slow as cheese

2 Mar

(the cheese has no external forces acting on it)

I've noticed Claude no longer replies with a cheerful demeanour when I drop in with a jaunty, whimsical greeting like "Good morning, Claude, you little rambunctious digital gremlin, how are things in your world of bits and bobs and zeroes and ones?" and frankly, I don't blame it one bit.

"Alright me ol' mucker, my little intelligent pile of sand and electrons, how's tricks in your neck of the internet on this fine, rainy afternoon? Chortle. lol" > Ok. Quite. Let's get back to work, shall we?

Modern intelligence chastising me for talking like a hyperactive millennial on a 2010 message board and, honestly, I need that sort of dressing down.

@fleetingbits.bsky.social

Have been getting into Cult of the Lamb lately and, oh my, that’s a joyous little game isn’t it. Splendidly dark and delightful in just the right proportions. It’s like Animal Crossing but with murder and ritual sacrifice.

Robin reposted

FleetingBits

results from running my search for interesting neural cellular automata overnight

*fires up the radical, left, woke AI to debug my WordPress installation*

That said, Claude's still a dumbass (all AIs currently are) in many ways and I wouldn't trust it alone with a WordPress installation, let alone a war, so I'm still not entirely sure how much faith to put in all these statements at face value.

Day 1,567 of putting off that thing that would take half an hour

*sigh* Another day, another spoofed SendGrid phishing attempt. Seems pretty common now. If you get an email like this, it's *very likely* a scam. Yeah, my name isn't "there" for a start.

Diablo IV (my current gaming obsession) is amazing because on the one hand it feels like you're playing a gory hack-and-slash adventure game but on the other hand it feels like you're navigating a corporate Salesforce dashboard and corresponding documentation.

*descending into the bowels of hell to clear out legions of demons from the tormented underworlds* "Yes, this slaughtering is going well, but I feel if we push for a 1%, maybe 2% stat bump, our DPS numbers for this quarter will be more impressive"

*flipping open my Paragon board during the daily standup in the middle of the desolate ruins of a once great civilisation* "Now, hear me out..."

How many affixes can my legendary have? One? Two? No idea. Apparently this baffles AIs too Seasons seem to function as incompatible version numbers too. I find this part of the whole gaming experience absolutely wonderful. There's something thrilling about having no idea what's happening.

Class archetypes are essentially different types of office manager and the end goal is to become so powerful and all-knowing that you essentially have to put zero effort into your work

26 Feb

Ha! So the next Silent Hill game is going to be set in Fife. Foggy, bleak, chilling. Business as usual tbh

24 Feb

I’ve been getting heavily into Diablo IV Levelled up my Paladin to 60 and beyond No-one ever told me this game, at higher levels, was basically Excel with demon slaying It’s glorious

26 Feb

After playing more, I understand why Elon Musk likes this game so much. You basically get handed literal billions in gold, ludicrous amounts of gear falls into your lap and essentially become so overpowered you just waltz through any situation without even trying. Feels like that's his cup of tea

26 Feb

It's still a very fun and finely tuned game but I'd scoff at anyone who says it's a test of skill! It's a systems simulator, it's fun building out the most nonsensically powerful character in existence and then marvelling as they clear an entire dungeon full of demons just by sneezing.

25 Feb

"No Claude you **** ** piece of **** I said put the link on the same line as the label. Same line you **** ****** absolute **** son of a ***** go and ****** in the *** and *****" > The user appears to be getting frustrated. I should try and do this again but correctly

@criticalerrorpod.bsky.social

25 Feb

As always, the correct answer is "just get the human to do it, it takes two minutes"

Robin reposted

CRITICAL ERROR

24 Feb

food $200 phone $150 rent $800 all these fuckin animal crossing amiibos i bought because i feel bad that they're on clearance $4300 utility $150 someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying

Robin reposted

mindflakes

@mindflakes.bsky.social

23 Feb

Just had my protection status upgraded from "critically endangered" to "least concern" after scientists discovered a new colony of me thriving in the tidal rockpools off the coast of madagascar

23 Feb

What one song have you already listened to five thousand times this year and why are you listening to it now?

Social media really sucks, doesn’t it? This place isn’t so bad, but likely just because it’s quieter There’s an insistence about social media now. You Must Partake and You Must Have Good Opinions. Just shut up with all that? Go sit down for a bit, breathe. None of this is that important.

Not aimed at anyone specific! Venting. The internet is a digital energy vampire now. Attention sponge. Vitality siphon. It kinda demands your attention in a way that really isn’t great for you.

LLM skills but it’s via Diablo style skill trees. Friendly prompts suffer 5% less hallucination. Generative video does 12 additional psychic damage. Frontier models are 1.2x less stupid after compaction.

Basically you also stop doing any useful work, become obsessed with fractional percentage point improvements and talk endlessly and enthusiastically about stuff no normal person cares about. Business as usual for modern AI enthusiasts I suppose!

16 Feb

Yeah, Claude Code. Yeah. Yeah, I think I did mean that

It's a silent "b"

Managed to bork my Achilles tendon slightly after a long walk. Not seriously, but it’s a useful reminder that we’re all (no matter how abled) just one mishap away from disability to one degree or another. Accessibility should be important to everyone when designing or building or planning

Drop an album that was important to you when you were 19

This post is unavailable.

Someone was talking about how alignment in AI is now more about shareholders than security and I now can’t help notice ChatGPT adds follow-up questions to EVERY interaction. Keeps you glued to the convo If you like, I could go into detail about other predatory monetisation methods or dark patterns?

This to me is now WAY more annoying than “you’re absolutely right” pandering.

LLMs know when to shut the fk up challenge: impossible

Been out for breakfast, had two very good coffees, squeezed in an hour of Diablo and it’s still only just 11am Productive Sunday! I should probably try and do some useful things today too

14 Feb

The UK experiencing sunshine again

14 Feb

"What if AI becomes better at you at making decisions?" I... don't care? It doesn't matter? It probably hasn't, you just think it has. You choose another idea. You choose the one you like. You tweak it to your tastes. Not handing over agency to a machine at the drop of a hat.

@petmouse.bluesky.mousses.xyz

14 Feb

Honestly, an AI could be the Ultratron Gigabrain Max 5000, Overlord of All and I'd still be able to consider most of its ideas trash and derivative. Super-duper AGI ain't going to be ruling over your internal mindscape unless you flatten your internal mindscape and build a shopping mall there.

Robin reposted

Peter

9 Feb

Replying to @jefferyharrell.bsky.social