Tales from the jar side: LangChain4j conversations, Magnus is still magnificent, Vaccine fever, My new toy, and the usual tweets and toots
A worm is a pretty disappointing prize for getting up early, if you ask me (rimshot)
Welcome, fellow jarheads, to Tales from the jar side, the Kousen IT newsletter, for the week of September 1 - 8, 2024. This week started my semester at Trinity College (Hartford), which dominated my time.
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LangChain4j Conversations, Revisited
Last week I talked about how to use chat memory inside of the LangChain4j framework to connect multiple AI requests together in a conversation. All my requests involved stating a user’s name, and then asking for it back. I promised that, at long last, I would make a video about it.
That did, in fact, happen:
I enjoyed making the video, mostly because I added all those movie snippets as B-roll. Most of them were less than 10 seconds. The only exception was the monologue from Gladiator (“My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, Commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next”), which took nearly 20 seconds.
I shouldn’t be surprised that that was the one element flagged for a copyright issue. Not a strike, fortunately, but a claim, for which YouTube said I could share in the profits (profits? You’re kidding, right?) if I enabled monetization.
My first thought was, I can’t do that. I’m only in the “limited” YouTube Partner Program, because I have over 3000 watch hours in the last year but I’m still under 4000 watch hours. That means I can monetize in other ways, but sharing in the ad revenue isn’t one of them. Besides, the video has about 100 views so far. What’s that worth? A dime? A penny? Less? I don’t know, and honestly I don’t really care.
My next thought was, wait, what’s the copyright claim based on? Digging into it, I found that it was made by the rights-holder for the orchestral score backing the dialog, which I didn’t expect. When I accessed it in YouTube Studio, the system offered to erase that background music from the clip (!) for me, and I quickly agreed. All I needed was the dialog anyway. If you watch the video, let me know if the result is decent enough to get the point across.
Because the views were on the low side, I decided to make a blog post about the process as well, which you can find here. I’m having some WordPress issues (my blog is hosted on wordpress.com) so I can’t see how many views it’s gotten, but I’m glad it’s out there anyway.
Magnus Is Still Magnificent
Every once in a while I comment on my lifelong enjoyment of chess as a spectator sport, and, to a much more limited extent, as a participant. These days I mostly find the game frustrating to play, but really fun to watch, especially online with rapid time controls.
Last week brought us the semi-finals and finals of the world Speed Chess Championships, being played in Paris on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The format they used was rather unusual, involving a combination of 5 minute games, 3 minute games, and 1 minute games, each with a 1 second increment.
The real reason to watch, however, is that this is the first time Magnus Carlsen, the best player in the world and former World Champion only because he walked away, was forced to play Hans Niemann, the so-called Bad Boy of Chess who Magnus essentially accused of cheating a few months ago, leading to a firestorm in the press, both chess and otherwise.
Hans is only 21, but acts about 12. He’s brash and obnoxious, and says intentionally inflammatory things to reporters. This week he thought he had a good chance because he had “broken” Magnus (seriously, he used that term) before.
Here’s the result:
Those results look much closer than they actually were. In the semifinal against Hans, Magnus built up about a 10 point lead before, as he said, he lost interest in the match and just wanted it to be over, dropping five in a row at the end. Neimann then went on to play Nakamura in the consolation round for third place, and there’s a lot of bad blood there, too. Naka crushed him even more thoroughly than Magnus.
I rather enjoyed that. I have no problem rooting for kids in general. The Indian contingent in particular (Gukesh in particular, who will be playing in the upcoming World Championship against Ding Liren, as well as Erigaisi, and the Praggnanandhaa siblings, Ramesh and Vaishali) are all great fun. But Hans seems to think he’s the second coming of Bobby Fischer, and he’s adopting all of Fischer’s worst traits in the process. His results in this tournament make it clear that while he has improved a lot lately, he’s no Bobby Fischer.
It’s also clear that Magnus still stands head and shoulders above everyone else in the world. It’s simply a joy to watch him play. I’m sad he stepped down from the world title, but everybody knows who the real champion still is.
While I was writing this newsletter, the latest commentary video from my favorite chess YouTuber, GM Daniel King, showed up. Take a look at the words on the thumbnail.
Says it all, right?
Vaccine Fever FTW
There are many news items (though far fewer than you might expect) that make it clear COVID has not yet gone away. For example, see the article COVID is surging again from the Association of American Medical Colleges. Normally I’m content to wait until the latest vaccines are available and just limit my exposure until then, but now I’m a professor and starting this week I have to be around lots of people from pretty much everywhere.
I was glad, therefore, to see they had a new vaccine booster, but discovered to my disappointment that the place I normally go for it wasn’t going to get it in for a few weeks. A quick search, however, showed that I could arrange for the newest version at a (relatively) local CVS pharmacy.
At CVS, they are willing to offer as many as three vaccines at the same time. My local pharmacy is reluctant to do that, saying the side effects can be significant. Still, I was going to be around a bunch of disease factories this week, so I figured, might as well give it a try. On Monday, I therefore got the latest COVID shot, my annual flu shot, and a DPT booster that my records suggested. The nurse warned me that I might be a bit out of it the next day. Tuesday was my first day of classes, though I only had one in the morning. I did plan to hang around at the college all day, given that my office hours were also that afternoon.
Let’s just say that was a tough day. I made it through, because “It’s (pause) What I Do.”
(That’s a quote from Captain Amazing (Greg Kinnear), in the awesome-but-highly-underrated movie Mystery Men. Sadly, I couldn’t find a clip.)
Tuesday was a very long day, after a long night as well. My stomach wasn’t very happy all week, though my appetite has come back. As with so many things, it was a short-term evil for a long-term good. Best of all, I don’t have any symptoms of COVID or flu (or diphtheria, pertussis, or tyhus, I suppose). Heck, I don’t have any symptoms of Rockin’ Pneumonia or the Boogie-Woogie Flu, either, so maybe that’s an unexpected benefit.
(Kids, ask your parents, or, more likely, your grandparents.)
My New Toy
I’ve had my current phone (a Pixel 6 Pro from Google) for a full three years, which is a new record for me. I usually get a new one every other year, and have be talked out of doing so more often than that. My normal excuse is that I teach Android development, so I need the latest and greatest.
I haven’t said much about it here, but I finally had my fill of the ever-changing, ever-getting-more-complicated Android development world. I did some work adopting Jetpack Compose, but haven’t spent the time on it needed to get good at it. I finally got tired of the latest “best architecture” discussions for Android, and decided it wasn’t worth it trying to keep up any more. The training market wasn’t big enough to support it anyway, and when the O’Reilly people dropped my Android courses for lack of enrollment (honestly, they could have done so six months before they actually pulled the plug), my biggest reaction was relief.
Back on my trip to UberConf in July, on the plane I think my phone slipped off my seat and hit the floor. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but eventually I realized the battery was starting to swell, causing the phone to pop out of its case just enough for me to have to push it back in every so often.
That meant the race was on. I knew the new Pixel 9’s were coming out soon, so I really didn’t want to go through the transition to a Pixel 8. The question was, would my phone last long enough for me to order a new Pixel 9 after they were announced in mid-August and released in early September?
The answer turned out to be yes. I’m not sure how, but my current phone lasted long enough for my new Pixel 9 Pro Fold to arrive this week. I’ve never had a “foldable” and spent way too much money on this one, but if I’m going to keep it a while, I might has well have a phone and a tablet at the same time.
I’m getting used to it. So far I like it, and I’m sure I’m not taking advantage of a lot of what it can do.
The really funny part, however, will come when I try to send in my current phone for the rebate. I’m sure the employees at the rebate center will be laughing uproariously at that.
Tweets and Toots
English vs metric
Here’s the tweet that included the above diagram:
I’m old enough to remember how the US was going to adopt the metric system by 1980. We’re a bit overdue.
Cybertruck
This is way harsh, and totally fair.
Here’s a link to the video.
Which one goes by Katie?
There are no coincidences! Except there are, and they happen all the time, and this is one of them. But, as the Boy Wonder would say, Holy correlation doesn’t equal causation, Batman!
(Katie Baker is a sports writer I often follow, though she primarily writes about hockey.)
Bluesky and the Brazilians
Here’s the direct link. One of the included references is entitled Brazil, Bluesky & the Fediverse, and points out that over 3 million (!) Brazilian accounts have joined Bluesky since Twitter was suspended in the country. It also said 85% of service reports are now in Portuguese. Wow.
I don’t spend much time on Bluesky, though I do have an account there. I’m still much more of a Mastodon person. If you are on either, feel free to say hi.
Kneel before Zod!
The best replies I saw were Zod Loppin, The Superhuman League, and Zod and the Kryptones. I would definitely listen to an album by Zod and the Kryptones.
The RPS finals
The animation is so worth it.
Real estate gag
I included that one for my wife, the retired real estate lawyer.
Calling Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law
That one, too. Big week for legal tweets, I guess.
A Star Trek cat joke
Make up your mind, will you??
And finally …
Don’t do it!
Yup, you’ve been rickrolled.
Have a great week, everybody!
Last week:
My Trinity classes started: Software Design, Computer Science Seminar, and Special Topics: AI Integration.
This week:
Spring AI, on the O’Reilly Learning Platform
Practical AI Tools for Java Developers, an NFJS Virtual Workshop
Integrating AI in Java Projects, on the O’Reilly Learning Platform