Gwynne Michele - The Curious Hermit

What I'm working on in programming class in college today vs what I'm working on in personal projects after hardcore crashcoursing myself through python coding, local LLM models, and agentic integrations the last few weeks...

I don't need content sponsors. I need hobby sponsors 🤣

My TikTok has started showing me diy cyberdecks and OMG I do not need a new hyperfixation...

Day 5 since I built myself a habit dashboard, based on a simpler habit tracker I'd built before. Lack of gardening the last two days is excused because it's cold and rainy. Lack of meditation and exercise... that I need to work on... which is why they're in the habit tracker in the first place. And go me on the other habits! Next on this project, I want to implement a monthly view.

We have a Friday the 13th this week. If you know anything about my hexing and money magic history... you know that's a very interesting day for me... Blood magic and Billionaires sort of interesting...

Today's coding project: An AI agent that uses a locally-hosted model to scan notes in an Obsidian vault folder, summarize them, and make content suggestions for me. Because I've got 10,545 notes in my Obsidian vaults, and every time I open one, I don't end up creating content, I just end up creating more notes. First task is creating an indexer, which I'm pretty sure can be pure python - the AI model won't need to do anything until it's time for me to tell it what folder to work through.

Today, I did the unthinkable and turned in an assignment four days early.

I'm at the stage of my "learning to code" journey where I'm learning sorting algorithms. Do I *need* to learn it? Probably not. I can just find code that's already been written that does the job or ask AI to write it for me. BUT that wouldn't rewire my brain and bulk up my grey matter, which is one of the reasons I'm learning to code. Because active minds are less prone to degradation as we age.

Weekly View from my habit dashboard I built yesterday. Starting with just a few habits, but I can add more whenever I want, and archive ones I'm no longer maintaining. All coded in python, json file for the data, and rich + textual libraries to make it pretty in terminal. Aliased with "habits" so I can access it from anywhere in my terminal because the less friction there is in using something, the more likely I am to use it.

Went for a walk, came home, and decided that my next personal coding project is going to be a terminal-based fitness tracker in python. Just something to log steps, bike riding distance, and other move minutes I might get in during the day. With really quick input on the command line. Like "fit 1500 steps" logs 1500 steps and "fit 7.5 m" logs a bike ride. Which then generates data I can turn into a Jupyter notebook to set realistic goals for improvement. Super simple. And I own my data.

Today, I'm working on morphing my python-based habit tracker that runs in terminal into more of a habit dashboard with more features and deeper stats tracking. Still more work today, but it's pretty so far!

One of my most reliable ways to hit transcendence is to find a song that hits in *just* the right way, and then play it daily until I'm primed, put it on repeat, and sit with it as my being elevates into ego-shattering transcendence and Oneness with the Universe. It's not exactly a new technique - music is connected with ritual for a reason. But I don't use songs you might consider to be spiritual. I'm not chanting hymns to transcend into the Passion of the Christ. Nope. It's pop music for me. Did it with Taylor Swift's Anti-Hero once. This time? Meek's Fabulous. I've been listening to it daily for awhile now, and it's on repeat today. Oneness is bliss. But being human is cool. We're the only ones that get to pet cats ❤

I have a whole folder of snark response memes that I don't get to use at all this year because one of my chosen discipline vows is "not arguing on the internet" and contemplation on that particular vow led me to conclude that yes, snark memes are argumentative. Refining the self is hard and annoying work.

I have this on repeat this afternoon... Brain is OBSESSED. https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=x-FLnQrUGTc&si=0Ln75K4NMH6Lh45j

Today, I'm working on my game some more. I got the core functions coded yesterday. Player can "look" to see what objects are in the room, "take" objects from a room and put them in their inventory, "equip" and "use" objects from their inventory, "drop" objects from inventory and they'll stay in the room where they were dropped to be picked up again if so desired (though I didn't limit inventory, so there's no real need to drop items at this point), and "attack" or "flee" when a battle starts up upon entering a room where an enemy exists. Next up is improving the room, item, and enemy descriptions - they're bland one-liners right now - and plotting a whole bunch of new rooms because you can currently get through the five starter rooms in less than a minute. Also need to work on balancing combat, which really just means playing with health, defense, and attack variables until it's challenging enough to be fun, but not so challenging that you die in the second room.

I spent several hours coding my text-based adventure game. All the core functions are working and it's playable! And now begins the process of polishing it and adding enough content so the game play last more than two minutes. Which will probably take longer than coding those core functions did 😅

Combat works! But I gotta work on balancing the earlier enemies - this boss battle was the first one that did my player character any damage at all 😅 And currently, battle just runs checking player vs enemy over and over until it's over, so I want to rewrite the combat mechanics a bit in the next version.

I technically have a working text-based game now! Can't exactly do much but look around at nothing and quit, but it's a start! Now I gotta "build" some rooms for the player to explore and interact with :D :D :D Also, my terminal Oh My Posh theme is M365Princess and I am IN LOVE with that color scheme <3

Coding my first game FROM SCRATCH! We have a player creation function :D Health/attack/defense values will likely be adjusted once I get more of the game coded and running, but gotta start somewhere! It's just gonna be a little text-based dungeon crawl adventure. First version will have five pre-defined rooms, but future plans include procedural generation for rooms, difficulty settings that determine how hard you're gonna have to fight through those rooms, and how many rooms you'll have to trudge through before you get to the final boss room.