Ergonomic updates, digital garden beginnings, and the limits of LLMs

Robin takes us on a tour through his new physical workspace, as well as his digital garden vitual workspace. We both talk about the podcast’s schedule, and end on an exploration of what the philosophy of mind can tell us about the limits of LLM reasoning. 📖 CHAPTERS 00:00 Robin’s continuing ergonomics journey12:20 Digital garden update17:29 Podcast schedule21:20 The limits of LLMs 🔗 LINKS Ours https://robinwinslow.ukhttps://noboilerplate.orghttps://lostterminal.comhttps://modemprometheus.comhttps://phosphenecatalogue.com External Obsidian.mdObsidian Digital Garden pluginMaggie Appleton’s “A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden” 🧑 CREDITS Decapsulate is a NAMTAO Production (namtao.com) It is hosted by: Tristram Oaten (https://mastodon.social/@0atman)Robin Winslow (https://union.place/@nottrobin) This work is BrainMade (https://brainmade.org) Transcript Tris: Right. oh my God. So this is extremely exciting. Robin, tell me about your ergonomics update. Robin: Yeah, I finally got a desk. it’s, it was Tris: Wow. Robin: of quite straightforward. So I’ve shipped out my old dining table and now I’ve got myself a,a mechanical raising and lowering desk that is 110, I think centimeters wide, which is just perfect to fit behind my door. Tris: I’ll say right at the top here that we are not only are we not sponsored by any of the things we’re about to speak about, we don’t even have affiliate links. So, did you get a, a flexi spot desk? I think I mentioned that last time. Robin: mention Tris: had good experience with them. Robin: it and I think to make it affordable, it relied on finding a really cheap place to buy wood, which Tris: Hmm. failed to do. And I discovered that I think basically these desks are not that complicated. So I’ve got like a fairly well reviewed thing that was actually from Amazon, for my. Shame. do put, the way I work with Amazon is I put quite a lot of effort, particularly if I’m spending any significant amount of money, I put quite a lot of effort into trying to find, to buy it from somewhere else. And then at some point I just give up and buy it from Amazon. That’s okay. I do the same. Like I, I, I switched off my Prime subscription so that my default wouldn’t be Amazon, and now I try all the local stores. I try this, I try that, then I try eBay. Then when that fails, I agree. I fall back to, Robin: so this Tris: to the one supplier. Robin: it’s, I can’t fault it really so far, like the,it’s clearly not like solid wood because it wouldn’t have been as cheap as it was if it were, but, as in it’ll be, MDF covered in a coating, but it’s Tris: Hmm. Robin: enough. Tris: I didn’t wanna spend like 300 pounds on, on super long-term furniture. MDF is, is, is very clever and in addition to being very cheap, it’s also very light. Like a solid wood is very heavy. the big drawback with MDF that, that I’ve seen on various DIY channels is that it’s like you have to have a bit of preparation before you drill through it because you are drilling through something that is not quite as predictable as your solid wood. You know, there’s, there’s, there’s splintering, there’s more. I believe I’ve, I’ve heard people talk about waterproofing , you know, if, like, if you spill a coffee and then it goes into the hole that you’ve just made suddenly the entire, that it like compromises the, Robin: explodes and it Tris: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Robin: Yeah. But anyway, Tris: You find that, that there’s a half and half situation and I think the first party flexis put tabletops do this. Like the, the outer five centimeters are solid wood and then the, the most of the middle is MDF, so that you can like, yeah, I guess you, it means you can like drill into it, you know, screw something into it. Like I’ve got a headphone Robin: here and I’ve, you know, just little bits. And that’s, you tend to want to do that around the edge. that makes sense. this Tris: Yeah. Interesting. Robin: a headphone hook, pockets dangling off the Tris: Great. Robin: it’s Tris: The dream. hole for the cables to come through, although, I dunno why, what I’m gonna use it for,Nice. Robin: that’s like off in the back Tris: Tidy. Robin: I literally put it Tris: Yeah. Robin: the side away from me. but it’s, it’s been perfectly fine. It goes from 72 centimeters high to 120, no, a hundred and it must be more than that, right? A hundred and I can’t remember what it goes up to. Yeah. But,it’s high setting is. high as I could need, and low setting is as low as I could need. It’s, know, it’s perfect. And I’ve got my stand for my monitor. I’ve got my little stand for my laptop. it’s big enough for my usage because I, it’s not like I spread out papers all over the place. yeah. And the Tris: Marvelous. Robin: is probably from what, maybe or something like that. I can’t remember. Tris: Ah, I don’t believe that’s gonna be very useful for our ...