Ordered a sample of this. It will be here in a few days. With a fragrance this expensive, even 1ml is costly. Supposedly one of the best oud fragrances on the market. We will see.
Sunday
July 20, 2025
Reconfigured Shellfish with SSH to run over OpenVPN. Had to use ChatGPT to get it set up correctly.
Yesterday wore MFK Oud Extrait. Today is Fall Into Stars.
Dawn Arrived
July 16, 2025
Sample arrived today. I'm not sure. I don't get the cold, church incense feel. I will check it out again in a few days.
Absolue Pour le Soir
July 14, 2025
I found Absolue Pour Le Soir 2024 to be a bold and challenging fragrance, but not entirely in a good way. The opening hits hard with a sharp cumin note that borders on harsh and medicinal, which lingers longer than I'd like. While the honeyed rose and amber drydown eventually bring some warmth and depth, the initial phase feels jarring and overly retro, almost like something an older relative might have worn decades ago. It lacks the raw, animalic edge of the original, but instead of refining it, the reformulation seems to have dulled its character. I appreciate the attempt to modernize a polarizing classic, but for me, the new version feels disjointed and ultimately disappointing.
Language Acquisition
July 13, 2025
I've developed a neuro-inspired language acquisition system that:
- Mimics child language learning
- Uses a tiny transformer architecture (4-layer, 256-dim)
- Trained on child-directed speech from the CHILDES corpus
- Features a web application with:
- Safari auto-launch functionality
- Real-time training monitoring
- Interactive model evaluation
- Cognitive tests like Wug Test and word segmentation
- API-driven interface for researchers
Next Engineering Steps
- Implement biological enhancement phase
- Add sparsity constraints via L1 regularization
- Integrate spiking neural dynamics
- Develop hierarchical attention mechanisms
- Expand evaluation framework
- Introduce curiosity-driven learning
- Establish production deployment pipeline
Future Vision
- Add multi-modal inputs (audio/visual)
- Develop real-time dialogue interface to demonstrate interactive language learning capabilities