Yay! I finished the first half of the first book in the series. The Iliad! As mentioned in the previous post, as I read The Iliad, I picked a quote/passage, crafted a prompt to tie it to some contemporary issue, and submitted the prompt to ChatGPT and Bard. They definitely gave me interesting answers, which made me think further.

I recently started reading ‘The Great Books of the Western Civilization’1 after buying the complete set from someone on Craigslist. The seller was a doctor who had purchased the books from a library sale many years ago and had even read some of the classics in Latin when he was younger.

Six calculated guesses to figure out a five-letter word. Wow! Wordle1 the game, is simple, yet super fulfilling once you crack the word of the day. As per wikipedia2, the emoji-style display of the result that could be shared with friends is what made this game a viral phenomenon on social media (Twitter especially).

“And it turns out that nothing will crack this world harder than one gentle question.” ~ The Nevers (HBO TV Series) 1 The ‘The Nevers’ starts with the upper echelons of the society in Victorian England being alarmed by the “natural order” being threatened by people (mostly women) who are “touched” by some mysterious spores from above.

“It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyze every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers. These were the words of Xerxes, Persia’s king of kings ..” — Admiral Emil Sauveterre, Season 5, Ep 2: Churn

“Into this wild abyss, The womb of nature and perhaps her grave, Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire, But all these in their pregnant causes mixed Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight, Unless the almighty maker them ordain His dark materials to create more worlds,

“Teams that are best at DevOps and continuous delivery can release software thousands of times more quickly and with a small fraction of the defects.” The above quote is from Dave Farley’s review1 of “The State of DevOps” report2. It rang so true that I tweeted it. Martin Fowler responded to the original Tweet from Dave asking if there was a transcript available.

“God needs no faint hearts for his ambassadors.” ~ Margaret Thatcher in The Crown Season 4, Episode 2 1 The Poem In the second episode of Netflix’s ‘The Crown’ 2, Margaret Thatcher recites a poem to the Queen, named ‘No Enemies’ by Charles Mackay. This was in response to the Queen saying that Thatcher is making a lot of enemies.

“It’s foolish to run the risk of going mad for vanity’s sake.” ~ French Philosopher Diderot (From Netflix’s “The Queen’s Gambit” 1) The Dream For the first time in so many years, I had a dream about Chess. Like many dreams, it is in the mind and is kind of difficult to exactly describe it.

“It’s really easy to settle for something that you don’t like. Because, if you never admit you’re unhappy with something, then you never have to change anything. Most of us don’t speak up when we’re dissatisfied and then things just accumulate until you can’t really imagine an alternative.” ~ John Wilson in Scaffolding (Episode 2 of ‘How to with John Wilson’1)