Weeknotes: Week 11- Q1 - 2025
This week has been a little quieter work wise. I started the week calling into another RCS Executive link session, this time in Melbourne. Unfortunately, I couldn't travel there for the session so we had to make do with a teams video link which although not ideal we managed to perceiver through. The more of these sessions I do the more I see the opportunity for AI in agriculture, it's amazing, i've been working in agriculture for nearly 15 years now and I am still learning. A couple of other things really stood out for me from the two sessions. The first is that there are lot of lonely people in rural Australia. I spoke to a couple of blokes who run their farms by themselves and who, while they didn't explicitly say it, were lonely. They were interested in how AI could help them in their business but also how they could use AI to be a mate or were worried about how someone on their own would be able to learn and engage with the opportunities that AI brings. I think there's something really important to address here and I'm going to try and do something to help if I can. The other thing that really surprised me was how many of the participants were engaged with cryptocurrency either as an investor or, more fascinatingly as a miner. One of the guys I spoke to was about to open his own mining operation in a spare barn. He was generating electricity from solar that he'd put on poor quality land on his property and was already generating a good income per kwH. Pretty amazing.
Gemma 3
Google's new open weights Gemma3 model was also released this week. I've been kicking the tires for another project i'm doing with the Australian Farm Institute. So far it's been a fantastic addition to our toolset. I rebuilt the RAG pipeline for Echidna as a result and i'm getting pretty impressive results from the 1B parameter model for my use case. The use case involves parsing hundreds of legal and policy documents into markdown and then identifying compliance requirements. It's an extension to the SR Database work we did for DAFF last year. Again super good fun - i still have to pinch myself that I get paid for doing this stuff.
Bits and Bobs
Other things I did this week included pulling together a couple of proposals, I made a map of event locations using the Airtable API and openstreetmap for a customer to put on their website and of course a stack of admin. You've got to love admin.
Mini Mechanic
I don't know if i've mentioned it before but I am the proud owner of a 2009 Mini Cooper Clubman. It's my pride and joy but it keeps me busy as it's at an age where things keep breaking and falling off (also known as a money pit). People also seem to like nicking bits off it. Most recently the hubcaps with the mini logo on them. The rear door lock also stopped working and a few other bits, anyway this weekend i spent a few hours fixing everything. I ordered the parts a few weeks back and they had to come from Europe so I had to wait a while for them to arrive. I love tinkering with the car and i've been learning loads. My main limiting factor is that I have no way to get under the car so for a lot of things I have to take it to the garage for someone else to fix.
Next week is going to be even busier, i'm back in Sydney a couple of days and have a couple of projects to finish off. One of which has been banging around for a long time so it's going to be a massive relief to get that one off of my table.