guitar player's journal

Where are you and where are you going?
guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

Yep I see what you mean. Do you have experience with red lentils that are not split? The split ones cook like you say into a curry base or Dahl, but I wonder about the whole ones. Reason being whole ones=more fiber.

I think what we might do is get a 25kg bag of green lentils and then top up with other legumes from the oriental shop downstairs for variety. Generally lentils in our slow cooker have this advantage that they don’t make a mess unlike for example beans. This is because beans fail to soak up all the water and so overnight the lid jumps up and spills some of that water, then sometimes I have a bit of a mess to clean. This is not an issue with lentils, they soak up all the water added.
Last edited by guitarplayer on Sat Apr 22, 2023 10:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by jacob »

guitarplayer wrote:
Sat Apr 22, 2023 10:17 am
Generally lentils in our slow cooker have this advantage that they don’t make a mess unlike for example beans. This is because beans fail to soak up all the water and so overnight the lid jumps up and spills some of that water, then sometimes I have a bit of a mess to clean. This is not an issue with lentils, they soak up all the water added.
A good dry beans to water ratio for slowcooking is 1:3 by volume.

As for exceeding container capacity, either use a bigger container or less beans. Insofar you add too little water, the beans will definitely soak up all of it. The 1:3 ratio will leave a bit of water.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

Hmm I’d need to fiddle with it. For one I use soaked legumes for cooking, so the ratio is a bit more tricky to arrive at (still possible). But long story short is that exactly the same ratio in case of lentils will leave me with no mess and with beans it is not always the case. My slow cooker is also partly to blame as it cooks at 90something C instead of 80something C causing to lid to jump in the first place.

Yes less food volume is a solution. I am greedy with using the slow cooker space in how much stuff I want to cook in it particularly with adding veggies on top to steam cook.

Which boils (pun intended) down to some modesty which is one reason I aim to resume stoic practice in the journal.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

2023 update 17/52

Job

030/156 weeks in (ca. 19.2%).

Just pulling together data for the next two or three pieces of work. No info about promotion opportunities yet, so I am gathering material to show off to get the promotion once it is on offer. I started entry level so there is lots of room up.

Studies

I am officially not doing the MSc in Data Science. I will be busy with the investment curriculum.

Otherwise, this weekend I plan to finish the final end-of-year assignment for the 'applied statistical modelling' course (this counts as exam). It is building three different models to do with one data set and compare / contrast strengths and weaknesses.

Then there will be three exams in June. I feel like the ground is running from under my feet about it, because I haven't started looking at reviewing properly yet. I should do next week.

Holidays / Projects

DW and I were wondering what to do in our next holidays. I got in touch with someone who runs interesting projects to do with practical steps to mitigate climate change and improve resilience. I think there is potential for lots of learning there so we might go for a week or two to help with their projects. We might also go and visit in a week or two for a day trip. I am not going to mention more detail now but it is in great scenery and to do with food production.

Food (messenger)

Yesterday I was cycling around town getting my fruit, veggies and a little bit of vegan junk food like a vegan wrap for example. By the second person that had couscous, blueberries and lettuce for me, also got two beautiful tomatoes as a bonus. Then we start chatting. She asks me if I am heading home after this and I answer that I might go another neighbourhood to get some more greens and bananas. Then she mentions that there are those biscuits that her children love that are for grabs in that area. We say goodbye, I request the biscuits and collect them with the greens from the third person. Then on the way to the last person (from whom we got sweet potatoes, more greens and some vegan junk food) I drop off the biscuits for the kids.

Happy days for everyone!

Otherwise, we got 25kg of black beluga lentils. Organic, costed about 110 USD - splurge. Tomorrow will be the day when we will have finished the old bag and started the new one, but we already have some now mixed with the old ones.

Stoicism

Was pondering impermanence of individual life as DW's friend who is now in advanced stage of cancer (I have met her recently, was carrying her between wheelchair and car and bed) is in hospital with fever on strong sedatives.

And yet in general, life prevails.

Spreadsheets and money

I have been playing with Excel to look at our money situation more. Recently we have paid ~ $2,400 post-tax income that should start yielding annually inflation adjusted ~ $1,145/year about 35 years from now. This is to do with Social Security, we have been eligible to buy a few years of contributions for the time we were already in the UK but doing volunteering and not having an income.

In general, in Autumn 2024 we will unlock an annually inflation adjusted $7,645 / year income starting 30-35 years from now. This will be growing incrementally by about $760 / year for every financial year we are in paid employment for at least ~ 4 months. But I think even if we do move on from paid employment, we would be able to buy increments - I need to read more about it.

Separately, I am trying to transfer my defined contribution pension pot to a defined benefit pension. It is about annually inflation adjusted $1,000 / year pension 30-35 years from now in exchange for the pot of about $10,000 that I have. If I were to translate that defined contribution pot into post-tax income, I had paid into it quite a bit less than $5,000. Quickly running the numbers, none of the options (keep the defined contribution pension or buy the defined benefit one) is obviously better. Based on a sentiment, I go for the defined benefit. Timing the defined benefit pension with Social Security, in Autumn 2024 this should grow to about $2,500 / year and growing by about $800 / year for each year worked, starting to yield 30-35 years from now.

So in Autumn 2024 we will lock in on about $10,000 / year inflation adjusted income when we are older, growing by about $1,550 each year, so long we stay in our current setting.

Got some piece of mind from it. I really look forward to reading the investment curriculum starting this Autumn when I have more time.

Thanks for reading!

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Bankai
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by Bankai »

Great progress on multiple fronts!
guitarplayer wrote:
Sat Apr 29, 2023 4:55 am
Studies

I am officially not doing the MSc in Data Science. I will be busy with the investment curriculum.
Are you planning a more active investing approach or is it just for increasing understanding?
Stoicism

Was pondering impermanence of individual life as DW's friend who is now in advanced stage of cancer (I have met her recently, was carrying her between wheelchair and car and bed) is in hospital with fever on strong sedatives.

And yet in general, life prevails.
Sorry to hear about your wife's friend. Negative visualization, including own's or close one's death, is to me the best stoic exercise. It's not easy and certainly not fun to do, but somehow it makes me calmer and more at peace with whatever happens. Obviously, you can't know for sure how you'll react until it happens, but playing the scenario in your head in advance has to help at least somehow. Or maybe I just like to think that.
Spreadsheets and money
Quickly running the numbers, none of the options (keep the defined contribution pension or buy the defined benefit one) is obviously better. Based on a sentiment, I go for the defined benefit.
Generally, the consensus is that all else being equal, DB is better than DC. A few things worth considering though:
- diversification - it's probably better to have some DB and some DC than just one. Also, your CS pension and your SP both are underwritten by the government, again making some DC more appealing from a diversification perspective
- potential upside - it's likely (but not guaranteed) that DC pot will double twice over the next 35 years, in which case it might win with DB
- DC leaves a pot behind while DB only pays while one's alive
- you can take a lump sum from DC pot - not sure if/how this works with DB
- you're in charge of how much you're taking out
- inflation protection is partial only with CS DB pension - my wife's small pot is adjusted up to 5% pa meaning it melted by maybe 10% over the last 2 years and any prolonged period of higher inflation will hit it hard
- as DB is adjusted by inflation only and DC potentially grows faster, it makes sense to go for DC early in one's career and for DB closer to retirement to maximize growth
- you might be able to start the drawdown earlier with DC pot - CS DB usually starts paying at the standard retirement age while DC can generally be accessed 10 years earlier

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

Hi @bankai, thanks for feedback!

About the investment curriculum, like with maths and stats two and a half years back - I don't really plan anything particular, hard to plan when one still doesn't know (unknown knowns). In principle initially learning to read the map.

Thanks for the kind words about DW's friend, I feel we are doing okay about it.

Good to read the pointers about the DB DC comparison. It all makes sense and probably after going through the investment curriculum I will be able to come up with even more points. Yes, I keep diversification in mind, but I go about it much more broadly than just 'money'. In the most narrow but a bit broader sense - DW is in a 5% (employee's contribution)+10% (employer's contribution) DC scheme now. The pot - thought about it, I don't need money when I kick the bucket :) Regarding inheritance, money does not strike me as a particularly good thing to leave behind (but this is just anecdotal knowledge). I also read about what appears to be a pretty standard option to buy an annuity with the DC pot which really makes it look much more like a DB one - just that the owner carries the risk throughout! The DB pension I am in is pretty good - taking out a lump sum is possible and if I read it right last month they adjusted it by 10.1% in line with CPI (might be the case also for your wife?). Also possible to start withdrawing 10 years before standard retirement age (with a correction).

Thanks for the comment, helps to reflect!

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

2023 update 18/52

Job

031/156 weeks in (ca. 19.9%).

Wow, approaching 20% of my planned three years with my organisation.

In Autumn I am going to start a 2 year workplace data science graduate programme, so finalising that data science programme will coincide with the three years being up. I am not sure what will happen after the three years are up. So far I am having a good time, still learning lots of stuff. I have a lot of freedom in how I get things done, people are happy with the outputs. This past week we had a meeting where some folk could not crack a problem and I cracked it for them.

I think once I wrap up the BSc in Maths and Stats it's going to be like a turbo charge to learning things at work, in the sense that I will have more head space for work.

Soon there will be opportunities to get promoted, perhaps still this year.

I will also get a retrospective small pay rise.

Studies

I finished the final end-of-year assignment for the 'applied statistical modelling' course (this counts as exam) - but a few days after planned. Deadline for submitting this is 25 May.

I will have three exams in June, inconveniently at the time when I publish one piece. I need to coordinate it a bit, got in touch with one colleague and my manager to get some help for the published piece.

Submitted the last round of assignments, had written them a long while back and it was just a matter of a quick review. The first one I got returned with a 95% score.

Food (messenger)

Yesterday I went to collect peppers and then carried another pack of peppers and ham to another person from whom I got oranges and greens. Discovering barter economy.

Green tea

I now drink green tea inspired by matcha and yerba mate drinking practice. I first grind and make a rather strong green tea. Once the mug is 2/3 empty I add more green tea and hot water and then again the same. After that I have a lot of ground green tea in the mug. Then I just keep on adding hot water throughout the day as the drink becomes weaker and weaker. In the afternoon the leaves are so weak, there is no more theanine in there, then I eat the leaves. After all, these are greens. Overall I love it.

Financial planning, or life planning etc

I am reviewing the financial and life situation of DW and I, we had a couple of chats the past week. Where we are, where we want to be, what is important and such.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

2023 update 19/52

Banana pudding at the Clyde banks

When we scavenge bananas, they are usually ripe which in this country passes for 'going off' - so they start getting black spots. What we like to do with them is to mash them with tahini and cocoa. I think there is some extra fructose released when mashing bananas because it turns very delicious and sweet. Or maybe the fact that we generally don't use sugar to sweeten things up. Anyway, yesterday (and today) was a nice day so we took bowls of this and went out to sit at the Clyde banks, enjoyed it.

Defrosting small freezer

There is a small freezer in the under the counter fridge we have, I decided to defrost it yesterday as the door had not not shut properly so there was a build up of ice.

Food going off in plastic bags

Some of the food I scavenge is on the verge of going off and the reason for this I have been suspecting is that they are packed in plastic bags and have no chance to breath. So I got those 2-3 kg organic carrots and decided to test this: I cut off bits that are soft-ish, maybe peal a little and possibly rinse, then spread on a tea towel and leave in the kitchen with the dehumidifier on (it is usually on overnight anyway). The carrots stayed okay for good several days, and these are organic. So I think the packaging is big part of the problem and will now be getting things out of bags much more readily.

Life

Recently I have been adopting this technique of thinking about life from its end. So I try to imagine my last days, they time preceding them. Then years leading to the final year and a decade preceding this. And so on, back until today.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

Expectation of a probability density function i.e. its mean is analogous to the centre of gravity (of a wire, for example) in classical mechanics.

ertyu
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by ertyu »

On food going off, something that's worked well for me is to cut veg in small cubes, mix it all up, portion into ziplock bags, throw in the freezer as is. then later take out a bag, dump it in a pot as is, also dump 2-3 cups of lentils or whatever, boil. When i say "or whatever" i mean it: one day it might be lentils, 5 days later it might be a cubed chicken breast and 2 cubes potatoes for a soup. im aware there's fancy steps to cooking, but toss it all in a pot with salt, oil, and paprika if you have any works wonders for me.

PS: broth is bougie bullshit. water is enough for an excellent soup base.

zbigi
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by zbigi »

guitarplayer wrote:
Wed May 17, 2023 2:00 am
Expectation of a probability density function i.e. its mean is analogous to the centre of gravity (of a wire, for example) in classical mechanics.
Yep, it's just a weighted average across a continuous function.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

@ertyu, I already have a freezer full of bagged food I got for free. All in cubes and ready to cook. So I try to be innovative with even more excess. I follow something similar to your cooking approach most days. If what you do works wonders for you, I suspect if you subtract salt and oil + add herbs and spices other than paprika + give it one month lag, it would be like all the wonders of the world together. Turbo charge to you proffing for a very long time!

@zbigi I recon deconstructing analogies most often gets us down to the physical world.

ertyu
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by ertyu »

guitarplayer wrote:
Wed May 17, 2023 9:53 am
@ertyu, I already have a freezer full of bagged food I got for free. All in cubes and ready to cook. So I try to be innovative with even more excess.
You could try ajvar. Recipe can be googled. It's a vegetable spread where you take a bunch of veg, you boil it down to a chunky goop, put salt, oil, chilli pepper if you want, and you can it. It is absolutely delicious on a sandwich or as a side/sauce w another dish. The recipe will of course tell you to take 3 peppers 4 eggplants and a tomato but the real recipe is "just keep throwing any of those four vegetables that come your way in the freezer and then eventually when you get enough for whatever your largest pot is, make ajvar with them and can it if you've made too much."

I believe eggplant needs to be peeled and roasted first bc there's some black liquid that comes out. I think people roast and peel the peppers, too, but i assume if you don't, you won't die.

the turks have a delicious spread that's called kyopolu/kyopoulou/some variation on this spelling that you might want to try, too

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

2023 update 18/52

Job

033/156 weeks in (ca. 21.2%).

Pushing forward two publications, one of them is a collaborative effort between me and two others in the team. I feel like I have published quite a lot in a relatively short period of time!

I am going to be moving to a different team, or the general team I am in splits from two to three groups and I am going to be in the new group. I welcome it, my manager remains the same which I am happy about as we get along well together. I see a possibility of getting more towards the technical side of things and away from client facing side of things which I am happy about, too.

There will be job adverts for higher positions. I chatted about it with the manager who is happy for me to go forward with applying. Likely, I would remain in the same team as it is a new one and still growing.

I have been querying about getting five days off for my BSc Maths and Stats exams. Unprompted, my manager suggested I read up on special leave arrangement that is to do with extra training. Lo and behold, I have been granted five days off on top of my normal holiday allowance!

Studies

This weekend I am going to upload the end-of-year assignment for the 'applied statistical modelling' course. Otherwise there are three exams ahead of me across the next few weeks. I feel less confident than last year as I just did not have enough mental space to thoroughly cover all the material the same way than back then. This is because the new job is to do with Maths and Stats, too. I anticipated it and overall I think it is a good way of learning, but from the point of view of 'ticking the exam boxes', it might be trickier to tick all the right ones. That being said, my coursework performance across the board was stellar. Let's see how it pans out!

Independently, I have attended a course by one major university with an introduction to R, Regular Expressions and SQL. They used the software carpentry framework that @mountainFrugal was recommending to me last year and I had gone through the R part of it back then so a bit of a refresher in terms of R. :)

Food

I have a semi-strict routine of looking at free food around Glasgow each evening, taking advantage of long mostly dry days. There are a few people I tend to visit, mostly for fruit or veg. There is lots of vegan tempting free stuff as well, such as vegan falafel and humous wraps, vegan sandwiches, pies etc. It's easy to rationalise one's way into taking this stuff too. For example now after Easter, there were heaps of Hot Cross Buns (the Tesco basic ones are without milk), so we were like 'well it's got 25% raisins and other dried fruit, let's go and get it!' - but actually also has lots of palm oil too and is generally a processed pastry. So recently had a chat with DW that we are going to limit ourselves to fruit and veg.

That said, I got about 60 'over-ripe' (i.e. very ripe) bananas today (this is just a drop in a large bucket of fruit and veg we get, though a large drop!). We froze about half, ate a lot of them and made a pudding of mashed bananas, tahini and cocoa powder that also went to the freezer.

Green tea

Green tea is great, I have no issues with falling asleep at all. I am occasionally tempted to get some coffee, like recently someone was giving away 2kg of arabica - luckily for me it was gone in under a minute. I might get some coffee around the exam days, but I am not sure if this would be helpful or it is just me wanting to find an excuse to have coffee.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

I am contemplating naming microwave oven among the top human inventions for personal use, after the bicycle. We have not used an oven or a hob in more than half a year. In fact, we have a large slab of wood across the (electric) hobs and have our spices there + workspace for cooking. DW just made a banana and carrot cake in the microwave (with no added salt, or fat, or sugar, but with raisins and walnuts + lots of nutmeg and cinnamon, and maybe other spices. Flour is the junky element of the cake). She gave it to me and I thought I would share.

Now that I do quite a bit of coding, it makes me think how similar stretching using various devices to their limit is to stretching manipulating 0 / 1 expressions to their limit - but this is just very loose, what do I know.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

2023 update 19/52

Long days

One great thing about living so far up north is the long days. They are still going to be getting longer for nearly a month.

Also, the sun is getting at angles so that we have it in the flat at times.

Job

034/156 weeks in (ca. 21.8%).

One publication is pretty much ready for internal review.

From more technical stuff, I have been exploring SQL which should make my work way more efficient in short course.

I still have lots of fun at work.

Studies

I think 'Mathematical Statistics' is going to be the hardest of the three exams I am going to have in the next 2.5 weeks.

Food

From the nicer / more unusual things, got some free sweet potatoes today. Ah yeah and something like 30 tangerines. Also got baking potatoes to test the 'jacked potatoes' function of the microwave. Plus the usual free greens such as iceberg lettuce, gem lettuce, lots of celery sticks, parsnips. More bananas also.

One green pepper that we got for free about a week ago because it was 'off' had finally ripened in our flat so that we had a yellow pepper.

Meanwhile, read somewhere in the news that food prices are going to take over energy prices in driving inflation in the UK.

Health

Added variation to daily burpees in that now I do sideway burpees. Normally I go out after a few hours of work on maths and stats or... well stats, as in at work. Catch some sun as well, enjoy the river.

Investment Curriculum

I am eyeing the books from investment curriculum, I think getting them second hand on ebay would be in the range of $50.
Last edited by guitarplayer on Sat May 27, 2023 4:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

ertyu
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by ertyu »

guitarplayer wrote:
Fri May 26, 2023 6:01 pm
I am eyeing the books from investment curriculum, I think getting them second hand on ebay would be in the range of $50.
You could cut that if you watched the lectures to intro micro/macro and intro to corporate finance that universities post on youtube. Or you could take some of these classes on coursera for free (without a cert). Searching corporate finance mit on youtube for instance yields lecture playlists for an intro corporate finance class and a fintech class. Or this. If you end up doing that, we could start a discussion thread. I'll join you for the finance classes.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

Thanks @ertyu, I think I will start a discussion thread or keep a discussion thread in the journal here.

Part of the motivation for getting the books is to diversity from screen time, I have a lot of screen time these days. Also, thinking that since these books go for a few pounds each, and it will take me probably a year to go through them, it would be less than $5 / month and I think I am okay paying this sort of subscription. Also, can resell them (or gift somebody) afterwards. And move between the pages a few hundred pages at a time in a matter of minutes for cross checking, or between books.

But mainly diversifying from the screen.

avalok
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by avalok »

Yeah, I think the books are fairly priced given the density of information within as well as the reuse value (you can use them as reference material after the initial learning phase). I think having this in a physical form is really important to be able to navigate them fast, as you mention.

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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by jacob »

I also prefer the physical form(*). I can often remember approximately where in a book the paragraph/idea I'm looking for is, like top of the left page around two thirds in, and what it looks like "next to a box". This doesn't word for ebooks. There's no way I can remember that something was on page 233 out of 614. The search function doesn't help much either because I remember the information as a particular chunk and if I just put in a representative word, I might get 37 hits. (This is also why making an index is somewhat of an art form. You want to include some mentions but not all.)

(*) I have in fact never bought an ebook in my life to this day.

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