Thoughts and reflections from the past week or so from my own financial independence campaign.

Progress on my goals

Boat life

Sun?! Finally!

After the Channel Islands’ wettest year to date – no joke – and what I’m told is something like 52 days of rain, we’re finally starting to see some kind of sun. Sailing season soon?

This year there’s a lot less to prepare than for previous years. Yes, I should repair the motoring lights, but we could day sail pretty much immediately.

After a bit of introspection and figuring out how to keep the boat dry and mould-free, we’re considering taking out the aft cabin mattresses and resetting that cabin for accessible storage. Will share pics if/when that emerges.

We’re still keeping the storage unit, but out day-to-day dumping ground for things like our work bags etc tends to be that aft cabin and with the mattress in there (not being very breathable) we constantly have to rotate things to keep mould out of it. Without the mattress, we’re hoping the hard surfaces will breathe a bit easier and mould won’t have trapped moisture to try to grow on. It’s a lot easier to clean down and dry out harder surfaces.

…and then, as I was writing this, the sun disappeared and I didn’t get you a good picture! Oh well.

Start-up work

Our regulator let us through to the formal application process, which is really cool.

There’s actually a bunch of us who were all trying to run related industry start-ups at the same time. We thought we were behind the pack, but it turns out that we’re the first business pitch that the regulator has allowed past the first gatekeeper.

So I think it’s fair to say things are going well.

This weekend and early week has been a working weekend to tighten up the application pack for the next round.

No rest for the wicked.

Distractions and detours

“AI” experiments and jeans replacement

This week I’ve learned that:

  • No AI is very good at contract writing for a product that isn’t already in common use.

    They rock at NDAs, but everything else is just awful and it doesn’t seem to matter what LLM you use for that.

    This is probably because most contracts are confidential, so it’s hard to create a training database.
  • ChatGPT doesn’t know shit about clothing options.

I had hoped that I could use ChatGPT to find me a longer lasting alternative for my overworked M&S £26 jeans that I tend to wear holes in every 3-9 months. The brief was that I need to replace 2 x pairs of blue jeans as my daily workhorse, I wanted to prioritise durability, and the solution needed to fit the whole range from brogues to hiking boots that jeans can pull off.

First thing it came up with was Dickies 874 work trousers, so I tried ordering those. The material was exactly what I was looking for, but there’s one big problem: it just looks like you’re wearing trousers to a suit whose jacket you’ve lost. They didn’t go with anything.

After a bit of an attitude correction and some truly rogue picks, it suggested basic Levi jeans. That’s it.

Wow. The robot uprising is truly upon us. Such profound insights.

Overall, have to be honest: AI is really good at surface tasks, but the rest of the time it’s at best an ideas engine. It’s useful enough to keep around but I don’t see The Singularity being close.

Anyway, I have now just replaced two pairs of M&S jeans with one pair of the more expensive Levi’s in the hope that they last 2-3 years. Feels… uninspired, maybe?

And, irritatingly, the ones I bought because they fit in the shop? Well, I’ll be damned if they didn’t look like I needed to go down a size when I tried them on in front of Lady SierraWhiskyMike.

Bugger. Back to the shop for returns, then.

Knees

Had an MRI scan. Results might be back by next update. Quite pricey at like £800.

Knees really hurt though so let’s see what’s up.

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

So I broke the potentiometers. Bugger.

That’s OK though because I ordered some spare potentiometers, adhesive copper shielding foil and shielded guitar wire to refit her.

She’s back up and running now and through the practice amp sounds great!

The Positive Grid Spark Mini I use has an in-built noise filter, so the real test is tomorrow’s lesson. I’ll be playing through the instructor’s Marshall amp, so with luck I’ve gotten rid of the hissing problem with the faraday cage I’ve created in each cavity of the guitar body.

Fingers crossed..!

Fitness

I got just one swim in.

That’s on me for making myself busy.

On the plus side I’m doing a lot of walking at the moment. 10,000 steps is fairly easy for me to hit. My aching knees can confirm.

Once again, I’m compromising my structured fitness training. This means I’m probably going to have to go back to rigorous portion control. Ew. Calorie counting sucks, but not as much as rapid and avoidable weight gain.

Final thoughts

Start-up adventures are going great! There’s so much more to say but I don’t think I can on this blog.

You work a lot harder when you work for yourself, but you also don’t feel put upon doing it. Or, at least, I don’t. It’s for my direct benefit.

Fixing the guitar was a close one. There was a moment where I just couldn’t get a sound through the amp and almost panicked that I’d killed the guitar! On the whole though guitars are simple machines and I’d probably feel confident doing things like changing pickups after this.

I really hope the shielding kills the amp noise..!

So yeah: busy week and the sun is coming out. It’s a pretty great time for me, I’m enjoying the moment.

My financial independence campaign continues!