Aug 11, 2024 3 min read

The Beauty of Remote Work

I recently returned from a working holiday. I spent a few days away with the family experiencing some very beautiful farm views whilst housesitting in Herefordshire.

Even though I was away I was still able to work, all whilst I and the family got to enjoy the sights and sounds of a new place. All I need is my laptop, an internet connection and a bit of piece and quiet. That last one is sometimes most difficult.

I know I sound like a stereotypical cliched web developer, but where else do we get to do that? I felt very grateful (and a bit out of place) whilst watching the local famers gather wheat and bale an entire field that here I was sat at a desk rather than in the baking sun across a 14 hour day during a mini heatwave.

We're incredibly privileged to enjoy such moments and should make the most of it.

It's been a while since I last wrote, but here's a selection of articles and projects that caught my eye. Let me know if you liked them.

Until next time, keep on shipping!

Ian

Articles

Fine-tuning Llama-3 to get 90% of GPT-4’s performance at a fraction of the cost

Hassan El Mghari shows us how fine tuning an open model can be comparable to GPT4 using the mathsinstruct dataset on together.ai.

An Introduction to DevOps and Software Delivery

A nice beginners intro to all the sensible stuff that you need to know to publish your web app and ensure it's easy to update. Be sure to check out the larger series it forms a part of too.

Introducing Structured Outputs in the API

OpenAI now can return guaranteed structured output as JSON from their API. If you're using the Python or JS SDK, it's even easier with pydantic or zod. This has been a long time coming and replaces lots of libraries that have sprung up to fill this void. See my video below for how you can get structured output with local AI models.

How to get Typed Data from Ollama

Code

fastht.ml - Modern web apps in Pure Python

An interesting take on web apps using Python using ASGI and HTMX from the founder of fast.ai. I'm interested to take a look at this since I'd imagine it might be difficult to pick up if you're heavily invested on using a client side library.