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controversy187on Ask HN: Share your personal website

General learnings and findings about technology and personal projects.

controversy187on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)

I'm writing https://github.com/controversy187/kerbalbook, which aims to be a hobbyist's guide to orbital mechanics, spaceflight, and maybe astrophysics. All this through the lens of a Kerbal Space Program walkthrough.

controversy187on Ask HN: What are you working on? (July 2025)

I'm building https://adeptli.org with the goal of making personalized learning available to anyone with an internet connection. It's pay-as-you-go, and everyone starts with free credits to check it out and not incur costs if they don't find it useful. I'm still very early in development and very open to feedback!

controversy187on I built a large language model "from scratch"

I wrote the blog post, and I did it on my own freewill, and am receiving no compensation. The main reason I wrote it was to help cement my own learnings from the book. I've heard that the best way to learn something is to teach it, so I wanted to see how much I could regurgitate on my own. Turns out, not a whole lot. It was hastily written, and more of a "brain dump" than anything else. I'm entering a new-to-me field, and wanted a place to document the things I'm learning. If anyone finds it interesting, great. If not, no big deal.

As for the specifics of the model I trained, I would be hard pressed to recall the specifics off the top of my head. I believe I trained a small model locally, but after completing that as a PoC, I downloaded the GPT-2 model weights, then trained / fine-tuned those locally. That is what the book directed. All the steps are in my github repo, which (unsurprisingly) like the author's repo. His repo actually has more explanation. Mine is more or less just code.

controversy187on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (September 2024)

  Location: Michigan, USA
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies / Skills: Team Leadership, Python, PHP, Web Technologies, Agile
  Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brettgfitzgerald/
  Email: brettgfitzgerald@gmail.com
  GitHub: https://github.com/controversy187

I'm an agile coach with over 20 years of IT experience, including roles as a software developer, engineer, and manager. My passion lies in team leadership, focusing on people-first management, team growth, and career development. I'm looking to transition back into a leadership role as an IT Manager or Director, where I can help teams thrive and deliver impactful solutions.

controversy187on ChatGPT with voice is now available to all free users

I've done this and, from what I can tell, it is reasonably accurate. However, I did have an instance where I was asking it a series of questions about the First Peloponnesian War, and partway through our discussion it switched topics to the first part of the Peloponnesian War, which are different conflicts. At least, I think they are. It was quite confusing.

controversy187on ChatGPT with voice is now available to all free users

> "I’ve realized that I’m built to learn socially"

That sentence really resonated with me and sums up a bunch of ideas that have been swirling in my head recently. I've been "interviewing" ChatGPT about world history for a few months now and even turned it into an unsuccessful podcast! I really enjoy learning and creating much more than I would enjoy listening to my own podcast, though :)

controversy187on Ask HN: What foods do you eat to optimise brain function/problem solving skills?

I switched to drinking tea instead of coffee, all day long. For the most part, I've noticed that I don't experience the afternoon slump as much. On the occasions that I do, a half cup of coffee usually overcomes it.

I've also experimented with intermittent fasting, only eating between noon and 8pm. That also, for me, helped eliminate the slump.

controversy187on Launch HN: SheerlyGenius (YC W18) – Indestructible Tights from Bulletproof Fiber

A much closer application in Jiu Jitsu would be replacing the rash guard that many people wear under their gi, or in nogi. Or replacing a surfer's rash guard, for that matter. Tons of applications for this.

controversy187on Ask HN: How did you move from IT/software to something unrelated?

I'm sort of doing this now. I'm a full-time software engineer, and I have a passion for tea as well. I've been reading a TON about small business, entrepreneurship, etc. My wife and I are in the processes of launching a side-hustle online tea company, and documenting the whole process on our YouTube channel. It may not be a full-time gig, but we want to grow it as far as we can. So, in short, we're sticking with the safe jobs we know and leveraging our free time to build something we love.