Welcome to My Notebook

Hi, I’m Zack. I’m a Master’s student trying to navigate the fascinating and often confusing world of Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing. This blog is my personal notebook—a place where I document my learnings, share my “aha!” moments, and reflect on my experiences as a student living abroad in Heidelberg, Germany.

Here, you’ll find a mix of technical deep dives and personal reflections. It’s a chronicle of my journey trying to understand complex algorithms, wrestling with code, and finding balance and perspective through new experiences.

From the Command Line: Tech, Code, and AI

This is where I break down the concepts I’m learning in my courses and the lessons I’ve learned from my projects. It’s my attempt to explain things in a way that makes sense to me, and hopefully, to you too.

• AI & NLP:

  • On Data Contamination in LLMs: A Grad Student’s Perspective
  • Grappling with LLM Evaluation: A Student’s Field Notes
  • A Grad Student’s Guide to Fine-Tuning LLMs: From Brute Force to Finesse
  • Building My First RAG System: Grounding LLMs in Reality
  • How I Shrank My LLM: A Student’s Dive into Model Quantization
  • Trying to Understand MoE: How LLMs Get Both Bigger and Smarter
  • Making Sense of Multimodality: How Models See and Read
  • Seeing My Coursework Everywhere: An AI Student’s Look at Web Development

• Web Development:

  • Navigating the Framework Maze: A Student’s Take on React, Vue, and Angular
  • My TypeScript ‘Aha!’ Moments: Best Practices I Learned on a Real Project
  • Leveling Up in React: My Journey with Advanced Hooks
  • From ‘Does It Work?’ to ‘Will It Break?’: My Evolution in Software Testing
  • My App Was Working, But It Was Slow: A Student’s Guide to Web Performance
  • From Monolith to Microservices: A Student’s Journey with Node.js
  • How I Finally Conquered CSS Layout: A Student’s Guide to Flexbox & Grid
  • Choosing a Look and Feel: My Dive into Material, Fluent, and UI5

Beyond the Screen: Life in Heidelberg

This is where I write about life outside the library. It’s about finding my footing in a new country, the challenges and joys of being a student abroad, and the adventures that have kept me sane.

• Finding My Footing in Heidelberg: How Hiking Saved My Sanity
• Packing Up Heidelberg: More Than Just a Year Abroad

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you find something interesting or useful here.