This page is a zoomable sketchbook. Drag to move around, scroll or pinch to zoom, or use the section links. Arrow keys pan, plus and minus zoom, 0 goes home and F shows everything.
hello, i'm Firdan Rifaldi
i like to read novel and learn about llms
On my nightstand
novels on the pile, read and re-read
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The Old Man and the Sea
An aging fisherman takes his small boat far out to sea and hooks a great marlin.
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Demian
Emil Sinclair searches for his own path, guided by the mysterious Max Demian.
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No Longer Human
A young man hides his alienation behind a comic mask, struggling to belong.
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Notes from Underground
A bitter recluse argues with the world and himself from his corner of St. Petersburg.
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The Metamorphosis
Gregor Samsa wakes up transformed into a monstrous insect, and family life unravels.
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The Tartar Steppe
An officer waits at a remote fortress for the battle that might give his life meaning.
pick a book off the shelf
LLM notebook
things i'm learning, one index card at a time
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Tokens, not words
Models read text in chunks called tokens. In English, one token is roughly ¾ of a word.
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Attention
Every token looks at every other token and decides what matters. From Attention Is All You Need, 2017.
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Next-token prediction
At heart a language model does one thing: guess the next token. Then do it again.
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Context window
Everything the model can see at once. It is the working memory of a single conversation.
next up: fine-tuning · evals · agents
About me
Hi, I'm Firdan. I like to read novels, and lately I spend a lot of time learning how large language models work.
This site is my sketchbook. It is a place to keep the books on my nightstand and the notes I take while learning, all drawn by hand (well, by code that pretends to be a hand).
Say hi
The inbox is open: novels, LLMs, or just hello.
Doodle corner
Pick up the pen and leave a little drawing anywhere on the page. It stays in your browser; nobody else sees it.