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Posts Tagged ‘projects’

Clearing the Decks

Posted in Other, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 3, 2026| Leave a Comment »

It’s end-of-summer, change-of-season, back-to-school time, and for me that means taking a moment for a little reflection and reassessment. I also like to use this time as an opportunity to clear the decks.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to accumulate mental notes to myself, project plans, ideas that have persisted over the course of the year. Now is a great time to cross those items off my list. Maybe an idea is so small that it seems not worth doing, but it’s been taking up space in my mind. Time to get it done. Maybe it’s so big that I’ve been avoiding it. Time to decide if it’s worth tackling or if it should be deliberately shelved in favor of other projects. Either way, I get it off my list and out of my head. 

And once the decks are cleared? I can look forward to a new season and new ideas.

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Photo by Nathan Cima on Unsplash

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Just Not Feeling It Today

Posted in Other, tagged , , , , , , , on August 19, 2026| 2 Comments »

Some days you just don’t feel it, whatever “it” may be. I’ve been there, certainly, we all have, but today I’m not talking about myself.

I’m talking about AI. (Or as John Scalzi puts it, “AI.”)

Here’s (my tongue-in-cheek analysis of) the issue: I have a nonfiction project that’s been sitting on the back burner for a while (fine, years) because I’ve been avoiding the tedious formatting work required to put it all together. Like a more complicated version of getting Excel to extract URLs from a long list of hot links; hardly rocket science but annoying to have to do by hand.

What if, I asked myself, I could get this new fangled tech-no-logy to do that boring work for me? I’m not interested in it as a creative tool, but is this the sort of task it might do well?

At first, the answer seemed to be a solid yes. Terrific, I thought, I just need to prep a list of inputs and I’ll be good to go. 

But that was yesterday.

Today, I used the same prompt and got a much different, and not nearly as useful, answer. Many followup prompts along the lines of “Hang on, this isn’t at all what you gave me before” and “Please return the thing I asked for, for crying out loud!” later and I have come to the inescapable conclusion that the program just isn’t feeling it today.

It also got me wondering: Is this the way actual intelligence arises from the primordial soup of 1s and 0s, in a haze of distracted mediocrity and foot-dragging compliance? More Murderbot than Star Trek’s tirelessly competent Data? And if so, what does that mean for the future?

Here’s hoping for a better tomorrow!

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Photo by Adam King on Unsplash

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Time to Get Cracking

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , , on April 8, 2021| Leave a Comment »

“Spring is the time of plans and projects.”

― Leo Tolstoy

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If only it were that simple!
Photos by Gabriel Jimenez, Markus Spiske, Tobias Stonjeck

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Newsflash! Twain Right Again!

Posted in Other, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 28, 2013| Leave a Comment »

“To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.”

— Mark Twain

We spent the weekend refinishing the deck. The wood was a mess, half covered with multiple layers of thick, splintering stain and half exposed to the elements. It was time. The only problem was that I’d never refinished a deck before.

Did I let that stop me? Nope. It helps that Mr Man is ridiculously handy but still. I took Mark Twain’s quote to heart and jumped in, and now, days later, the splinters and uneven steps and flaking are no more. I learned how to use an industrial sander, tons of power tools, and now know that Onion Goggles are perfect for jobs that result in large clouds of airborne particulates. The wood is now smooth, the finish even.

Is it perfect? Well, no. But it’s done. And that’s much better than not doing anything at all.

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