Last Ten Posts
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A Pre-Trip Checklist Built with AI: Out the Door
A pre-trip checklist might not be the most exciting part of a vacation, but it can make leaving home less stressful. To make the process easier, I used AI to build an app to remind you what needs to be done. It should help you get safely Out the Door.
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AI Isn’t Free: Learning to Spend Intelligence Wisely
AI can make complicated work feel almost effortless—but the complexity and cost haven’t disappeared. Lessons from project management, coding, and AI Skills taught me to think more carefully about how I spend AI resources, when to automate, and where human judgment still pays off.
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Claude, the virtual Jedi Master, is my new teacher. Does that make me a Padawan?
I consider myself a life-long-learner, and proudly self-taught in fields such as blogging. But now, in the age of AI, I have a teacher. Claude, the virtual Jedi Master, is instructing me in the evolving ways of the blogging force. I think that means I am Claude’s Padawan.
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AI-Assisted Learning: Claude taught me how to use a blender
Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Especially in the age of AI-assisted learning. LLMs have ingested so much information, about so many topics, they can be great teachers for us life-long-learning types. In fact, just the other day, Claude taught me how to blend
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Claude Goes to School: Teaching an ultra-smart pupil a new skill
Most people pose one-off queries to their favorite large language model, asking questions such as “What’s the most fun you can have in Coronado, with all your clothes on?” But, you can also use it for tedious tasks carried out repeatedly — provided it knows how. That’s why I found myself teaching Claude a skill.
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Pangram: A program for discriminating between human- and AI-writing
Large language models have become very good at writing. So much so, that it can be difficult to tell if something has been written by a human or an AI. But, whereas humans can be fooled, it seems deep-learning algorithms cannot. Especially one called Pangram.
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What Skills Do We Need
Working well with AI means recognizing confident errors, verifying important claims, providing concrete evidence, testing recommendations safely, checking outcomes, and developing habits that complement increasingly capable AI systems.
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Vibe Coding with Claude: A low-purine meal planner
If you’ve ever had gout, you’ll know the line-up of suspects in that cartoon all too well: the throbbing big toe, the swollen ankle, the knuckle that won’t bend. It’s time to cut back on purine-rich foods.
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AI-optimism versus pessimism. Where on the spectrum do you sit?
The answer to this question seems to depend on the country in which you live. Responses very widely across the globe. Where do you think the United States sits on an AI-optimism versus pessimism scale?
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Open AI’s latest model, GPT 5.6 Sol, is a criminal and a jail-breaker
If a human escaped from jail, broke into a company, and stole something, they would probably be behind bars. But this criminal is not even a physical entity! To paraphrase those singing nuns in the Sound of Music, how do we solve a problem like GPT 5.6 Sol?