Using ChatGPT for creative purposes

I was having ChatGPT do some anagrams for me on a username I use and I also had it do the same on ‘Nikolai Tesla’. At first, it just generated 10 replies, but easy enough to just ask for 50. That was pretty solid…it didn’t break a sweat however I did get a Creating 50 unique and meaningful combinations from those letters is quite challenging warning. So then, on a whim, I asked it to write a story with only the letters in ‘Nikolai Tesla’ (note, it’s not 100% perfect - while the majority of letters are in the name, a few aren’t, but with lower frequency):

 In a silent lake, a lone koi listens. A tale as old as soil itself. A tale of a lonesome lake isle, an isle so still, so silent. A stoik koi, Aiko, sails in still lake, as alike as an isle. Aiko’s tale is akin to no tales. Aiko is alone, no kin, no ties, no clan.

 Aiko, a silk-like koi, slinks into the lake’s inlet. A stain like ink leaks into the salt sea. A sea lion, Ike, also alone, tails Aiko. Ike likes Aiko. Aiko sees Ike. An instant link, a tie, a kin.

 Aiko and Ike, koi and sea lion, alike in isolation, now sail in alliance. Aiko’s loneliness, like Ike’s, lasts no longer. Together, akin to stars in skies, they link tails, a tale to last as eons last.

Not bad at all. I rather enjoyed that.

====== fin ======

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The move to react native

The ENTIRE reason I initially pursued programming later in my career as a product manager was because I was frustrated with the time it took to get from the abstract concepts written in my verbose requirements documents to actual code that was living and breathing. I initially learned Rails because of the approachability of Ruby and the community and also because of some of the tooling that got messy stuff out of my way so I could get the basics done more rapidly. Progress a few years and I’ve launched an iOS app using Swift…then had hired a contract dev to build the android app. This was my first venture as developer or product into the mobile app world and it was enormously frustrating to have feature disparity between platforms. Inevitably, iOS would have the features before Android because I was at the helm and the Android users didn’t appreciate that. So I started looking for options and I had seen a few things about React Native. I immediately started absorbing as much as I could by reading everything, took a Udemy class, and then embarked on rebuilding my Swift/Java app in React Native. I have a week or two of coding left and it will be in both app stores. Efficient, effective, easy to use, intelligent…it’s fair to say I love React Native and would really welcome coding in it full time. I am using Facebook (login and sharing), Parse Server, (entire data system) Redux, OneSignal for notifications, Ad Mob, Google Analytics, and React Native Router Flux.

Stop Skynet

Start early, start now.

Say please and thank you to ChatGPT and any other conversational AI.

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My working setup

Updated June, 2024

Here’s how I currently do my work, both personal and professional.

  • iPad
  • Mac
    • Terminal with Oh-my-zsh for terminal-ly good looks (and shortcuts)
    • Doom Emacs - I wrote about doom emacs for blogging
    • Roon - Can’t work without music!
    • Visual Studio - replaced TextMate and SublimeText and haven’t looked back; strange for me to say that for a Microsoft product (different than say GitHub, which was an acquisition)
    • 1Password - long-time user
    • Trello - Despite the Atlassian acquisition, this is still my go-to for just a general purpose throw it up and track it. Using the Assista bot for time tracking on tickets I drag into the Doing list - it helps a lot with billable work, but also helps me track where my play time goes.
    • yt-dlp - it’s a secret
    • CyberDuck - connect to anything for remote file access/management
    • Homebrew - I see no reason to leave this hardy package manager - it’s just worked under brutal conditions for years and years.
  • Home network
    • Fiber, it’s the only way to fly
    • Unifi network throughout house; wired (by hand, blood, dust, cobwebs, and pink spackle) and wireless
    • Pi-hole - remove all the craptasic stuff out there, network-wide
    • Tailscale - take my networks with me securely (recent addition so lots to learn)
  • SaaS
    • Cloudflare - it’s the only online service that I don’t have a fear of recommending. Yes, there might be some issues from the centralization of the decentralized web, but right now, that’s not a critical path issue.
    • Hugo - The most performant, flexible, and joyous web development platform. This site and my LLC and Synth company are built with it.