Chuck Grimmett

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Month: March 2023

  • Praxis Chat on Using AI Tools for Learning and Creating at Work

    My friends at Praxis (where I used to work) asked me to join them for one of their Monday night workshops for folks in the program. I had originally planned to talk about learning out loud, showing your work, and blogging, but I changed the topic at the last minute to something a bit more en vogue right now: Discussing strategies for using AI tools.

    I’m glad I decided to do the session on AI. I was surprised at how few of the participants had even tried out ChatGPT, let alone use it or Copilot regularly. These tools have been transformative in my own work recently, and the space is moving fast. I see using these tools as early investment in your own compound career growth curve.

    Some of my key points:

    1. AI lowers the opportunity cost of trying out new ideas. (h/t Simon Willison)
    2. AI can help you learn the fundamentals of any subject faster.
    3. Don’t have AI do the finished product for you. Use it like an assistant to help you make your own work better.
    4. It is easier to edit than it is to create.
    5. In any kind of work, one of the core skills is communication, and working with AI tools like ChatGPT is no different. You need to learn how to communicate effectively (read: getting the results you want).
    6. You still need to learn the fundamentals of your subject (which ChatGPT and others can help you do!) in order to use it effectively. At the end of the day, the end result is still your work, so you need to understand it and be able to account for it. Hiding behind “well, ChatGPT said…” is no excuse.
    7. You still have to decide what is worth building/working on/investing in. AI can do things, but you have to know what to ask it to help you do.
    8. GPT-4 is leagues better than GPT-3.

    I also spent some time before the session going back through the Praxis bootcamp curriculum and brainstorming ways to use AI tools for each month in the bootcamp, and for each of the main roles Praxis helps participants land jobs at startups in.

    Bootcamp modules

    1. Foundations of each role and the job landscape
      • Use it to learn the basics of each role quickly, then with the time you saved dive deep on two that interest you. Ask for lots of examples, details, specifics.
      • Ask it to ask you questions to test your understanding.
    2. Writing + Personal Branding
      • Writing an essay? Ask it to help you find your weakest arguments and help you find substantiating evidence. Use it like a really great thesaurus. Ask it to play Devil’s Advocate and then use those results to improve your counterarguments.
      • Writing an email? Have it help edit for tone and clarity.
      • Have it help you set up scaffolding and outlines.
    3. Portfolio project + Learning a tech stack
      • Use it to help you come up with a customized learning plan. Think Diamond Age.
      • Use it to help you rapidly prototype a bunch of different projects, then pick the best to double down on.

    Placement Roles

    • Sales
      • Ask it to help you learn how to negotiate. Negotiate with it! ChatGPT can roleplay.
      • Record sales calls, transcribe them with Whisper, then ask it how and where you can improve. Hone your pitches!
      • ChatGPT is a really good scraper. Copy the HTML contents of a page and ask it to pull out everyone’s names and put them in a list, then add their email addresses using their first initial and last name at the company domain (or whatever you find for the company on Hunter.io).
    • Customer Success
      • ChatGPT is great for quick help and debugging.
      • Rewrite emails in a helpful customer voice. Say, “Rewrite this email with the following tone: Helpful, positive, collaborative, empowering, clear, concise, and avoiding trigger words.”
    • Marketing
      • Use it to create and improve copy + imagery + videos + schedules. Set up workflows.
      • Need photography? Instead of taking a chance on hiring a model and photographer, try https://photoai.com as a proof of concept beforehand.
    • Operations
      • Set up automations!

    Afterward, I followed up on a couple questions:

    Here is the recording of the session:

  • Week of March 20, 2023

    Spring is here! Nice to hear the frogs again in the wet areas of the woods. No wildflowers appearing just yet, but Charlie and I are keeping our eyes peeled on our walks.

    I like the woods in early Spring. Warm enough to not need a coat, no bugs yet, and you can see a long distance since the leaves haven’t come in yet.

    We started seeds, both indoor and outdoor this week.

    Indoor: Magic Bullet tomatoes, tomatillos, jalapenos, red lipstick peppers, and rosemary. The tomatillos have already sprouted!

    Outdoor: French Breakfast radishes, lacinato kale, spinach, cilantro, and Sugar Magnolia snap peas.

    I have another type of tomato seeds coming this week, Firminio’s Plum Tomato.

    Charlie is in a bird phase. He loves seeing birds outside. Whenever he does, he excitedly points to them and shouts, even if they are far off. He does the same thing with airplanes – “air pane!”

    Since he has taken an interest, we made a birdhouse together out of a gourd and also hung a small birdfeeder on a window so he can see the birds.

    Strep update: I went back to work on Tuesday and my throat finally stopped being sore on Friday. This is the first time in many years that I’ve taken antibiotics and they’ve messed up my stomach and made my urine smell funny. Not cool, but better than having strep.

    Unfortunately Amanda picked it up a second time over the weekend, so we are still kind of in survival/recovery mode.

    Sometimes you need to know when to say, “no blog post tonight, maybe tomorrow.”

    Projects corner:

    My weather blocks are now mobile friendly. Check them out at https://cagrimmett.com/weather

    I figured out how many boards I need for the rock wall project: 8 of the 5/4 x 6in x 8ft pressure treated boards. I measured the side, divided it in half to make a right triangle, then dusted off my trigonometry to figure out the top angle and then made a Sheets formula for figuring out the length each of the boards will be.

    =SQRT((A2/SIN(1.01913))^2-(A2^2))

    Other projects:

    • I need to measure the second level shutters, which seem like they might be a bit shorter than the ones on the first level.
    • Looking for some patio furniture at a good price and a large corner swing arm umbrella.

  • Week of March 13, 2023

    Amanda and I both got strep throat this week, Amanda early in the week and me at the end of the week. I’m writing this Sunday night in bed with a fever. I was supposed to be on jury duty tomorrow, but I’ll have to call and ask for a deferral tomorrow.

    The nor’easter that came through on Tuesday dumped plenty of snow, but did not give very interesting weather station readings.

    The snow melted off completely by Thursday, when it got up to 60F. Charlie and I went on a nice walk in the woods, then swung in the backyard for a bit. we noticed that daffodils are blooming!

    Charlie remembers so much. We seems to know most of the common fruit and vegetables now. We were quizzing him and he was able to point them out correctly multiple times from a grid of photos. We also got out some from the fridge and he got them right, too. He can’t quite say the words yet, but he is working on it.

    Lately Charlie has been picking things out when we go to the grocery store. The look of pure joy on his face when we say okay and help him get whatever he picked is worth it. Thankfully it has been normal stuff like cheese and muffins.

    I did most of our taxes this week (just need to double check and submit) and we planned a family trip to California for a wedding. It will be Charlie’s first plane ride! ✈️ To quote him, “Wwoooooowww!”

    I added spark lines to my weather station blocks. Check them out at https://cagrimmett.com/weather. Next up: Mobile styling.

    That’s all. I’m going to get some sleep and hope these antibiotics work quickly. Here’s hoping for a week or two without anyone in the house being sick 🤞

  • Week of March 6, 2023

    This week was kind of a blur. I had to go back through photos and text messages to piece it together.

    • Charlie was home sick from daycare on Monday, which made us feel behind at work all week.
    • Tuesday-Thursday had more urgent issues at work than usual. Days that involve regex and database rollbacks are not fun.
    • Amanda was sick Wednesday night and Thursday
    • Charlie has had some tough nights sleeping Wednesday and Thursday.
    • Charlie threw up more than normal this week. We think that he might be overeating, which is new. Hard to tell because only he knows when he is full.
    • Saturday brought some fun playtime with Charlie and a long nap where I got to hold him. I know those days will end soon, so soaking it up while I can.
    • Sunday we went on a nice walk in the woods and then had brunch at a friend’s house for his birthday. I made butternut squash latkes because he has Crohn’s disease and can’t eat regular latkes. Charlie had a great time being the center of attention. In the afternoon we cleaned the house.
    • Charlie is learning lots of new words and made a two-word request this week!

    This week I also spent quite a bit of time planning out some house projects. We want to renovate the attic and turn it into a third floor living space, so I was on the hunt for an architect who could guide us through the local regulations and help figure out key components like where to put the stairs.

    I’m kind of interested in getting solar panels, so I’m getting some estimates this week for that. Also pricing out shutter replacements and buying materials to build a climbing wall on Charlie’s swingset.

    I know that if I don’t take action on these things right away, months will go by without them happening.

    We decided to up our seed starting game this year with grow lights, so I got some set up. Ready to start some in a couple weeks! In the meantime, this week we plan to direct sow some radishes, spinach, and peas.

    In what little spare time I have, I’m trying to make some styling updates to my Wunderground PWS blocks plugin. Here is what I have so far:

    Next: Adding some sparkline trends, trying to figure out whether the pressure is high or low for our area and adding an indicator, and dialing in the color palette a little more (colors change based on the data).

    What a crazy end to the week with Silicon Valley Bank being taken over by the FDIC. This doesn’t affect us or the companies we work for directly, but it does impact some projects we work on with third parties. I expect this will loom large in the tech consciousness for quite some time.

    Unfortunately there are so many bad takes about what happened. When Lehman Bros went bankrupt in 2008 and kicked off the financial crisis, I spent a lot of my free time the next 4 years reading about money and banking and then much of my work time from 2012-2014 focused on it, too. I’m no longer very interested in that space, so I’ll spare you my take. I’m very curious what the FDIC/Fed/Treasury will announce on Monday morning. Do they have a buyout lined up? Are they setting a crazy precedent and making depositors whole without a buyout? Leaving depositors hanging and causing more runs? I guess we’ll see.

    As is common during periods of financial turmoil, it is amusing to watch Nassim Taleb calling people with bad takes imbeciles and ignoramuses on Twitter. Never change, NNT.

  • Week of February 27, 2023

    Monday was my birthday!

    We celebrated the day before with a day trip to Kingston and Woodstock, where we visited a bunch of indie bookstores and two restaurants I’ve wanted to try. It was a really nice day!

    The find of the day was the full Sandman series, each book signed by Gaiman, at regular retail price. I’ve only ever checked these out of the library, so I’m stoked to have the full set on my shelf now.

    Day-of I had to work, but I made a nice dinner for the three of us at home and Amanda and Charlie got me an ice cream cake.

    Check out my birthday post:

    https://cagrimmett.com/thoughts/2023/02/27/thirty-three/

    We had some snow on Tuesday! It was the first major snow of the year. We took Charlie out for a sled ride in the woods.

    Charlie has some new words this week: Open and Taco. He’s been asking us to open various things all week and it is pretty cute. He’s also been pointing out words he already knows wherever he sees (the object) or hears them, and his recognition/noticing is getting pretty good.

    Wheels on the Bus is still his favorite song, but Row, Row, Row Your Boat is closing the gap.

    He and I were on our own for a couple days this week while Amanda travelled for work, which meant some early morning breakfast outings. This little NY toddler loves Bacon, Egg, and Cheese breakfast sandwiches.

    I created a plugin to pull down data from my home weather station and display it in a custom block. The data updates every 10 minutes. I’m also gathering daily summaries behind the scenes for future blocks to come.

    Here is the block in action. It is currently “no frills” and needs some styling and a round of code clean up, but I’m happy with the first working version.

    Current weather conditions from KNYPEEKS11

    Last updated: 2023-06-16 02:26:36

    58°FHeat Index
    58°FActual Temp
    58°FWind Chill
    91%Humidity
    0UV IndexUV index sparkline over the past 48 hours
    Low risk, no protection needed.
    0 in/hrPrecip Rate
    0 inTotal Precip
    56 °FDew Point
    29.99 inHgPressure
    Holding steady ↔️
    0 mphWind Speed
    EDirection
    0 mphWind Gust

    This block will live permanently at https://cagrimmett.com/weather/

    You can find the plugin code on GitHub: https://github.com/cagrimmett/wunderground-pws-wp-blocks

    Some things I have in mind for future updates:

    • Highs, lows, and averages for the past 7 days, past 30 days, and months, quarters, and years.
    • Maybe some historical charts.
    • Styling for better representation of the data.

    I’m also open to ideas for more blocks using this data. Would would be cool to see? The current block is dynamic, but I’m open to some static blocks, too.

    The Carthusian monks, who have been producing Chartreuse since 1605, will be limiting production and allocating their bottles in an effort to devote more time to monastic life. “We look to do less but better and for longer,” reads the memo, which also considers the costly environmental impacts of production and distribution of the beloved herbal liqueur.

    We were pretty well stocked on the yellow Chartreuse, but picked up another large bottle of the green this weekend before the prices sky rocket even more than they already have. Get some while you can!

    I expect to see some more alternatives/knock-offs coming to market over the next year. Lots of boutique bitters and amaro producers are well positioned to do it.

    Heck, I might try making some. The process isn’t that different from making the ginger liqueur, falernum, and pimento dram I’ve made in the last year. Plus it will give me an excuse to go to Kalustyan’s again.

    We got out and did a little bit of yard work this weekend, mostly trimming trees and bushes, and clearing out dead plants to make way for the new shoots. I noticed peonies, lilies, and rhubarb emerging out of the ground this week!

    I also ordered some seeds this weekend. I plan to get seeds started in the next couple weeks. New for us this year: Cherry tomatoes are replacing the heirloom slicing tomatoes that always seem to split and the animals get to before we do, a new variety of pea (sugar magnolia snap peas), and spinach for some additional early season harvesting. Also bought some foxglove seeds to add another perennial to the flower beds.

    I’m looking forward to getting back out in the garden!

    Time for bed. See you next week 👋