A consistent by-product of periods of intense building (software, a book, a team) — really anything where I am heads-down focusing on the craft — is that all the utilities and habits surrounding building said craft get scrutiny. Why? Because small imperfections or inefficiencies stand out when my brain is in build-it mode. Put simply,… more
I’ve used Claude quite a bit for both the upcoming new book and the next edition of Managing Humans. I wrote the entire book, but, as I’ve done for years, I’ve used the robots for editing, research, and data wrangling. When Anthropic announced they were going to do “text and image” watermarking, my eyebrow was… more
I’ve never built more interesting, random, and useless scripts, tools, and services than I have in the last six months. The cost to go from “Random Thought” to “Working Something” has never been lower thanks to Claude Code. However, this increase in speed has only made my desire to move faster and more efficiently higher.… more
When I explain that Claude Code has changed my relationship with developing software completely, I’m under-exaggerating… if that’s even a thing. This off-the-cuff piece started as a unposted social update that read: Watching Claude Code adeptly use every type of Unix command shows me that a) you can do anything in Unix, b) my higher-level… more
Come winter in the Santa Cruz mountains, the rain runs down the hills. When the rains start, I throw on my rain gear, grab my shovel, and tromp around the property. My goal: make sure the run-off creeks and streams run unimpeded and in a better direction. At the beginning of the season, this is… more
Who doesn’t love a hack? A hack. A clever bit of knowledge that, when used, provides disproportionate return on investment. The fact that it costs you little to nothing to use and deploy a hack isn’t irrelevant. You understand the work involved in discovering and refining what others call a hack. You call it knowledge,… more
Your robot experience started simple. You typed a question into a chatbot… just to see. Can it answer that question? I’d be impressed if it did. Your query was simple. A simple knowledge question that with a little effort using legacy tools like Google, you would have discovered yourself, but the robots made it trivial,… more
The robots and I were tinkering with the script, and I somehow asked ChatGPT to make three sentences sound like me, but… just a bit. There’s enough writing out there that the robots have a rough idea of my style, but this prompt somehow triggered deep research. The robot did a full analysis of all… more
I was in the city a few weeks ago and exclusively used Waymo for the entire trip. My biggest complaint? I needed to walk four minutes to a pick-up spot. Other than that, the car just showed up, traversed San Francisco streets easily, and the cost was reasonable1. Sitting in the back seat watching the… more
In the early days of this weblog, I was on MediaTemple using MoveableType for a good long time. Three things happened during these many years: MoveableType was mostly abandoned during this time. I’m sure well-intentioned folks were working on it (and it appears they still are), but the vibrancy of development had faded from my… more
