I’ve been critical of Chat-GPT in the past, so it’s only fair I tell you about a good experience I’ve had with the chatbot.
Three years ago I moved my site from WordPress to Ghost.
It went smoothly enough, although that’s a story for another time.
I had a whole load of customisations that I’d made to the WordPress Theme’s PHP code over the years. I’m no programmer, but I did learn enough PHP and CSS to tweak the WordPress site to my taste.
Ghost uses something called Handlebars instead of PHP. And yes, I may not have used those names in a programmerly way. Did I mention I’m not a programmer?
When I saw Handlebars code, I realised repeating my WordPress tweaks on Ghost was not going to be straightforward. To put it bluntly, I don’t have a clue what is going on in Handlebars code even if, at times, it looks a lot like PHP.
Earlier today, I fed my PHP tweaks and the Handlebars code for my Ghost theme into Chat-GPT and asked how I could get the effect of this piece of code in that piece of code?
The answer looked too confusing for a non-programmer to deal with.
I tried again, one tweak at a time. So far Chat-GPT helped me fix three of the outstanding tweaks. This isn’t a complex task for a computer and AI, but it’s one I couldn’t handle myself and isn’t worth the expense of hiring a coder to handle on my behalf.
It’s quite possible that as I work through some of the other tweaks, I’ll get more of a grip on Handlebars as I look closely to understand what the chatbot does. Or maybe not.
Either way, I’ve finally found a practical use for ChatGPT.
AI is not completely useless. Yet almost every example I read of the good things it does are related to medicine.
and my story:
I pulled my story about the goings on at InternetNZ from the main newsletter this morning and sent it out as a extra bulletin… It’s a longer read than the usual newsletter format, but an important one with plenty of context.
I presume I’m not the only person to have had this scam email:
Hi there!
I am a professional hacker and have successfully managed to hack your operating system. Currently I have gained fu! ll access to your account.
Our ten year old robot vacuum has given up the ghost. I replaced the battery a year ago and it is still failing, so we need a new one.
We want to get a bottom end model. We don’t need fancy features. Any recommendations?
Further to my earlier post about red kiwifruit.
Is there a technical reason you never see kiwifruit bubble tea or other exotic Asian-style drinks made with them?
Or is it just because the bubble tea drink innovators haven’t got around to it yet?
Took great pleasure seeing the Laser Kiwi flag so prominently on show before the All Whites game.
Not sure what New Caledonians would have made of it, but it could be a huge international hit and talking point if we rock it when we get to the World Cup.
Today I actually found a useful task for AI.
Unscrambling a confused and poorly written press release.
It was still unusable because the story was boring… but I can see this capability may be helpful in future.
The All Whites are all over Fiji, that’s not surprising but I love how the TVNZ coverage is giving Fiji respect.
A family member needs help with Excel and I’m immediately reminded why I have spent the last 25 years actively avoiding the software.
I have fully ActivityPubified my main work Ghost site Bill Bennett. It all seems to be working, but nothing appears to be happening. Perhaps it is all going on in the background. Or could it be that my readers, maybe even my audience in general, don’t do ActivityPub?
Minor panic when I looked at Sky and couldn’t find a listing for tonight’s All Whites game. Turns out it will be shown on TVNZ.
Five years ago New Zealand’s telecommunications sector was breaking all kinds of records as the nation went into lockdown.
I’m not complaining, but Auckland is a lot colder today. This time yesterday it was 25, right now it’s 16C. That’s a huge drop. Last night I came home at 9:30 wearing a polo shirt. Today I’m wearing a rugby shirt and it’s the first day this years I’ve needed socks.
At last I found a question worth asking ChatGPT where I was not disappointed by the answer:
“What where the names of the Kung Fu ‘stances’ that were shouted out in the fight scenes in the 1990s Hong Kong film ‘Iron Monkey’?”
Linkrot has been a problem for years now, but this weekend is one of the worst yet, more than 40 outbound links from my site died in the last 24 hours and a similar number look like they are about to snuff it at any moment.
Five years ago New Zealand saw unprecedented data peaks during the firstt lockdown. From my site:
I dislike science fiction and fantasy because everything is so implausible. Yet I love kung fu movies where fighters are not even remotely subject to the laws of gravity.
No… I can’t figure this out either.