03.06.2024: New kid, newish tech, and using ChatGPT more.
To say I have a lot going on right now would be an understatement. My wife had our new baby boy at the very end of February which is what caused the delay of me writing a second Digest for that month. I plan to write three in March to make up for that missed Digest, and this will be the first.
New Kid
Before I get into the tech part of this newsletter I first want to breifly introduce my new son. My wife was amazing through labor and delivery, and our new son has been a great addition to our growing family. It is quite an experience having children; through the whole process of pregnancy, birth, and raising them.
It is the hardest thing I have ever done, but also the most rewarding.
Newish Tech
I already posted about all my new gadgets but wanted to give some additional insights on why I bought these retro gadgets. I had planned to talk about this before the post went up, but the new baby and all.
Anyways, I had been looking for an iPod for some time to restore and use as a single-use device for times when I want to reduce screen time. It was hard to find one at a reasonable price though. Most of them are selling for over $100 on Ebay and felt it was a little high for such an old device.
Like I stated earlier, I wanted something that had good guts, meaning a good motherboard only really since I was going to replace the battery, storage, and casing. Not only was I excited about finding a iPod Classic that I could use, but I was also excited about the project of restoring it.
Besides the iPhone 11 Pro, one of the reasons for me buying these gadgets was my need for things to tinker with. I wanted an old iPod to restore and play with, but I also wanted to get an old Mac that I could put Linux on to try it out and just tinker with things.
Mike Hurley on Upgrade stated recently that he felt the Vision Pro was a good noodling computer to play around and be productive in a more adventurous way. That is how I feel about the 2012 11-inch MacBook Air that I found.
It has a couple of dents and scuffs, but the display and keyboard are pretty great, and that is what was more important to me. Installing Ubuntu was a breeze and all the drivers for everything were included without any issue. I have a backlight keyboard, can use most of the function buttons, the Wi-Fi worked as soon as it was finished installing, and all the USB ports work flawlessly.
The best thing about the MacBook Air though is it's tool as a writing machine. It is so comfortable on my lap on the couch, the keyboard is amazing, and MarkText running in Ubuntu gives me a clean canvas for me to type away. If this thing had a slightly higher resolution, I think it would be a perfect device.
I stated in my post about why I bought these retro gadgets, and I think being a new parent (again) and my acceptance of having Overlapping Tech both play a role. I think it was also exciting for me to see if these old gadgets could really still be used today. Not that they can't at all, but could they be used and be bearable in terms of performance and capabilities.
So far, the answer is a huge yes. The iPhone 11 Pro still works fantastic and don't notice any difference to it compared to my iPhone 13 Pro that I used before. I also think the iPod works great even with it's old spinning harddrive installed.
Quick update on the iPhone 11 Pro: in-between working on this draft I dropped the 11 Pro and now have a small crack on the back. Sucks because fixing it would cost more than I paid for the device. I bought a Slickwrap to put on the back, so it doesn't get worse on its own. I can't fathom putting a case on it, but if I end up dropping it again then maybe I will need to reconsider.
ChatGPT
I hardly talk about the whole AI moment we are having in the world. Not because I don't find it interesting but mostly because I am ignorant to a lot of it and when it comes to ChatGPT I don't use it for things that I find that interesting.
I was very unsure of ChatGPT at first thinking it was just a gimmick--it might still be in some aspects. But mostly felt it was just a different kind of search engine, or Google. But then I realized after talking to my wife, some coworkers, and using it myself. It is more of search engine that can aggregate information instead of you having to scroll through pages of search results.
This use I have found pretty interesting. For instance, I have a family member that was diagnosed with cancer recently and asking ChatGPT to provide a list of different papers about certain treatments or provide the severity of a certain type of cancer has been super useful. What would normally take hours of work to find myself took seconds and instead of seaching, I was left reading more.
Another big thing that I have been using ChatGPT for, which felt sort of icky at first, but use it to replace Grammarly. Since I started writing more seriously only online, I decided to start paying for Grammarly to help me with my grammar and spelling. I also wanted to broaden my vocabulary which Grammarly helps with in suggesting different words when it recognizes that you are using a similar one often.
I don't think I need my vocabulary improved that much more now that I have been writing for a while, but for spelling and grammar mistakes it is easy for me to miss little things. So instead of renewing my Grammarly subscription, I decided to try and just use ChatGPT to rewrite my blog post with any spelling or grammar mistakes for me.
It isn't perfect, but it is fast and does a pretty good job when compared to what I get from Grammarly. I still miss things, and I do still publish somethings with mistakes that I missed, but for the most part it has been doing exactly what I wanted which is clean up simple mistakes.
I don't pay for the upgraded version of ChatGPT and I have started using the preview version of Copilot more on my Asus Zenbook 14, which uses ChatGPT, to search things when writing a post instead of Google. It's supposed to eventually help you by using context of what you are working on in Windows alongside Copilot which sounds really neat.
ChatGPT is also great for coding which I do a lot at work. Not only web development help with HTML and CSS, but I have also had it help me with some tough SQL that I am working on which is so much easier sometimes then searching through Google and scrolling through Stack Overflow pages.
This is all to say that I am starting to understand the hype and the potential of AI. I know we are also in the midst of some dangerous possibilities in AI taking over the world, but for now, it is cool to see it be useful for creatives and professionals who can use these tools to make their lives easier.