This week I have learned:
- I got contacted by someone I know who needed to knock up a budget for a grant application with little information and very little time. We plugged his needs into Claude and asked it to create a budget modelling tool. Using a probabilistic tool to create a deterministic one feels like a really interesting line of enquiry.
- Working on a new government procurement also saw a new idea for LLMs in three steps. Create a plain-English version, then ask it to create a script for a graphic novel, and finally generate the images. I’d love to share the output, but NDAs and all that. The graphic novel isn’t high art, nor necessarily even right. But it’s allowed me to quickly spot a few things about the bid I might not otherwise have thought about.
- The Creativator is still a great tool. I was helping at a two-day workshop this week, and it needed a bit of fizz. 45 minutes of spinning the random wheels for people thinking. Ideation is a numbers game.
- When people actually see and touch the book, they’re captivated. I told a short story at Kevin Molloy’s latest Social (Media) Mixer and then chatted with folk afterwards, book in hand. Folk were fascinated.
- The planning for the launch event is making me think I might get a bit emotional on the night.
- Birmingham was very busy out on a Monday night.
- Blog articles can have a very long half-life. I got quoted this week in New Scientist about a word I invented in a blog I wrote a decade ago – https://dev.akhiles.co.uk/an-encyclopedia-formed-from-ai-hallucinations-what-could-go-wrong/
- Of course this means I made a new game: https://experiments.mattballantine.com/nonomatopoeia/
- Tomorrow I celebrate 4 years at EE. My second-longest period of employment.
- We’ve entered “Parakeets Dive Bombing” our sliding doors time of year.
The week in media:
Watched:
The new episodes of Clarkson’s Farm. He’s an annoying character, but there’s something compelling about this show.
Listened:
Still not finding a particular groove at the moment, although continuing to adore Owen Cutts on Instagram, so think that’s influencing my listening choices.
Next week:
Annual Conference.
mmitII 