I’ve reduced the number of posts displayed on the home page of smays.com from twenty to five. Slightly better experience when viewed on your phone.
“Why you should work out loud”
This blog was never work-related in the sense that I was trying to promote or market myself. But it quickly evolved into a place that documented the work I was doing (back when I had a job). So this article by Allen Buchanan resonated with me. A few snippets:
don’t invent content. Document your work.
AI can help me create content. It cannot give me 42 years of experiences from which to draw.
The most compelling content generally comes from experience, not imagination.
create a digital record of your expertise.
For me, this is the money-quote:
And now, with artificial intelligence able to search, organize and repurpose that body of work, those years of accumulated knowledge become even more valuable.
If you’ve been following along, you’ve seen ever-more-frequent examples of this.
Thanks to Travis for the pointer.
“The 405 Diaries”
Our friend Travis recently packed up and moved to Los Angeles (“Swimming pools and movie stars!”). He talked about keeping a journal of his adventures and yesterday, while drinking beer on my deck, I had an idea for a brief, video mini-podcast. Something along the lines of…
I asked Claude for some good names: “What would be some good names for a daily one minute video podcast chronicling the adventures of a middle age hipster who pulls up stakes and moves to LA?” Continue reading
Perplexity threads
My first blog post referencing ChatGPT was in September, 2023. Before I deleted my account in February, 2026 I had mentioned ChatGPT in 173 blog posts, and had saved twenty-eight “conversations.” I started doing this because a) the threads were (to me) so…fascinating and b) they were too long for a blog post. Even ones I knew nobody else would ever read. In those days I was a little fuzzy on how long the chatbots kept conversations so I saved them as PDFs.
In the ensuing years I settled on Perplexity as my AI of choice (and the only one I pay for: $200/yr) and have saved 28 threads to date: Continue reading
Stronger than he looks
When I got to the Y today I saw a barbarbellbell on the mat in front of the big mirror. “Someone in love with his body,” I thought to myself. When I came out of the restroom this normal size young man is lifting this fucker. The mirror is for checking his form, not his bod. [Click the image above or this link for 15 second video]