35 years

Sheryl and I spent the weekend in Halifax to watch Camren compete at Dalhousie and to enjoy the city the way we enjoy most: lots of walking, with coffee roasters and bakeries as our waypoints. The extreme weather and exhaustion cancelled those plans, so we spent our free time at IKEA and Costco, which isn’t quite the same at all. Dinner out was the first pub with a table and a meal prepared from the grocery store. Both were equally uninspired.

I wanted to write something poetic about how the weekend marked 35 years together—but that’s just not me. We met at St. FX on Main Street that September, went out as a group shortly after, and have been inseparable ever since. It’s been a wonderful life, filled with all the joys and challenges that come with it. We’ve traveled, worked, and raised two kids around the world, and we have no intention of slowing down.

Here’s to 35 more years.

Sheryl’s replacement?


I had some credits for AI voice over at a sound effects service, so I thought I would plug-in the first paragraph from the latest story I wrote. I have a thing for British and Australian accents, so I chose a “middle-aged British female” with “slightly exaggerated” production. I think Sheryl is secure in her job, but it won’t be long before it becomes hard to tell the difference. Except, that Sheryl makes mistakes, which we celebrate because we are human, but I suppose AI could be trained to make mistakes as well.

Tech Update

I did something a bit out of character for myself. These days, I don’t have much interest in upgrade cycles, new technology, or chasing the latest gadgets. Which is good because I don’t have the money anyway.

A couple of weeks ago, Sheryl’s laptop—a 10-year-old MacBook Pro that I used to rely on for work—started acting up in ways that made it hard for her to use. The battery had long since given up the ghost, and now the hard disk seemed to be failing.

Normally, I’d just give her my current MacBook Pro, which is now five years old, and order a new one for myself. But as I write this, I realize how unfair that pattern is (and Sheryl has pointed this out to me too). So, this time, I ordered her a new MacBook Air. It arrived, but she hasn’t used it yet because it’s not set up the way she likes—sigh.

As for my five-year-old laptop, it’s still fine. I do all my writing and podcast audio production on it. It struggles with video, but so do I, so we get along just fine. However, Apple recently released the new Mac Mini, and that caught my attention. I ordered one.

I have a Dell 4K monitor that works fine for text, but Macs don’t scale well to 27” 4K monitors, and my eyesight isn’t what it used to be. I’d prefer a 5K display, but I’m not willing to shell out $2,000 for an Apple Studio Display. When Asus launched their new 5K monitor, I ordered one from B&H south of the border. I’ve also got a Thunderbolt 4 drive/SSD on order.

Why this seemingly extravagant spending? There’s some need, but it’s not particularly urgent in my case. I think I worry that if we don’t update our gear this year, we might not be able to next year. And since I spend so much time using these tools, I want them to work—and work well.

Not kids podcasts unfortunately

Low capex means the profits can be enormous once a podcaster covers the costs of producing two pods a week (e.g., two or three producers and a part-time sound engineer). The Prof G podcast portfolio (Prof G, Prof G Markets, Raging Moderates) will register 2025 revenue of approximately $10m. We employ five producers, two analysts, and a technical director/sound engineer. Few businesses garner $1m+ per employee. Pivot, the podcast I co-host with Kara Swisher, does more revenue, with even fewer resources.

Put another way, to build a business in podcasting that pays people well and keeps the attention of a host with high opportunity cost(s), you likely need to be in the top 0.1% by listenership.

The Podcast Election – Scott Galloway.

With no staff, limited resources, and no local media industry to lean on, we’ve managed to reach the top 0.1% in our category. Yet, despite generating consistently high impressions over the past three years, advertising has shrunk, not grown. As we rethink our strategy, we’re reflecting on what’s next. We love sharing stories with children, but life is about more than spending every day, 7 days a week, in the studio.

Podcast Award

Our podcasts, Sleep Tight Stories and Sleep Tight Relax, have been nominated for Outstanding Kids and Family Series by the Canadian Podcast Awards. Last year, Sleep Tight Science won in this category.

While I don’t put much emphasis on awards, it’s nice to receive recognition, especially from such a kind and supportive event team. Many awards are expensive to enter, so we’re grateful that the Canadian Podcast Awards receives funding, making it easier for independent creators to participate.

As part of the process, we had to submit a video acceptance speech—just in case we win. Unfortunately, our video skills leave much to be desired. It has that “phone propped on a pillow” vibe, and in our rush, we didn’t even use a microphone. Oops!

Newsprint

Despite my best efforts to distance myself from online media, I still occasionally give in to some mindless scrolling, mainly on Threads and Instagram. Although I avoid Facebook, I guess this still makes me, in a way, a product of Mark Zuckerberg.

I do my best to steer clear of online news sites because I find the reporting uninspired, and even local news has leaned heavily into sensational, click-driven headlines. Mostly, though, I want to avoid the reactions and constant news sharing, which are so often toxic (how are people still on Twitter?). The downside is that I now know very little about local events and rely on others to fill me in. For instance, I recently learned from a friend that a Three Rivers council meeting was moved online due to threats and hateful social media commentary—a change some view as a win. It’s disheartening to see that racism is still alive and well on PEI.

One solution I hadn’t considered is going back to print. I haven’t subscribed to a print newspaper since I last received the Taipei Times 25 years ago.

This idea came after reading: I’m a journalist and I’m changing the way I read news. This is how.

I have resubscribed to print newspapers because they are finite; when you’re done, you’re done. Here, I’m taking a cue from Kelsey Richards, the “print princess” and “media literate hottie” who reads print newspapers on TikTok. “When you read print media, you give yourself that space to feel those emotions compared to if you read something online and then you immediately switch over to Instagram…and then you go on Twitter….and then you go on Facebook…and then a CNN notification comes up on your phone,” she told Slate last year. “With all those distractions, those emotions no longer belong to that blocked-out time period. They are now convoluting your schedule, your work, the fact that your mom just texted you that something’s going on with your grandparents — it’s just too much for your body to handle. Print media gives us the opportunity to sit down, and decide when we want to feel the emotions we want to feel, rather than letting some arbitrary algorithm decide how we should feel.”

Perhaps I should try a paper with my morning slow coffee habit. But do they still deliver?

Also: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier.

A dream of reading

I keep buying books—I prefer hardcovers, but paperbacks will do—always with the hope that I’ll find the time to read them. My collection has grown to the point where, if I start today, I just might finish them all before I turn 70…if I try hard enough.

When I daydream, I see myself sunk in a comfortable Eames chair, in some unrealistically perfect cabin, by a raging fire while it snows outside. Two stacks of books sit beside the chair, one read, one not.

Statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb believes that surrounding ourselves with unread books enriches us, serving as a constant reminder of all we don’t know. I realize I don’t know much.

Our home in Taiwan was wall-to-wall with children’s books, and as a result, our kids grew up reading.

The Japanese even have a word for this practice: tsundoku—the stacks of books you’ve bought but haven’t read.

Maybe it’s time I tried harder.

Should I be more deliberate?

I had a lovely call at noon today with an illustrator from Italy whose work I stumbled upon by chance. Her portfolio immediately made me smile, and I thought, “Maybe her art could bring that same joy to those who like my stories.” So, I reached out to see if she might be interested in illustrating one of my books—perhaps the story about a dog living on Prince Street in Charlottetown, or the one about a pig on a Hampshire farm. And, as it turns out, she is!

Working with an illustrator of her caliber is certainly an investment. It’s going to be costly, but I feel it’s money well spent. A beautiful illustration has a lasting impact—something a website redesign seldom will. Websites come and go; in ten years, mine will likely be forgotten, along with so much of my past work spanning 25+ years.

I wonder if I should approach these books more thoughtfully, with a bit more patience. Many authors talk about carefully crafting each word, especially in children’s books, while I tend to create at a faster pace, editing only lightly before sending it off. What if, despite the beautiful illustrations, the story itself falls flat?

Some people see writing a book(s) as a one-off project, but I don’t. I want each story, each memorable character, to come to life in print. That sounds like a business, with all that entails. Perhaps it’s best not to overthink it and just dive in with a beginner’s mindset—ready to learn and see what unfolds.

Selective Focus

With so much anger and a flurry of wildly different, often illogical opinions circulating, I’ve often thought it might be useful to allow the same kind of experimentation on a national level that I might conduct in my personal life—a national A/B test.

Against immigration? Let’s halt it and observe the results.
Oppose vaccination? Don’t get vaccinated, and let’s see the outcome.

Of course, it’s rarely that simple. The motives behind some proposed solutions are often misguided, leading to outcomes that are cruel and cause innocent people to suffer. Advocates for these solutions often shift blame when results don’t meet their expectations or deny the outcomes altogether, deflecting accountability to protect their self-image.

In many ways, it feels as if the U.S. is conducting its own voluntary national A/B test. I wish them well and hope women and marginalized groups are able to thrive.

I’m not sure where the widespread vitriol comes from. We face many pressing issues, both locally and nationally, yet I still recognize how fortunate we are.

I’ve already stopped reading many online news sources, even local ones. The commentary has become so toxic and the reporting so driven by clicks that I no longer find value in following the news as closely as I once did; the signal-to-noise ratio is too skewed. A positive outcome of this shift is that I can now step away from the few remaining sources I still follow, focus on my niche interests, and spend more time with books.

A race to quote

It’s been a while since I’ve worked as a freelancer, and even then I rarely wrote proposals. For the most part, the how and what I would do for a client was worked out in meetings that started with relationship building before moving into increasing detail about proposed solutions.

Now that I’m the one asking for help, it’s interesting to see how little time potential contractors spend on detail. There’s minimal focus on addressing needs, or suggesting alternatives I might not have considered. They all race to the quote – and in a couple of instances, the quote didn’t even address what I asked them to do.

Perhaps this is how things are done in today’s market? Bring in as many potential clients as possible and hope you land enough to prosper?

This wasn’t the case with our copywriter. When I asked her to write some ad copy, we spent considerable time together before getting started, and even more once we initiated the contract. She then not only wrote the ads but helped define the brand going forward. As a result, I look forward to working with her again and again.

I realize people’s time is valuable, but in a time of quick solutions, wouldn’t a slower, more personal approach be a competitive advantage?

(Un)Joy

“No artist is pleased… There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.“ – Martha Graham

‘Joy’ and ‘joyful’ are words I use almost daily to describe what creative work should be. I have a chart on my desk that places joy at a circle’s centre, while tasks that support that activity spiral outward, creating barriers – tasks many face but often pay others to handle.

Yet even when those barriers fall away, the creative act itself can feel far from joyful. This morning I must finish part 29 of a 30-part series, and it’s been laborious, boring, and the output is not great. I’m not sure an editor will even want to touch it. But kids like the story, so it must be finished.

Despite not being a writer, I spend more and more time writing. I’ve reached what learning theorists call “conscious incompetence” – that humbling phase where your growing taste shows you exactly how far you still have to go. This gap between taste and ability is far from joyful, but the practice continues.

Coincidence?

This week Apple dripped their latest product announcements with slick, swoopy videos; a yellow iMac looks fun.

The MacBook Sheryl uses to record audio and other unknown tasks was bought in 2015, and this week it decided she could no longer access the desktop. The disk is bad, I guess. The MacBook that we bought in 2020, which I use with Logic Pro, took 10 minutes to boot this morning, and Safari hates just about every website I use, which is a problem because all software is just some bloated web view.

Is this just a coincidence that computers start failing when Apple releases new products, one of which is actually appealing?

The Joys of Fall

When we lived in Taiwan, I absolutely despised leaf blowers. We lived in the Science Park, surrounded by trees, and the Park administration, being the efficient managers they were, equipped their army of groundskeepers with blowers and sent them out to create a constant racket—all year round.

Now, here I am with just one fan rake, staring at a lawn covered in leaves. I spent 90 minutes earlier this week trying to clear it, barely making a dent.

Then the owner of the neighboring Airbnb arrived and had his lawn blown clean in 10 minutes. I might just be a convert.

“Hello Sleep Tight Team!”

This is one way our emails are often addressed. The other common option is no greeting at all. A few people, who know us well, actually use our names or address us as “Sheryl & Clark,” which is how we always sign off our communications.

This never fails to make us smile because, well, there is no team.

I recently finished a Creative Blocks workshop (?) organized by Creative PEI. They’re doing great things lately, and during a group discussion, I finally admitted something that’s been a big barrier to my creative process: I rarely ask for help. Other than Sheryl, no one else contributes to what I create.

One of my excuses is a lack of time; the other is that the Island is a small place, and finding someone interested in children’s media feels nearly impossible.

When I met with Kerry Anne MacDougall earlier this year, she pointed out—accurately—that I have a long list of excuses for not reaching out for help. In that case, it was about government funding, but the resistance is the same.

Am I afraid of hearing “no”? Or do I just prefer the distance that hiring a freelancer now and then provides?

Last night, while trying to stay awake on the long dark drive back to Montague, I thought about a recent article where a small podcast producer thanked her team for their hard work after winning an award. We might be the last kids’ podcast without one. Perhaps it’s time to post a help-wanted ad: “Team Needed: long hours, no pay.” Or, as someone suggested in a meeting yesterday, maybe we could just have AI do it all—even clone Sheryl’s voice!

Wither CrossFit?

When I encountered winter again for the first time in twenty years, I quickly decided to stay indoors as much as possible. Our apartment parking lot was always covered in a slick of ice, and with my fear of slipping and breaking a hip, venturing out wasn’t exactly appealing.

As a result, my year-round marathon training pretty much stopped in its tracks. I tried running in the cold a few times, but mostly I was stationary for what felt like months. Then, like Catriona at the time, I discovered CrossFit.

I didn’t prescribe to the notion of using CrossFit classes to get muscular or strong, I don’t find lifting heavy things all that enjoyable, but found that it helped my mobility immensely. It also provided an outlet for my competitiveness, though that also has led to a couple injuries.

After moving to Montague and having to endure a frenetic schedule, I have been going to class less and less, and in the summers here stopped going completely. I prefer to spend my time outside on the trails vs. in the gym.

This fall, I signed up again, thinking I’d go a few times a week, but I didn’t quite stick with it. The programming at 782 hasn’t always been exciting lately, so I decided to outfit my own gym at home. We’ve got a SkiErg, a BikeErg, some heavy kettlebells (which are surprisingly affordable on Amazon with Prime), a jump rope, a plyo box, and a light barbell setup.

Originally, I thought I’d only use it in the depths of winter, but I’ve actually been doing conditioning workouts most days now. I miss the people, but for now, this setup works well enough. I might still drop in on the odd class at Kinetic—just to get out, enjoy a change of pace, and enjoy sweating with others.

Work friction

I full of not yet fully formed thoughts lately …

There is an interesting back and forth in my work life between the old and the new. I want to work and collaborate with people, especially local where we can sit and talk over coffee, but people are messy and it can be a challenge.

We want to try publishing in print. Local publishers if interested have a lead time that feels almost archaic. One local author shared how it took an entire year for an email of hers to get a reply, and she told this story as though it were completely normal. Meanwhile, all of my own attempts to reach out to a local hybrid publisher were met with silence.

Coming from a background in software, these kinds of timeframes feel completely foreign. So, we’ve decided to publish everything ourselves—no waiting, no unanswered emails, and, unfortunately, no in-person collaboration.

I hired my preferred illustrator to bring our stories to life. She’s talented, but here we are, weeks behind schedule. I’m not sure why, though I suspect it’s because this work is just a side project for her.

Then, I turn to AI for help with art, and almost instantly, I get something usable. After a bit of tweaking, we end up with almost acceptable results.

We also wanted to invest in a new website (or maybe all of them), but we don’t have the time or the expertise to do it ourselves anymore. So, I reached out to a team for help. What I got in return was an expensive quote that didn’t address the problems I mentioned, nor did it offer any clear solutions.

Meanwhile, one of our websites broke, and I needed a fix right away. I went to ChatGPT, explained the problem in detail, and it wrote a WordPress plug-in that fixed the issue immediately. It even generated some additional brand-related materials—pretty vanilla, but definitely getting closer.

When I have the time, I like to A/B test different solutions. This time, I thought, “Let’s change the pricing on that product and see what happens.” But Stripe wouldn’t allow it. No warning, no clear explanation. After some digging, I found out it’s due to accounting practices.

There is a reason why I always go to the check-out line that has a person. I like the friction, the annoyance of the person who doesn’t know how to use the pay terminal, the other customer who like me hasn’t talked to anyone all day so is telling the cashier all about her life. The person complaining that they should have more people on cash. I see value in this inefficiency; its social interaction.

There’s a reason I still prefer to go to the checkout line with a cashier. I like the little moments of inconvenience—the person struggling with the payment terminal, the chatty customer sharing their life story with the cashier, and the inevitable complaints about needing more staff on the registers. There’s value in this inefficiency: it’s human connection.

In my professional life I think we all should be aware that there are more efficient solutions on the horizon, and make the value of human friction more apparent. I enjoy my work, but I also enjoy the satisfaction of getting it done.

Interview on Pod The North

This past summer, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Kattie Laur for her podcast and newsletter Pod The North. The episode was released earlier this month.

Sheryl read the interview transcript and mentioned it was fine, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to read or listen to it yet—especially the audio. I’ve never been a fan of hearing my own voice.

I used to describe my conversations as a bit like hypertext, where one idea would lead to another, often taking us so far from the original topic that no one could remember what we were talking about. I fear my answers to the questions suffered from that lack of discipline and preparation on my part.

If you’re interested in the Canadian podcasting scene, I recommend subscribing to Kattie’s newsletter. It’s a great resource for staying informed.

Mornings

I recently started a creative block workshop, and one of the exercises involved tweaking my daily routine—introducing spontaneity or breaking from habit to see if it might spark positive change.

Having a structure to my days, and week, is pretty important to me. Without it, I tend to drift aimlessly, or worse, neglect important things like exercise, as I did last winter. Since early spring, I’ve followed an identical daily schedule, which generally works well. However, I’ve been in a bit of creative rut lately, and spend too much of my mornings dwelling on long-term issues that aren’t going to be resolved anytime soon.

The most productive part of my day is right after my morning coffee—that’s when I find it easiest to get into a flow state, and during summer, with the morning sun, I spend that time outside running or walking. But as fall and winter set in with darker, colder mornings, I thought it might be the time for a change.

So, I consulted my assistant, and after explaining my challenge, it suggested a revised morning routine that has me diving straight into work with my sun lamp on, and reschedules exercise for later, when it’s brighter outside.

Its ideas are interesting, though it has a fascination with blocks of 15 minutes, which in my world isn’t enough time to do much of anything.

Life is so wonderfully dull, that changing my morning routine is worth spending 20 minutes writing about.

Outsider Resistance

I don’t have fully formed thoughts on the subject yet, but I’ve observed a noticeable resistance toward outsiders on the Island. It’s often said that no matter how long you’ve lived here, if you weren’t born on the Island, you’ll always be considered “from away.” But it feels deeper than that—almost as if there’s a tendency to reject the ambition and ideas of those from away, while only respecting what’s homegrown. The exception, of course, is when it comes to wanting fast food conveniences or services you’d find in larger centers, without acknowledging the population density required to sustain them. Many seem to wish the Island could remain frozen in time.

Having spent much of my adult life living abroad, I experienced a culture that embraced foreign ideas. My children attended a private school influenced by educational practices from Germany, Japan, and the U.S. My wife taught first in an international school and later at a national school that followed an American curriculum. And my entire career was shaped by companies eager for different perspectives. That openness sometimes came with its own challenges—there was occasionally pushback against foreign ideas, and there were certainly faults. Was the education at an American or UK university truly that much better? It did seem, at least, to be far more inclusive than the inclusion we often claim to have.

I’ve been reflecting on this today because I just learned there’s a planning board meeting tonight in Three Rivers, where they’re discussing a proposal for the foreign-born community to build additional facilities—facilities that, without their efforts, would likely never be built. Much of the opposition I’ve read, even from people who should know better, strikes me as distasteful. As usual, I suspect that instead of working together to direct this ambition and investment toward creating services that benefit everyone, there will be an effort to halt development altogether.

No more premium!

I know many in software development hear frustration over pricing models. I know I have complained. I guess we sometimes feel as if digital services should just appear magically, without considering that behind those products are real people with real expenses, just like everyone else.

Though I don’t hear complaints often, when I do, they usually sound like the one I received today:

“No more premium! It’s so annoying that the best episodes are always for subscribers only.”

We also do things a little differently. Unlike other platforms, we don’t use previews. It feels unfair to let someone get drawn into a story only to cut them off with, “To hear the rest, sign up for premium.” Instead, we bundle our paid content into collections, so you can enjoy them in their entirety, as they’re meant to be experienced.

Another frequent complaint? Ads. “Why are there ADS? No more ads!” It’s a common refrain.

ADS also allow us to keep our content free for those who can’t subscribe. They’re a necessary part of the process that helps us continue creating the stories people seem to love.

It seems like many have a love-hate relationship with capitalism. I know I do.

Was it always this hard?

A couple of our websites were offline due to an SSL certificate issue. Seeing as today was a wash otherwise, I figured ticking this box in OmniFocus would give me some sense of accomplishment.

I’ve had a website in some shape or form for as long as I can remember. And before that, I used to play around with BBS on other, more capable computers. In all these years—decades—I don’t remember ever experiencing as much nonsense as we have gone through lately. Everything feels more complex. Instead of getting easier and cheaper to publish a website, the exact opposite has happened. Or is this just a symptom of a middle-aged brain incapable of dealing with new challenges? I think it’s more likely that I no longer have patience for nonsense like this.

Fantastical Grift

I bought a license for Fantastical before they switched to subscription pricing. I don’t have a particularly busy schedule to manage, but I liked their calendar sets and how they handled the month view on both their macOS and iOS apps.

All the features I paid for were available—until today. When I opened Fantastical this morning and clicked on the calendar set, a dialog box popped up that couldn’t be closed, offering a subscription for $80 plus tax per year. I can’t, for the life of me, understand how this app justifies such egregious pricing.

Fortunately, there are alternatives, including Apple’s own calendar, which, at least on iOS, has improved a great deal.

Output

I think it was Nicholas Felton who used to produce his personal annual report. I thought of him as I was completing my homework for a class in creativity I am taking. I only set aside 10 minutes to complete the task, so something as beautiful and comprehensive as what he used to create might wait until another time. I also only really have a few data points.

Thus far this year:

I wrote 475,937 words
I produced over 300 podcast episodes
Launched 9 new shows
Edited 2 books for illustration

The purpose of this exercise is I assume to give you a moment of reflection over a body of work and help with some kind of creative breakthrough. Sometimes, creative roadblocks come from not recognizing how much you’ve already achieved. For me though, it just makes me feel tired.

Too Busy

“Busy” is a relative term. It’s not the same as a cashier handling a Christmas rush, a doctor managing an emergency room during a hectic night, or a delivery driver working all day for Amazon as a side hustle. For me, “busy” means my mental capacity to handle things in a timely manner has greatly diminished.

I’ve been so consumed by work every day that things are starting to slip. My task list has overdue items from more than a month ago.

Today, I received an email from Pair with my resource summary for my WordPress installations. It shows I used 885 GB over the past month—286 GB over my allotment. This means I’m facing a huge overage charge. Typically, we use around 274 GB in a busy month, so this spike caught my attention. I tried to investigate, but the control panel doesn’t offer the detailed information I needed. Then, I got sidetracked by other tasks.

Two months ago, I planned to switch away from Pair and even found a company to help with the transition. But I was too busy.

It’s ironic: being busy is actually getting in the way of getting things done.

Spirit

We took Camren to Mount A. last week to help him move into residence. Any reservations I might have had about the school vanished the moment we arrived in Sackville. What an incredibly welcoming university community! Everywhere we looked, students in colorful tutus were cheering on new arrivals. At the residence, they danced, sang, and efficiently unloaded our car, bringing all his belongings up to his room while directing us to find parking. Even the university president was walking around, personally welcoming each new student. The school spirit was wonderful, and the food in the cafeteria was great, too.

I had nothing like this experience as a freshman at UPEI or St. F.X., and Catriona didn’t experience anything close to it at UPEI either. Camren is lucky to have found such a great school.

A Little Push

In late March, after a 90-minute coaching session with Kerry Anne MacDougall, I left with a number of questions and a gentle push.

During our conversation, she pointed out that the topic which seemed to energize me the most was running. Running had always made me happy and healthy, yet I hadn’t been engaging in the activity at all. Mornings had become an unhealthy routine: roll out of bed, throw on sweats, drink coffee, and head straight to the office.

She encouraged me to start again. Just a little push to get moving. And so, I did.

Since that day, I haven’t missed a single morning. Rain or shine, right after my coffee, I lace up my sneakers and head outside. Sometimes I walk, sometimes I run, but most days I do a bit of both. It’s taken time to quiet my mind and rediscover that meditative “zone,” but it’s happening. Slowly, my weekly mileage is starting to reflect my former runner self.

Sometimes, all it takes is a little push.

ChatGPT and categorization

Next week we are scheduled to launch season 4 of Sleep Tight Science which will feature more calming music, weekly publishing, kids introducing the show using their own voice, and more breakout episodes like fun facts, and listener questions.

I’ve been stuck trying to think of where to start writing, so I thought I would rely upon the interests of the kids themselves. Kids have been submitting questions since the show began and I think this year we received a range of interesting question to answer. Except itchy are all in a spreadsheet, and to find patterns amongst all those questions is time consuming. Perhaps a perfect task for ChatGPT?

I exported the question column into a separate spreadsheet and imported the file into ChatGPT to analyse. This is the first result:

Miscellaneous - 318 questions
Food & Nutrition - 28 questions
Space & Astronomy - 26 questions
Animals & Nature - 22 questions
Weather & Climate - 19 questions
Human Body & Health - 17 questions
Science & Experiments - 4 questions
History & Culture - 2 questions

At first glance that is pretty useful. Except, what the hell is Miscellaneous? Thats lazy categorization. So I asked ChartGPT to categorize Miscellaneous further. This is the result:

How Things Work (e.g., how something is made, how things function)
Why Questions (e.g., why natural or human-made phenomena occur)
General Knowledge (e.g., common facts or inquiries not linked to specific categories)

This wasn’t particularly helpful, since most questions kids have about anything may include the words, what, how, and why. So I ask for further clarification again:

How Things Work - 148 questions
Why Questions - 109 questions
Other - 54 questions
General Knowledge - 7 questions

Thats pretty much the same answer again. So I asked for one more clarification, with it ignoring how the question was formed. This is the result:

Other - 246 questions
Manufacturing & Materials - 56 questions
Nature & Animals - 9 questions
Human Body & Biology - 4 questions
Science & Technology - 2 questions
Food & Nutrition - 1 question

Now we are getting closer, and I am feeling secure in the idea that ChatGPT won’t be taking over the world anytime soon, as finding patterns is fairly fundamental. I’m a big believer that there is a category for everything. Asking for more information on the “Other”, ChatGPT gave me this:

Human Behavior (e.g., yawning, reactions to lightning)
Animals & Pets (e.g., dog and cat behavior, puppy teeth)
Everyday Objects (e.g., pancakes, toys)
Science Curiosities (e.g., sun rotation, infinity)

That’s pretty good, but I need to assign numbers so I can rank them based on interest. So asked for further clarification. This is what I got:

Uncategorized - 197 questions
Human Behavior - 24 questions
Animals & Pets - 13 questions
Science Curiosities - 9 questions
Everyday Objects - 3 questions

I’m tired at this point, and want to start writing so I feel like giving up. I entered a couple more prompts and this is the final result:

Miscellaneous (Overall) - 318 questions
Uncategorized - 197 questions
Manufacturing & Materials - 56 questions
Human Behavior - 24 questions
Animals & Pets - 13 questions
Science Curiosities - 9 questions
Nature & Animals - 9 questions
Human Body & Biology - 4 questions
Everyday Objects - 3 questions
Science & Technology - 2 questions
Food & Nutrition - 1 question
Food & Nutrition (Main) - 28 questions
Space & Astronomy - 26 questions
Animals & Nature (Main) - 22 questions
Weather & Climate - 19 questions
Human Body & Health - 17 questions
Manufacturing & Materials (Main) - 56 questions (but grouped under Miscellaneous)
Science & Experiments - 4 questions
History & Culture - 2 questions

Perhaps there is something in my prompts that could be adjusted. More exact language perhaps. But while somewhat useful, I’ve come away disappointed. It did a much better job at the start of the year when I was stuck for topics and asked it to give me a list of animal topics that we haven’t covered yet that would appeal to our listeners. It gave me a long list, some of which I used.

Half Inch Off

Just about everything that might need replacement in this old house of ours is off from standard by 1/2 an inch. I don’t know why, but perhaps it’s an old standard, or just as likely a quirk.

The latest is the one standard looking window in what functions as my office. With temperatures in the office well above 26˚C in the afternoon I find it difficult to function, and more often than usual am falling asleep. I could easily decamp to the house, I use a laptop after all, but I find Logic Pro’s overactive interface too much for a 13” laptop screen. The portable AC I bought for cheap a few years ago has been inadequate and inexplicably failed, so I went to Canadian Tire and bought a window unit without much thought.

Luckily, I decided to measure the height of the window before taking the AC out of the box, because as it turns out, it doesn’t open high enough. The standard looking window, is non-standard, and off by 1/2”. Fortunately, I could still return the unit. Unfortunately, it’s still hot.

Malware

Our websites were down for a couple of days due to a Malware infection that caused them to redirect to various shopping sites.

It is a mystery how miscreants can exploit six separate websites running unique instances of WordPress in this manner. Pair doesn’t know, but I suspect their setup is somehow insecure.

We had a choice of paying over $1000US to have software fix the problem for us, plus an ongoing subscription to maybe prevent it from happening again or doing it ourselves. I did it myself, but I’m sure I wasn’t entirely successful.

It all feels like a scam to me. Software that is ubiquitous but too complex requires whole separate businesses to function, each with its subscription fees, just to deliver simple HTML files over the web.

This experience has effectively ended my 20+ year relationship with Pair, which means I will look for an alternative to WordPress for my hobbies, like this weblog. We’ve already decided to use a non-nonsense service like Squarespace for our work sites.