Category: Rant

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AI & IT

MsWalshLeave a comment

I don’t have the soul of a programmer and I don’t have the patience to be one either.  I want to say last week but I think it was the week before, we had a hack-athon / prompt-athon where we had to come up with ways of automation that would help us in our day to day work using AI and the likes.

(and yes it is the slippery slope of turkeys voting for christmas but that’s another rant altogether.)

Anyway – our team decided an email notification for records older than 90 days would be very handy – work is always moving forward that we tend to forget to look back especially after 90 days – or we could just organise ourselves better – but this email nudge would actually be handy.  Now I like to play with computers – figure things out.  I should point out that does not mean I’m good with computers – please see my opening sentence.  However when I get a new computer, phone, tablet, gadget – I like to press buttons, find out where everything is and mould it into what I feel comfortable with and makes sense to me.  So after our 2 hours were up in the hackathon we were to go away and actually do our “whatever your team decided on”.  Now this was really just showing me the shiny.  I could happily (with swearing) spend hours trying to figure it out.  The downside to this is that there is also the normal day to day work that needs to be done along with playing with the puzzle.

So yesterday (yes it was a Saturday) I decided that I was going to make it work – mainly because on Friday, I couldn’t even get the damnable programmes to see the excel file – talk about falling at the first hurdle.  – Anyway – I decided that armed with copilot and power automate I was going to make this work.  I liked that I didn’t have other calls on my time when I was breaking my brains, I could swear if I wanted (and I did) and the frustration went unwitnessed.

I had to start the conversation with Copilot a few times because it was just getting too bogged down and the more questions I asked the more lost I became in “where was I?” The first time Copilot mentioned that it had completely missed out a step was annoying – particularly when it tells me Great Question (like, Stop Patronising Me Please!).  I restarted the prompt and it omitted it a second time so when i did the restart for a third time I had to tell it to include the step if it was going to be needed for a later part of the instructions!  I mean by the end of the day I really was just annoyed with it.

Ultimately the computer won the battle but I did have a small victory.  I managed to get the computer to finally see the excel spreadsheet – yay!  and I managed to work thought all of the flows to get the thingy to send me an email.  However the email just contains gibberish and not the actual information that I want it to tell me.  In the end I opened the wine so that we could both be spouting gibberish.  I think ultimately the use of AI and all that it brings really should be left to the IT magicians, and let it help them with their wizardry.  Like I said I managed to get it to work(ish) but I didn’t understand the code that I had to enter and I think that’s ultimately why I don’t know why it failed.  At least a programmer would have an idea at what point it fell over and looking at it can see what went wrong – but I’m just taking screen shots and asking “is this correct?” of an AI programme that didn’t tell me all of the things I had to do.  So chances are when it’s say yes that’s correct – there’s a possibility that it’s not.

My task for today is to ignore the niggle in the back of my head that is asking why it didn’t work properly and I must not go back and try to figure it out – leave it ’til tomorrow when i can reach out to the real experts and get them to sort it.

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Decisions

MsWalshLeave a comment
This is just a small follow up from the post on the 25th of Jan – It’s time to nuke my X/Twitter accounts – I’ve two – one where I’m me and one where I’m not me and therefore a little bit more me. Yes I know that makes no sense whatsoever!  So a quick explanation – on my This Is Deirdre accounts all over the internet – there is a social circle of people I know and they know me (they think). but the thing is I have very thin skin and find ribaldry difficult.  So if I say that I like something and somebody takes the mick and makes fun of that – I’ll just never mention it again because I just don’t want to have to put up with that.  So in order for me to like what I like without have to put MY head above the parapet, I found another name and that profiles likes the things that i like without the fear of ridicule from my friends and acquaintances.  Funnily the ridicule of strangers doesn’t bother me – I just think who the hell are you – and Blocked.  So I have ME and a me in a few places. For now it’s X that’s getting targeted.  I know lots of people have deleted their accounts – well we’re all on Bluesky so a sidestep and keep moving forward – actually Bluesky (https://bsky.app) is waaay better!  I’ve kept both X accounts for different reasons – the ME account – I’m not sure why I just haven’t – I suppose it’s ’cause there are people on there that I like to follow – so yeah I’ve been reluctant – I’ve had the account for YEARS – just checked – I joined in 2009 – now in fairness I’m not a prolific user so my absence won’t make an overall difference.  I’ve had the me account since 2013 – and that was even less of a user – but this one was kept because of one single tweet I made and didn’t want to lose.   Sentimental isn’t even in it!! For the past few weeks I’ve been watching the absolute CarCrash that is America and I just can’t be part of X.  I just can’t.  Everything I’ve read has just given me anxiety – I really think that there will be boots on the ground before his 4 years are up – and the 22nd amendment will have been shredded – I hope I’m wrong – I hope I’m very very wrong.  Last night I decided it’s time – X has to go and so this morning I’ve requested my data and while I’m waiting for that to come in – I’ll go through my follow lists and see if I can find folk elsewhere.  Once my data is secured, the accounts and the apps are all going to be deleted. Like I said in the overall scheme of things it makes no difference – however it does mean that I can look myself in the eye and know that I’m taking a small stand. I’ve also downloaded all of my books from Amazon so that they are mine and not under the control of somebody else’s decisions as to what is and isn’t appropriate, what cover should be on it etc.  I think the only time I’ll be using Amazon for shopping will be to source something and go directly to the shop or the author etc to purchase.  Jeff Bezos doesn’t need my few quid (again not exactly a prolific user) but it soothes my soul.  Mind you the ebooks might be a bit of an issue – I’ll work on it. I’m also contemplating jettisoning my gmail accounts – the me & ME – so I’m investigating alternatives – for my I’m looking to go a bit more Eurocentric ’cause I’m not liking the way the Tech bros are all queuing up.  It’s making me feel a bit queasy and uneasy – so right now I’m looking at what https://european-alternatives.eu/  has to offer.  I think I don’t mind paying a minimum fee and having secured rights.  Again like I said – it’s all being looked at. Is this all a knee jerk reaction – possibly. Is it an exaggerated reaction – no I’ve long wanted to make my internet a little bit more Europe based/Europe Sponsored so it’s time – it’s the push I’ve needed.
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Moving Over

MsWalsh1 Comment

The past evening or two I’ve been going through the list of folk I follow on X and looking to see if they have made the jump to BlueSky. Some have and some haven’t, some even got skipped, and that it possibly the part that made me happy.
Looking at the list and the batches of people – I can tell what I was watching or what was popular at the time – it’s like strata. However I’m a polite hoarder – and while I was interested in some folk at a specific time they have moved on, as have I, and the interests diverged.  My problem is that I find it difficult to unfollow after that – not impossible though – but it just feels like I’m being mean.  I know – totally weird!
Anyway – I could say that after the latest exploits of Mr Musk, I’ve decided to jump ship, but given that I was a poor user of the app in the first place, I can only say that it’s given me a bit more impetuous to move house to BlueSky.

What I like about BlueSky is the different feeds – and the different manipulations you can have.  I have friends that repost a lot of things and some of it is outside of my interest base, so I can jump to an only posts feed that shows only the posts that they have written something in – yes it can have repost in it –  but it gives a context as to why it was reposted.  Or there’s the Mutuals feed where you see the posts of the people you follow, that follow you back.  There’s also feeds for interests that doesn’t only contain the people you follow – it is open to all in sundry, introducing you to new people, ways of thinking, opinions – helps reduce the echo chamber.

My next mission is to see who, from my FB F-list, is on BlueSky, because as with twitter I’m less and less on FB too.  I’m not mad about Meta and it kills me because I loved Instagram.  I’m a photos girl (girl – ha!  ok – photos lady) and the massive push on videos & reels is just putting me off – Why they just couldn’t develope a new app to rival TikTok – they could have used what they had as a foundation but instead they mashed out the photo aspect and it’s now all videos or selling stuff.  I’m still there ’cause I love the feed that I’ve collected.
I can’t help but feel that FB destroyed the internet (ok that might be a bit strong) While it made is accessible to all, it homogenised it – gone are the various websites – the individuality. People no longer site hop, it’s all there in their feed. I know on Livejournal we had our friends page but each journal was created to the users taste – the different templates – (the same as here on WordPress)  – your profile where you could list things you were interested in etc. Some of that is on FB but it’s not for people to find you or you to find them -it’s for companies to sell you things, to use the information – it’s not about friends it’s about profits, Metas profits. It just gives me dystopian jitters.

They know that people find it hard to step away from the familiar, to strike out on their own. It’s funny but moving to another app (no matter which or why) it really does feel akin to emigrating – you’re leaving all of your friends and family behind and you can just hope that some of them will find you again.