Last updated: July 9, 2025
What I’m working on
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A post about building Maeve (a custom GPT), our personal TV and movie maven who helps us answer the perpetual question, “What should we watch tonight?”
Follow-up posts will describe:-
preparing and cleaning my personal ratings data (from Netflix, IMDB, etc.) to serve as Maeve’s knowledge base
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refining Maeve based on couch-based field testing
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prompt ideas for movie nights — including themed snacks
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Collecting data and scribblings for a Lab Notes post on “How We Sized and Selected a Backup Generator”. Will be including info on measuring power draws from various household items to create an energy budget for a power outage.
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In the idea stage for a post, “People I Want to Emulate and Why”, including the likes of Austin Kleon, Brett Victor, Andy Matuschak, and Oliver Burkeman.
What I Just Shipped
- Spark Notes: Ten Things I Wanted from Our Netflix Ratings: Prelude to a Custom GPT — Posted July 7, 2025
- Lab Notes: Taming the Tangle: Custom Cords for the Outage to Come — Posted July 6, 2025
- Lab Notes: Lessons from a 24-Hour Power Outage — Posted July 1, 2025
- It Was a Dark and Stormy Afternoon: How We Used Data to Prepare for Our Next Power Outage - Posted May 25, 2025
- The Day the Water Stopped: What I Learned During a Seven-Month Drought - Posted April 21, 2025
Open Questions I’m Exploring
- Can I build a “web-of-notes” from the gargantuan LaTeX/PDF file of daily notes that I’ve written over the past five years? I’m looking to create something(s) I can browse, search, and otherwise use to surface interesting content for this site as well as for future experiments and study. This is really a dream project for me — and no, I’m not trying to build another Obsidian. More to come on this topic soon.
- How can I create “live” charts on this site to allow both you and me to explore the rain, solar, radon, and other data I’m collecting?
- What will it take to build “Marian, the Librarian” — the custom GPT, book-recommending “sister” of Maeve?