After Hours Blog

Using AI to “vibe code” some improvements to this place after a good number of years of neglect.

Here are some of the projects that Github Copilot and Anthropic Claude have helped me accomplish, with no more than an hour devoted to each:

• Added a light/dark theme switcher to the entire site, that respects a user’s system setting and allows them to override it
• Added micro blog posts into the main blog posting feed
• Added top 5 directors list to the Movies rating page
• Added top 5 years and top 5 systems to the Video Games page

(I also restyled the ratings items, but I didn’t need - or want - AI help for that.)

So… AI.

It’s been fun using these crazy tools. Seeing what they can do with so little given to them in terms of prompts, watching them learn from the files I upload to them - it’s all really fascinating.

A case study

Also, a file that I usually work on annually for my playoffsbracket site is one that usually takes me hours to complete by manually referencing and copying and pasting NBA scores into a custom format I established several years ago. I also needed to copy and paste the URLs for each game I reference in the playoffs from nba.com to that file. This is a slog for me that I was actually planning on putting off this year.

Instead, I decided to show Anthropic Claude my file from last year, and my empty file from this year, and gave it this prompt:

Using 2024.json as an example, add all of the games from the 2025 NBA Playoffs to 2025.json, with links to nba.com and scores.

…and it created the entire file in 5 seconds. It actually scoured the internet for the NBA Playoffs results and the appropriate nba.com links to the games, looked at and learned from my custom format (which likely doesn’t make any sense since I don’t know what I’m doing writing JSON), and wrote the complete file. I saved it and ran it, and it ran perfectly. I didn’t need to make one change. It saved me hours.

Well, ok then

So if it can do that, what else can it do? Apparently alot, as the above list demonstrates. I’m not a programmer. I’m not a frontend web developer. I’m a practiced web designer and design systems specialist, which has nothing to do with writing code in Go or figuring out how to traverse complex JSON data files and return data from them. I just want to make that data look cool on the way out.

Happiness, for now

So, I’m very happy for now to allow AI to take over the heavy lifting of the “complex” programming aspects of my private projects while I move on to the parts I like to do, like styling with CSS, figuring out what else I want to add, and what features I can make better or more accessible. Though I do want to be careful about having AI do a bit too much, and getting lazy with it, to the point where I’m not really internalizing how something works in CSS or how to apply new features. That’s why I’m writing my CSS manually still.

Anyway, this has been pretty fun for the past few days that I’ve been able to implement it. I have some ideas to run through these tools soon that should push them a bit further, so we’ll see how far we can go.

I’ve collected concert and tour posters from all of the concerts I’ve ever attended - a remarkably pitiful list!

As a part of my recent efforts to expand my Library, I’ve added all of the concerts I’ve ever attended, and also collected tour posters from many of them to display as well. Some didn’t exist or couldn’t be found, so the next best things were included instead.

I’m using my Library to help collect information that I can refer to as a personal wiki of sorts. It’s been a fun personal project.

Where I say goodbye to a now horribly run company, steered into the ground by yet another horrible rich person.

Twitter as a service had become my go-to tool for collecting news over the past 5-10 years. I quickly learned that following select resources that deliver consistent value - and eliminating any “fluff” accounts that I don’t really care for or follow - is the best way to get the most value from the service.

I also quickly learned to download a 3rd-party app to access Twitter, and found Tweetbot by Tapbots to be the cleanest, best experience for me.

I also learned to use Lists - groups of related Twitter accounts - to consume news and info. I had lists for News, Sports, Weather, Apple news, Entertainment, and more. This way I could read only targeted information on what I was interested in at the time.

Life was good.

In October 2022, the world’s richest person (that is, before he lost more money than anyone ever, due to his horrible decision making) acquired Twitter and took it private, and subsequently began firing many of the executives and teams that he deemed were no longer needed. His decision making is covered in the excellent Twitter is Doing Great! blog, highlighting what an absolute dumpster fire it has been, and showcasing how arrogant, inept, childish, and insecure the new owner really is.

Among terrible decisions including allowing anyone to buy a blue Twitter “verified” checkmark (leading to multiple account impersonations, many fooling news organizations with their fake announcements) and forcing employees to buy in to a toxic and intimidating culture of working harder and for longer hours, Twitter devs were instructed to cut off 3rd party access to Twitter data.

Cutting off 3rd party access meant that apps like Tweetbot, Twitterific (click through to see their eulogies) and many others are unable to exist. As alternatives to the official Twitter app, they did not have ads and operated under their own subscription fees. On a random Thursday evening, access was cut off without any notice or terms. A tweet from the Twitter Dev account mentioned cutting off access for breaking rules, and then subsequently invented and added those rules in the following days.

All to say, I’m leaving Twitter. I will not be posting there, I will not be following anyone there that I can not elsewhere, and my use of the service will be relegated to emergency use for checking updates by local and national accounts that have yet to get their act together and move to a reputable service.

The current, most popular alternative is Mastodon. Mastodon is a Twitter-like activity posting service, but differs in that it is federated: no one person, company or server owns all of Mastodon’s posts or foundations. Anyone can be followed - just like Twitter - by any other user. It’s free from ads and algorithms that tell you what you want. Probably 80% of the people and companies I followed at Twitter are on Mastodon, and roughly 60% of them have moved there exclusively.

Tapbots have developed a Tweetbot-like app named Ivory that is very well done, and allows me to seamlessly transition to Mastodon without skipping a beat. Ivory is in the early stages still - with some bugs and features yet to iron out - but it is very much functional and worth every penny of the subscription fee ($25/year).

I’ve also taken the opportunity to own more of my own data. I post as many “micro posts” here on my website as I can, instead of directly into Mastodon. This way I keep my data, and it gets shared to Micro.blog (another Twitter alternative) and to my Mastodon account. Micro.blog also cross-posts to my Twitter account, but I think I’ll be turning that off (Edit: turned off).

This is kind of a template now, similar to my Goodbye, Facebook post in 2018 (now updated).

Blindly following tyrannical and in-compassionate people and their causes is a pet peeve of mine. Not having the decency to respect those that have stood by and for something enough to give them the time of day is another. Twitter is a dumpster fire that will surely consume itself over time - if not within the year then surely over the next 5. And I’ll be happy to post all about it over on Mastodon.