Prompt writing tips, will AI eat our jobs, inside the Thunderbirds, why we love hobbies, and more

It's Advanced Geekery for the week ending July 8, 2023

Welcome to the first edition of my weekly update newsletter. This should be fun. Let’s kick it off with a quick recap of the articles I published last week on ZDNET:

• 7 advanced ChatGPT prompt-writing tips you need to know: Let's dive a bit deeper into the arcane art of AI prompt writing. There be secrets here, for those who dare enter.

• Will AI take programming jobs or turn programmers into AI managers? With programming, you code. With AI, you haggle.

• The other shoe finally dropped on my Google Enterprise cloud storage plan: The reality of cloud-based storage is there are hard limits, even to 'unlimited' plans. We continue our story of managing tons of terabytes of online storage, and what happens when an 'infraquake' hits.

But I’m not the only one providing interesting information. Here are some very interesting videos for you to watch:

• Century 21 Films is the YouTube channel for Gerry Anderson’s productions, the creator of the classic Thunderbirds “supermarionation” TV series. In this video, animator Mike Trim talks about what it was like creating some of the greatest vehicles and effects on that wonderfully geeky series.

• Next up, Nerdforge takes a PC and turns it into a dragon’s castle. What more can I say? It’s just that cool.

• You know those beautiful/ugly giant concrete buildings that were all the rage in the 50s to the 70s? That architectural style is called Brutalism and Curious Muse has a six minute video that explains it all.

• Finally, let’s talk about Friendly’s. If you’re from northeastern United States and you’re of an age, you know Friendly’s. Personally, I have a lot of powerful memories about Friendly’s. My high school physics teacher would sometimes teach from the Friendlys near Fair Lawn High School. I never saw my dad happier than when he had a big sundae in front of him. Swiss Chocolate Almond sauce. We had one right next to where I lived in college and right next to where I worked in Rocky Hill. Company Man tells the story of Friendly’s — and its eventual decline. For me, it was a high-calorie trip down Memory Lane.

Moving on, let’s look at a few articles I found really interesting this week:

• Do you want to know why the streaming channels are suddenly dumping their own shows? It’s horrible, and Vox has the inside story.

• Julie Beck of the Atlantic says Americans have a love affair with what she calls “productive leisure.” How Hobbies Infiltrated American Life is a worthwhile read — if you can justify the time.

• This one might be behind the WSJ’s paywall, but it’s still interesting. What Will AI Do to Your Job? Take a Look at What It’s Already Doing to Coders. It’s one perspective and I don’t agree with some of it, but if you’re concerned about this trend, this is a worthwhile read. I paid my bucks to WSJ ust to be able to read it.

Reader Projects

I’d like to regularly spotlight a reader project or two here. If you have a photogenic reader project, send an email to me at david@zatz.com with the subject “READER PROJECT,” a few pictures, and a short one-paragraph description. If you have a social media link or a link to the project, include that, too.

Gratuitous Pixel Pic

Here’s the little guy, just getting ready to fall asleep. He’s a tired little pup.

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