No! Thanks for reading. Still here? Cool. So way back in 2023, I built a little demo that I thought was kinda cool. Early in 2023 I had used Alpine.js and the excellent Deck API to build a simple web-based Blackjack game: Creating a Blackjack Game with Alpine.js and the Deck of Cards API. I then took that demo and connected to Google's GenAI API, which back then was named Palm: Can GenAI help you win in Vegas?. It's been a few years and I thought I'd take a stab at it again, this time making use of Chrome's Prompt API. Technically I'd have much better luck using a bleeding edge Gemini model via a serverless function, and I may still take a stab at that later, but I thought I'd see how well the Prompt API worked.
"It is pitch dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue." If you recognize that quote, congrats, you probably need to see your doctor about pain in your back. (Ok, pain everywhere.) For those of us of a certain age, or folks who like classic games, the Infocom series was a tremendous source of entertainment. Using plain text commands to navigate your environment, players had to use their minds to figure out puzzles and mazes in order to win the game. The IF (Interactive Fiction) community is still strong and of course, I've spoken before about my time playing and coding on MUDs, so with that in mind, I thought I'd try tackling something that I assumed probably wouldn't work well - seeing if Chrome's built-in AI could handle playing Zork 1, the most famous of Infocom's library. The short answer is... not so well. But honestly, it was kind of fun to try so I figured I'd share the results.
One of the "joys" of living in Louisiana is the rainy season, which is heavier in spring but honestly, feels like it lasts all year long. I can still remember being on a business trip in 2016, about to fly home, and hearing about some sort of 'rain event' back in Louisiana. This surprised me as there wasn't a hurricane involved, just an incredible amount of rain (up to 2-3 inches per hour). You can read more about it on the Wikipedia page about the event, but it goes without saying - rain is a big deal down here.
Yep, I get to write this post again...
Well, today I find myself in the same position I've been a few times over the past few years. Webflow went through a company-wide restructuring today and as part of that re-org, my role (and many others) were eliminated. So once again - I'm asking my faithful readers to help me find my next role. You can find my resume if you need the latest edition and feel free to contact me with any opportunities you may have!
A few weeks ago I wrote about using Chrome's built-in AI support to summarize documents - "Summarizing Docs with Built-in AI". This was a followup on an earlier post that was PDF only and made use of an excellent library, officeParser, to work with Microsoft Office files. This library worked well, but had one issue that made it a bit harder to use.
I've been a professional writer now for thirty plus years, and honestly, it's one of the things I'm most proud about. When generative AI first exploded on the scene, a lot of people used it to help them write, and frankly, that wasn't for me. I'm not the best writer, but I damn well know how to write and damn well know my own voice. That being said, I've been really interested in how GenAI can help with the process.
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