Projects and Updates, 2024Q3
A synthwave sunset, generative AI, my 5 albums of right now.
Playlist of music in this post: Spotify
Generative AI
I've been using generative AI, specifically Perplexity Pro, to great effect. Here are two ways I've been really successful with Perplexity.
How Do I Talk About Myself?
Two quick things:
A) I don't like promoting myself... something about it makes me feel gross.
B) I'm bad at promoting myself. This is partially because I don't like it, but also my brain isn't optimized for it.
So I fed Perplexity the results of 4 personality assessments: StandOut, StrengthsFinder, VIA Character Strengths, Area Problem Solver Profile. I asked it some questions and was able to gather some useful ways to talk about myself.
I found...
- The language I wanted to use to talk about my skills. i.e., Delineating cognitive & behavioral skills vs. technical & sector-specific skills.
- Three strengths I most like about myself.
- Three things I should look for in an organization.
- Three things I should prioritize when evaluating a new role.
Crystal Healing & The Genesys Role Playing System
I'm working on a campaign in the Genesys system and I'm considering incorporating crystal healing magic.
Perplexity was able to identify the most common crystals used for crystal healing, tell me their general benefits, and assign Genesys specific attributes to each one.
e.g.: Instead of running a generic web search and reading clear quartz enhances mental clarity and focus, Perplexity was able to incorporate information about Genesys and synthesize an answer: clear quartz could add "1 blue die to Intellect or Cool checks when the character needs to concentrate or remain composed".
In both of these cases, I repeatedly edited and reran queries to get better results. And in both cases, I created more answers than I ultimately used. Sometimes the first answer was the best one; sometimes it was not.
Generative AI remains a poor replacement for me handcrafting the things I personally like to handcraft... those are labors of love, so I'll keep them for myself. Researching how to discuss my skills in an interview is most certainly not a labor of love for me -- I'm happy to outsource that to the robots.
While there are still loads of ethical concerns with generative AI, and perhaps with Perplexity more than others, it's been very useful for me.
Fun
Minor leagues, major vibes
Basswood and 
The Best Science
Five Albums
Aghori Mhori Mei, The Smashing Pumpkins
Michael & The Mighty Midnight Revival, Songs For Sinners And Saints, Killer Mike
Short n' Sweet, Sabrina Carpenter
TIMELESS, KAYTRANADA
venequia., Danny Ocean
Spotify playlist
Now Playing: Albums of the Moment library
Other Recent Bloggeries
Posts I've written since the last quarterly recap.
C. Kennedy
C. Kennedy
C. Kennedy