Well, I haven’t posted here since May. I’ve had a bunch of stuff I wanted to post about, but I just haven’t had the time (and/or energy).
Tomorrow is July 4th, and a Saturday, so today is the official day off from work for Independence Day. We’re in a bit of a heatwave right now, so I’m not doing anything much for the long weekend. So I thought I’d spend some time writing a blog post today, and trying to catch up on some stuff I wanted to write about.
WordPress 7.0
Well, I didn’t actually intend to write about WordPress 7.0 today, but when I went into my blog admin page, I saw that it was available. So I’m currently upgrading my test site, and will update my actual blog site later, if all is well with the test site.
It seems like the big feature in WP 7 is AI integration. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised about that. Not too long ago, I probably would have rolled my eyes at the idea of having AI integration in my blog site, but, today, I can think of some semi-valid uses for it. Yes, some people are going to use it to create terrible AI slop, but I’ve got a few ideas about how I could use it in a positive way.
Here are a few links related to it:
- Introducing the AI Client in WordPress 7.0 — This article goes over the underlying PHP functions, and would be helpful to a programmer working on WP.
- WordPress 7.0 Has Arrived: Here’s Everything You Need to Know — This is a general overview of the new stuff in WP 7, at a high level.
- How WordPress 7.0 Is Building the Foundation for AI-Powered Sites — This one goes a bit deeper into the AI stuff.
I haven’t read any of this stuff too closely yet. I’m not even sure how much of it works with the open source WordPress software, vs. how much of it is specific to WordPress.com. Anyway, I guess that researching this stuff and playing around with it is yet another little project for me.
Robot Assistant Field Guide
I mentioned the Robot Assistant Field Guide a couple of posts back. The main part of that class is all done now, but there’s a series of “Robot Builder’s Club” meetings that’s continuing, and those are fun. I learned a bit from this series, though I’m still not really on board with the full robot lifestyle, I guess you could say. I did about 2 hours of busywork this morning (or “donkey work” as David Sparks would say), and I really haven’t automated any of that. But I have gotten in the habit of keeping Claude open while I’m doing work, and using it for little tasks here and there. Here’s some stuff I did today:
- I had it read all of the 2026 statements for a bank account I have, and create an Excel file summarizing performance YTD, including charts. It did a pretty good job. I didn’t get any new insights out of it, but it was nice. I then also had it create a CLAUDE.md file in the folder with the statements, so I can repeat the exercise, updating the Excel file regularly.
- I asked it to read and summarize a mutual fund prospectus that I had just downloaded. It called out one upcoming change that’s kind of important: the fund is converting to an ETF next year. I’d stopped reading prospectuses at all, some years ago, but now I’m trying to get into the habit of downloading them and asking Claude to summarize them for me. There’s often nothing big in them, but sometimes, there’s something important.
Overall, I’ve started using Claude as a way to help me analyze my finances and surface trends and opportunities. It’s working better than I would have expected.
The AI Pro
I’m starting to look at something called The AI Pro, from Rob Conery. I signed up for a free account, and I might talk myself into the $300/year paid membership, though I’m not sure about that. I’ve watched one of the free videos, and it’s pretty good. And the material is definitely aimed at folks like me: senior engineers who are getting curious about getting better at AI-assisted programming.
But he uses a service called Circle to host it, and my company (for some reason) blocks that. So I wouldn’t be able to access any of the content from my work computer. In theory, I could ask work to unblock it, but I’m a little hesitant about requesting an unblock for anything that isn’t strictly work-related. I mean, this is clearly a tool that would help me do my job better, but who knows what the powers-that-be at work would think about me bettering myself on company time. (Yes, I know that sounds cynical, but that’s where we are these days.)
Books
I’m currently reading the first book in the Marlow Murder Club series. I’d previously watched (and enjoyed) the PBS series based on the book. I’m enjoying the book too. And I finished the first book in the Thursday Murder Club series earlier this year. Both of these “murder club” books were (presumably) named in reference to Agatha Christie’s “Tuesday Night Club” from The Thirteen Problems, featuring Miss Marple. So that’s another book I need to read, one of these days.
I went on a Kindle book buying binge during the Prime Day sale a week or two ago. I just counted them up, and it looks like I bought… 15 books. Yikes. They were mostly on sale for $2 or $3, so I didn’t break the bank here. But my “want to read” shelf on Goodreads is now up to 928 books.
I’ve also been wanting to switch more of my book buying over from Amazon Kindle to Kobo, but I haven’t been terribly successful at that. Kobo recently announced integration with StoryGraph. I haven’t set that up, but this could be a nudge in the direction of moving away from Amazon/Goodreads over to something else. So I guess that’s yet another little personal project for a rainy day.
Well, I have more stuff I could write about, but I feel like that’s about it for me today. I’ve spent most of the morning doing busy work, writing this post, and generally not doing the kind of things one should do on a holiday. So I think my next stop is the couch, for a quick afternoon nap.