Farcebook

Author: james

  • If you use ChatGPT to help you learn things, you’re an idiot.

    If you use ChatGPT to help you learn things, you’re an idiot.

    So I thought I’d do some research… But I was wise, I know ChatGPT has a bit of a habit of making up stuff. So I thought “I’ll get you… tell me where you get your information from”.

    I know, “interesting” and “COBOL” is a big ask…

    None of the URLs actually work. They’re all 100% fake. The second response is quite good though – “I made up URLs that look like the kind of URLs you should be looking for when researching this stuff”. So it knows what a URL is, and treats it exactly the same as written text – “you want to know about Cobol? Here’s some words that people string together when talking about this”.

    It does this with code too – “when people write database apps, this is the pattern they all seem to follow. You should go look for code that looks like this…”

    It’s not giving answers, it’s giving us the shape of what an answer looks like, so when we go and search the web ourselves we know what to look for. It’s drawing the perfect looking but false McDonald’s burger you see on the advert, so that when you get the crushed slop in a box they really serve, you can recognise it.

    This folks is why we’re trying to stop kids from using ChatGPT and friends in their work. It generates plausible looking nonsense.

    Life must suck as an English teacher, since they’re trying to teach kids how to write their own plausible looking nonsense. “Write me a story that contains a badger, a horse and a trip to the moon”. ChatGPT could do that well, it’d be hard to tell that from a human made up story.

  • DofE 2023

    DofE 2023

    It’s late April which means once again I enter the national cat-herding competition. The challenge – set 13 students off on three days of camping and walking to complete their silver Duke of Edinburgh.

    Since this is no longer the 1980s and simply kicking kids out of a minibus and saying “see you on Sunday” is frowned upon things are more precise and organised.

    We kick the kids out the minibus with a GPS tracker in their bag and say “see you at the camp!” instead. We then follow them about the countryside using the GPS trackers to see where they’re going and checkpoints to .

    If the trackers can’t get a signal or our phones have no mobile broadband we then start having to do it old school, predicting how far along their routes they are and finding the closest road to that point to go and wait.

    The kids think it’s magic that we just appear seemingly from nowhere. I appear to have perfected the art of arriving at a checkpoint exactly as they do. Almost like I’ve been sat in my car just the other side of a wall waiting, looking at the trackers. Although sometimes it is just good timing and coincidence.

    Risk assessment – Risk: Students might get lost. Mitigation: Watch students with tracker, drive around country lanes like a local trying to catch them when they go off course.

    Risk: Tracker doesn’t work. Mitigation: Estimate where they probably are, go a bit further along, begin a determined Fitbit pleasing route march/jog up the route until you meet them. This never works, but does guarantee that once you’re about 10 minutes from your car the tracker does update and the kids are stood by your car looking puzzled.

    This is a spring/summer activity, so obviously it was snowing on the practise expedition wasn’t it.

  • Got a refund from the TV Licensing people!

    Got a refund from the TV Licensing people!

    No really, I did. This is like the “Bank error in your favour” card in Monopoly.

    For those of you from far-off lands, the concept of needing a licence might seem a bit weird. A TV isn’t some dangerous weapon that needs careful monitoring, nor is it some large lump of dangerous metal. But we here in the UK have the concept of a TV licence. You might know it by another name – the BBC Tax since the payment of a TV licence is used to fund the BBC. That wholesome and benevolent arm of the government we trust with honest and impartial news, quality programming and an utter lack of adverts.

    For those of you in the UK who are so deeply embedded in the culture that tea flows through your veins and you have a red, white and blue mottled look like a stick of rock, the concept of being able to cancel your TV licence might seem a bit odd. Just know you can do it, and it’s only a slightly difficult bureaucratic process where the unmarked part of the TV licence website is in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory – regular British efficiency you’re used to.

    I might get pestered with mildly threatening letters in the future when they think I might need to pay them again. The whole thing is kind of comical and so very very British.

    But yeah anyway my house doesn’t have a TV aerial and ever since Dr Who turned shit I’ve stopped watching iPlayer and I can’t see the point of paying for a service I don’t use. Also it’s perfectly OK for you to continue paying yours, even if your only reason is to do it out of principle. 🫖

    Also notice how I spelled it “licence” consistently even though it say “license” on the letter. That’s because I know how to use my own language…

  • Almost UV light from RGBW LEDs

    Almost UV light from RGBW LEDs

    So it turns out the RGBW LED light strip in my living room has some almost-UV component to its blue light. It is almost UV enough to make some things fluoresce quite vivid colours.

  • According to Fitbit, gardening is cycling

    According to Fitbit, gardening is cycling

    One of FitBit’s more useful features is its ability to automatically detect exercise. I think it uses a combination of your heart rate and how the device is moving.

    The pattern of motion and heart rates must be categorised by FitBit so the app can tell the difference between “swimming” and “running”, etc.

    It’s not a precise system though. Yesterday I went skating for a few hours, and then spent the afternoon working on my allotment.

    I can see how walking and skating are similar. They both take relatively low amounts of effort and have a rhythmic stepping pattern.

    Gardening and cycling though don’t seem that similar. Then I remembered I spent a while using my awesome battery powered rotavator to turn over some of the ground, and I guess the shaking of my arms and the effort of trying to stop the thing escaping looks a bit similar to a bike rolling along a dirt track.

    This is a bike now. Probably not comfortable to sit on!