Andrew's AI Crash Course

Update 1: added an album of AI edit quirks below

Update 2: added cautious optimism & ended with

Update 3: AI data centers are not what you think! 

I mentioned before that AI will need skilled writers more than skilled coders. Forbes wrote here about a US efforts in that regard. The UK government has a playbook here.

Here is are lessons-learned in Andrew Zolnai Blog here and Andrew Zolnai my Professional Medium Channel (my Personal Channel is indexed here):

Andrew Zolnai Blog

Community Engagement Series (2023)

22: AI Prompt Engineering Trial 1

23: AI Prompt Engineering Trial 2

AI Series (2024)

"AI for the rest of us"

"AI for the rest of us", Part II

"AI for the rest of us", Part III

"AI for the rest of us", Part IV

"AI for the rest of us", Part V

"AI for the rest of us", Part VI

"AI for the rest of us", Part VII

Medium Professional Channel

2017

The robots aren’t coming… they’re here!

2022

The future is digital… only it’s not what you think!

2023

AI isn’t coming… it’s here!

When is AI not AI?

Stop AI scraping your Internet data

When is AI good AI?

2024

When is IT bad IT?

When is AI more than AI?

A divergence of AI

2025

Thither AI?

Photos on Flickr

AI edited in Google Photos

These AI-edited shots aren't about the people at all—the are just for no/show—but rather about elements that detract from the photo; in other words, both tools and pitfalls in this narrow AI context. I don't think it's worth it, however, do you? Pros like Martin Bond here and Paul Nickeln here told me they are unequivocally against it!

Cautious optimism

Here are two  case studies that point to a useful role for AI: to aid in accelerating initial research or preparatory trial&error, rather than as a replacement of actual work; it still needs to be done by humans with the help of traditional IT, again, with complementary AI tech. Dont't you agree?

• Stanford professor who co-founded 4 startups: How to use AI as a 'force multiplier' to start a business - Source: CNBC
• Google's AI 'co-scientist' cracked 10-year superbug problem in just 2 days - Source: LiveScience

Caveat

Everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask about AI data centers...

 

This wraps up a blog started 15½ yrs. ago  - banner menu & sidebar index on desktop - as I move on in my life’s next phase… Thanks for reading!

East Anglia Peatlands revisited

Update1: see clipped oroginal and working vector datasets posted as detailed at bottom.

Update 2: added DIY map-mapping workshops & notes to help citzen science

Update 3: here at the end is the relevance of this sort of effort in a broader context

As news abounds about Arctic Permafrost & Peatlands degrading faster than thought (Copilot), this may be a good time to bring back some Natural England and Environment Agency data under Open Government License (OGL, National Archives). The upshot is that returning peatlands to their original state is the biggest climate change mitigator in the UK detailed here & here: briefly, peatlands either degraded thru neglect or converted to farm land, not only shrinks & stops being floodwater catchment, but it converts carbon sinks through sphagnum moss into carbon emitters thru windborne dried peat. In other words, re-watering peatlands dwarf efforts from other mitigation of climate change (see sources at bottom).

Beechey Island update

 A previous blogpost here almost 7 years ago showed how to use a niche product to create detailed elevation model of Beechey Island. Posted on Google Earth here (download & open it in Google Earth, see 'GE' below), it allowed to add a Parks Canada photo of the Franklin Expedition landing site: it was the first one uncovered by University of Alberta's Owen Beatty in 1984, the year before I spent a summer in the Arctic 'nearby' the other side of King William Isl. on the west shore mid-Boothia Peninsula... We were in fact told to report any unusual findings!

London Thames Barrier update

Update 1: here is the transcript of Hansen's latest "in plain English" (alt. here)

Update 2: here is the Climate Cultures article this map was used in, thanks Lola Perrin.

Update 3: here at the end is the relevance of this sort of effort in a broader context

Two weeks ago I recreated Sea Level Rise (SLR) and Risk of Flooding (RoF) maps for the lower Thames River near the Thames Barrier (blog) for a WhatsApp Group considering the future of its ageing infrastructure w.r.t. recent climate extremes. This week came a global and urgent update affecting Sea Level Rise, by James Hansen who sounded the alarm ~ 35 yrs ago (go to 1981 & 1988 in Medium): a paper incl. supplementary materials "Global Warming Has Accelerated" (Columbia) c/w companion webinar (Columbia).

A brief web history of mine

As I wind down my blog posts and I quit socials, perhaps this may be a good time to reflect on my Web journey that started almost 40 years ago (a recap of my IT journey is here)...

But wait... Tim Berners-Lee didn't invent it til just over 35 years ago (Wikipedia)! That's because I had a site dubbed HTTP in 1986, see inset below:  "world wide web" hadn't been coined yet, but I knew as a student at late 70's University of Calgary of Ted Nelson's failed Project Xanadu (Wikipedia), to try and link all forms of knowledge via hypertext; it failed partly due to Nelson's eccentricity,  partly because there was no global network to carry it. 

London Thames Barrier revisited

Update 2: see renewed Sea-level Rise extents according to new information here 

Update 1: see addition at bottom... thanks to our indefatigable London climate activists!

Further to my original blog post 3½ yrs. ago here, I was asked to share maps of the area surrounding the Thames Barrier (Wikipedia): A WhatsApp group considered the necessity for a second barrier under Climate Change that increases both flooding and sea level seasonal elevations. 

Exhuming my thesis ... an update

Update 2:  ... aaaand I didn't plan on having yet another one here!

Update 1: this is my last post as I move on. Didn't plan it that way, but ending where I began  _is_ satisfying.

New Years Eve 2000 racing by Greenwich Meridian

Update: note a dash of AI mixed in at the bottom for fun

Our TV rung in 2025 live in Paris in my time zone, and six hours later in NYC dropping its ball in Times Square; nothing matches however this cracking event in London to usher in the New Millennium: barges were aligned in the middle of the River Thames, spaced exactly 1 s. apart as the earth rotated past midnight GMT in London, from the Meridian at the Millennium Dome to the east, to Vauxhall Bridge to the west.

Exhuming my thesis area over 40 years later

Update: see here papers a decade later that point also to precambrian terranes.

My 1982 M.Sc. thesis, Regional cross section of the Southern Province adjacent to Lake Huron, Ontario: implications for the tectonic significance of the Murray Fault Zone (ResearchGate) proposed a plate-tectonic (Wikipedia) setting around 1.9 billion years ago, in the Proterozoic (late Pre-Cambrian). I presumed there was another buried land mass south of what I called the Manitoulin Island Discontinuity. While plate tectonics was well established in the later Phanerozoic (Wikipedia) record, it took a lot longer to be accepted earlier in the geologic time scale with lot scanter rock record to go by (more at the bottom).

Senegal delta sea level rise map

Five friends at Arts & Metiers engineering school in Paris took a ten month leave to sail around the North Atlantic: Lez'Arts Marins (here) sail south from Britanny past the Azores & Madeira to Senegal for a moth humanitarian aid project, west across to Martinique and northeast N of Scotland to Scandinavia and back.