Every Day AI – Outsourcing My Brain

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It has been over year since I last posted about AI, or anything else for that matter. In fact I’ve been chatting more with AI chatbots than with a blog for sure, and that leaves me with mixed feelings. After a year of use, I’ve actually developed some opinions on how this stuff works at a very fundamental level.

Every day AI:
Basically I use one or more chatbots pretty much every single day. Essentially, I use them as a front end to the web. In the past I would have done a Google search for something and ended up with links to individual web sites. An AI chatbot will search multiple sites, and synthesize the results in a conversational manner. This is great for things that I don’t remember, or one-off things that I don’t care to remember, such as command-line syntax for batch files, or obscure definitions or historical events. A chatbot is wonderful if you want to find out something about an historical figure, and yes, of course, it probably uses Wikipedia as one of the sources.

Here’s a selection of random queries from Claud.Ai for the past month:

  • Find Active Directory Groups that have “RDP” in their name
  • Availability of Claude AI app for the MacOS?
  • Checking SQL Server Database Read-Only Permissions with Powershell
  • How to release the coin battery connector for Lenovo T15 laptop
  • Find a source for parts for an HP404 laser printer
  • Remove Bluetooth devices in Windows 10

Apart from the work-related queries, an AI chatbot is helpful for other aspects of life:

  • Understanding Car Dealer Documentation Fees
  • Find Procreate brushes for mimicking woodcut prints
  • Used Car Financing Requirements
  • Understanding good credit ratings.
  • Troubleshooting Tire Rotation Noise.
  • Reversing Age-Related Muscle Loss with Resistance Training
  • Optimal Car Oil Change Frequency
  • Detering Skunks around the House
  • Overview of German Expressionist Art and Artists
  • Understanding the Cyrillic Alphabet

My current chatbot of choice is Claude.Ai. I like that it replies almost immediately after I submit a query, and it seems to be fairly accurate. When I run out of free queries for the day I switch to Microsoft Co-pilot which is a front end for ChatGPT. Sometimes I will go to ChatGPT directly.

When I said I had mixed feelings about using chatbots, I am wondering if, in the process of outsourcing my brain, I’m actually reducing brain activity to the extent that I’m losing search and reasoning capability that would otherwise remain, much in the way that its been suggested that navigation and mapping applications have destroyed peoples’ ability to follow a paper map. Still I wonder if might be especially useful for picking up the slack that inevitably accompanies growing older.

And what of non-profits? Why not ask Claude? So I did and got the following suggestions:

Notice how Claude concluded with a helpful question whether I needed further elaboration. But then ….

Say Hello to ChatGPT with Powershell

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ChatGPT, Bard, and other AI models are fun. A good way to dig into their capability and limitations are to access them via their API or applications programming interface. From what I’ve seen, many examples of this are in Python. So far, I hadn’t seen much for Powershell…so I thought it would be interesting to say hello to ChatGPT using Powershell.

Like any API, you need to establish an authorization code which identifies you to the API and which allows billing. The authcode essentially serves as a name and password for your call to ChatGPT. First you have to create an account:

Sign Up for OpenAI API

To sign up for the OpenAI API, visit OpenAI’s website and fill out the form. Once your request is approved, you’ll receive an invitation to join the API.

Get an API Key

After you’ve been accepted into the API, you’ll need to generate an API key. To do this, navigate to the API Dashboard and click on the “Generate API Key” button. Your key will be a string of alphanumeric numbers about 48 characters long.

Choose your model

OpenAI has several different models going back from ChatGPT4. Each model is a little different. Some are supposed to be more suitable for things like chatbots, others are better for searching, and of course the graphic model Dall-E generates (argueably horrible) pictures. For purposes of our sample here…. we’ll use the “text-Davinci-03” model which is an earlier version of the ChatGPT3 series.

Powershell Code to Connect:

The Powershell Code uses the PowerShell Invoke-RestMethod cmdlet, and its use is surprisingly similar to other API calls for other services. Here is the full code:

$headers = @{
‘Content-Type’ = ‘application/json’
‘Authorization’ = ‘Bearer yourAPICodeGoesHere12334455’
}

$body = @{
prompt = ‘Hello ChatGPT!’
temperature = 0.7
model = ‘text-davinci-003’
}

$bodyjson= ConvertTo-Json -inputobject $body

$response = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri ‘https://api.openai.com/v1/completions’ `
-Method ‘POST’ `
-Headers $headers `
-Body $bodyjson

 

The prompt parameter specifies the text prompt to send to the model. The temperature parameter controls the “creativity” of the response, with higher values generating more novel responses. The model parameter specifies which model to use – in this case, text-davinci-003.

It works! Run the Powershell script, and you’ll get the following:

‘Hi there! How can I help you today?

API Documentation

You can find more information about the text-davinci-003 model in the OpenAI API documentation. The documentation provides details on the available parameters, example responses, and more.

Payment and Charges

It’s worth noting that to use the OpenAI API, you’ll need to provide a payment method and will be charged an initial $5.00. More information on payment and charges can be found on the API pricing page.

Microsoft for Non-Profits / NGOs

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I’ve been getting emails from Microsoft for the past several weeks about a new (?) initiative for non-profits. While it is always a little suspicious about getting help from the Microsoft behemouth (“We’re from Microsoft, and we’re here to help”) its also worth a look. To cut the chase, it looks as if Microsoft is de-emphasizing traditional programs that run on your own computer that you obtain with a perpetual license in favor of pushing people towards their subscription model.

Its not as if we’re not using Microsoft already. Windows, Microsoft Office, and various cloud services from Microsoft already make a lot of sense even before their new push into the non-profit sector.

How much?

Microsoft 365 Business Premium

So, a cursory glance a the the web site, suggests that you can receive all of the services and applications in Microsoft 365 Business Premium for free for up to ten users. The rack rate appears to be $20.00 per user per month….so this is a pretty good deal.

The Premium service also includes the familiar desktop versions of the Microsoft applications, including Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams. That said, I have been trying the web versions of these applications through my web browser on my aging Mac, and those seem to work reasonably well. The web versions are free to anyone with a “home” Microsoft account, like a hotmail.com account.

Traditionally, our advice has always been to look to TechSoup for heavily discounted software products. It looks like they are on top of the changes that Microsoft is expecting to have in place by April 2022, and they have a detailed discussion of what the program will look like.

JSON for PowerShell Part 1

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JSON, otherwise known as “Javascript object notation” is a fundamental way of representing key/value pairs. In database terms this translates as a field name (the key) and the field contents (the value).

Let’s show a single contact record in JSON, with two phone numbers, work and home.

{    
"FName":"Myron", 
"Lname":"Kapoodle",
"Address1":"123 Anywhere Lane",
 "Address2":"Apartment 404",
 "City":"BigTown",
  "State":"AZ",
    "Zip":"12345",
    "PhoneNumbers":[       
 {"type":"home","number":"920 234-3424" },
 {"type":"work","number":"920 535-2312"  }
   ]
}

A couple of characteristics:

The complete JSON structure is enclosed in its own curly brackets
If there is more than one record, then the whole structure is contained with square brackets, and the individual records are separated by a comma. This applies to nested records too, as in the case of the two phone numbers for the individual.

Below is the notation for two contact records. In this case, the whole structure is enclosed in square brackets. The individual contact records are enclosed in curly brackets and the two records are separated by a comma.

[    
{"FName":"Myron",
 "Lname":"Kapoodle",
 "Address1":"123 Anywhere Lane",
 "Address2":"Apartment 404",
 "City":"BigTown",
 "State":"AZ",
"Zip":"12345",
"PhoneNumbers":[ {"type":
"home","number":"920 234 3424"},
"type":"work","number":"920 535-2312"}]
}
,
{
"FName":"Myra",
“Lname":"Kapoodlova",
"Address1":"123 Anywhere Lane",
"Address2":"Apartment 404",
"City":"BigTown",
"State":"AZ",
"Zip":"12345",
"PhoneNumbers":[ {"typee":
"home","number":"920 234-3424"},
{"type":"work","number":"920 535-2312"}]
}
]

When writing JSON, its helpful to have an automatic checker for syntax. One such is JSONLint at http://jsonlint.com. In Visual Studio Code you can use the Shift-Alt-F within the editor to nicely format JSON code.

The rules of JSON are summarized at JSONLint, but basically include:

  • Keys are enclosed in double quotes.
  • All data elements that are not a boolean or integers are enclosed in double-quotes.
  • Individual entities (i.e. records) are separated by a comma
  • Each key/value pair is separated by a comma
  • Each entity is enclosed by curly brackets.

Since I’m editing JSON in Visual Studio Code, there is more how VSC handles JSON in the Microsoft docs at JSON editing in Visual Studio Code.

Powershell has a two commands that deal directly with JSON. 

PS M:\PSFolder> get-command *json*     

CommandType     Name                    Version    Source
-----------     ----                    -------    ------
Cmdlet          ConvertFrom-Json        3.1.0.0    Microsoft.PowerShell.Utility
Cmdlet          ConvertTo-Json          3.1.0.0    Microsoft.PowerShell.Utility

These convert Powershell objects to and from JSON notation. More on that in Part 2.

Install PowerShell Core on the Mac

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My ancient iMac, late 2012,  is still able to use the latest and greatest MacOS. At this writing, it is running MacOS Mojave 10.14.2, and I’m trying to install PowerShell Core 6.0 with Visual Studio Code on the machine.

PowerShell Core 6.0 is the open source cross-platform version of Microsoft PowerShell for Windows, and is available for Windows, Linux and the Mac.  In hindsight,  it might make more sense to test this all out on a Linux virtual machine before mucking up the MacOS.

The first thing to do is to install a package manager called Homebrew on to the Mac. This is the package manager which interfaces with GitHub to fetch the packages necessary for PowerShell.

Homebrew is available at: https://brew.sh    It gives you a command line to insert in the Mac terminal program which runs a script to fetch and install the Homebrew package manager.

Before pasting the command within the terminal prompt, you need to create a terminal session with “elevated” or root permissions.

Start Terminal

type su <your account name>   that is,  the command “su” and you’re user account.

You’ll be prompted for a password,  put in your Mac password.

On my machine this returns a prompt on the command line of bash-d.2$ At this point, I can paste the command below, and Homebrew will be installed.  The installation took about ten minutes.

Once the installation is complete,  you’ll see a message within the terminal:

Now that we have the package manager installed, we can go ahead and install Powershell

bash-3.2$ brew cask install powershell

This downloads the files from GitHub  Accoring to the prompts this will be version 6.1.

Once the packages are downloaded,  you’ll be prompted again for the root password:

and now, if you type pwsh you can start powershell which returns a prompt PS

type $psversiontable to see the current version.

FileMaker: One to Many Reports

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FileMaker is great for putting together a quick form for any number of data-entry chores.  By using a FileMaker portal you can put together a master/detail form that will keep track of transactions based on some kind of header record.  Typical examples include:

  • Invoices and line items
  • Customers and interactions
  • Prospects and sales efforts.
  • Jobs and application sequence.

These forms are especially helpful when you need to keep track of a “pipeline”.   For example when applying for a job, there are multiple steps involved:

  • Applied for the job
  • Received an eMail acknowledgement
  • First phone interview
  • Second phone interview
  • Scheduled live interview

At any one time you may have multiple jobs somewhere in the process, and a typical status report would show a list of each job and its current status.

This brings us  back to the question of displaying the jobs and activities. We’re looking for a “report” which has a list of jobs, and underneath each job the list of activities that have taken place for the job.

JobHunt FileMaker portals display the related records for each master record but a portal almost by definition shows only a specific number of transactions at a time in a scrollable window.  For a printed report, where we want to see all of the related records, we need to define the report without the portal.  This is done using FileMaker’s “sub summary” band when creating the report layout.  The trick is to start defining the report using the transaction table as the basis of the report displaying the fields in the body band and referencing the master table in the sub summary band.  When setting this up,  it looks something like this:

JobHunt2.png

Note the report bands on the extreme left,  with the body band at the bottom, the sub summary above it,  and the report header band at the top.   One clue that the basis of the report is the transaction table is that at the top of the screen, it shows “Table:Transactions” .  Also, the reference to the related field in the subsummary band are prefaced with the double colonon.

The ::RprtHeader  field is actually a calculated field which consists of the employer’s name, and the job being advertised by the employer.  This solves the problem of applying to more than one job at a single employer, in that it effectively provides a unique field name to display the transactions for just one job at a time.

 

 

Moving to the Cloud – with Box Part 1

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We’re moving to the cloud with cloud storage for working files. Old news of course,  haven’t we had cloud storage for years already?  Of course… let me count the ways:

  • Adobe Creative Cloud Libraries
  • Apple iDrive
  • Microsoft OneDrive
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Amazon Web Services
  • Google Drive
  • DropBox
  • Box

A quick Google search also shows up some open source solutions that you could install on your Linux server.  But today, we’ll take a look at Box.

The wonderful TechSoup has an offer for Box at the “starter” level  for 10 users for $84.00/year. This is just about right for our workgroup; we currently have 8 full and part-timers on our team, which leaves 2 additional slots available for what we hope we have for growth in the next year. While we do have an office, we are a distributed group. Each full-timer spends a minimum of one day per week outside the office, and our part time employees either work from home, or come in during only part of their week.

What we’re trying to replace here is is an in-office rack-mounted physical server. (remember those?) which sits in a corner of the office roaring away, much as it has for at least ten years. This is a Linux server running the Samba file-management system which is solid and reliable, but a pain to manage. We typically map to drive letters on each person’s workstation:

Drive F: – This letter is mapped to the user’s personal folder on the server. So, my case, my F: drive is mapped to //server/home/larry

Drive U: – This letter is mapped to our “Main” shared folder, under which there are about a dozen departmental or functional sub-folders including Admin, Creative, Editorial, Grants,  etc.

On Linux if you know how Samba works; (and a GUI interface is really helpful…) you can restrict each of the folders to groups of appropriate users. So, for example, you can restrict the HR folder to your bookkeeper,  HR manager and your E.D. There is an additional complication with Samba in that you have to maintain a parallel set of Linux logins and home directories for each Samba user.  Box provides the ability to maintain a similar set of permissions and file restrictions within a web interface. Even thought the “starter” version isn’t as versatile as their full version it still allows you assign individual users as “collaborators” for individual folders.

Other user requirements:

  • Cross-platform availability,  Mac, Windows, iOS, Android
  • Native applications for each platform.
  • Available from anywhere with an internet connection
  • Ability to sync between the cloud and the device.
  • Butt-simple interface that passes the five minute test.

Next time we’ll get into more detail about Box.

 

 

 

 

MailChimp: Data mining your subscriber lists.

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MailChimp Logo

To find out more about your MailChimp lists, create a segment.

I’m not sure why it took me so long to figure this out, (just dumb, I guess..) but MailChimp actually has a pretty good built-in querying ability directly from the management interface.  It involves the segmenting function, where you create subsets of your list.  MailChimp calls these subsets segments, and the classic use for this is to break up a large list so that you can test different segments by using different subject lines, or mailing times.

From a database perspective, it looks like this:

MailChimp vs. Database
create a segment = create a query
segment = query results, aka a “cursor”
segmenting options = query criteria, aka  an SQL WHERE clause
saved segment = saved query results

In SQL, this would be the equivalent of:

SELECT * FROM <my eMail list> WHERE <my criteria> INTO <my segment>;

The available criteria are fixed, but there are a lot of useful ones. You can combine up to five criteria in a single segment request.  For example, let’s say you want to see how your list is performing. You can query how many subscribers opened:

  • all of your last five campaigns
  • one or more of the last campaigns
  • none of your last campaigns

The criteria are chosen from a convenient drop-down list.

Mailchimp Segment Drop-Down

Mailchimp Segment Drop-Down

To see the results of this query,  click on the  “Preview Segment” button at the bottom of the dialog box.

MailChimp - Segment Results

MailChimp – Segment Results

One thing you may note in the listing above, is a field called “Grade Level”.   We include this field on our MailChimp sign-up form. It will be populated only if we acquired the user through that form and if they choose to give us that information. We also ask for zip code.

The “Contact Rating” field, with the stars, rates the quality of the contact based on their campaign activity and the length of time that they have been on the list. Oddly enough, new acquisitions start out with two stars. If they fail to respond to several campaigns, then they are demoted to one star. These stars are the basis of determining how to pare down your list; eventually you might consider removing 1-star contacts altogether, or sending them a “re-engagement” eMail beforehand. This is well documented on the MailChimp web site. To cut to the chase…  4 and 5 star members are engaged, 3 star members either have low activity, or haven’t been on the list long enough to earn a higher rating.