But let’s get real. If anyone tells you it’s not useful, they idiots. If they think it’s going to magically go away, they’re delusional.

Search engines have been degrading for years! The quality of results is getting worse and worse. Something has to change. AI is that something. It’s not perfect, but it’s what we have. And from a work context, if you don’t use it, you’re going to be left behind. It’s that simple.

So, I use it extensively to research things and to help me work, so I thought it might be interesting to share some of the prompts I’ve used over the last week, along with some of the followup questions. I’m currently using ChatGPT only. In some cases I’ve redacted huge boring chunks of code back and forth, but you’ll get the idea.

Securing my website.

• “How do I set a Content-Security-Policy header in nginx?”
  • “Am I able to use Content-Security-Policy-Report-Only if I have no URL to point that to?”
  • “Hey, whist I’m here - what curl command can i use to test http3?”

Random Questions

(I also got personal. I do treat it like a person sometimes. Queue Bluesky rage.)

• “I’d like a 1 page brief on GCP’s CloudSQL.”

  • “What is Kong (from a engineering / devops context)”
  • “Are you able to draw diagrams?”

  Spoiler alert: Yes, it can - but not very well AT ALL

  • What software or service could I use to make a single page A3 sized cheat-sheet for interviews and technical chats

  • “Sorry, I’m juggling eleventy-seven things today and my questions are all over the shop. How are you today ChatGPT? People getting used to gpt-5 yet? I gather it was a tough first few weeks. (I honestly had no complains at all aside from some slowness on your first days)”

It started it’s reply to that last one with “I’m steady, thanks for asking - multitasking right along with you.”

😆 🤜🤛

Working on my Radio Page

• “Is there any way to play the audio only from a video/mp2t stream in a web page?”
  • “Hmm. I have this web page that I use to play radio streams. That “test” stream doesn’t work. [provides the code] What’s wrong with it?”
  • Questions about specific radio stations
  • Lots of discussion over how to parse XML in javascript
  • Lots of discussion over how to parse “Server-Sent Events (SSE)” in javascript
  • “How can I include a MIT license at the top of a html file ?”
  • Lots of discussion over how to parse plain vanilla text in javascript
  • “Hey, given this index.html - [I provide the code] - I’d like to add a discrete button on the site that changes it from a light theme to a dark theme and back. But defaulting to whatever the user’s browser is set to. How can I do that?”
  • “When I put in a URL into Facebook - where does it find the image it puts into the post?”

Return a Pixel 9 Pro XL for Trade-in

• “I have a pixel 9 pro XL that I need to return for a trade in. Can you give me step by step instructions for everything I need to do to wipe and reset it?”

Curious about Kirpans

• “Can Sikh’s use that knife they carry for self defence, or is that not allowed?”

Working on a bug @ Work

• “Where in the AWS console do I see Route53 resolver endpoints?”

  • “I can’t see any menu item called “DNS settings” ?”

  Just to note, this one returned absolute nonsense. I ended up finding it myself.

Transferring 14,000 music files from MacBook to my new Pixel 10 Pro XL.

• “How do you transfer a lot of files from a MacBook to android phone in 2025. The old tool they used to use isn’t maintained anymore. Are there any open source tools?”
  • “Why is OpenMTP so WILDLY slow?”
  • “Ok, next question, on Android, what’s the most popular music player for local music files? specifically mp3s and flac? Well maintained open source ones preferably?”
  • “Can you tell me the URLs of VLC and Phonograph?”
  • “How do i install adb with brew?”
  • “And, how do I know where to copy the files on the android? Is there any way to do a directory listing?”
  • “adb shell doesn’t see the device?”

Trying to remember my own military history

• “What was the military action that happened in Iraq around October 1994”

  • “Ok, with Operation Vigilant Warrior, do you know which squadrons of the USAF from Pope AFB were sent to Saudi and where they were sent?”
  • “I was there with the F-16s”
  • “No, there were F-16 from Pope AFB back in those days. I was sure we were the Flying Tigers.”
  • “Were any of those F-16 sent to an air base near Riyadh?”

  ChatGPT was deeply trying to suggest the Flying Tigers were A-10 Warthogs. I had to keep insisting they were F-16s too. I’m quite proud to have been a part of a squadron that John Wayne once portrayed in a movie. ;-) I don’t blame ChatGPT for that though. The F-16 long left Pope AFB.

Some research. I really just wanted to know if Mongo was a NOSQL database.

• “Can i get a 1 page summary of MongoDB from a devops / engineering perspective?”

I’ve thought about building a personal wiki for YEARS but can’t find one I like.

• “What’s the most popular wiki for businesses these days. I’m thinking about building a knowledge base. I’m looking for a good WYSIWYG editor that lets me link to other articles with ease.”
  • “I think, of those, I’d like one I can self host, and don’t need to pay for it, but Media Wiki is way too complex for normal humans perhaps?”
  • “Both of those sound nice but here’s the decider: Which one “looks” more modern”
  • “Let’s go with wiki.js! Hit me up with a “first deployment plan” with the target being a docker compose powered system.”

As always, you can add my RSS feed to your reader of choice and if you made it this far thanks for reading!

Chris

• The heat’s been brutal this week and the A/C in the front room’s been hard at work keeping us cool.

• My contract got renewed with like 2 days to spare! I’m not sure what my next move is now. I can’t keep taking 3 month extensions and not knowing until the very last minute if I’m going to have a job or not. If anyone needs a senior devops / platform engineer on a remote contract basis, please get in touch.

• I tripped backwards over my own feet and a water hose at the allotment and came down hard on my already dodgy hips. Mostly just embarrassing, but I’ve been horribly sore ever since. On the plus side, everything is growing well despite the rain being almost nonexistent this year.

• I finally got around to sending my Canon RF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM lens off to be repaired. It took a rather brutal fall about a year back and whist it still worked, I knew it was in a pretty bad way internally. They got back to me today and it needs - a new barrel, replacement of the front and rear elements, and a new focus motor. The total cost is going to be around £1000. I guess I should be thankful that it can be repaired at all, but it still stings.

• After paying Adobe’s extortionate subscription fees for years, I’ve now stopped paying for Adobe Creative Cloud - and thusly Photoshop and Lightroom. I’ve replacing them with Affinity Photo but that’s gonna take some getting used to. Later Update: Affinity Photo was NOT a good replacement for Lightroom. It would have been a great replacement for photoshop, but that’s not what I needed. I mostly process RAW files and export them to JPEGs for the web so I ended up going with free Darktable.

I’ve Started Watching

• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. How have I not been watching this sooner?
• Wolf King on Netflix.
• The 2nd season of The Sandman on Netflix.
• The next season of Dan da Dan on Crunchyroll.

As always, you can add my RSS feed to your reader of choice and if you made it this far thanks for reading!

Chris