![\"Claude](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/347251/2026/33591c79db.jpg\")
\nClaude CodeI’ve been trying out Siri AI over the past few days. Overall, I’m very impressed and see the potential.
\nHowever, it seems the one thing the old Siri was really good at got nerfed. All I want to do is set a reminder, but Siri AI rewrites it and doesn’t always set the date and time correctly.
\n", "date_published": "2026-06-28T14:13:42-04:00", "url": "https://focustivity.blog/2026/06/28/ive-been-trying-out-siri.html", "tags": ["AI","Apps"] }, { "id": "http://focustivity.micro.blog/2026/04/19/openclaw-not-today.html", "title": "OpenClaw, Not Today", "content_html": "I almost spent the day trying out OpenClaw on my personal PC. I was tempted because I find the process fun and interesting.
\nI talked myself out of it because I know I have no real use for this type of system in my personal life. I would never use a setup like this for work, as I work with many clients.
\nOh well.
\n", "date_published": "2026-04-19T16:05:00-04:00", "url": "https://focustivity.blog/2026/04/19/openclaw-not-today.html", "tags": ["AI"] }, { "id": "http://focustivity.micro.blog/2026/02/21/playing-with-claude-code-and.html", "title": "Playing with Claude Code and Claude Cowork", "content_html": "Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve dabbled with Claude Code and Claude Cowork to see what it’s all about. I love tinkering with technology, after all.
\nClaude Cowork is essentially a less technical way to do the same thing Claude Code can do. It can be used to manipulate files in specified folders as well as connect to the many online services you may have. You can then automate tasks, do research, clean up files, create or manage notes, and the list goes on.
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\nAs usual, I love playing with this stuff. I like to know how it works. I’m interested in discovering the systems that can be automated by this technology.
\nYet, at the end of the day, I have no particular use for it in my personal life. My life is intentionally simple. I don’t need automation. I don’t need an LLM to create notes or make connections. I don’t need it to tell me what I should be working on.
\nOn the other hand, my work life is very complicated, especially recently. I don’t want to use Claude or other LLMs for work because of the nature of the content. My organization does have Microsoft Copilot.
\nI use Microsoft Copilot every day to take meeting notes, find information across the organization, do research on particular problems, and write simple scripts.
\nRecently, I’ve been using Copilot to troubleshoot issues, and when I’m done I have it create a Word document that summarizes the issue, the troubleshooting process, and the solution. I then add this document to our project files. Next time I have a similar issue, the solution pops up in my search, and it saves a ton of time. Copilot has replaced search, in a good way.
\nDespite its usefulness, there is no way these tools could take over my job, or anyone else’s job in my company. That would be a disaster. They require specific instructions and guidance to extract the usefulness from them.
\nCertainly, this will change over time, but I’m optimistic that we will change as well, and will learn and adapt as time goes on.
\n", "date_published": "2026-02-21T14:20:00-04:00", "url": "https://focustivity.blog/2026/02/21/playing-with-claude-code-and.html", "tags": ["AI"] }, { "id": "http://focustivity.micro.blog/2026/01/24/using-claude-code-to-manage.html", "title": "Using Claude Code to Manage Your Obsidian Vault", "content_html": "\nClaude Code
I’ve been seeing many posts and videos talking about using Claude Code to manage their local Obsidian vaults.
\nI played around with this and found it potentially very valuable for someone (like me) who enjoys making notes but doesn’t enjoy the organization of said notes. Or for processing meeting notes and other work-related data and acting as a project manager assistant that handles all the grunt work I would rather not do myself.
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\nIf you consider Claude Code to be a developer’s tool, you wouldn’t be wrong, but what Claude Code really does is work with local files. That includes markdown files, making it a great tool for note takers who are following the File overApp philosophy.
\nIf your initial reaction is something like, “I’ll never use AI to write my notes,” then I’ll say I agree, but you should look at the other possibilities. You can instruct Claude to never write your notes, only organize them, and provide assistance following your specific instructions.
\nI’m not a heavy user of Obsidian (yet). Recently, I started using Obsidian for writing my blog posts and then publishing them to Ghost using the Ghosty Posty plugin. So, I thought of a few ways I could potentially use Claude Code to help me out (without doing any of the writing). I’m not going to talk about them yet, but I want to first spend some time with it and see what works for me.
\nHere’s how to get started. I’m not going into detail here because there are so many variables (Mac or Windows, etc.). You can search or use Claude, to give you the exact steps for your scenario.
\nHere are the high-level steps I took on my Windows PC:
\nclaude while in your root folder to get started.Some alternative options include using the Obsidian MCP or Claudian plugins. I haven’t tried these, so I don’t know what advantages or disadvantages they may have.
\nYou can create a profile in the terminal that automatically loads Claude Code in your Obsidian Vault so it is ready to go every time.
\ncmd.exe /k cd /d C:\\{your obsidian vault root folder} && claudeC:\\{your obsidian vault root folder}Now, every time you load that profile, it will be ready to go. You can also set it as the default profile if you don’t usually use Terminal for other things.
\nThe next thing you’ll want to do is create the CLAUDE.md markdown file in your root directory. This file provides Claude the instructions and memory that tell Claude exactly how you want it to help you in your Obsidian vault.
\nIn the CLAUDE.md file, you’ll want to add the purpose of your vault, how your vault is organized, and each of the processes you use to organize your files. I suggest using Claude Code itself to help you write these instructions.
\n\n\nHelp me create my CLAUDE.md file for this Obsidian vault. Ask me questions about how I would like to use this vault. Use the existing file structure and metadata as a guide.
\n
Claude should walk you through some questions and finally update your Claude.md file for you. You can view it directly in Obsidian and make any adjustments you want.
\nAs you use Claude Code, if you tell it to fix something or do something new, you can also ask it to update the instructions so it always knows how to handle the situation going forward. This is powerful and allows you to continually expand Claude’s capabilities and precisely control how it helps you.
\nI’ll continue playing around with Claude Code and will send out a new post with anything I find interesting or useful. If you need any clarification, please let me know!
\n", "date_published": "2026-01-24T15:47:00-04:00", "url": "https://focustivity.blog/2026/01/24/using-claude-code-to-manage.html", "tags": ["AI"] }, { "id": "http://focustivity.micro.blog/2025/10/29/insights-from-a-notebooklm-podcast.html", "title": "Insights from a NotebookLM podcast talking about my site", "content_html": "Just for fun, I created a Google NotebookLM notebook and set this site as its only source. I then listened to the podcast Deep Dive. The results were quite interesting.
\nOne of the main discussion points was how “the author”—me—seems obsessed with finding the “best” app, constantly switching between blog hosting platforms, browsers, notebooks, e-ink devices, etc.
\nYeah, already knew I had a problem. But I’d argue it’s not always about finding the best app or hardware but rather about satisfying my curiosity. I enjoy tinkering.
\nIt was weird listening to two podcast “hosts” talking about the content of my site and making connections between my posts. I actually found it quite helpful. It walked through my posts about the various e-ink tablets I’ve tried over time, among many other fascinating connections.
\n", "date_published": "2025-10-29T15:06:00-04:00", "url": "https://focustivity.blog/2025/10/29/insights-from-a-notebooklm-podcast.html", "tags": ["AI"] }, { "id": "http://focustivity.micro.blog/2025/10/07/ai-slop-a-video-from.html", "title": "AI Slop - A video from Kurzgesagt", "content_html": "The Kurzgesagt team has released another great video, this one about how AI content is taking over human-created content and making it harder to find facts on the internet.
\nThey have a store with calendars, art books, and other merchandise that helps support the channel.
\nAI slop is killing our channel
\nhttps://youtu.be/_zfN9wnPvU0?si=USGQ-T7uOlg29B18
\n", "date_published": "2025-10-07T15:54:00-04:00", "url": "https://focustivity.blog/2025/10/07/ai-slop-a-video-from.html", "tags": ["AI"] }, { "id": "http://focustivity.micro.blog/2025/01/10/ultimately-that-is-all-chatgpt.html", "content_html": "\n\n", "date_published": "2025-01-10T09:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://focustivity.blog/2025/01/10/ultimately-that-is-all-chatgpt.html", "tags": ["AI"] }, { "id": "http://focustivity.micro.blog/2024/12/26/ai-in-its-current-state.html", "title": "AI, in its current state, is a rubber duck", "content_html": "“Ultimately, that is all ChatGPT does technically—act as a very elaborate autocomplete like you have on your phone. You give it some initial text, and it keeps writing text based on what it statistically calculates as the most likely next token in the sequence. If you type “Finish this sentence: I think, therefore I . . . ,” the AI will predict the next word will be am every time, because it is incredibly probable that this is the case.” (Ethan Mollick, Co-Intelligence)
\n
I was listening to Scott Hanselman’s Hanselminutes podcast with guest Maggie Appleton, and they were talking about AI.
\nI agree with the discussion that LLMs (AI), in their current state, are best used for rubber ducking.
\nWhat is rubber ducking? It’s a term often used by developers where the idea is that you have a rubber duck on your desk that you talk through a problem with. You don’t necessarily need another person for this; often, you need to talk through the problem with yourself in order to discover the answer.
\nToday’s LLMs excel at this. Give it a prompt that will act as a guide. Tell it to ask you questions about the problem. Let it answer questions, but respond with more questions for you to answer.
\nThe back-and-forth is invaluable for figuring out problems and thinking through topics. You can do this on your own, but a good LLM can give you a big boost.
\n", "date_published": "2024-12-26T22:12:00-04:00", "url": "https://focustivity.blog/2024/12/26/ai-in-its-current-state.html", "tags": ["AI"] }, { "id": "http://focustivity.micro.blog/2024/12/22/whoop-ai.html", "title": "Whoop AI", "content_html": "I’ve been using the Whoop band for a couple of months now. My main reason for using Whoop is that I can wear it on my bicep and forget about it. Then, I get all kinds of data that I can use to improve my health.
\nI love data. But I hate digging for it.
\nOne of the cool features is the use of AI within the Whoop app. With access to all of your data, the Whoop AI can tell you what you “should” be doing and give you better answers about what you did and how it impacts your health.
\nAs a casual user, I appreciate this. Without digging through the app, I can ask things like, “How much time did I spend in Zone 2 this week?” and “How much time should I spend in Zone 2 this week?” and I get direct answers based on my data.
\nEven better, the daily insights usually provide the most relevant answers before I even need to ask them. I can see how much I should push myself today. It even provides recommendations of what workouts to do based on my past workouts. It’s pretty useful.
\n", "date_published": "2024-12-22T17:23:00-04:00", "url": "https://focustivity.blog/2024/12/22/whoop-ai.html", "tags": ["AI","Hardware","Health"] }, { "id": "http://focustivity.micro.blog/2023/08/20/what-ai-teaches-us-about.html", "content_html": "What AI Teaches Us About Good Writing - NEOMA
\n\n\nBut simply abiding by the rules doesn’t make excellent writing — it makes conventional, unremarkable writing, the kind usually found in business reports, policy memos and research articles.
\n
The article discusses how AI can be used for writing. While it may produce concise and clear content, it cannot yet evoke the emotional responses from readers that a skilled human writer can.
\n", "date_published": "2023-08-20T17:03:47-04:00", "url": "https://focustivity.blog/2023/08/20/what-ai-teaches-us-about.html", "tags": ["AI"] } ] }