Remember when AI (LLMs) couldn’t decide how many fingers go on the average human hand? That still seems pretty recent. But, my how things have changed. AI is now immensely more capable, and not just at counting to five.

To get a sense of where AI is now, I set out on an experiment. I want to better track my family’s spending, so I gave myself two days to create a web app, with AI’s help. I wasn’t sure how far I’d get, or the quality of the output, but I was curious to find out.

Here’s some fun news: we bought a house, in Northern Tuscany of all places. We’ve been thinking about getting a little escape from the city and have been missing the mountains and coast we had in Seattle. So, we started virtually exploring Europe to find places where the “mountains meet the sea”, as my wife put it. Our journey landed us in Northern Tuscany. Last summer we visited the area, checked out some houses, and fell in love with a little place a little north of Lucca, nestled in the Apuan Alps.

You can find out more in a little introductory video I put together:

We’re still quite early in the renovation process, and will be sharing more on our new YouTube channel. So go like, subscribe, comment, and all that fun stuff!

At the beginning of 2015, I set some goals for myself. While airing all this publicly felt a bit strange, the exercise provided a degree of accountability and prompted thoughtful contemplation about improving myself over the year. So, in that spirit, here we go again!