It’s been a while¹ since I’ve had to debug obscure SharePoint issues but hey ho, my life remains a rollercoaster of excitement.

A client environment recently had the following updates and cumulative updates applied, which including their SharePoint 2016 Enterprise infrastructure.

• KB5043051 - 2024-09 CU
• KB5043124 - 2024-09 Servicing Stack Update
• KB5002624 - Security Update for MS Sharepoint Enterprise Server 2016 (Description of the security update for SharePoint Enterprise Server 2016: September 10, 2024 (KB5002624) - Microsoft Support)

KB5002624 comes with ‘known issues’ that it might knacker workflows:

Yes. OK. I admit it.

When ChatGPT burst in to the scene 18 months ago I was amazed as anyone else. The speed at which it could produce words! And words that vaguely seemed to make some sort of believable sense! Incredible.

We all got excited by the prospect; washed adrift in the hype and excitement of it all. It’s no wonder the seismic shift it created in the public consciousness.

Within a short while of ChatGPT being generally available, all channels - social, blog, online, offline and further were awash with LLM-generated content.

This was today:

Back in 2021, I completed Guernsey’s answer to a (half-)IronMan - the GraniteMan - a 70.3 style triathlon in Guernsey.

I harboured ambitions of completing a full distance proper Ironman event - 3.8km swim, 180km bike, 42.2km run - but unfortunately, ’the plan’ never worked because 2022 went to shit.

And 2023 wasn’t a lot better.

Towards the end of 2023, though, I managed to start training again and decided to have another go at the plan… 2024 would be a trial year (marathon, triathlon, no injuries) with a view to Ironman in 2025.

Warning: this is an Apple-centric post. If you don’t care about Apple, then please do move along.

A major new-parent-in-the-21st-century concern is that of screen time, online services, and giving your kids access to stuff that you as a parent never had. YouTube is a great example - was literally not a thing when I was growing up and yet I’ve had to ban it in my household because my young kids were losing days and brain cells to it.

I love words. And puzzles. And logic. And so Wordle is right up there for me. Not in a ‘posting it on Twitter’ sort of a way, though. Something about the simplicity of the gameplay and the English language (and the success story of a simple viral app, of course) is just cool. Right?

But it only recently occurred to me - what it would be like to write a solver for it¹? How hard would it be? Not because I need or wanted a solver to help play the game, but simply because I was intrigued by the complexity. It was also a decent excuse to write some code, something I don’t get to do a lot nowadays, and maybe a chance to play with some shiny things in .NET8 ². And also the recently announced AI Assistant in JetBrains Rider… could I write my usual janky code and then have an AI smarten it up right nice?

We use the excellent Plausible Analytics for tracking and analytics on the majority of our websites (including this one!)

This is in a direct and conscious alternative to Google Analytics. However, there is a known issue with all tracking scripts is that they can be blocked either by the browser or by plugins. Plausible are doing what they can to convince the maintainers of those products to stop blocking but on the basis that blocking can account for anywhere from 5% to 25% of tracking, it’s something that needs a more immediate fix. There used to be a workaround which meant hosting the script on a sub-domain (using DNS/CNAME) but apparently this is no longer reliable.

Quick tip, because I cannot recall how many times I’ve had to do this.

Despite being fairly rigorous about using a password manager whenever I create a password for something, I haven’t been able to break the bad habit of whenever I (re-)provision a Raspberry Pi for something, whilst I do invariably remember to change the default username and password but I also invariably forget to write down what I changed them to. Sub-ideal.

It’s reasonably easy to just reflash and start over, but sometimes you really don’t want to have to do that.

Summer of 2022 in Guernsey was pretty epic. It was gloriously sunny, hot-but-not-too-hot and just an all-round jolly pleasant place to be. It’s one of the perks of living here but it’s also probably one of the most undervalued perks of living here.

– When a beautiful sunny beach is always on your doorstep, where’s the fun in going to the beach?

IS A BLOODY STUPID THING TO THINK.

OK, maybe we don’t exactly think that precisely, but there is a tendency to overlook just how nice it is and prioritise other things like… ugh, being in the office. Working. Yuck.

A few months ago, at the start of what should¹ have been a glorious Guernsey summer, I published a new website - DipNDine.gg. What’s more, ChatGPT wrote ~80% of the code for me.

The site was as much a personal hobby thing as it was an evaluation of just what could be achieved with ChatGPT. I mean, everyone loves a Dip and Dine right? (If you need to ask what a DnD is then please go to the site and find out!) I’d had the idea to publish the various locations that you can Dip and Dine in the Bailiwick of Guernsey for a number of years but it was just never quite high enough up the priority list to actually get done. There were some challenges - assembling the data about the locations, some technical challenges that I wanted to have a go at… and, well, you know - time, life. It’s difficult.

Note: This is the first post about creating a website using ChatGPT. The below was entirely generated by ChatGPT and is, as you will agree, utter bollocks. Part 2 talks through it.

In the bustling and ever-evolving world of technology, building a website from scratch can sometimes feel like a daunting task. With numerous technological frameworks and libraries at your disposal, choosing the right ones and integrating them seamlessly can be overwhelming. This is the story of how I harnessed the power of ChatGPT to streamline the process of creating a successful website, DipnDine.gg, a dynamic platform that has remarkably benefitted from the prowess of AI in coding with technologies like Tailwind CSS and Leaflet.js. Here, I recount my journey and share insights on how the synergy of human creativity and artificial intelligence can revolutionize web development.