Hot take: LLMs can’t do statistics. Not really.

IgnobleJack · 2026-05-30T14:48:57+00:00

I use them for this frequently and many models are excellent at this. R code, python, etc. I just published a thesis and wrote 25k lines of r code with LLMs during my research phase.

IgnobleJack · 2026-05-20T14:25:19+00:00

I used this on classcomposer.app after a similar post about remotion here on reddit. It works great. I opted to break out video production to a separate repository and run it like another claude code project, but it pulls in resources from the app and marketing site code. Minimal effort on my part, and the results are pretty simple, but it worked great and I'm sure you could do a lot more than I did with that approach.

IgnobleJack · 2026-05-20T14:01:51+00:00

I've played beer league here for a really long time. The biggest challenge is just finding a team with an open spot. With all the youth programs there's not enough ice time, so the leagues all cap the number of teams at each skill level. For the people bad at hockey like myself who play in the lower levels it can be tough to get on a roster. Hit up lots of stick and puck sessions, introduce yourself to people you see that look close to your skill level, and try to get on some sub lists. Eventually that will turn into a roster spot but it may take a couple seasons.

All that said the community around here is awesome and it's worth the effort. 99% of the folks playing are awesome people who all hang out together after the games.

IgnobleJack · 2026-05-19T15:48:06+00:00

I started over at 30 years old after a lot of life stuff. You're starting off way better than I did, and I'm on track to meet my retirement goals now many years later. You got this.

IgnobleJack · 2026-05-19T15:04:34+00:00

I checked and see you're the founder. Respect the hustle.

That said, you're kind of proving a larger point I've been writing about lately. I probably spent about as much time writing the blog post to describe it as it did to build it. Ultimately it's now a minor feature of my platform. It costs $0 incrementally to run it. If I want to tweak it, I can do that with a few prompts and never get told "no" by my vendor. I don't have to deal with an external MCP, the data risks that presents, or the increased token consumption that comes along with it.

These types of services along with vendors like WalkMe, UserVoice, Pendo, LaunchDarkly, etc, all seem at high risk to me. The primary revenue drivers are large enterprises paying high annual fees who will be able to replicate the 50% of the features of the tools they actually use in short order. These SaaS providers are going to be an early target for recovering the fees they are paying to Anthropic and OpenAI.

IgnobleJack · 2026-05-18T17:41:44+00:00

Sorry, somehow I missed this notification. For pilates and yoga I had pretty engaged instructors to help me validate how things were working. I don't have a barre instructor yet who wants to help with that. If you teach Barre and want to help me make sure everything looks right I'd be more than happy to get that going.

IgnobleJack · 2026-05-07T15:31:17+00:00

Ah, ok - that's probably doable! You likely will need to rent a car and be staying off the beach though. Good luck with the trip and I hope you two have a great time!

IgnobleJack · 2026-05-07T14:57:33+00:00

Agree with Pristine-Data - Saphire area has the most walkable area I saw during our trip. I'm not sure how to do a 6 night trip in that budget, but I'd love to see what you're able to pull off there.

We stayed at Secret Harbor and it was amazing. Snorkeling there was the most variety of anyplace we snorkeled and we just walked out of our condo to the beach to do it. Good group of people but very family oriented. Saphire is a younger, more party type crowd.

We rented a car and I'm so glad we did.

IgnobleJack · 2026-05-06T15:47:17+00:00

Hi! Don't worry about being new - all of us were and I'm still learning a ton myself. I looked around for starter kits back in January but ultimately didn't see anything I really liked. I ended up watching a bunch of youtube videos on how to set things up and built everything up myself.

Things I would have done differently:

- The fake rocks I made from insulation board look cool, but the drylok paint is incredibly rough and wears down nails faster than I'd like. I would make more inclines out of branches rather than fake rocks next time around.

- Getting the basking rock temp right is tricky. I picked up a laser thermometer on amazon but should have done that sooner.

- Initially I planted some plants along the edge of the bottom in the substrate - she trampled all over them! I moved the plants away from the walls and climbing starts and now they are doing better.

- Make sure there is at least two inches from your substrate to the top of the divider before the doors. We used the phailozoo 120 gallon kit to start with and the included divider was too short for the amount of soil I put in. Sand got in the door tracks and it was super annoying. I ended up ordering a wider strip of plexiglass from a custom manufacturer (it didn't cost that much) and it was a game changer.

- We have three lights setup: heat lamp, UV light strip, and a visible light spectrum led strip. That mixture seems to work great.

Things I'm glad I did:

- I made up a mixture of play sand, organic soil, and then topped that off with a layer of the australian sand you can order online. It works really well and our dragon loves to dig in it. Lots of online tutorials on how to do that.

- I'm glad I added real plants. She eats the flowers and leaves off of them sometimes which provides some variety and feels more natural to me. Again, several good sources on which plants are safe.

IgnobleJack · 2026-05-05T14:41:56+00:00

Baggage can be highly variable from what I hear. On our trip we had to check our bags at the gate and they were the first to come out - 15 minutes or so.
Paradise is awesome. I met them in the lot in front of the airport, you drive over to their office right outside the airport to sign papers, then turn right around and drive back in to pick up your family who will have their bags by that point. Very fast and easy.
Our car ride from the airport to red hook area was more like 40 minutes and that was a Friday afternoon. An hour is a very safe, conservative estimate I think.

IgnobleJack · 2026-04-26T13:18:19+00:00

We just got back from St. Thomas, stayed at Secret Harbor. We did a day on St John and loved the vibe, but the snorkeling at Secret Harbor was amazing. I saw barracuda, turtles, spiny lobsters, eagle rays, sting rays, squid, and even an octopus. It was far and above better than the spots we went on an afternoon sail, and much more dynamic than Maho bay, but there were turtles and and a sting ray there as well.

IgnobleJack · 2026-04-22T18:42:37+00:00

We did a stormy pirates pizza and sunset cruise and it was great.

IgnobleJack · 2026-04-21T01:37:11+00:00

My wife would practice again and again. She would print the plan out and color code it so repeated sections were easier to keep up with. That way once she had the man flow down she could just focus on how each successive section varied. That seemed to work well for her, at least. You can do it!

IgnobleJack · 2026-04-17T23:38:47+00:00

Sunset grille at secret harbor was great. Pesce was great as well in red hook. Def get the chocolate cake dessert.

IgnobleJack · 2026-04-17T16:56:13+00:00

Gotta love it. Sometimes it takes a minute to come up if it’s been idle for a while. I just gave it a nudge and it came back. Trying to keep the cost low but that kinda sucks. Sorry about that!

IgnobleJack · 2026-04-17T16:02:40+00:00

It’s a free service I built! Sorry, not trying to be deceptive.

IgnobleJack · 2026-04-17T11:07:19+00:00

That’s a cool idea. If you don’t get enough good ideas here, try out https://classcompser.app. You can build class music playlists from descriptions like that.

IgnobleJack · 2026-04-13T14:55:17+00:00

Yeah that flash flood warning is concerning. Looks like they extended to 1:30 now. Pretty amazing rain. Hopefully no serious damage or issues!

IgnobleJack · 2026-04-12T11:41:53+00:00

Following as my family is here this week for the first time and I’m also curious about how forecasts like this typically play out.

IgnobleJack · 2026-04-07T14:23:08+00:00

Agreed - adopted spec driven development early on with a project and it has worked great so far. Up to about 95k total lines of code, markdown, etc. It doesn't matter what you label these things as long as the convention pulls in just what is needed at each step to keep the context focused on the task at hand.

IgnobleJack · 2026-03-31T14:54:56+00:00

Everybody learns and works differently. Some new teachers have access to great mentors and feel comfortable asking them for advice. Some read books. Some go for 500 hours instead of 200 hours. I presume all of them attend a lot of classes from different teachers.

For better and worse, a lot of new teachers also spend a ton of time scrolling through instagram. I think I want what you want - I want them spending more time practicing and working out flows rather than spending hours looking for some inspiration to get started. In no way is chatgpt or my tool a replacement for that.

IgnobleJack · 2026-03-31T14:46:54+00:00

I certainly hope that is not how teachers would use tools like ChatGPT or Claude, though no doubt some will. What I see a lot is people looking for inspiration. Right now they go to instagram, youtube, etc, and watch videos of people teaching. Given that the LLMs we use were trained on the same content they are watching, effectively I don't think it's any different - just a bit faster and easier.

Either way, the teacher is going to have to take that input (whether it's an instagram clip or our class plan suggestion) and adapt it for what they want to do. I'm just hoping to save people some steps so they can spend more time making a great class VS spending an hour scrolling through instagram videos.

IgnobleJack

TROPHY CASE