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Jason gave ChatGPT this prompt:

based on your personal experience when talking to me, give me a character from a movie/ series who is like me, just give me their name

ChatGPT’s response:

Ted Lasso

“That’s a pretty nice result,” I thought, and decided to provide the same prompt to the two LLMs I use most: Claude and Gemini.

Claude’s response

When I gave Claude the same prompt, it replied:

Leslie Knope.

That’s Amy Poelher’s endlessly-optimistic and community-minded character from Parks and Recreation.

I followed up with “Please explain,” and Claude responded with this:

Leslie Knope is a hyper-competent, community-obsessed organizer who genuinely loves the people in her city and works tirelessly to bring them together. She shows up to everything, documents it all, and has an almost unreasonable enthusiasm for turning local events into something meaningful. She also has a personal brand, a loyal community, and a side thing she’s weirdly passionate about that most people don’t fully understand but respect anyway.

You organize multiple tech communities, cover local events with the dedication of a beat reporter, have been doing it consistently for nearly 20 years, and you play the accordion. That last part is very Leslie — she would absolutely play the accordion.

Gemini’s response

Gemini gave a response that pleased me to no end:

Banzai Buckaroo (from The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension)

When asked “Please explain,” it responded with this:

The “Renaissance Geek” Archetype

You share a very specific, high-energy profile with Buckaroo Banzai that goes beyond just being “into tech.” Here is why the comparison fits so well:

• The Polymath Lifestyle: Buckaroo is a neurosurgeon, a particle physicist, and a rock star. You mirror this multi-hyphenate life as a Developer Advocate, a Python/AI instructor, and a professional accordionist. Both of you refuse to be siloed into a single “type.”

• The “Hong Kong Cavaliers” Energy: Buckaroo surrounds himself with a specialized team of experts (his band) who also happen to be his tactical unit. Between your leadership in the Tampa Bay AI Meetup, your neighborhood advocacy in Seminole Heights, and your frequent collaborations in the dev community, you lead your own local “Cavaliers.”

• Tech-Forward Creativity: Whether it’s Buckaroo’s “Oscillation Overthruster” or your work with Agentic AI and MCP servers, there’s a shared theme of pushing the boundaries of current technology while maintaining a distinct, slightly eccentric personal brand (the “Accordion Guy” persona).

• The Aesthetic: There is a certain “cool professor meets indie rocker” vibe that defines both of you—capable of teaching a deep-dive technical course on AI one hour and playing a high-energy set on a stage the next.

In short, you’re both proof that you can be the smartest person in the room and the one keeping the party going at the same time.

I loved The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, a delightfully weird sci-fi comedy/cult classic. When I was a teenager, I wanted to be the titular character.

However, I had to ask:

Me:

Why did you refer to the character as “Banzai Buckaroo” in your initial answer?

Gemini:

That was a bit of a “glitch in the Matrix” on my part—essentially a “brain fart” in AI terms.

While his name is Buckaroo Banzai, I flipped the order, likely because “Banzai” carries such a punchy, iconic energy that it jumped to the front of the line. It’s a classic case of my internal processing prioritizing the high-action word over the actual name.

I’d like to say it was a clever test to see if you were paying attention, but in truth, I just got the name backward! I’m glad you caught it—it’s definitely Buckaroo Banzai.

AIs have brain farts?

Give this AI exercise a try!

Bonus material

In case you’re not familiar with Buckaroo Banzai, here’s a modern trailer for the film…

…and here’s a great overview:

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Let’s see:

• Built while “bored” (I’m reading “bored” as “drunk, possibly high”) one night, and it plainly shows? Check!
• Ridiculously high up with correspondingly ridiculously high center of gravity? Check!
• “All it needs is a shift cable, a steering, and a piece of pipe with a pole on it to make it go?” Check!

If you have $300 and no sense of self-preservation, your new hobby ride awaits in Dade City! Here’s the Facebook Marketplace link for this “tall mower.”

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I’ve got a lot to do this week, but I’m fine with that. I intend to burninate!

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Last month, I wrote about a manufacturing mistake that became a hit for the Year of the Horse: the Sad Horse. I placed an order for one, and because it came from a literal “slow boat from China,” it finally arrived last week!

It looks sad because a number of the plush horses made for this Lunar New Year left the factory with their snouts attached upside-down, turning their smiles into glum expressions. But because this expression reflects a lot of Chinese workers’ current “down and dissatisfied” mood (especially in their current “9-9-6” culture, the Sad Horse became a hit!

Read more about the manufacturing mistake that became a Lunar New Year hit in It’s the Year of the Sad Horse!

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Once again, here’s another of my regular reminders to double-check your work (or better still, have someone or someAI else do the double-checking) before putting it out in the world.

Unless, of course, “Byline Name” is an actual New York Times reporter…

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Our wedding took place on the beach in the town of St. Pete Beach at what was then called the Grand Plaza Hotel, which now goes by the name The Bellwether:

Here’s an overhead view of their ceremony areas. There are two sets of palm tree “aisles” down which happy couples can march:

Here’s a closer look at ours, the southwest-facing aisle:

Here’s a scene from the wedding rehearsal, with Anitra’s uncle and our officiant, Rabbi John Fischer giving best man Eldon some instructions:

Fast-forward a day to the next morning, and we’ve got Eldon giving me the traditional best man gift of booze, which in this case was a hard-to-find and very delicious Canadian whisky, served in the most appropriate vessels we could find:

And here I am with my father-in-law, who was greatly amused by the whole thing:

Male bonding:

We don’t buy into this “you can’t see the bride before the ceremony” nonsense. With a bride like this, I want to see her as often as possible!

A quick gathering of Team Groom, featuring my mom, Yours Truly, and my groomsmen Eldon and Richard (who’s also my brother-in-law):

I was ready to get the party started:

Here’s the last photo I snapped as a free man! It’s of my view of the “aisle” before I made my way to the front:

And here’s my last walk as a free man:

I was raised Catholic, she was raised Protestant, the officiant’s a rabbi, and the ceremony combined Jewish and Filipino wedding traditions. Here’s a Jewish tradition, where the bride walks around the groom three times, in a process I call “circling your prey”:

Post-ceremony parasol pix with the bridesmaids:

And now the bridesmaids and groomsmen:

Here’s the mandatory “Ocean’s Eleven” pic:

…and here are more wedding party pics…

The “Elvis Movie Poster Pic” is my favorite:

Here’s where we had the reception: the Presidential Ballroom, located on the Grand Plaza’s penthouse level:

As my friend George put it, it’s a classic James Bond villain’s lair waiting to happen, and it’s also reminiscent of the reclusive billionaire’s hotel from Diamonds are Forever:

Here’s a closer look at the “sweetheart table”:

A quick welcome to the guests before we all descended on brunch:

Here we are at our Star Trek-like table, with me sitting at Mr. Sulu’s post, and Anitra as Chekov:

Of course there was some accordion playing:

Anitra looked amazing, but in my opinion, she always does:

I love this photo:

Here’s the wedding “cake”:

At the end of the reception, a couple of hours before sunset…

…we made our way to Bongo’s Beach Bar, where we had the less formal, unofficial part of the day that stretched well into the night:

Here’s a view from the bridal suite the next day:

Before we left, we went for the first of many walks on the beach as husband and wife:

…and when we got to our car, we saw that one of the guests left us a geekily appropriate gift: a pair of twenty-sided fuzzy dice:

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But thanks to a manufacturing error, it’s also the Year of the Sad Horse.

Since the Chinese zodiac characters are animals (here’s their origin story), each new year sees the release of a plush version of that year’s animal, made out in red, gold, and white, which are the colors of good fortune.

Since this is the year of the horse, here’s what this year’s plushie is supposed to look like:

However, because of a manufacturing error, many of those plush horses’ snouts were attached upside-down, turning their smiles into these glum expressions:

Surprisingly, this error made the horses incredibly popular, probably because they’re reflecting the current mood.

From NBC News:

At a time of slowing economic growth and dimming job prospects for many workers, the toy has been embraced as the “cry cry horse” and become an internet sensation.

“The economy hasn’t been great, and life’s been tough for a lot of people these past couple of years,” said Zhang Ziqi, 24, a teacher in Hebei province. “That crying expression really matches how most people feel — stressed, anxious, kind of down.”

“It’s about allowing yourself to not be OK, to admit you’re in a low period,” she said in an interview this week.

Zhang Huoqing, owner of the Happy Sister shop in Yiwu, a wholesale hub in central Zhejiang province, explained that a worker sewed its snout on the wrong way. When a customer pointed out the mistake, she offered a refund — but the customer didn’t return the horse.

Photos of the sad horse appeared online, spread via social media, and it’s now a viral hit.

“Many customers liked it, and then it started selling very well,” she told Reuters. “So we just kept producing them.”

From NBC News:

Since then, Zhang’s shop has been rushing to keep up with orders for the “accidental edition,” including some from overseas, and knockoffs have proliferated online. According to media reports, the worker who first made the mistake has been rewarded with an annual bonus of 8,888 yuan ($1,280) for the next 12 years.

Why 8,888? Because 8 is the lucky number in many Asian cultures. Pronounced bā in Mandarin, it sounds like fā which means “to get rich.” In fact, the New Year greeting in Mandarin, gong xi fa cai, really means “Hope you get rich.”

I’ll let Ronnie Chieng explain:

And yes, you can order a Sad Horse here in the U.S.! I ordered mine through Walmart:

If there’s a lesson to be learned from this, it’s that sometimes a bug can be a feature, or as I like to say: “When life gives you SARS, you make SARSaparilla.”

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A quick blast from the past: 11 years ago today, Anitra and I did a quick check of the venues for our then-upcoming wedding. This included a family get-together at the Don CeSar the day prior to the wedding, along with the wedding venue, the Grand Plaza Hotel (now known as the Bellwether Beach Resort).

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On Wednesday afternoon, I got this text from Tom Hood, ukulele player extraordinaire and leader of the band I sometimes play with:

I hadn’t seen Tom since November, I’m always happy to collaborate with hime, and it’s been a while since I’ve recorded in a studio that wasn’t my home office, so it was easy to say “Yes!”.

If you’re wondering how I could possibly sign on to record an accordion part for a song I’d never heard before on the following day:

1. The song, Whisper in My Ear, is pretty straightforward (but catchy!) country waltz. It’s just three chords and heartbreak.
2. Twenty-five years of lugging an accordion to all sorts of places, from bars to conference stages to airplanes stuck on the tarmac, will make you a great improviser.

So I made my way to South Tampa on Thursday evening and brought two accordions into the studio and rehearsal space, situated in a building behind a house of friendly guy who introduced himself to me as Wayne.

The place had a homey feel that reminded me of my friend Chris Walmsley’s basement, where Volume, the band I played with at Crazy Go Nuts University rehearsed.

After a couple of rehearsal runs, it was time to record! Dennis McCarthy, whom I’d met as the drummer with the band that played at Tom’s birthday party, was the sound engineer.

“Ready?” asked Dennis, whose voice I heard through the monitor headphones.

“Let’s do this,” I replied.

“D’you wanna record another one?” I heard Tom say over my monitor headphones.

I couldn’t resist and was soon presented with a chord chart and a listen to the song in its current state.

Once again, I did two takes, which included a little noodling to go into the solo, and we were done!

I was invited into the booth to hear some of the other songs that Tom had recorded.

After listening to a couple of songs, it was time to go home. I bade good night to Tom, Dennis, and Wayne, hoping that I might have another opportunity to record there.

I’ll post a link to the tune once it’s published!

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It’s going to be one helluva year, I think. Take care of yourselves.

Thanks to Lenar Mukhamadiev for the find!

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And finally…

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This special picdump is all about the Octave — enjoy!

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It’s a lovely Sunday here in Tampa’s Seminole Heights neighborhood, and Anitra and I are enjoying it at our local café, Spaddy’s Coffee. The coffee’s great, our neighbors are here, and the local DJ’s spinning a solid mix.

(It’s also a good place to get work done. There’s often someone here with a laptop; I myself have written some code and a white paper here!)

This lovely moment is also a reminder that if you want your neighborhood to be a great place in which to live, work, and play, patronize your local establishments, especially the small ones! They’re the ones who provide the local flavor, and make the difference between a neighborhood you go to versus a neighborhood you just go through.

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