Posts

GTL: Calculators, Colour Pickers and 10 minute Emails [Aug 2025]

Image
In this edition of GTL, we explore a variety of tools to help you and your families produce their best work and avoid being spammed. It’s essential to recognize that sharing data online means these sites store it on their servers. While this may not be a problem for everyone, exercise caution when uploading sensitive media. Some sites use uploaded data to train their AI models, and others may sell it to data brokers. Calculator.net and CalculatorSoup.com Calculators for all occasions URL: https://www.calculator.net   URL: www.calculatorsoup.com     Who needs a standalone calculator today? You can ask Google, Alexa, or open the calculator app on your phone or computer. If you're looking for something beyond standard arithmetic, Calculator.net and CalculatorSoup.com offer a wide range of specialized calculators, grouped by category. In addition to providing results, they explain the underlying concepts, helping you understa...

The complete guide to installing, configuring, and managing Plex Media Server on an Ubuntu Server

Image
Introduction This guide covers how to install Plex Media Server (PMS) on a lower-powered Ubuntu Server. As a long-time Plex Pass user, I created a video titled HOWTO Setup a Plex Media Server (PMS) Appliance back in 2020. While that computer (a laptop, actually) had been running flawlessly, I decided to replace it with a virtualised setup. As part of the upgrade process, I chose to start from the very beginning and document each action I performed. I also wanted to make this tutorial beginner-friendly, allowing anyone to follow along and replicate the steps I describe here. 

BNF Bank's Gone Wrong System Update

Image
Introduction In March 2025, Maltese BNF Bank plc (€1.28 billion in assets, 40,000 customers) initiated a critical IT modernization project involving its core banking systems, digital channels, a transition from VISA to Mastercard, and an account number change that also modified customers’ IBANs. However, the execution of this digital transformation took a decidedly calamitous turn. What was intended to be a seamless transition devolved into a textbook example of how a major IT upgrade can go spectacularly wrong. It checked all possible boxes in the worst ways: C-Suite handling of a disastrous outcome, Customer Relations, GDPR compliance, Security, Operations and, ultimately, failure to provide an improved solution for customers. The Plan It began with multiple notifications to customers that the Bank’s ATM network would be unavailable between 29th March 2025 and 1st April 2025. The downtime was planned to minimize customer impact since 30/03 was a Saturday and 31/03 was a Malt...

AI Prompt Engineering - Use Code not Words

Image
AI language models don’t actually reason in a human sense. For those interested in how these systems are trained, I recommend checking out Demystifying LLMs with Andrej Karpathy .   The Token Challenge When processing text, language models work with “tokens” rather than complete words. The relationship between words and tokens isn’t always one-to-one. For instance, the term “LLM” gets split into two separate tokens in the paragraph below. Similarly, longer or unusual strings can be divided into numerous tokens. The word “ SuperCaliFragilisticExpialiDociouc ” is broken down by GPT-4o into 11 distinct tokens. It’s important to understand that AI responses are generated probabilistically, one token at a time, with deliberate randomness incorporated. This explains why asking the same question multiple times often yields different answers. These fundamental characteristics create significant constraints when AI attempts text analysis tasks. For example, until recently, many langu...