When I was a practicing artist, I had a website so curators or any interested people could see what I had done. When I stopped doing art, I let my website die. Now that I want to do art again, I will again need a website to get exhibitions, residencies, etc. I don't know anything about mobile-first websites, so it makes sense to use AI to help me create a new web presence. I will begin doing that, and sharing it in the Classroom under the course "Build Your Website from Scratch". Hope it is helpful to anyone who wants to start building their own websites! I may begin to build websites for individual projects. Here's an old one from back in the day: https://martiantea.com/ Enjoy!

Saturday morning. Coffee. Notion open. I was tidying up old TikTok scripts in a Kanban board. I was powering through work and felt really productive. Except I didn't delete the scripts. I bulk-deleted tasks across my entire workspace. Every active task. Every client project. Gone. And yes, I panicked. I'm not going to pretend I was cool about it. I sat there staring at an empty workspace with a full client load and no idea how bad the damage was or how I was going to recover. So I did the one thing I've been training myself to do when something breaks: I opened Claude and started talking it through. (I call him Fred. Long story.) Fred calmed me down first, which honestly was the thing I needed most. Then we got to work. In about 15 minutes we had: - A clean backup of the 55 tasks that were still visible, exported to a markdown file I could actually work from while Notion was down - A support ticket filed with Notion with the exact restore point I needed (before noon CT Saturday) - A rule for myself: don't touch Notion again until the restore is confirmed, because any new edits would get overwritten Notion finally got back to me this morning (two days later). The restore is in progress. It's taken a lot longer than I expected, and it's cost me real work hours, but it's happening. And in the meantime, the markdown backup has been doing the job. I've been moving work forward without my "main system" even being available. I very quickly learned: Your system is only as good as your recovery plan. I had no backup routine for Notion. None. Didn't ever think I needed one! That's on me, and it's changing this week. Go AI first. It just saves time. I am actively learning to move out of my first instinct, panic and click, and into "open Claude and describe what just happened." Most of the problems you're used to just dealing with as they come up? AI can solve them, or at least get you unstuck in a fraction of the time. Lost files, broken spreadsheets, an email you don't know how to write, a process that keeps falling apart; stop white-knuckling it. Go AI first.

Was walking in the woods yesterday and had this conversation with Gemini. https://gemini.google.com/share/250440e1fc24

If you only ever ask it to summarize things, you’re going to get a neat little paragraph… and still miss the part where you were supposed to actually think. Here’s the upgrade that’s helped me the most lately. Instead of “summarize this,” try one of these: - “What am I forgetting to consider?” - “What’s the risk or tradeoff I’m not seeing yet?” - “What questions should I be asking before I decide?” - “What would someone who disagrees with me say?” This works especially well in NotebookLM, because you can point it at your notes and sources and use it like a thinking partner, not a shortcut machine. Copy-paste starter prompt: I’m working on [the thing] and I have these notes and sources. 1. What are 5 questions I should answer before I move forward? 2. What assumptions am I making that might be wrong? 3. What is the simplest next step that would reduce uncertainty? Your turn: What’s one decision on your plate this week where you don’t need a summary, you need better questions? (If you want, drop the context and I’ll reply with 3 questions you can ask AI that won’t melt your brain.)

Try using prompts like these to get ideas flowing: 1. I'm writing an email on [TOPIC] for [AUDIENCE]. Generate potential 10 subject lines. 2. (Paste content you already wrote). Suggest 10 possible follow-up topics for this article/post. 3. (Paste a podcast or video transcript). Based on this transcript, write 10 article headlines for [AUDIENCE]. Use [KEYWORD(s)].