Field notes

Rob Burke

Latest side quest: Oct 2026

AI agents, side quests, and 25 years of synthetic characters

Side Quests

19 quests · Jan 2026 to Oct 2026

Field notes from building with AI. A growing batch of side quests since January, each with the why-bother and what I learned. Read in any order; the escalation is the story.

  1. No. 19 · Oct 2026Bitter Lesson, 2026 VintageMollick is right, the frontier doesn’t need my tracks. My daily drivers still need my scars.
  2. No. 18 · Sep 2026AI-Assisted Travel18 days in Japan with an AI assistant in the family group chat, and a souvenir at the end.
  3. No. 17 · Sep 2026Vibe PhotographyI share the memory; an AI takes the helm in Lightroom.
  4. No. 16 · Sep 2026Ad AstraI stopped playing ‘courier’ between Claude and Codex, settling in for long-time partnership.
  5. No. 15 · Aug 2026AI-isms DefenceJapan made SPAM delicious (I hear). Can we do the same to AI slop?
  6. No. 14 · Jun 2026Man, Machine, DrawerA Kobo and a Garmin, hung off a USB and brought back from the dead.
  7. No. 13 · Jun 2026Anthropic Architect CertAnthropic says: certified. Tips inside.. they test judgment, not trivia.
  8. No. 12 · Jun 2026Brand New RenaissanceTeaching an AI my taste: 2,500 frames in, 24 bangers out.
  9. No. 11 · Jun 2026Full Ted Lasso (is the ROI)My AI assistant does the lineup while I focus on the kids.
  10. No. 10 · Apr 2026SAASpocalypse NowThe hour I truly believed in the SAASpocalypse.
  11. No. 09 · Mar 2026Obsidian All the ThingsMarkdown is the new lingua franca of my life.
  12. No. 08 · Feb 2026Tax Return AssistantSparking today’s meditation on ‘what will happen to the professions’.
  13. No. 07 · Feb 2026Swim Meet Photographer’s AssistantClaude plans the shoot, Dad held the camera.
  14. No. 06 · Feb 2026Minecraft Build BotL-systems, Lorenz attractors, and a G1 Ark (was how it started)
  15. No. 05 · Jan 2026LegendWeb: ResurrectedFrontPage 98 museum site of 60+ pages reborn and optimized.
  16. No. 04 · Jan 2026Legend of the Greasepole: Resurrected10k lines migrated twice. 50 students built it, AI resurrected it.
  17. No. 03 · Jan 2026Side Quest HelperWordPress automation, built on a plane at 10,000 ft.
  18. No. 02 · Jan 2026Withings to Garmin Instant SyncHealth integration I use daily and my first AWS Lambda.
  19. No. 01 · Jan 2026Galton’s GoalieComputer vision over Plinko math, inspired by Mark Rober’s CrunchLabs.

Field notes, newest first. Click any one to dive in, or follow the arc below from the beginning.

The arc so far

These read fine in any order, but they happened in this order, and the escalation is key to the story. One revelation at a time:

  1. Jan · Galton’s Goalie – feeling late to the party with my ‘omfg’ moment: me and Claude could ship in an afternoon a framework I once spent 3 months building in a research lab.
  2. Jan · Withings → Garmin Sync – my first AWS Lambda and I still use it every morning.
  3. Jan · Side Quest Helper – the tool that publishes these write-ups, built on a plane.
  4. Jan · Legend of the Greasepole: Resurrected – software archaeology as weekend hobby.
  5. Jan · LegendWeb: Resurrected – proof the archaeology generalizes: a 60-page FrontPage 98 museum, reborn.
  6. Feb · Minecraft Build Bot – math as art: L-systems and Lorenz attractors rendered in-game, to my teenager’s exacting standards.
  7. Feb · Swim Meet Photographer’s Assistant – it started planning work in the physical world. Claude called the shots; I held the camera.
  8. Feb · Tax Return Assistant – genuinely uncomfortable revelation.
  9. Mar · Obsidian All the Things – markdown became the lingua franca between me and my AI assistants. Everything runs through it now.
  10. Apr · SAASpocalypse Now – the hour I truly believed the subscription economy has a reckoning coming.
  11. Jun · Full Ted Lasso (is the ROI) – the AI runs the logistics so I can coach the kids. The ROI was my attention all along.
  12. Jun · Brand New Renaissance – an AI with a Group of Seven painter’s name learned a decade of my photographic taste. Bring it on.
  13. Jun · Anthropic Architect Cert – AI relocates judgment rather than replacing it, and nearly every failure I debugged this spring was, at root, a context failure. The exam knew.
  14. Jun · Man, Machine, Drawer – hang orphaned gadgets off USB and AI makes you a wizard that refuses the landfill, custom features and all.
  15. Aug · AI-isms Defence – my AI’s slop turned out to be a dialect all its own, and the yardstick that tamed it was 25 years of my writing, thesis included.
  16. Sep · Ad Astra – Giving two AI assistants the same workbench, checking each other’s work, and preparing for long-term success dual-wielding multiple AI partners.
  17. Sep · Vibe Photography – I shared the memories behind my photographs, questioned the edits, and ordered six prints.
  18. Sep · AI-Assisted Travel – planned and ran an 18-day family trip to Japan with AI assistants sharing our notes, and learned the AI needs to support the trip, not steer it.
  19. Oct · Bitter Lesson, 2026 Vintage – had four models audit my skills for dead scaffolding; they found scars, and a two-minute test beat their opinions about their own needs.

..more to come..

Why document this?

A wise man said that if you get distracted by a side project, you should at least write about it:

readme.md on GitHub explains what and how. These write-ups are the why, the journey, and cool stuff I think I learned along the way.

Apparently the limiting factor is ideas now, so.. let’s roll!

New ones show up in the feed (RSS) as they land. I’m old school like that.