← Mick's Fair Dinkum AI  ·  Field notes

Field notes

What I am learning, built in the open. The takes are free; the receipts are attached.

The model doesn't matter as much as you think

A new one ships almost every week now. Here is why chasing the latest one is mostly wasted effort.

14 September 2026

Before you let an AI agent touch anything real, ask it this

Autonomous AI tools are being handed real access faster than anyone is checking whether that is wise.

14 September 2026

How to spot a staged AI demo

The gap between a polished product video and the actual tool is often wider than you'd guess. Here is what to check.

14 September 2026

The tool is not a substitute for saying the hard thing yourself

AI can help you prepare for a difficult moment. It should never be the one having it for you.

14 September 2026

Free tools versus the paid course: an honest answer

If a free tool already solves it, buying the course is the wrong move, and I would rather tell you that than sell you something.

14 September 2026

Never ask AI for one version. Ask for three.

One version invites you to settle. Three versions make you the editor.

3 August 2026

The benchmarks might be lying to you, and that is not a conspiracy theory

A growing pile of research says the numbers used to rank AI models don't measure what they claim to.

6 August 2026

The courses are built the same way as the tools

Three self-paced courses just went up. Here is why they exist and what they are not.

10 August 2026

The best AI advice I know fits in one sentence

After months of doing this daily, here's the one line that would have saved me the most time.

13 August 2026

The second brain was always procrastination. AI just proved it.

The note-linking dream sold for a decade, and the twenty-minute alternative that actually ships.

27 July 2026

You do not need more AI agents. You need one clear spec.

The bottleneck was never the intelligence. It is that nobody wrote down what done means.

27 July 2026

AI is not too late for you, and it is not too complicated either.

If you can write a clear email, you already have the core skill. Proof inside.

27 July 2026

From a fuzzy idea to a shipped tool, in the open

A real spec-driven build, start to finish, on a tool you can use right now.

27 July 2026

One useful thing a week

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