There are many topics this week to cover, thus the reason for the non-descript title. Some of the things that have come up this week are Psion and Ericsson repairs, ChatGPT and DeepSource, and Agile2023.
Psion and Ericsson repairs
I was able to carryout another screen cable repair this week on the Ericsson MC 218. The MC 218 had the hooks in the back for the lid hinge so this repair resulted in a good as new repair. It did pose a challenge as the hinge is really not designed to be put in place while connected to the screen. I feared that I was going to break the plastic hooks so I worked to remove the pins holding the wire hinge from the screen. It was not easy and after I removed them, I saw that doing so caused a different challenge. The pins holding the wire hinges in place are actually spring metal wound up into a pin shape. This made them difficult to put back into place. The removal of the pins did make it much easier to get the wire hinges over the plastic hooks without breaking them, but I do not recommend doing that. If I carry out this repair again in the future, I plan to figure a better way to choregraph putting it all back together without breaking the hooks.
I feel that the terminology that I’m using to describe the hinge mechanism on the Psion 5 Series devices is not correct. If Martin Riddiford or anyone else in the know happens across this post, please add a comment below to let us know what the proper names for these are. Also a drawing with text pointing to them would be awesome as well.
I captured a video of the repair and hope to find some time shortly to edit it and post it to YouTube. I will post an update with a link to the video once it is available. In the meantime, here are some screen grabs from some of the video to show the hinge assembly and the spring metal pins referenced above.
Hinge Repair
The hinge repair that I carried out last week, did not last long, which was not too much of a surprise. The metal pins bent and allowed the hinges to pop out from under the cover. I straightened the pins and used my 3Doodler, to add some PLA around the pins to give them a bit more strength so they hopefully will last a bit longer. The repair looked ugly but no one will see how bad I am at using the 3Doodler.
The opening and closing of the unit is very tight after the repair, which makes me a bit uncomfortable so I will take it easy when opening and closing the unit.
ChatGPT and DeepSource
It looks like things may be starting to really take off in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) field. We are starting to see more and more application of AI in some of the products that we use. I had been following the latest news regarding ChatGPT and found it interesting that it was able to pass a law exam at two different universities. While it would not be at the head of the class, it is good enough to get a passing grade. This presents a lot of challenges for professors at universities.
I had not given it much thought until I saw a video, 10X Your Code with ChatGPT: How to Use it Effectively, by Dave Plummer showing how ChatGPT could be used by software developers and others. He showed how he was able to interact with ChatGPT to develop a small software application and how we all need to start to understanding how to use the tool in our workflows.
I have seen that Visual Studio is now prompting me with code completion, based on my previous actions and where I’m at in the code. It is kind of freaky seeing the IDE basically writing code for you. There were times that it seemed to get in the way but most of the time, it was a real time saver. I’m sure it will get even better in the near future.
We may be at at point in time when AI will really start to have an impact in how we work and in our daily lives. Let’s just say that it has my attention now.
DeepSource
As I was trying ChatGPT, one very good use case popped out, and that is to do code reviews. Typically I am a lone developer and one of the biggest disadvantages of being a lone developer is your code is rarely code reviewed by anyone. ChatGPT did a fairly good job but the length of code it can code review is very limited.
Looking into ChatGPT led me to look into tools for Code Review. I found an article at GeekFlare, 6 Best Automated Code Review Tools for Developers. The article listed DeepSource as number 3. I looked into the other options and settled on DeepSource. It has great integration with GitHub so it scans code each time it is checked in. I was able to clean up my code fairly quickly.
I’ve made a recommendation to the DeepSource Team to incorporate AI for code reviews, particularly for us lone developers. We may be a few years away from being able to have a really good AI performing code reviews, but I think that is something we will see in the very near future.
Agile2023
I received some news this week that my submission for the Agile2023 conference was accepted. Now, I need to focus on polishing and practicing the workshop. This will be my first time presenting at a conference, so I’m nervous and excited for the opportunity. I hope it goes well and starts me down a path for the future.
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