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Part 3 – What’s In the Folder?: How to Build a Personal Operating System from Scratch using Claude Cowork
ByMichaelThe system runs on one folder. Insid that folder are plain text files, organized into directories. No proprietary database. No SaaS subscription that can change its pricing or deprecate a feature. The intelligence is not stored in the files. The files are context. The intelligence is in the AI that reads them before it…
Google Colab: Comprehensive Guide for Data Science and ML
ByMichaelBrief Overview of Google Colab Google Colaboratory, commonly known as Google Colab, is a cloud-based computing platform that allows users to run Jupyter notebooks using free resources such as GPUs and TPUs. The service was launched by Google in 2017 and has since gained immense popularity among data science and machine learning enthusiasts due to…
The bottleneck isn’t data. It’s interpretation.
ByMichaelAt most small institutions, the problem is not that IR can’t produce data. The problem is that nobody has time to think about what it means – including the IR director producing it. I run a three-person IR office at a Lasallian Catholic university in the Bronx. We produce enrollment reports, retention analyses, IPEDS submissions,…
Part 4 – I Added Obsidian Last. That Was the Right Order.
ByMichaelI added Obsidian last. That was the right order. Most people building a personal knowledge system do it backwards. They install Obsidian first, configure a vault, explore the plugins, build a folder structure for notes they have not written yet. Then they discover that the system needs content to be useful, and content is harder…
The Power of Perspective: A Comic Book Experiment Meets Research Methodology
ByMichaelThis was a fun experiment: I’m a big fan of comic books. While browsing the internet, I occasionally encounter debates over hypothetical scenarios like, ‘Who would win in a fight between Franklin Richards and Dr. Manhattan?’ Some responses are well-reasoned, while others resort to ad hominem attacks. The most insightful answers are those that examine…
Navigating the New Frontier: Generative AI in Institutional Research
ByMichaelWhat an amazing week at the Association for Institutional Research (AIR) Forum! I was privileged to present with the great and powerful, Dr. Jason Simon Jason and I led a session on generative AI in Institutional Research. In our hands-on workshop, we explored key skills like prompt engineering and worked through practical IR use cases….

