Recent content on Brett Fitzgerald
Why? I have done very little work in Microsoft Azure. I’m very familiar with Google Cloud Platform and the data analytics and AI tools available there, and I’m somewhat familiar with similar AWS offerings. But there’s a technical gap in my Microsoft side. I wanted a quick project to gain some familiarity with the platform. The goal will be to do some simple data transformations…
Project (or Task) Management In my day job, I work as a product owner for an Advanced Analytics / Data Science team. It’s a bunch of really smart people that use many analytical techniques including machine learning, statistical models, and a whole host of other tools. We work with teams across most of the business to help understand markets, demand, supply chain, sales… just about…
When context clicks I had one of those conversations today where, at first, nothing landed. We were discussing whether we could allow orders for items still in transit by estimating when they’d arrive, be received, and be ready to pick so that customers could buy them before the warehouse technically had them “in stock.” I was tracking along, but not connecting it… until…
Chasing Nano Banana When Google quietly dropped the Gemini image model codenamed “Nano Banana” (Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash Image model) and only exposed it through an API, I was disappointed that I couldn’t immediately test it out. Since I’ve been enjoying building things recently, first thought was, “I’ll just build the app I want.” I wanted a fast way to…
“I’ve got a great idea for a weekend project!” Two months later… “I’m launching my weekend project!” The Dream vs. The Reality I want to give anyone the power to learn anything, however they want to. That was the idea. With the Age of A.I. changing the way we think and work, I thought this would be a great time to get started turning that project into a…
My Todoist Was a Mess I’ve been a loyal Todoist user for years. It’s been my trusty sidekick for keeping my work organized. But recently, things got a little out of hand. A small internal restructure at the organization I work for meant my workload grew significantly. More projects, more stakeholders, and a couple more people on my team. And a constant stream of new tasks hitting my…
Delving into Cursor Ok, I’m late to the game. I just started using Cursor to write code. To be fair, writing code isn’t really part of my day-to-day job as a Product Manager for an advanced data analytics team, but I wanted to scratch that “builder” itch in me. Also, I wanted better data than what is available through Jira’s API. That means I need to write some code,…
My Journey with MCP Servers I recently learned of MCP (Model Control Protocol) servers through a post on Hacker News . The premise seems really neat. MCP is essentially a protocol that allows AI models like Claude to interact with external tools and services through a standardized interface. I can write a very simple server and create “tools” for the Claude.ai desktop application to…
A videography hobbyist In my free time, I like shooting videos of my family’s adventures and doing some basic editing. I shoot on my cellphone and a GoPro. For the past several years, I have rendered my final projects in 1080p at 24 frames per second. I liked the ability to shoot in 4k and still “zoom in” digitally to 1080. That also let me shoot slow motion video at 1080, and…
Building a large language model from scratch I’m a machine learning / A.I. hobbyist. The technologies fascinate me, and I can’t seem to learn enough about them. Sebastian Raschka’s book, Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch) caught my eye. I don’t recall how I stumbled on it, but I found it when it was still in early access from Manning Publications. I purchased it,…
Why? Does the internet need another blog? Definitively, no. Do I have original insights that you will benefit from reading? Most likely not. So what’s the point of this blog? I recently changed jobs, and I’m learning a lot. I retain information better when I describe it to someone. I also have a fear that if I constantly regurgitate my ongoing education to my close family, they will…