Claude: Hobbies, Fitness & Learning

Write a crochet pattern from a photo with ChatGPT and Claude (gave up)

Melissa Warr wanted to crochet a Valentine's dog from an image found online, but couldn't find a pattern for it and had never written one. Basic prompts for a pattern from a picture didn't work, so Warr had ChatGPT help write a better prompt. The patterns kept coming out as numbered lists instead of bullet points, with arms and legs that weren't long enough. Warr ran the prompt in both ChatGPT and Claude; Claude's results were better but 'missed many of the parts (the tail, ears, etc.)', and both struggled with irregular shapes. Warr gave up on the AI pattern and bought a pattern on Etsy instead.

Research a Victorian-born grandfather's life with Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini deep research (partial)

Dan Taylor-Watt gave Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini the same brief, with deep research turned on, to research a paternal grandfather, Cecil, who died in 1960, starting from a Word document written by Taylor-Watt's father. Claude took about 6 minutes, used 340 sources and wrote an 11-page, 4,219-word report; it found no significant new information but flagged inaccurate dates, and it later made a 3-minute-30-second narrated video using code and an open-source voice model. ChatGPT took 9 minutes, ran 714 searches and wrote 14 pages (4,659 words); it caught an error about the year of the fire that destroyed service records, noted that the LNER railway wasn't created until 1923, found information on the first wife's family, and spotted a Lance-Corporal's chevron in a photo, but its video attempt fell short. Gemini wrote the longest and most visual report (5,347 words), but its maps were wrong (Osmotherley is east, not south, of Northallerton), it missed the date problems, and it said it couldn't make a video.

Rewire a battery light-up ghost to USB-C and an ESP32 for Home Assistant alerts, with Claude

nabossha's spouse had ordered a sketchy light-up gadget online. Claude helped nabossha gut it: the batteries and on/off switch came out, and USB-C power and an ESP32 went in. It's now hooked into Home Assistant and changes its light show when the doorbell rings, a parcel arrives or someone passes by, in time for Halloween. The attached video shows the gadget, a ghost figure, lit up by a door.

Turn class slides and notes into a compact certification exam study guide with a Claude project

Obsvra, preparing for a certification exam, gave a Claude project the class slides as PDFs and a transcription of notes taken in class, marking which parts were most likely to come up in the exam. With project instructions to focus only on likely exam material and a prompt asking Claude to pair the notes with the slides, it produced a clean, compact study guide that cut each 2-hour exam prep session down to 2–3 pages of notes.