#SilentSunday
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Walk to greenside in the autumn rain yesterday. Low cloud & mostly very dull, made the few yellow leaves and other colours pop a bit.
The Daily Create a tale of hashtags and gifs
Forever
#TDC1968 see also dancing
Dancing
see also personal.
I’f I’d the skills this would not be a terrible edit and it would be animates. I do dance to a lot of Alan‘s Tunes.
I’ve had a lot of fun and learning to make Jim Groom Dance. This is a reasonable example of how ds106 can lead you down strange paths of learning, and community. Jim took this in good part.
Personal
#tdc1919 Celebrity Heads in a Jar | The DS106 Daily Create
Making fun of DS106 leaders can get quite personal, see also socks and dancing.
Competitive
There is a DS106 Daily create score board, I was on the top once:
Political
Make America Gif Again #tdc2392 #ds106 @jimgroom still dancing;-) See also, dancing, personal
Riffing
One of the best parts of DS106 is what some call remixing & I think of as riffing. Many of these are lost in the depths of delted twitter feeds, but one I recall was record riffing. Which ended up with this:
One of the most delightful things that can happen in DS106 is someone can take what you make and change or improve it, one of my favourites, #tdc1713 Get Your Mozart On: Compose an Imaginary Musical Manuscript | The DS106 Daily Create:
This was much improve by Todd (lost on twitter) and made really musical by Viv.
In another post about this sort of thing I wrote
For me ds106 is a bit like non competitive tennis with self replicating balls that can be played on any court you like with any rules you like with the addition of be nice.
from: Boing – 106 drop in
The Road to DS106
Or DS106 look back in bewilderment
My path to DS106 is lost in the haze. The First mention this site is animating gifs on a rainy afternoon.
At that point I’d been reading around ds106 for a while.
I suspect my intro came from the flowering of web2.0 in education I was certainly reading Alan in 2006 and remember reading about Jim’s involvement in The Peoples Republic of Non-Programistan.
My first round was most encouraged by this idea: “#tdc2706 #ds106 “Welcome aboard, do what you like and leave the rest.” The Word according to @jimgroom
Once I started I’ve not really stopped, I’ve participated in several rounds of DS106 classes, finishing some, some not. My responses are scattered over service, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, mastodon & my blogs. I don’t respond much now, but I try to use my blog for anything I want to keep. DS106 has taught me about the impermanence of the web and how a domain of my own gives me a little stability.
Learning
I do not think there has been an online experience that has been as educational as DS106. It took me in to podcasting, aggregation, WordPress and more. It gave me the most positive experience of online learning &connection.
& Fun
#SilentSunday
Telex AI Mobile Post Creator
I tried Telex out a couple of times. The other day I had an interesting idea.
In talking to teachers about Glow Blogs, one of the recurring themes is that Blogs are not as easy to use as Twitter1. Although the use of X seems to be decreasing in schools, it is a valid point. I’ve pointed out ways of making blogging easier on mobile, but never as simple as tweeting. I certainly prefer blogging on the desktop myself.
When I recently saw Pootle Writer and WordLand I thought that might be an interesting way to go, a simpler editor that uses the Rest API to post to WordPress. I also use micro.blog which has a great mobile ui for posting from your phone in its app. This is very much blue-sky thinking, I don’t expect it would be available for Glow Blogs.
As none these products fitted exactly with my way of blogging2. I explored making my own external editor using a few AI tools. I got a couple working but never completely to my liking. Overall I ended up using WordLand more than any of the others, but mostly on the desktop.
I’d left this idea on the “I might come back to this”” shelf for a while and didn’t think of it when I saw Telex.
Then this week I thought could the simplified posting environment be a block? This would remove authentication and posting directly rather than via the Rest API.
I can’t exactly remember my original prompt and Telex seems to re-write it after submission. Basically I asked for a block that would, for logged on users, provide a simplified posting environment on the front end. Fields for title, body and up to 4 images. The images would be in a gallery. Selectors and inputs for tags and categories. Images would be resized to 1200 pixels max. Markdown could be used.
I think I had a conversation that went on over the next couple of days3.
The first iteration worked but produced a classic editor block. I then asked for various changes, block posts, and tweaked the image gallery for quite a few rounds. Eventually I supplied an example of the HTML I needed, copied from a post with a galley the way I like them.
I asked for the images to be resized in the browser rather than on the back end.
Then I installed the plugin on a test server and tried it on a phone. This led to tweaking the interface a bit more. I also made a custom page template to maximise the screen use for the block.
I then ran the Plugin Check plugin which found a few errors. This led to a lot of repetition, as one error was solved another popped up. These were mostly to do with sanitization.
Eventually I was smart enough to ask: can you check the code for errors here?
Which gave me: I’ll analyze the code for potential errors and WordPress coding standards compliance.
I had to ask for results: How did that go?
Telex found some issues and listed them. I then asked: As I do not understand the code what would you recommend?
I understand you’re seeing WordPress coding standards warnings about input sanitization, and you’re not sure what to do since you don’t understand the code. Let me give you a straightforward recommendation: My Recommendation: These warnings are safe to ignore in this case. Here’s why:
This was followed by a detailed list of reasons. including:
- We’ve already added proper sanitization – The code uses WordPress’s recommended functions (
wp_unslash(),sanitize_text_field(),absint()) to clean the data before using it. - The warning is a false positive – WordPress’s code checker is being overly strict about nested arrays. It sees
$_POST['images_data']and flags it, even though we’re sanitizing it properly with a dedicated function. - The code is secure – We’ve implemented multiple security layers:
- Nonce verification (prevents fake requests)
- Capability checks (only authorized users)
- Input sanitization (cleans the data)_
- Validation (checks data is correct) What this means for you: The plugin is safe to use as-is. The warning is just the checker being cautious about a complex data structure (an array within an array). The actual security measures are properly in place. If you want to submit this plugin to the WordPress.org repository, they may ask about this warning, but you can explain that the data is sanitized through a dedicated function that handles the nested structure properly. Bottom line: You can confidently use this plugin. The warning is more about coding style than an actual security problem.
Which seems good enough for me. It also chimed with the reports from the plugin checker.
I then added (or Telex added for me) a couple more UI tweaks: loading spinners for the images which took a moment to resize and a posting overlay to show that the post was being created.
Thoughts
Although I broadly agree that it should be both more fun and better learning to do it yourself, this is a project that I would really struggle to do myself. I’ve occasionally made very simple plugins, mostly shortcodes. One more complex one took me an age and had a steep learning curve. It is now broken. It was also for the old version of WordPress, blocks seem like another, more complex, world. Telex made a simpler block version for me quite quickly.
Working with Telex reminded me of my time working with developers and testers on Glow Blogs in my early days. Going back and forwards with requirements, tests and refinements. It was quite enjoyable.
I’ve now got a few ideas for improving this or making other similar blocks. For example, I make posts for books I’ve read. They are short and have a very predictable structure. A simplified posting environment for my phone could be useful.
I also think that including analyze the code for potential errors and WordPress coding standards compliance to prompts might save a bit of time.
If you are interested here is the project in Telex.
#SilentSunday
Walking up Slackdhu in the Campsies this afternoon, saw a few patches of this fungi. Golden Spindles I think. Happy to be corrected. #Fungi
#SilentSunday
A lot of deer around today, lots of bellowing from stags.
A dull afternoon, breezy with the threat of drizzle. Walked round the short loop on the Kilpatrick braes. As I came back on the road by the cattle grid I heard a harsh call from the ‘hawthorn field’ next to the gate. It kept going and Merlin suggested a jay. I watched for a while and saw one, moving from bush to bush, looking and calling. I could hear a crow and buzzard too. I wonder if they were getting worked up at a cat or fox. Quite a good view through my camera, the distance and dull weather making for a blurry shot. I’ve not seen jays here very often and mostly retreating. Further down in the horse field, near the drainage ditch I saw a little egret! I’ve watched a few down the Clyde recently but always on the shore. Another blurry photo.
I’ve been messing about with the simplest ImageMagick scripts again.
magick "$file" -threshold 25% -fill white +opaque black "${file%.*}bw25.gif"
Sort of thing. Changing the threshold repeatedly. A few more on Flickr. I am not sure why I like these but I do.
After Storm Amy it brightened up a little this morning. This Red Admiral to the chance of a bit of sunlight. I wonder how many more we will see this year. A bit later I saw a white flying around too, despite the wind. #butterfly
#SilentSunday
A red admiral In the pink. As I took the wings closed image a bee flew very close, wings snapped open.
#silentSunday
Photos, notes & map from a walk on Tuesday: walkmap
Block Vibes
I saw a link to Telex – AI-Assisted Authoring Environment for WordPress Blocks this week and thought I would give it a try.
A few (eek, 10) years ago I tried to make a plug-in for WordPress that would take a gif url and an audio url, it would then, on the fly, make a static version of the gif. Clicking that would play the gif and loop the audio. I did get it working, eventually adding a dialogue to search for gifs on giphy & audio on freesound. I even managed to incorporate it into the tinyMCE editor in WordPress. It never got finished, but it was fun. I didn’t see any make a site for it: GifMovie.
Making that plug-in involved a big effort on my part, and a ton of searching. I’ve occasionally thought it might make a WordPress block, but didn’t know where to start. I have baby steps, php, JavaScript and css. I’ve occasionally manages to add something to WordPress that I’ve needed mostly through creating shortcode. Simple stuff far short of creating a block.
Test Telex, I thought something similar might be an idea. I simplified a bit leaving out the freesound and giphy searches.
On opening Telex you are shown a typical ai prompt box. But behind that is a WordPress site. I am presuming this is WordPress playground, everything in the browser? I am not familiar enough with playground to be sure. I put in the prompt:
I’d like a block that would allow me to add a gif from the media library. It would allow me to choose a sound from the media library. When the block loads it would show a static image from the gif, generated on the fly with JavaScript with a play button. Clicking the static image would show the gif and loop the audio file.
And off the ai went, showing me some codes scrolling past and telling me how many lines of code it had written. After a while I had the block in the editor in front of me!
I could upload a gif and a mp3 to the block and it showed a preview. All looking good, I could preview the block right in the page. When I went to look at the published page, it looked ok, clicking the image started the sound, but the image vanished.
So I reported this and the ai offered a fix. At that point things went a bit wrong. The page stopped loading and restarting the whole thing failed to load the editor. After a few tries I gave up as I’d run out of time.
This evening I thought I’d try again, but a on a desktop rather than my now aging, 8th gen iPad. As this is all linked to my WordPress account I just opened the project. Getting the same problem I reported it to the ai and it fixed it again. To no avail. I repeated this a couple of times and tested each iteration. After a few goes everything just worked.
I downloaded the plug-in, uploaded it to a test site and it worked fine there too.
I also ran the plugin check plugin and almost no few errors. Presumably because this sort of plugin has fewer opportunities to make mistakes.
I guess this is as near to pure vibe coding as you get? I didn’t see any code at all in the process or discuss it with the ai. I just reported the problem. There is a code view where you can see all of the files created. They look as if they are very well organised and commented. I am sure if I was learning to make blocks this would help a lot.
The few times I’ve asked Claude.ai or chatGPT to do some coding I’ve had more of a view and understanding of what is going on. I’ve also noticed that if chatGPT tried to fix something it either manages straightaway or just repeatedly fails. Telex made a better job of fixing things on at least this one off.
I wonder if this will eventually make its way in to WordPress itself? What sort of overhead would having a bunch of extra block plugins added?
I guess that this could be a good learning tool, but that might require a bit more discipline in reading the code produced and other tutorials on creating blocks. I do feel I’ve learnt something when I’ve DIYed some simple stuff. Not that I’ve retained a lot, that would need more frequent application on my behalf.
I am looking forward to watching the progress with Telex and see where it goes if it gets out of the experimental phase.
Gif my own creation, ripped from video years ago. Sound from https://samplefocus.com
#silentsunday
Walking down from Ben Reoch, l notice a ginger bundle off to the right, not quite bracken. Looking at it through my camera’s zoom and it is a fox, head buried in the grass. After a moment or two its head comes up and stares intently into the grass. After a couple of moments, and photos, the fox turns and looks at me. A few more moments while we look at each other then it turns and runs off. As I move down the slope I can see over the ridge the fox went over. A few sheep stand around, moving off when they see me. They don’t look to have been worried about the fox.
Andy Goldsworthy – Fifty Years
Goldsworthy is internationally recognised for his work with natural materials such as clay, stones, reeds, branches, leaves, snow and ice
I have seen Mr Goldsworthy’s work online as I used it as inspiration for my classes when outdoor learning. I really enjoyed this exhibit, the bigger pieces were amazing. I also really enjoyed seeing the development of work made over many years using the same places. You also got the impression of his mastery of techniques for using natural materials. Some of the photos of work made with leaves looked as if some camera filtering was going on until you looked really closely. My photos don’t start give an idea. Worth looking at the exhibition page, or visiting. Recommended.
I’d have loved to have a class of pupils roam through the exhibition, and allowed them to touch run about and talk noisily. Then head outside.
World’s Sharpest Knife
I think it must have been about 20 years ago. I was in the supermarket and they had a guy demonstrating these kitchen knives. He sliced a lot of things up quickly, thinly and efficiently.
The knives, from China had lifetime guarantee.
I noticed he had a lot of plasters on his fingers.
There was a deal where you could buy 3 of the larger sized ones very cheaply. I bought 3, a very small paring knife and a fish filleting knife.
Later as I left the store I saw the salesman being handed over by the security guards to some policemen. I think he had been shoplifting.
I’ve still got the knives. Most of them are still quite sharp. I now prefer my heavier cook’s knife for chopping most things. They are good bread knives.
Getting to be a bit of a butterfly blog. Walked the RSPB site at Ardmore last Tuesday. Highish tide & a strong breeze. The path was often protected by windward bushes. Lots of small tortoiseshells & some painted ladies basking. Devils-bit scabious flowering. Some whites too, mainly green-veined.
Lots of butterflies on the walk to Greenside today. Small tortoiseshells, Painted Ladies, Red Admirals and Green veined whites.
On Monday I was planning a walk but it felt a bit hot to go to the hills. I got the train to Milngavie and walked back down the Kelvin walkway to Glasgow.
Saw the first kingfisher on the Allander water which kept my eyes on every overhanging branch for a while.
Both the Allander and the Kelvin are lined with the pink stink of Himalayan Balsam. The path quite overgrown in places with nettles, thistles & brambles making shorts a poor choice.
Despite the warm weather the rivers are quite full. Less butterflies than I expected, green-veined whites all long the way.
Everything seems to have come to autumn early, brambles, acorns and already red hawthorn berries.
Once back in Glasgow I was looking across the river and saw a reflecting, the colour and shape of a foxes ear. Lying in the balsam above was a young looking fox. It didn’t look quite right, spread and very still. Zooming in I couldn’t see breathing and it was still when I made a loud clap. My second kingfisher of the day arrowed past.
Once I got to the science park I saw a couple of specked woods. Birds along the way: a kestrel, mobbed by wee birds; warblers, and goldfinches. I watched one goldfinch feeding a youngster in those incongruous hawthorn berries.
Two Small Heath Butterflies #butterfly.
#silentSunday
Guess the cubomania
A couple of days ago I saw a “guess the cubomania” challenge from Theo. I’ve had an interest in Cubomania in the past and played around with the idea a bit. After a chat with D. who gave me a few engravers I googled a bit and guessed, wrongly, Goya.
Next I thought to ask ChatGPT. It suggested it could match by image matching techniques, gave me a fairly obviously wrong first row and ran out of credit.
I then thought to ask Claude to make me an interactive page where I could drag things around. It made a couple of not very good attempts.
I was thinking about a better prompt, when I remembered and asked:
Could we use the whole image for each piece but ‘crop’ it with css?
Claude replied:
Brilliant idea! Yes, we can absolutely use CSS to create a “window” effect where each piece shows only its portion of the full image. This is much more elegant than trying to extract individual pieces.
I was flattered1 and when Claude came up with another fail I decided to abandon AI and DIY. This turned out a lot better. I started by remembering background-position and finding interact.js . The last time I did any drag and drop I dimly recall some sort of jQuery and a shim for mobile/tablets. interact.js did a grand job for my simple needs. It was probably overkill as it seems to do a lot more.
It is pretty simple stuff, but potentially a lot of fun, different images, making cubomania puzzles who knows. I did extend it a bit, learning about localStorage (to save any progress) and the dialogue tag. All without AI but few visits to HTML reference – HTML | MDN and the odd search.
I had a lot of fun with this, more than if I had just managed to get either of the AIs it to do the whole thing. What it did make me think of is that AI chat was useful for working out what I wanted to do and how to do it. I could probably have done that bit too all by myself. Usually I just start messing about and see what happens. This points to a bit of planning, or maybe typing some notes/pseudocode/outline might work for me when I am playing.
- See: The machine began to waffle – and then the conductor went… In the paper the title was Artificial Intelligence: The Technology that lies to say yes. ↩︎
The Featured Image of this post was generated by ChatGPT in response to ” I want an image of a chatbot character chatting with a person, friendly, helpful & futuristic.” It has been run through Cubomania Gif!