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Screenshot of the telex WordPress AI interface. Showing a new block created.

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.

Screenshot of Telex AI prompt, the prompt reads: '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.'

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

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Fox on a Grassy Slope, looking intently into grass.
Fox on a grassy slope, looking straight at camera.

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.

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'painting' made by sheep gathering around a salt lick.
connected russhes in a circualr curtain, looking up towards the skylight
detail of a large image made with bracken
A passage between to walls of oak branches. A 'sun burst' of reeds at the end

Andy Goldsworthy | Fifty Years | National Galleries of Scotland

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.

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Packaging for the "World’s Sharpest Knife," showing a serrated blade cutting a red tomato and marketing text.

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.

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A goldfinch feeding a oungster, in hawthorn bush covered with bright red berries, sky very blue behind.

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.

A dirt path through a dense green forest with sunlight filtering through the leaves.

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.

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Ai generated picture of a AI bot talking to a human. Turned into a cubomania gif

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.

Cubomania Solver

Partially completed sliding tile puzzle on a yellow background, featuring black and white sketch-style artwork. Some tiles are in place forming parts of faces and figures, while others are missing or scattered around the screen.
Screenshot

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.

  1. 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!