Apparently today was this WordPress.com account’s eighth birthday. Time flies.
Of course the blog itself dates back to 2006, but it has changed platforms a whole bunch of times. It’s only this latest incarnation that’s celebrating its birthday.
I feel like such a dork but hey, nothing wrong with being a dork.
Earlier today I inserted an image into a post using the wordpress.com image tag thing. “/img”. 99% of the time I just paste in a link to an image on Flickr and the post editor embeds the photo through magic or something. The other 1% of the time I pull the images off of my phone. This morning though I used the tag and saw something new. There’s an option to have the built in wordpress.com AI thing generate an image for you.
I figured I’d try it out today. I asked it to generate an image of a Jedi Knight petting a kitten while a blues band plays in the background. Success, I guess?
Let’s try another one. This time I’ll add the instructions before I generate the image… how about this:
Generate an image of a hockey player using his stick to fight off a zombie attack at a fast food restaurant
Let us see the results………
Huh… okay… I guess it decided on its own that one of the zombies should also be a hockey player. Everyone appears to be skating without actually wearing skates, though why they would have to skate at a fast food joint is unknown. Is the guy in the back living or just a newly turned zombie. Also, what’s the deal with the teeth on the zombie on the left? Does the AI think that zombies have different teeth than the humans they used to be? That does not compute.
Okay, so there’s a nice little feature that I will only ever use ironically. Okay. I guess.
Every time I start to think about taking some time away from this page I get one of these in my notifications.
I’m just a sucker for validation, I guess.
Are any other wordpress.com users who use the iOS version of the Jetpack app for their mobile blogging needs having troubles with the app?
My notifications are always weird. They don’t match up with what I see on the web app. Things that I see in the browser don’t show up on the app for some unknown amount of time, and things that I clear off in the app don’t go away and are back the next time I look. As a total stats/analysis nerd, these issues are frustrating, but they are nothing compared to the new problem I’m seeing.
For the last three days or so I have not been able to upload an image from my iPhone’s Photo Album. It tries, but it hangs almost immediately and it never finishes the upload. 99% of the time I pull images out of Flickr rather than upload them directly, but on the few times I try and fail it pisses me off like crazy.
Anyone else having troubles like this? Is it time for us to start a revolt? Should I start designing “Down with Jetpack!” signs to bring to the protest marches, or what?
Today’s haiku for you is undead……
Zombies are hungry,
But feeding them is stressful.
Does my brain taste good?
So I watched an episode of The Walking Dead last night. Season two episode seven, titled Pretty Much Dead Already. That is the episode that changed my opinion on the show from “I think I like this show” to “holy shit I can never miss an episode of this show ever.” To say it’s a good episode is a massive understatement. If you were to say it was one of the best hours of television ever aired then I probably would not 100% agree with you, but I would understand where you are coming from.
I wrote the above haiku during my lunch break today. Watch a great zombie episode on Monday night, write a zombie haiku on Tuesday afternoon. Makes sense, right?
I then thought it would be funny to ask the wordpress.com AI Assistant to “write a haiku about zombies.” Allow me to share the results the AI came up with:
Hungry Zombies Haiku
Zombies are hungry,
But feeding them is stressful.
Does my brain taste good?
Yes, kids. You are reading that correctly. It gave me the same haiku that I just wrote! What the hell, bro? I hadn’t even published it yet! The AI Assistant literally read the document I was working in and stole my haiku! What the fuck?
Okay… I am going to ask for another one. This time I will ask it to “write a different haiku about zombies.” Here’s the result:
Zombies in the night,
Moaning for flesh and delight.
Fear their endless plight.
Oh nice, it rhymes this time. Think it did that as an apology? Neither do I. What a jerk! What an artificially intelligent ass wipe!
I wonder… did the AI Assistant somehow misinterpret my initial request for a haiku as a request to format my current post? Something like that? It added the title. I centered the text myself after the fact. I wonder if it thought I wanted input on the text I had already written. I’m not sure. I did specifically ask for a haiku, but I did not ask for a new haiku. Who knows. The AI is a jerk either way. A plagiarizing, haiku stealing thief of a jerk.
If the second AI haiku was not stolen from me… where did the AI Assistant steal it from? I’m sure it just went to google and spit out the first zombie themed haiku it found.
WordPress.com let us know via email last night that there is now an AI Assistant available in the blog post editor. At least if you are using the Block Editor format. I don’t know if it’s there if you’re writing HTML code or anything else, but if you’re using blocks you can add an AI Assistant block and ask it to do stuff for you.
For example, I asked the AI Assistant to write a paragraph about using AI to write a blog post and it came up with this absolute fucking masterpiece:
AI has revolutionized the way we approach content creation, offering unprecedented efficiency and creativity. By harnessing the power of advanced algorithms, AI can rapidly generate compelling blog posts on a diverse range of topics, tailored to specific audiences. Moreover, it can analyze trends and audience engagement to optimize content, enhancing its impact. While AI streamlines the writing process, it also empowers human creators by providing valuable insights and freeing up time for strategic thinking and ideation. Embracing AI in blog writing opens up exciting possibilities for innovation and scalability in the ever-evolving digital landscape.
How cool is that? Now I don’t have to go to Google Bard or Chat GPT when I want to add something fucking stupid to my already lame-ass blog posts. Hurrah!
WordPress.com announced a new function today. We can cross post to federated services (federated is the right word, isn’t it?) like Mastodon. I switched it on and I can see the domain it created, robertjames1971.blog@robertjames1971.blog, in Mastodon… though I don’t really use Mastodon. This post is me testing to see if the cross posting works. They say it could take 15 minutes or so to show up in the fediverse.
Now the good folks at Bluesky have to get their federated act together (I am pretty sure they are still heading in that direction) so I can follow myself there… because Bluesky is one that I actually sort of use.
Well now… this is just getting a little silly now, right?
I mentioned in yesterday’s daily writing prompt post… I think it was yesterday’s at least… that I’ve been writing pointless blog posts for about 17 years. I did something today that I have never, in all that time, done before. It has to do with my dumb haikus for you’s thing.
I have a new note on my iPhone where I have already written tomorrow’s haiku for you.
I did prep work. Really. I feel so gross. Like, this page is supposed to be spontaneous brain droppings, right? Where do I get off doing prep work?
Whatever. Anyway…
I have a couple of tasks for work that I wanted to crank out this weekend. It’s 7:11pm on the final day of this glorious three day weekend and I haven’t even started them yet. What the hell is wrong with me?
I had a bad case of what my mother used to call “the hungry horrors” after lunch today. I feel like I had a full days worth of between meal snacks in the space of about 30 minutes. It turned me into a giant gas bomb that’s ready to burst at any moment. It wasn’t bad enough to ruin dinner (I didn’t eat anything for four hours prior to dinner) but it’s left me uncomfortable and distracted. Blah. I have to push through and get that work done before I go to sleep tonight. Moron.
Okay, time for Robert to buckle down.
Inside the Red Head's Head 