Given last weeks post… it’s been a struggling week. To top it off…
That’s what a close friend sent me!
and through it… I’m tinkering. If I’m going to build something and put something in the world, I’ve looked back and it’s likely in December. I get all pensive around my bday, asking what am I doing with myself? And then I go off and make something.
Minimum Vibeable Product
What have I been making? I’ve been sinking my teeth into a little pet project. It’s my own little ActivityPub corner of the internet. And love it or hate it… I’m vibe coding.
I’m working with Google Gemini through Antigravity. And After a couple weeks. It’s fun to be a micro manager of a developer sometimes and, that’s pretty much what you feel like.
I give it some vague detailed order; it does some translating of that order; makes a plan and a todo.; checks with me if I agree, and I do about 80% of the time; then goes off and does it.
I review the code and for me… it’s good enough. After all I’m not going for any developer accolades with my little project. Right now, I’m just going for an MVP.
Note: If you’re a developer and want to watch something funny, as it to unit test everything it builds. Watch it argue with it self, sure it’s built perfect code, and then see every unit test fail. And then it argue with itself.
Note II: I now always ensure everything it builds has a corresponding unit test.
I’ve found once Google’s Nano Banana gets an idea in it’s head… it has some trouble letting go.
Here’s how the prompts went:
Make me a picture in the style of Ren & Stimpy an interpretive picture of sleep deprivation caused by back pain, flu and children
That’s a little too scary for folks… try again more like Spongebob Squarepants, and you don’t need the text.
Hmmm. Can you start again? Make me a picture in the style of Spongebob Squarepants an interpretive picture of sleep deprivation caused by back pain, flu and children. No need to add any text where the person sick is a person
Ya, sure. I think I can say that’s been my week on a bunch of fronts. Ship it.
I’ve finally decided to pull the chord and give this whole AI stuff a real college try, as they say.
After some consideration, I used the highly scientific Eeny-Meeny-Miny-Moe method and landed on Gemini.
So how’s it going?
Images
Kids love it. The colouring pages are fun for them. Even the neighbours kids are coming over asking.
Though I find myself really needing to ask “can you try it again, but this time….” comments.
I’ve also been struggling a bit on dimensions. While the images look nice, I usually want them to be specific in shape, and it’s been a struggle to say the least.
I really wonder the long books length prompts that are required for some of the more advanced uses of these tools.
Here’s an image when prompted “Make an picture of Google Gemini”
Coding Agents
When I first started trying to code with Gemini, it was a small pain because I essentially was given step by step prompts on what to do and samples. Meh…
Cursor was fun… but felt like it added a bit of bloat – lot’s of code that maybe didn’t need to be there.
It cleaned up after itself and I though… well that’s interesting.
The way it does it’s briefs and summaries I find very intuitive to read through through the steps and thoughts the agent explored.
I gotta say, it makes some of the lighter work easier when you can give it the simpler tasks and it just does it. Give a quick read to make sure it went through the right mental steps as checks and balances.
I haven’t fully flexed it’s muscles, but I think I just might and see what comes of it.
I don’t have any other idea’s that need that deep of a data set, but if I did – that’s a cool tool.
Gems
Gemini has Gems, there are like little helper agents. I tried it for a few days for a bit for things like productivity and ADHD exploration.
Maybe it’s what I tried to have them help me with? However my overall take is that it would be so easy to have it hold my hand and tell me what to do next. But, that’s kinda one of those things that has my dooms day yellow flag going off a tad.
Overall Thoughts
I gotta say, this stuff is fun, and enticing. It’s so easy to see the time savers. I think I’ll keep playing for a bit more, however I’ll probably push it a little further out to an arms distance…
Just one full week in, and I can quickly see and even feel a little bit of the ethical pitfalls. Those psychological cracks it the mind that it can easily slip in through.
If not careful. If not resilient.
Being told that every question I have is a great question; that I’m always making great progress; that I am awesome. Doing it over and over, feels off. Like surrounding yourself with digital “yes” folk.
Giving up my own agency and asking it what I think I should do next. Maybe use its take on a subject that perhaps I should have my own take on. Perhaps the right course in life would be to make a left turn, zig when I should zag. If I’m not careful enough I might give it enough of my agency it will tell me to keep driving straight, and I’ll do it, even though into the proverbial lake straight ahead.
Changing how I communicate. How I ask questions or better yet, how I “prompt”. The novels I would write for it, to do the things I want it to. And it will get close enough. Though would I even give the same detailed prompts for the real people around me. I shouldn’t need to. They are humans and should just get it. The AI is a computer so it needs me to be more considerate than to those around me. It needs me to be more detailed because of it’s mind.
While this might feel like a bleak outlook, I like to sit in the grey. I can still see the good. I thing the ethical conundrums of our technology have up till now felt pretty small in comparison. This one I can quickly see and even feel the weight.
Though I’m just spit ballin’ – the good old classic “If I had more time I would have written a shorter [post]”
I’ve been doing a bit of AI experimentation and NotebookLM just… well…
Google Gemini Generated: “Mind exploding from Orality, Postman, McLuhan knowledge”
I added McLuhan, Postman, Ong and a few other papers around media & the Gutenberg era ( 1400-1550 ) as sources, and clicked the “Audio Overview” button. I’m still in a state of shock on what it made. Enjoy.
Boom. I’m bona fide! Just got the results today that I passed the exam!
I am an AIPMM Certified Product Manager.
What does that mean now? At this moment, no clue.
Tomorrow, it ties the room together. Maybe it can open doors. It says, yes, I have a diverse background in tech, marketing & business and, yes, I know a thing or two about building things.
This is how I’ve been feeling lately. High high’s and low low’s.
Signed up to get the final AIPMM CPM exam. It’s been a while since I’ve been exam nervous. Now… do I even have a quiet place where no one can bug me for a couple hours???
It’s that time of year! I do Movember every year for their support of mental health. I suggest and those i love suffer. And let’s be honest Men don’t speak up, and we should.
I like to keep people on their toes and mix up the how to watch along. I try to not bombard with daily feeds, but I also think it’s fun to see the progress over time. This year, I’m using pixelfed.
Turkey Weekend 🇨🇦🦃 has drained me so all you get for weeknotes today is a list:
revisit note system through obsidian for my adhd-ness – I’ve used daily template for years, but it’s not feeling right anymore. Time to change it up
Did some reading on L-theanine and ADHD and until I get any movement on re-diagnosis, though why not.
I’m also looking to improve my life pattern specifically trying to help ADHD patterns. Note: I fight patterns and routine on a good day – my ADHD abhors it… which makes things interesting. I’m already telling my Pomodoro timer to put that break in it’s tomato. And I’m only a few days in.
I wrapped up the final psychodamic of an orality culture. I think there’s a few I need to add clarity and revisit, but now what? If we are a postliterate oral culture, and everyone’s like “ya” then what? My comms background is consistently asking myself “why should anyone care?” And it’s a very valid question I still can’t successfully communicate.
Finished the class work on AIPMM CPM. Now it’s time to study up and get ready for the exam.
We’re finally at the final attribute of Ong’s Psychodynamics of Orality. Even though he didn’t outline it last, I think it ties it all together.
The Interiority of Sound
Outside of sight, sound is a major sense for us. Sure there are 3 other senses, but come on…
Optical illusions can fake out our vision with perspective, relativity, reflection, translucence, or vapor our eyes can loose focus and be tricked. And when they are sound can inform us to fill in the gap.
You can echo locate with a game of Marco Polo. You can get a sense of what’s inside something simply by knocking on it – determine how hollow or dense an object is; uncover it’s insides like finding studs on a wall . The sound, and lack of sound, can give a sense of feeling based on ambient noise, resonance, or reverb, to give a “feeling” or maybe even alert to danger.
With instruments you can hear its make up of materials far away through it’s tone – the smooth and deep from the wood in a violin vs the sharp grit from the metals in a saxophone. You can hear quality, like the use of more modern, dense, plastics in vinyl records today verses the junk vinyl used as the Medium declined.
Listen to someone long enough, and you can even get a better sense of who they are. You might start to understand them more than you thought.
Reading, in contrast, is a solitary act even in a crowded room. It’s your voice inside your head echoing the words you’re seeing. Their thoughts become your thoughts. Whereas in oral traditions, you always remember the person who taught you.
“Sight isolates, sound incorporates,” as, Ong, put’s it.
Protect the Sound, Defend against Noise
However, Ong’s book was written before the internet and long before the smart phone – standing on a train car watching reams of people streaming music or video’s, all listening in isolation with their headphones intending to be a barrier.
One could argue that these devices can transform sound to isolate like a good book. We even have noise cancelling technology to further block out the world around.
However, it’s not call “sound cancelling” and, I think there’s a nuanced difference in our postliterte society between sound and noise. I think we have become acutely aware of the difference.
Technology made walking through a park more an act of blocking out and ignoring Bluetooth and cell phone speakers. It has added stop lights repeating “wait, wait”; tills with beeps and blips; musak; audio branding; gas pump ads; AIs calling us on the phone; even the wires in our walls hum all around us.
Our world is now very very noisy.
Sound is permissive. We focus in and must block out everything else to hear it.
And because of that we are pickier now than ever on who we listen to, we are also pickier who we communicate with.
There are profound feelings of vulnerability and judgement. That there is a preference on the written word or recorded image. The ability to capture many takes, revise and rewrite to come across in the most flattering light.
Radio students are scared to give live interviews. Afraid of being seen by the other person. Questioning who’s really doing the interview?
Live, immediate sound is now one the most profound experiences. Live communication has a feeling of exposure and rawness.
We even have running gags and jokes on the topic, how we no longer answer random calls or turn off all the lights in the house and duck when someone dares knock on our door.
While headphones create a cocoon against audio interaction trying to immerse in their own experience, what initially may look like isolation, I think is incorporation. Perhaps a deep connection, just not with the person next to them – instead maybe to other Swifties, or SmartLessers. The sound they are embraced in is just for another community that you, or I, aren’t a part of.
The fact that we protect ourselves so much from “noise” is evidence of how powerful sound is to our core. As we progress in our postliterate society, I think we’re going to defend and protect it even more.
Is this one of the many reasons people don’t want to go back to the office; why headphones are status symbols; why concerts are so expensive; why radio kids don’t want to do interviews; why people aren’t listening to each other?
Related/Unrelated?
Speaking of powerful audio communities, Taylor Swift’s ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ album release party “movie” was a 3-day theatrical experience and crush it over traditional movies making over $30 million domestically. It was a collective experience.
