Everything

This should be everything you can find on this site, more or less:

Thinking about coconuts

When I was a child I used to go on a long car journey with my father to visit my grandparents in the North of England. Apparently my father would complain to my mother that…

On misremembering and AI hallucinations

artificial intelligence

In the wonderful 2001 film Monster’s Ball there is a scene where Hank (played by Billy Bob Thornton, one of my favorite actors) has an argument with Leticia (played by Halle…

Self-prompting - leveraging your mental cockney builder

artificial intelligence

When I am doing DIY jobs at home, I have a cockney¹ builder who gives me useful tips in his Bob Hoskins accent². He generally tells me that the way I’m approaching a job is…

The WEIRD bias in generative AI responses

artificial intelligence

Diagram of the structure of the human eye by al-Haytham

Creating a website with Bear app

This web page is written and maintained using the Bear app, a simple note-taking app for Apple devices. I now use it for all my note-taking, and have a special set of pages…

Comparing ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini

artificial intelligence

In this experiment I compare the generative AI platforms below. I have awarded them stars based on their overall responses to similar or identical prompts.

Understanding Perlin noise

In this little experiment I investigate Perlin noise, and end by making a fantasy map:

Bear Helper, an easy-to-customize macOS menubar helper for the Bear app, written in Python

The script is on GitHub here, and also reproduced below.

Using OSX Shortcuts to copy Perplexity.ai responses to markdown apps (Bear, Quarto)

artificial intelligence

“I … am rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand.”

My Personal Knowledge Management system

This article is discussed on Reddit, and the Bear community forums.

Tree of knowledge image

I started this by using a compass and ruler to reproduce some sacred geometry, inspired by images in The Secret Teachings Of All Ages (1928) by Manly P. Hall.

What markdown features can I export from Quarto to Confluence?

Previously I did a test to export content from Quarto to Confluence. It worked, and very well! You can read about that here.

What features in Confluence’s own storage format can I export to Confluence?

My previous test was to see which basic Quarto features I can export to Confluence. It went pretty well. You can read about that here.

Diagrams from Python, exported to Confluence

Final test in this series, can I include a diagram drawn with Python?

The Art of Explanation by Ros Atkins summary

information visualization

Visual notes from the book The Art of Explanation by Ros Atkins.

My seal

King Charles has seals for his projects. In fact he’s gone a bit seal mad, having had three created in about a year, all designed by Jonathan Ive’s LoveFrom design agency.…

Using Quarto to create Confluence pages

Quarto is a great publishing system for charts and graphs. It allows you to generate data visualizations with Python and Plotly, Observable or whatever. Confluence is a…

We need to talk about your information diet

Download a PDF version of this essay for classroom use.

Processing a podcast transcript with the ChatGPT API

artificial intelligence

I was going to use Python and the ChatGPT API to cut up a podcast transcript and process it. But I discovered I could just cut and paste the whole transcript (over 9k words)…

Marriage of Heaven and Hell image

I started this image many months ago. The inspiration for this work comes from many sources, including Italian Renaissance magic and William Blake. I inked the stems and…

What is the perfect layout in the age of screens?

The history of book design is fascinating. Page layout has developed slowly over centuries of refinement. But what is the perfect layout in the age of screens? Landscape…

William Blake timeline - information visualization experiment

information visualization

I’m a huge fan of William Blake. As an information visualization experiment I decided the make the timeline below. My original intention was to make all the images in the…

Using Google Sheets as a database for simple web applications

web development

Often when creating simple web apps you want a small and simple database for the data. It is also often a requirement to give someone else access to the database, and to…

Making neat notes whilst standing up

I like to take neat notes. If I don’t concentrate when making notes they are terribly messy and worthy only of the bin. Making neat notes is satisfying and an end in itself…

Meetup groups

public speaking

I’ve been running Meetup groups for about ten years. It’s an important part of my study process. I currently run these two meetup groups:

Uncle Lubin - experiments with colour palettes

I’m a big fan of the ligne claire¹ illustration style, which is basically clear strong lines filled with flat colour. I am also a fan of the eccentric drawings of Heath…

Connecting to ChatGPT via the API in Python

artificial intelligence

I connected to ChatGPT using the API in Python. I ran a couple of tests, which cost $0.01 to process.
Next step - take data from a database, process it, return results to…

A curious case of JSON data being out-of-sync

Update: this didn’t actually solve the problem. It was a bug in Drupal itself.

Gods of the visual essay

I enjoy explaining things. There’s an incredible sense of satisfaction that comes from taking a complicated idea and simplifying it into easily digestible bits that anyone…

Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Magic

public speaking

I run a discussion meetup group here in Barcelona. Every few weeks I (or one of the group members) talks about something that interests them. In this video I run through a…

Using Obsidian for Personal Knowledge Management

Whilst Obsidian has many fine qualities, I’ve decided it’s not the right tool for me. I’m sticking to Quarto for notes that I want to be public (like this one), and Apple…

Fungus collected in Cataluña

These are photographs I’ve taken of fungi over the years in various places in Cataluña.

How I finally got the habit of productive note taking

For many years I tried to get the habit of regular note taking, but it was only once I started to write research notes for clients that I understood how to do it properly.

AI is coming for your job

artificial intelligence

The news has been full of it lately - Artificial Intelligence is coming for your job¹! Within a few years, Artificial Intelligence is going to make you unemployed, and…

The Moral Machine - Could AI Outshine Us in Ethical Decision-Making?

artificial intelligence

There has been a lot of hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth about the dangers of AI. Artificial Intelligence is going to be the end of us all, apparently. But is this…

Discussion about Swarm Intelligence

public speaking

artificial intelligence

A discussion between Gonzalo Guarner and myself about Swarm Intelligence — from what it is to terraforming Mars with nano bots. We talk about metaheuristics, John von…

Notes from the course Neural Networks and Deep Learning

artificial intelligence

The title graphic for this page I created with Stable Diffusion, using the text as a prompt which included illustrations by santiago ramon y cajal. Santiago Ramón y Cajal was…

How I improved my digital handwriting

Writing by hand has been demonstrated to have a positive effect both on learning/memorization and achieving goals. And so earlier this year I started to take handwritten…

Image tests: format and size

When I did these experiments I didn’t include the webp format, which may be a better one than any of these. More experiments needed.

More experiments with Stable Diffusion

artificial intelligence

Stable Diffusion V2 was released this week (Dec ’22), so I decided to do some experimentation with it. To do this I used the ImaginAIry Python code by Bryce Drennan. I also…

Experiments with Stable Diffusion

artificial intelligence

I created these images using the Stability Photoshop Plugin by the wonderful Christian Cantrell, with images generated utilizing the Dreamstudio service. It’s a paid-for…

Drunk Schrödinger cartoons

¹ What is Life? article on wikipedia

Kepler’s Somnium

The astronomer and astrologer Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630) wrote one of the very first science fiction novels, and the book caused his mother to be tried for witchcraft.…

William Blake postcards

I’m a huge fan of William Blake. He was a crazy genius. These postcard sized images are inspired by quotes from his work The marriage of Heaven and Hell. The second two are…

Paradise Lost cartoons

information visualization

A few years ago I got a bit obsessed by Paradise Lost. Paradise Lost is a difficult work to read. It starts like this:

Abiogenesis pictures

Some little drawings I did around the concept of abiogenesis, using a fiber-tip pen and coloured pencils.

The Medici family tree

information visualization

The Medici were a powerful banking family during the Italian Renaissance. Their influence spanned a couple of centuries, and they produced four Catholic Popes. They were…

Information visualization notes

information visualization

Advanced techniques from the Coursera course by Enrico Bertini of NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

Information visualization: visualizing temporal data

information visualization

Visualizing temporal data from the Coursera course by Enrico Bertini of NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

Information visualization notes: visualizing network data

information visualization

Visualizing network data from the Coursera course by Enrico Bertini of NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

Information visualization: interactive and multiple views

information visualization

Visualizing interactive and multiple views from the Coursera course by Enrico Bertini of NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

Introduction to Psychological Sciences lecture 3

These are my visual notes, created on the iPad using the Concepts app, for Steven Pinker’s PSY 1 Introduction to Psychological Sciences course¹. It’s a great course. I only…

Introduction to Psychological Sciences lecture 2

These are my visual notes, created on the iPad using the Concepts app, for Steven Pinker’s PSY 1 Introduction to Psychological Sciences course¹. It’s a great course. I only…

Notes on Pinker: Introduction to Psychological Sciences

These are my visual notes, created on the iPad using the Concepts app, for Steven Pinker’s PSY 1 Introduction to Psychological Sciences course¹. It’s a great course. I only…