Borne up and drawn in by fast becoming friends’ web of writing prompts
Writing is a unique space for me and increasingly so. My dear departed sister encouraged me to go to a writing group in Sligo, Ireland – a place full of writers and artists and all in the shadow of the poet WB Yeats. Indeed, when I first moved there in 1995, one of my early commissions as a signwriter and, it turns out, a muralist, was to paint a mural of WB Yeats on a new secondhand bookshop – The Winding Stair – named for the title poem of one of Yeats’ books of poetry – you can see me painting it here. I had studied Yeatss at school in English (Literature) which replaces the English (Creative) of earlier school years – why do they do that? I also painted a little but didn’t want to go down the road of fine art because I perceived that artists are so often groomed by galleries encouraging them to produce more of what sells rather than following their own creative wanderings. And so I became a signwriter (painted not computer-cut vinyl) where the creative input is much smaller and constrained by a brief but, I felt, more honest and more sure as a means of making a living. Moving to Ireland gave me a new burst of creative freedom as a signwriter – especially after doing the Yeats mural although some years later, The Winding Stair closed down and the subsequent occupiers of the shop painted over my “masterwork” – a lesson in the zen of attachment to earthly achievement…
Going back to the writing group, it was such a pleasure to rediscover the joy of putting words on the blank canvas of the page – I produced a slim volume of the group’s writings including a CD of the members reading their pieces – and then I discovered blogging… By now it was 2005 and my partner and I moved back to England to see more of our growing grandchildren, and as we waited to complete our stable-to-house conversion, there was no time to make friends in the community and so blogging remained my virtual circle of friendship. I belonged to a blog -site called Mo’time run by an American living in Italy, who created Mo’time as a test bed for ideas for the larger site which was his job. Sadly, the larger site was sold and Mo’time terminated and though we made several attempts to kindle a new space – it was never the same – however I still see quite a few Mo’timers on Facebook.
Then in 2020, on April 1st – I stumbled across the A to ZX Challenge and as the pandemic was taking hold, I plunged in! Each year has been differently themed and I have encountered new fellow writers as well as old friends. This year, however, writing was even more central – my theme was on the etymology of phrases and so was like honey to writing bees and I have joined another writing group – not in the flesh, but by Zoom and our facilitator is also an A to Z-er. What has been different though, is that through the new writing friends I have made (and reviewed here on my Roadtrip) I have encountered a world of other blogging challenges, written, photographic and especially poetry. Since my writing group is prompted by poems and much of what I have written has been (Free) Verse, it was like an alignment of the planets – instead of tailing off into silence after the A to Z finished, I am being tempted and indeed succumbing to all sorts of new challenges as well as writing in my group. I created the picture at the top of this post using Midjourney – another takeaway from this year’s A to Z (thanks to Misky and Vidya) to convey the sense of both support and crazy fear of falling out of control and spending my whole time writing challenge posts! So far I have engaged with Six Degrees of Separation, the Poet’s Pub and Sadje’s WDYS (What Do You See) and in the interests of Life/Work/life balance, I think that may be enough for now – things should be a pleasure and not a pressure… And then there are two novels to get back to, one finished to first draft and the other, a more serious work, with a lot of writing to go! And I used to spend a lot of time keeping abreast of the news! And then there’s the allotment – water and weed it or lose it! And then there is my partner, children and grandchildren not to mention two and a half days at work…
Here’s the thing though, within reason, the more you do, the more you fit in because what goes is the dross, the stuff that didn’t really matter, write poetry not protest seems to be where I am right now…
P. S. I have been told that I am not great at communicating, say, enthusiastic responses, that I may even be on the spectrum, but when I write, even though I may not feel the feelings whilst in the act of writing, be it poetry, prose or fiction, when I read back emotional content, I emote with the best of them, tear up – the works. So I guess writing is my medium of expression…
Lady in Read – such a great pun – and it truly reflects Vidya’s approach to her blog – it might be described as Fusion – “Lady in Red” is a western song by Chris de Burgh and it has featured in several films and both Vidya’s avatar and blog banner show her in a red dress but in the content she goes further. For example, in this year’s A to Z (she is a veteran participant), she wrote poems about people and places from India and particularly Karnatka where she grew up. However, Vidya writes prompted by many blogging challenges including NaPoWriMo which was also running in April and rather than do two separate posts, Vidya gives us a mash-up or fusion. so in My Heart Beats for Harihar, her H post, Vidya writes a poem celebrating the town she grew up in as a Sea Shanty – the NaPoWriMo prompt! To have followed Vidya’s A to Z is to take a deep dive into Indian/Karnatka culture but served up with a fusion twist seasoned with a great deal of humour…
Vidya also explored using AI for both images to illustrate some posts and also to generate ideas for post titles and you can read about her assessment of her experiments in her Reflections Post.
This was supposed to be an A to Z Roadtrip Review of LADY IN READ WRITES and I will get to that but on looking around her blog, I found this intriguing way of reviewing books and once I had sussed out that this was a regular challenge, I got back to the source of the Six Degrees of Separation Bookish Meme – here! And I had to take up Lady in Reads’ challenge and think of six linked books myself – so late it is, but here goes…
Now I haven’t read Hydra, by Adriane Howell, so I have had to go and look at the review on Amazon to find out what it is about and here is some of what it says – “Anja is a young, ambitious antiquarian, passionate for the clean and balanced lines of mid-century furniture. She is intent on classifying objects based on emotional response and when her career goes awry, Anja finds herself adrift. Like a close friend, she confesses her intimacies and rage to us with candour, tenderness, and humour. […] Hydra is a novel of dark suspense and mental disquiet, struck through with black humour., Adriane Howell beguilingly explores notions of moral culpability, revenge, memory, and narrative – all through the female lens of freedom and constraint. […] From the treacherous auction houses of Melbourne to the sun-struck islands of Greece, Hydra took me places I never expected to go.”
So a Greek island named after a tiny water creature named for the many-headed monster of Greek myth and the setting for a dark psychological drama…
This led me to This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson Link:- A psychological drama about a man who probably was bi-polar.
This Thing of Darkness tells the story of the friendship between Captain Fitzroy (after whom the weather area is named) and the illustrious Charles Darwin and their voyage of discovery on HMS Beagle. Fitzroy had hoped that the trainee Parson and amateur naturalist appointed to the voyage, would scotch the ideas gaining traction from geology, that the story of the Earth was not as written in the bible but rather that written in the fossil record. Alas, Darwin formulated the bones of his Theory of Natural Selection after their voyage to the Galapagos Islands but it is thought that it was partly out of respect for his friend Fitzroy, that he held off publishing his theory until forced to by the possibility of rival scientists publishing ahead of him. In the course of the voyage of the Beagle, it becomes clear that Fitzroy was probably suffering from what we today would diagnose as Bi-polar disorder.
This led me to Ammonite by Nicola Griffith The link:- Fossils
Four out of my six linked books are or contain elements of science-fiction and those four are some of my favourite books ever – not that I only read that genre only, any more than Nicola Griffith only writes sci-fi, but Ammonite was, brilliantly, her first novel. set on a planet where a virus kills all men and the indigenous women have found a way to reproduce without the opposite sex. The titular ammonite plays a very small part, but a link is a link…
This led me to The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula le Guin Link:- A planet of humankind with a unique form of sexuality…
Ursuala le Guin is perhaps the pre-eminent female writer of science-fiction and it is hard to imagine that her sex was not a factor in writing The Left Hand of Darkness. In a universe where a long vanished race have applied pan-spermia to many planets, seeding each with variations on the human theme – this planet has a people who only come into their sexual phase at a certain time of the month. Ursula le Guin explores the implications of such a thought experiment, no monogamous birth couples, no rape, sex as a cloistered activity etc. There is much more to the book, friendship, diplomacy, political intrigue, but the sexuality was the link both to and from…
This led me to Orlando by Virginia Woolf Link:- A sex changing nobleman whose lives span 300 years.
I have not read Orlando myself, but have heard it dramatised and so it is on my Tsundoku list… It is a satirical fiction dedicated to Virginia Woolf’s lover, and author – Vita Sackville-West and who had a mutual fascination with the more literary author that was Virgina – the latter has made the literary grade whilst the work of Vita has sunk into comparative obscurity. However she was the inspiration for Orlando and so has achieved a form of immortality…
This led me to the breakthrough work of one of my favourite authors – Kurt Vonnegut and Slaughterhouse Five Link:- a hero who has become, in the author’s words – unstuck in time.
Kurt Vonnegut – an American of German origin, joined up to fight the Germans in World War 2, was captured by the Germans, locked up with his work party on the outskirts of Dreden on the night of the fire-bombing of Dresden in which he nearly lost his life to being bombed by his Allies. This had a profound effect on Vonnegut and although this was not his first book, when Slaughtrehouse Five was finally birthed, it was Vonnegut’s breakthrough masterpiece. Vonnegut projects his PTSD onto his character Billy Pilgrim who flashes back and forth on his time-line…
This lead to The Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell Link:- A nested series of stories going from the past to the future and back
This highly successful book and the probably more widely viewed film that was made of it, shows how what can work in a novel may need to be changed in a movie. The Cloud Atlas starts in the 18th century, tells half a story – moves on in time, tells half of another story and carries on into a post-apocalyptic future which is somehow linked to each of the stories. I then concludes each story working backwards in time. The movie, and we tend to think, mistakenly, of flashbacks (and flashes forward) to be a movie invention, and The Cloud Atlas darts unforgivingly between the various strands of the story and I found, that even having read the book previously, it has taken several viewings to grasp all the connections which were amplified by the visual rendering of the book. Which is best? Read then watch and weigh in for yourselves…
Which brings us full circle, because The Cloud Atlas (book) begins on a beach like the setting for Hydra and the movie ends on another beach in another galaxy far, far away and like all the books mentioned, they all take the reader on a journey which cannot leave the reader unmoved or unchanged…
I decided to make a Header Image (above) for this little series of posts and have retrofitted it to the two previous posts here and here. So I asked the Midjourney app on Discord, to depict a silver-skinned Android, firstly, standing at an easel painting, and then at a computer typing. I am fairly sure that the AI known as Midjourney had no sense of the irony of asking it to anthropomorphise an Android doing these activities, because current forms of AI are so far from having the sentience required to appreciate concepts as subtle as irony. Spoiler alert, I approached this evaluative exploration with certain preconceptions about the likely conclusion although I didn’t know for sure, how those conclusions might be reached because I didn’t know how AI’s work, in detail. What I am going to show you today is what I have learned, but I am also going to link you to a very erudite analysis of why we should not be worried about AI taking over the world – in a piece called “Why the AI Doomers Are Wrong“, Nafeez Ahmed explains why the direction of travel of AI development, simply can’t lead to a human-brain-like sentience. I will quote from his article later.
First of all, look at the left-hand side of the header picture, in particular, the easel. On close inspection, you can see that the easel is the wrong way round and that the painter/android, is standing behind the easel. Midjourney produces four images by default, in the remarkable time of about 60 seconds which is almost like magic – indeed, in 1962, Arthur C. Clarke, a science fiction writer, stated in his book “Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible” that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. So despite the apparent magic of creating these images so quickly, the AI has made a fundamental mistake that reveals that it doesn’t really understand what an easel is or how it should be used. Nafeez Ahmed is mostly talking about text generative interactions with AI – ChatGPT and the like, but what he says below, is equally applicable to images generated by AI…
The stunning capabilities of the new chatbots and their uncanny ability to engage in human-like conversations has sparked speculation about sentience. Yet there is zero tangible evidence of this beyond a sense of amazement. What many miss is that the amazing nature of these conversations is not a function of an internal subjective ‘understanding’ by an identifiable entity, but rather the operation of algorithms made-up of hundreds of billions of parameters trained on massive datasets of human text to predict words that should follow given strings of text. {…} This is not a breakthrough in intelligence, although it is, certainly, a breakthrough in being able to synthesise human responses to similar questions and thereby mimic patterns in human interaction. This model of AI, therefore, cannot, in itself, generate fundamentally new knowledge or understanding – let alone sentience.
Nafeez goes into great detail about how the research is headed in the wrong direction and indeed, how it is unlikely it is that it will ever succeed in equating to human sentience, so if you want to put your mind at rest about a Terminator-style future in which humans are subjugated by machines – nip on over and read the full article. Meanwhile I am going to show you some more examples of how Midjourney gets things “wrong” and how to get the “right” results and what that says about how useful such a programme can be.
You interact with the Midjourney app by sending it a message (just as if it was really an intelligent entity) containing a prompt, and once you receive your four images, you can choose one to enlarge, if you are satisfied with it, or run variations on one or all of them. Here is the prompt that produced the above set of images. “Silver android painting at an easel by Roy Lichtenstenstein” – the AI places most importance on the object at the beginning of the prompt, then on the activity described and lastly, it attempts to produce the images, in this case, in the style of the Pop Artist Roy Lichtenstein – famous for painting s in the style of close-ups of comic book pictures. These close-ups show the dot screens that were used to shade the illustrations of the comic book plus the hard black outlining and Midjourney has picked up well on these style features, particularly the top right and bottom left pictures. The top-left shows a sculpture vaguely resembling an up-cycled easel made of silver and the bottom right shows a silver-skinned figure with dot-screen effect, holding a brush and painting a picture but with no easel. In the [op-right picture, the top of the easel is just showing in the bottom corner and the android “artist” is holding a small blank canvas in her hand and drawing on it. Having seen the header image at top, and these pictures were as near as I could get to what I wanted, from multiple attempts, you can see that what I wanted was an all-over silver-skinned android and in the images above, top-right has a human face although “her” body is robotic – perhaps cyborg is a better description, whilst the other pictures show a sculpture, a woman and a totally abstract figure. So I decided to change the prompts to “Robot” rather than “Android” which produced better results. The reason I had started with “Andriod” was because robots range from automatic hoovers that move around your rooms looking like little miniature flying saucers sucking up dirt to more anthropomorphic devices – which is what I wanted.
“standing silver robot painting at an easel by Roy Lichtenstein” produced(among others) the above image in which the robot, possibly standing, is grasping what looks like the top of an easel but the “painting” does not appear to be on the easel. So I tried “Robot standing painting at an easel” and got this rather cute robot who looks like he is sitting on an invisible chair – “Hey Midjourney” just because you don’t show the chair, doesn’t make it standing!” Notice that with the style reference to Roy Lictensten gone, this image is very different. I would like to show you more of the iterations but Midjourney froze and when I reinstalled it, it had lost the entire session of work – you just can’t get the staff…
Another thing that I have discovered in my experiments, is that both Midjourney and ChatGPT, like to add unspecified embellishments – remember in my first report, how ChatGPT found the correct explanation for the phrase “Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey” but then added a totally made up explanation? Well Midjourney does the same thing too. Here is a picture of the railway viaduct at Knaresborough in West Yorkshire , an hours drive from where I live.
I wanted to see if Midjourney could produce a collage image using fragments of maps which it tried but didn’t really understand the concept – although I am not saying that it can’t, but at the very least, my prompt wasn’t sufficient (one of the oldest sayings amongst computer programmers is “Garbage in – garbage out!”) Here is Midjourneys best effort…
There are some map elements and the whole scene has been chopped up and rearranged but not in a way that makes sense – this one is closer to the real view…
But my first attempt, before I added the collage style, was simply to see how Midjourney would find and represent the viaduct and it generated the four images below. The top left image, Midjourney has added another railway running beneath the viaduct, likewise, lower-left it has added a canal and in the images on the right, Midjourney has transported us into a past sans Knaresborough and a post apocalyptic future where vegetation is growing over the viaduct.
Enough with all the pretty pictures – what does all this reveal about the way that the AI Midjourney works! Referring to the work – Erik J. Larson in his book, The Myth of Artificial Intelligence, Nafeez Ahmed cites a summary of the work by Ben Chugg, lead research analyst at Stanford University (Iknow – quotes within quotes) as follows:-
“Larson points out that current machine learning models are built on the principle of induction: inferring patterns from specific observations or, more generally, acquiring knowledge from experience. This partially explains the current focus on ‘big-data’ — the more observations, the better the model. We feed an algorithm thousands of labelled pictures of cats, or have it play millions of games of chess, and it correlates which relationships among the input result in the best prediction accuracy. Some models are faster than others, or more sophisticated in their pattern recognition, but at bottom they’re all doing the same thing: statistical generalization from observations. This inductive approach is useful for building tools for specific tasks on well-defined inputs; analyzing satellite imagery, recommending movies, and detecting cancerous cells, for example. But induction is incapable of the general-purpose knowledge creation exemplified by the human mind.”
Current AI has become proficient at both deductive and inductive inference, with the latter becoming a primary focus. Larson points out that human intelligence is based on a far more creative approach to generating knowledge called ‘abduction’. Abductive inference allows us to creatively select and test hypotheses, quickly eliminate the ones which are proven wrong, and create new ones as we go along before reaching a reliable conclusion. “We guess, out of a background of effectively infinite possibilities, which hypotheses seem likely or plausible,” writes Larson in The Myth of Artificial Intelligence. {…} And here is Larson’s killer diagnosis: We don’t have a good theory of how abductive inference works in the human mind, and we have no idea how to recreate abductive inference for AI: “We are unlikely to get innovation if we choose to ignore a core mystery rather than face it up,” he writes with reference to the mystery of human intelligence. Before we can generate genuine artificial intelligence that approaches human capabilities, we need a philosophical and scientific revolution that explains abductive inference. “As long as we keep relying on induction, AI programs will be forever prediction machines hopelessly limited by what data they are fed”, explains Chugg
To relate this back to my experiments with Midjourney, the AI could identify what an easel looked like and include it in an image but it didn’t really know what it was or how it was used. Easels are probably present in thousands of pictures of artist’s studios as well as adverts but I bet there isn’t a Painters 101 that “First you will need an easel and this is how you use it” because when a human artist goes into a studio and sees canvasses fixed into easels, even if he has never seen one before, he is there to paint canvasses and it is obvious what they are and what they are for. It might be obvious to a human being with our ability to use inference, deduction and abductive capabilities, but an AI might identify an easel, but without finding a clear description of the usage, it cannot fully fathom how to use it…
As for the the tendency to add extraneous details, well the algorithms that govern Generative AI’s, are designed to mimic human conversational style, so when it has found a relevant answer to the requested information or task, it looks to extend the conversation in what it has learned might possibly follow – it doesn’t know whether it is true or not, because that is way above it’s paygrade ( a metaphor which it probably wouldn’t understand either). This phenomena of AI’s making things up is called hallucination – a very anthropocentric term…
I will make one more report on my attempts to get exactly what I wanted from Midjourney and how I found a compromise to be able to work with the results…
“Ronel Janse van Vuuren hails from sunny South Africa” says her About page, and her blog is called “Ronel the Mythmaker” subtitled Dark Fantasy Author which has intrigued me ever since I came across her blogs – you see I can’t think of South Africa without thinking of sunshine so strong it bleaches out everything, mind, body and motivation. I have to imagine Ronel in a dark, cold cellar beneath a remote house in order to conceive that anyone could write about fairies and review books from all over the world. because, too, South Africa seems at the end of the Earth, last stop before Antarctica and whilst the internet means that you can wander, virtually wherever you wish to go in the WWW, that is merely rational and I am constantly challenged by these mental disconnects when I visit Ronel’s blog. That’s just my problem, because Ronel can, and does write successful books and blog posts about dark fantasies and this year she is another A to Z participant who double-blogged. On one of her blogs – Ronel the Mythmaker she reviewed books on the theme My A-Z of Book Recommendations and Reviews 2023 (AKA my languishing TBR) in which she shows us, graphically, her to be read pile, followed by a book review of one of them that she has read. What this does, is to let us glimpse into the mind of an author of dark fantasies, which is almost as good as reading her own creations – although I still have to imagine her hiding from the sun in a dark cellar…
Ronel’s other blog was her My A-Z of Faerie 2023: and whilst this guide to all things Faerie is not my preferred area of reading, if I ever want a comprehensive guide to the subject – this is it and I have it bookmarked. I half expect Ronel to vapourise my imaginings and tell me that she writes from under a shady umbrella beside a pool in a city somewhere in S.A….
J.S. Pailly was a sometime visitor to my blog just as I was to his, and what I found was fascinating so although I dipped in and out, Planet PaillyWhere Science Meets Fiction, is bookmarked for me to read all the way through… J.S.Pailly is not a scientist, though he is a Sci-Fi writer and a cartoonist and he chose this year, to write everything you ever wanted to know about the planet Mercury! Now I think you will agree that this is pretty niche and some people might hesitate to visit that niche, but, illustrated by his own cartoons, this is a very readable blog. One of the joys of the A to Z is to pick up on other bloggers via their comments, and one who would clearly have delighted in Mr Pailly’s theme was the author of My Hubble Abode, who is a student of Astrophysics and who started blogging to write free A-level notes for herself and her fellow students but then kept going as she moved up the academic ladder. If astrophysics is not your cup of tea, then she also gives out designs for her Crocheted planets and more. What’s not to like, I also share a passion for (Tunisian) Crochet…
Carrie-Anne, in her incomparable Welcome to My Magick Theatre, gave us, not forvthe first time, a tour de force – on the history of both Iranian cities and also pioneering Iranian women – the latter in homage to the current persecution of women in that country. Iran, arguably the cradle of civilisation, has cities that have risen and fallen so many times through history it makes one giddy! And the women Carrie-Anne describes are all fascinating, not least because of the way their stories are told…
As if this Abercadarium was not enough on it’s own – Carrie-Anne did one in her second blog – Onomastics Outside the Box which was on Persian names – a possible goldmine to any expectant parents to be who want to go with something different, more ancient, perhaps, name-wise… any way, Carrie-Anne drove herself to exhaustion as she explains in her TWO Reflections posts here and here! Carrie-Anne’s posts are not to be read from A to Z and certainly not in one sitting – no they are to be savoured, like a fine wine from the cellar, when the occasion demands…
It is late, and I have work in the morning and besides I cannot bring myself to add another review to stand in the shadow of Carrie-Anne and so to bed…
ChatGPT is the AI offering from OpenAI and is probably the most talked about Bot since its launch last year – however it is not the only one so today I am going to compare it with Writesonic and see how they handle a piece of promotional writing. I still work 2.5 days as a manager at a gelato and pudding factory – sounds great unless you are diabetic like me. Anyway, we are trialling some new gelato flavours and I thought it a good moment to see how an AI generative writer might handle promoting this.
ChatGPT
Having no idea what might emerge, I started by putting a very simple prompt in “Promote a new gelato flavour – Caramel Popcorn Gelato” and this is what emerged a minute or so later.
“Introducing the newest addition to the world of gelato: Caramel Popcorn Gelato! This delectable treat is the perfect blend of sweet and savoury, with creamy caramel gelato swirled with crunchy popcorn pieces. One spoonful of this delicious gelato and you’ll be transported to your favourite movie theatre, with the aroma of freshly popped popcorn and the indulgent taste of caramel. The creamy texture of the gelato perfectly complements the crispy texture of the popcorn, making for a truly delightful dessert experience. Whether you’re looking for a sweet treat to enjoy on a warm summer day or a cosy dessert for a movie night in, Caramel Popcorn Gelato is sure to satisfy your cravings. So go ahead and indulge in this delicious new flavour – you won’t be disappointed!”
I have changed the spelling of Flavor to Flavour but otherwise, this is straight from the horse’s mouth and for so little guidance, is a pretty remarkable effort in just 128 words. As a marketing piece it leads straight to the movie/popcorn evocation as well as describing the mouthfeel and flavour.
Writesonic
The process of specifying and even joining the bot service was much more complicated – it assumed that I was a business user and gave me 10,00 free words to trial the product. Then it asked for a Subject for the piece and offered to search for Keywords if I did not supply them, which I did – the name of the flavour, it asked d what sort of Tone the piece should have of which I picked Excited, and it then generated Ideas for the article followed by a default three Outlines for an Article. I could have had more outlines but reading through the three that was quite sufficient and I then had a chance to add or remove the ten or so points that the article would consist of and I narrowed it down to five points – the rest would be useful further along in the promotion. Finally I pressed Generate and in short order got my article. I had tried to indicate a length of 130 words to be compatible with ChatGPT but Writesonic did its own thing – 465 words which together with the preliminary stages, reduced my 10,000 words to 9,271. Here it is, complete with photo and in the style of a blog post article:
A Delicious Breakthrough: New Caramel Popcorn Flavour Gelato
This was the image that Writesonic sourced from the internet which it merely credited to Unsplash – I have reverse-searched and added the full credit link – Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash
As a gelato lover, I’m always on the lookout for exciting and unique flavours to try. So, when I heard about the new caramel popcorn flavour gelato, I couldn’t wait to give it a taste. As soon as I took my first spoonful, I knew that this flavour was going to be a game-changer. In this blog post, I’m going to share my thoughts on this delicious breakthrough.
The Inspiration Behind the Creation of the Flavour
What inspired the gelato makers to create a caramel popcorn flavour? The answer is simple: the love of movies. Think about it, what’s a movie without a tub of popcorn? And what’s better than caramel popcorn? That’s right, a caramel popcorn flavour gelato!
The gelato makers wanted to create a flavour that would bring the movie theatre experience to your taste buds. They experimented with different combinations of caramel and popcorn, trying to find the perfect balance. They wanted to create a flavour that was sweet and buttery, with a hint of saltiness. After many attempts, they finally found the perfect recipe.
How to Pair the Caramel Popcorn Flavour Gelato
Now that we know the story behind the creation of the flavour, let’s talk about how to pair it. The caramel popcorn flavour gelato is perfect for those who love sweet and salty combinations. It’s a great flavour to enjoy on its own, but it can also be paired with other flavours to create a delicious dessert.
One of my favourite ways to enjoy the caramel popcorn flavour gelato is to pair it with a chocolate flavour. The richness of the chocolate complements the sweetness of the caramel, while the saltiness of the popcorn adds a nice contrast. Another great pairing is with a fruit flavour, such as raspberry or strawberry. The tartness of the fruit provides a nice balance to the sweetness of the caramel popcorn.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts on the New Flavour
In conclusion, the new caramel popcorn flavour gelato is a delicious breakthrough that’s perfect for movie lovers and gelato enthusiasts alike. The gelato makers behind this flavour deserve a round of applause for their creativity and dedication to bringing new and exciting flavours to the table.
If you haven’t tried the caramel popcorn flavour gelato yet, I highly recommend giving it a taste. It’s a flavour that will take your taste buds on a journey and leave you wanting more. So, go ahead and indulge in this sweet and salty treat – you won’t regret it!
CTA: Head to your nearest gelato shop and try the new caramel popcorn flavour gelato today!
Which was best?
ChatGPT did an amazing job for such a skinny prompt, but I can see that Writesonic would deliver a much more refined article with a lot more options to craft the result, which was fully SEO optimised, for those of you with a nerdy disposition.
A Midjourney image generated by the prompt – “salted caramel popcorn flavour gelato in the style of a Baskin-Robbins ad“
To conclude, I am going to show you another gorgeous image generated by Midjourney AI bot from the prompt “Wild Rose and Lonicera in the style of Tenniel –version 5 –tile”…
Shilpa Gupta chose to write Flash Fiction for her A to Z and here’s the thing about flash fiction, either you enjoy a writer’s offerings or you don’t, you find consistency rather than having to search for the rare nugget, and you keep coming back because, even though the pieces may be personal to the author, the pieces resonate for you… Shilpa delivered on all these things for me. A good example was M for Arithmetic in which a father posters the narrator to practice maths homework but is completely scathing about her exam failures. If you want to see what resonated for me you will have to read the post and find my comment…
Hannelore was interrupted in the middle of April by the sad death of her grandmother who, together with her late grandfather, was the subject of her A to Z and so she bravely presented the last letters in a compendium as part of the process of moving through grieving. The early posts, together with the rest of the month’s journey, deserve our attention.
Anne Nydam is a print artist who specialises in mostly one-colour block prints and for this year’s theme she chose to show us letters from many illustrated Abercadariums to which she brought a wealth of research and commentary. I can only repeat my comment on her Reflections post “Your posts were unique amongst the A to Z Challenge this year and I not only enjoyed them whenever I visited but have bookmarked your site to return to whenever. as I have said before, having been a signwriter and a graphic artist going back to letterpress printing at school – this was right up my street…”
So there you go – a few more of my frequent commenters reviewed – eventually I will get to some of the blogs I didn’t get too in April…
AI or Artificial Intelligence, is a hot topic at present with governments weighing up how to invest in the sector, insiders from the industry warning of the potential dangers and the media stoking fears from job losses to the eradication of the human race. During the recent A to Z Challenge 2023, I was highly impressed by the images selected by Misky in her blog IT’S STILL LIFE – A.I. ART & POETRY and decided to investigate the whole subject of AI for myself. I also wanted to know about Generative Text AI because my work demands various forms of word creation and I had heard that this might be one of the first areas to suffer job losses to AI.
This tile design was designed by Midjourney 5 with a prompt of no more than Passion Flower –tile. It lines up perfectly on every edge, a task which is difficult to do by hand…
Using a third-party software, you can turn Midjourney’s tile into wallpaper and appreciate the seamless matching of edges.
But first, a little thought about where I understand us to be right now. There is Soft AI (think Alexa) and then there is the dreaded Hard AI (think Terminator). Soft AI is already in use all around us, Grammarly, Predictive Text on your smartphone, Alexa, Google and other search engines but the reason people are not running around screaming “The terminators are coming!” as a result of all this Soft AI action, is because the intelligence quotient of this sort of AI is pretty low. For example, say to your “smart” speaker Alexa “Alexa! Tell me a joke!” and Alexa will oblige with a joke of variable humour, but then say “Alexa! Tell me another!” and Alexa will not know what you want – unless you specify “joke” in which case you could leave the “another” out since it is irrelevant to Alexa that she has just told you a joke. This means that Alexa is hardly conducting a conversation. On the other hand, she can sort through literally millions of bits of data to find and play you the song you want to hear. So this sort of AI is doing exactly what we want -conducting the repetitive, boring, difficult (because of the magnitude of data) tasks which we none of us really enjoy doing, or given the scale of data today, could even do! I was reading how when the sea-change brought about in Accountancy when computers could sit on every desk and more particularly, when those computers could run spreadsheets, there were fears of mass redundancies in accounting firms. And so there were at the clerk level of the business, but on the other hand, amongst the higher level accountants, jobs boomed like never before, because the things they could do with spreadsheets, the new things they could offer their clients had been undreamable before – so let us take the tales of mass unemployment with a pinch of salt – after all, I wouldn’t mind betting that some of the accounting clerks were able to upgrade their skills and move up the ladder with the help of a computer…
Above is an example of a tricky task for any graphic designer to do manually – to design a seamless tile repeat and I will come back to this particular task in the future, but to say that this task was accomplished in under sixty seconds, is for now simply amazing!
Text AI
So first of all, I want to look at my first encounter with ChatGPT which was developed by OpenAI and which they describe as a Large Language Model Generative pre-trained transformer Chatbot. What that means is that an AI computer programme has been fed a huge amount of written material, novels, adverts, and non-fiction from the World Wide Web and not only does the AI have access to all this material, but it can stitch information together according to very clever algorithms to write “original” material. So I thought I would test it out by asking it to write a piece about one of the more colourful phrases from my recent A to Z Challenge – phrases we mostly know the meaning of but have forgotten the origins of. First, here is my explanation:
“Cold Enough to Freeze the Balls Off a Brass Monkey!” – you may be beginning to see the “lost in translation” aspect of sayings overheard from sailors by landsmen in which case, you will not be surprised to learn that this expression has nothing to do with statues of simians cast in brass losing their genitalia!
A “monkey” on a wooden ship, especially a warship, was a (usually) wooden tray with rounded depressions in which cannon balls were stacked in preparation for the battle – the last thing you wanted was heavy cannon balls rolling around the deck of a pitching deck – let alone a “loose cannon” – so cannons were secured (against recoil on firing) by strong ropes and cannon balls were kept on a monkey. I said that monkeys were usually made of wood, but admirals or very lucky captains, who had made a lot of money from their share of “prizes” (captured ships, evaluated and paid for by the Navy) – were allowed to prettify their ships with gold leaf, dress their crews in custom, fancy uniforms, and purchase brass monkeys rather than the standard issue wooden ones. Now here’s the thing, a monkey was carefully designed so that you could pile the cannon balls up in a pyramid to maximise your supply of cannon balls in as small a space as possible but the thermal coefficient of expansion of brass (the monkey) and iron (the cannon balls) is different – the brass monkey shrinks more than iron in very cold conditions. Now, the carefully spaced second and subsequent layers of the pyramid are too big for their positions and can roll off the monkey hence “Cold Enough to Freeze the Balls Off a Brass Monkey!” – Simples! Not!
Now here is ChatGPT’s first attempt: “The expression “cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey” is a well-known phrase that means that it is extremely cold outside. Although it is a common phrase, its origin and accuracy are often disputed. One theory suggests that the phrase originates from the age of sailing ships when cannonballs were stored on the deck of the ship in a brass frame called a “monkey.” The frame consisted of several round holes where the cannonballs were stacked. During cold weather, the brass frame would contract more quickly than the iron cannonballs, causing them to fall out of the frame. Hence, the phrase “cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.” However, there is little historical evidence to support this theory. The phrase “brass monkey” itself is not found in any nautical dictionaries or records, and the idea that brass contracts more quickly than iron is also questionable. Another theory is that the phrase originated from a Victorian-era pub game called “brass monkey,” which involved placing brass balls on a tray and attempting to knock them off with a ball bearing. The game was typically played in cold weather, and if the temperature dropped low enough, the brass balls could freeze to the tray, making it impossible to play. Hence, the phrase “cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey” may have originated from this game. However, like the previous theory, there is little concrete evidence to support this theory. Overall, the origin of the phrase “cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey” remains uncertain. It is likely that the phrase has evolved over time, and its origins may be lost to history.”
So what do we think of this? Well firstly, the “the idea that brass contracts more quickly than iron is also questionable ” is simply not true – science tells us that brass both expands and contracts more than iron – so there is a lie right there! Secondly, Chat GPT says that there is no evidence of the phrase in “nautical dictionaries or records. Whether or not such dictionaries even exist, there are plenty of references to this particular phrase and it’s origin in many places on the web and in literature – I first heard of it in the books of Patrick O’Brien who spent much of his life carrying out research for his books in the Admiralty records and I would trust him implicitly. You have to find as many references as you can when researching a subject like this. There are, of course, always people who will dispute the origins of various phrases and so perhaps ChatGPT gave undue credence to these doubters. Still, then ChatGPT goes even further and completely fabricates an alternative theory! The idea of a “Victorian -era pub game called ‘brass monkey’…'” does not show up in any search of the internet whatsoever, so ChatGPT has not only dissed the correct explanation, but suggested a completely fictitious alternative – all done with a convincingly authoritative tone. Luckily, there is a Regenerate button and on dressing this, without any refining the prompt or critiquing the first result, ChatGPT came clean and produced a correct version of the explanation: “The expression “cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey” is a colloquial phrase used to describe extremely cold weather. There are a few different theories about the origin of this expression, but the most widely accepted one is that it comes from the era of sailing ships. In the days of sail, cannons were an important part of a ship’s armament. The cannonballs were made of iron and were stored on deck in piles or pyramids. To prevent them from rolling around in rough seas, the cannonballs were often stacked on a flat brass plate called a monkey. When the temperature dropped below freezing, the brass monkey would contract more than the iron cannonballs, causing them to fall off. Hence, it was said to be “cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.” However, it’s worth noting that there is no definitive proof for this theory, and other explanations have been proposed as well. Nonetheless, the phrase has become a part of English language and culture, and it is still used today to describe extremely cold weather.”
The second iteration is both factually more correct and more concise, but for a first encounter with ChatGPT to throw up such a blatant fabrication is worrying. It suggests that however miraculous the task of researching and collating this story might be, it definitely needs checking by a human being because otherwise, another false news item might find its way onto the Internet and go echoing around and around… Just such a story of defamation by a ChatGPT “news” story, happened to an Australian Mayor who rather than being portrayed as the whistleblower he actually was, he was reported to have gone to jail for corruption – he is suing ChatGPT‘s developers, OpenAI.
Not that I am fishing for compliments but what do you think of my explanation of the phrase compared to ChatGPT’s? After all, you might think I was too verbose and ChatGPT more concise…
Image AI
So far, I have only tried out the Midjourney bot (short for Robot, which I discussed in my “R” post in April) but I will be trying and comparing them and reporting back to you Dear Reader, but for now, I just want to share some images that I have created which were successful, although sometimes after several attempts to refine the prompts – more of that next time…
Each submission or message to the Midjourney Bot, produces not one, but four variations for you to choose from. You may then ask for an enlargement of one (see below) or to take one as a starting point for variation and another four will be developed. The prompt for this group was “flower_fairies_playing_amongst_blackberry_stems_and_fruit”
Here is the enlargement of the top left image.
I then decided to turn this into a tiled image (below).
The prompt for this image was “Village_beside_lake_style_of_Charles_Rennie_Mackintosh_pallette knife_oil_painting. I think the syntax should have been “in the style of” so I’m not sure that this owes much to Mackintosh but it is great – I think…
So we (if you want to come along with me) are on our way to investigating AI – so far Text AI dodgy, and ImageAI – amazing!
