🪲 James Johnson

Learning Logs — like Morning Pages, only different – The website of James Johnson I’ve thought of a new kind of habit I could try to adopt, kind of like Morning Pages but learning focused, rather than emotional/stream of consciousness. I’m going to call it Learning Logs.

I have thought of a new habit I want to try to adopt. I read a lot of articles every day but I don’t tend to make any notes on them, which isn’t very efficient as I just forget most of what I have read. This new habit should make my article reading time more useful:
thisisjam.es/reflecting/l...

Be your authentic self – The website of James Johnson I just saw lots of people on park benches looking at mobile phones on a lovely sunny day. It inspired this little rant.

I just saw lots of people on park benches looking at mobile phones on a lovely sunny day. It inspired this little rant.
thisisjam.es/reflecting/b...

Testing recording video with different cameras – The website of James Johnson I did some experimentation with different camera setups. I decided the Sony Alpha 7 III looked the best.

I have been trying to set up a desk studio so I can quickly record presentation videos. My latest experiments:
thisisjam.es/experimentin...

Fallen and heavenly angel wheel – The website of James Johnson Wheels of eyes and a snake and angel wings and a neuron and angel names…

My latest artwork:
thisisjam.es/illustrating...
#creativity #magic

Using FFMPEG and Whisper to add subtitles to a video – The website of James Johnson I used whisper and ffmpeg at the command line to add subtitles to a video. It worked really well and this is the process I will use for this.

I have been experimenting with adding subtitles to the videos I make, using Whisper and ffmpeg at the command line. Works great.
thisisjam.es/experimentin...

What in me is dark, Illumine. How Milton summoned the wrong muse – The website of James Johnson William Blake thought that John Milton was of the Devil’s Party without knowing it. I’ve worked out why. Milton was possessed by Satan.

William Blake thought that John Milton was of the Devil’s Party without knowing it. I’ve worked out why. Milton was possessed by Satan when he wrote Paradise Lost.
thisisjam.es/reflecting/w...
#books #magic 😈

Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky – The website of James Johnson I’ve read quite a few book by Tchaikovsky and they have gradually got worse over time. Alien Clay was a bit boring.

I’ve read quite a few books by British science fiction author Adrian Tchaikovsky, and highly recommend some of his older works (Children of Time especially). I talk a bit about some of his books in this review, as well as the couple I have most recently read:
thisisjam.es/reviewing/al...

When using LLMs it is often useful to be able to keep long threads going so that it has all the context. But I keep running into the usage limits on my Claude Pro plan. So I have started to get the LLM to summarize large threads and use that to start a new thread:
thisisjam.es/experimentin...

Using my AI Life and Business Coach – The website of James Johnson The process of setting up an AI life and business coach has helped me consolidate ideas about how I am going to approach things over the next few months.

I have created a personal Life and Business Coach using Claude. I have written a bit about it here:
thisisjam.es/creating/usi...
#productivity

Creating my own personal life and business coach – The website of James Johnson I am building my own life and business coach, aka Life Operating System, using Claude Opus.

I have been creating a new system for myself - a personal life and business coach. I have written how I did it here:
thisisjam.es/creating/cre...
#productivity

James Cameron is confused about copyright and AI – The website of James Johnson James Cameron thinks it doesn’t matter if AI models are trained on copyrighted content. I strongly disagree.

James Cameron recently did an interview in which he said that it doesn’t matter if AI models are trained on copyrighted content. I strongly disagree. I've written about it here:

thisisjam.es/reflecting/j...

June will be a month of posting every day – The website of James Johnson I am challenging myself to post something to this website every day in June.

The habit of writing posts to my website is a really good one. It keeps a record of what I’ve done, motivates and directs me, and helps me clarify my thoughts. But I’ve not been doing it as often as I would like. So I am going to try to post something every day in June.
thisisjam.es/reflecting/j...

Recursive horror (a short story) – The website of James Johnson A short horror story.

I wrote a short horror story about an AI Engineering group I run in Barcelona:
thisisjam.es/creating/rec...

On being successful – The website of James Johnson Let’s not spoil our lives by using the US-centric definition of success. We need to keep in mind what makes us European.

I wrote a little bit on the theme of “being successful”.
thisisjam.es/reflecting/o...

Trying out a few markdown editors – The website of James Johnson Just spent a while trying out some markdown editors that I’ve not tested before or not used for a while.

I tried out some Markdown editors. Obsidian is very tempting.
thisisjam.es/experimentin...

Twenty Lessons, read by John Lithgow Key selections from On Tyranny, for viewing and sharing

Here is my best guidance for action, rendered beautifully by the great John Lithgow. I first published these lessons more than eight years ago, in late 2016. They open the twenty chapters of "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century."
snyder.substack.com/p/twenty-les...

Thanks for the encouragement!

Keeping a link blog – The website of James Johnson Keeping a link blog to make better use of my article reading and online video watching time

Today I’ve got round to doing something I’ve been meaning to do for ages - starting a link blog. The idea of a link blog is to write about articles and videos you watch, to help retain the information and to make it useful for your future self and others.
#productivity
thisisjam.es/creating/kee...

It specifically means when you are not making any attempt to check or understand the code, so not how professional programmers (should) code with AI.

Vibe-coded fractal trees with threejs – The website of James Johnson My son and I created a little application to generate fractal trees. It was great fun and eductional to do.

This afternoon I’ve been vibe coding with my youngest son. Whilst vibe coding may not be a great way to learn how to code, it is a really good way to explore geometry, maths and fractals — it’s really easy to set up demos. It’s also great fun.
thisisjam.es/creating/vib...

Image Zoom experiment with revealjs – The website of James Johnson After a presentation someone with bad eyesight asked if I could zoom into images more. I experimented with ways to do this, and decided the Accessibility funtionality in OSX is the best method.

Just a little experiment in how best to show artworks in revealjs presentations, so that I can zoom in when talking about different features of the work:
thisisjam.es/experimentin...

Today I realized it's not enough just to stop using X - having an account means I still would count towards user numbers. So I have completely deleted my X account.

Spiral snakes – The website of James Johnson Some experiments with inks, snakes and spirals

Experiments I did with Indian & Parker inks and bleach. Painting with inks on watercolor paper is easy to get even tones and strong blacks. Snakes have a long and important association with magic, and appear in myths like the Epic of Gilgamesh and Eden/Genesis.
thisisjam.es/illustrating...

EU accused of leaving ‘devastating’ copyright loophole in AI Act Architect of copyright law says EU is ‘supporting big tech instead of protecting European creative ideas’

Creative people should be protesting about the abuse of copyright by the tech giants, and we need to make sure the law doesn't dilute copyright.
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

I created an animation of the little light-displays that sparks used to make in the soot on the back of the fireplace when I was a child.

Read about it here:
thisisjam.es/creating/spa...

#animation #creativity

YouTube video by Andrej Karpathy Deep Dive into LLMs like ChatGPT

Two great, free talks have been released in the last 24hrs, one from the brilliant Andrej Karpathy, and another from Andrew Ng and the writers of the O’Reilly book Hands on LLMs:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xTG...
learn.deeplearning.ai/courses/how-...

I need to add a "Made with Bear App and Quarto" footer to my sites...

I have completely redone my professional site, and added a video. For a while I tried to mix my professional work with more personal creative stuff, but I decided it didn't work.

Made with Bear App and Quarto.

@bearnotesapp.bsky.social
@quarto.org

www.beyond2060.com

Thank you!

Using Apple Voice memos to record notes whilst running or reading – The website of James Johnson A successful test of recording notes with iOS Voice Memos. I will be incorporating this into my routines.

I tried a new productivity technique today — recording me talking using Voice Memos on my iPhone whilst running with the dogs. I often get ideas when running and want to good method to record them. This was a successful experiment.

#productivity #ios #iphone

thisisjam.es/experimentin...