Automated updates: 2023-05-22

2023-05-19-week.md

@@ -128,6 +128,14 @@ In similar cases, it now only tells the same prose or scripted story, where two
 
 Other projects require more explanation---enough to fill their own blog posts, if I thought that they had enough distinctive features to interest readers---but the generated results proved increasingly implausible and erratic.  Though in my "favorite," most frustrating case, the AI would keep "forgetting" what I had asked it.  I put that in sarcasm-quotes, because it could query the conversation to summarize my requests, but when I told it to finish the work, it'd insist that I needed to repeat the question to make progress, but doing so would cause it to repeat the previous wrong solution.
 
+**Update:  20 May 2023**:  I tried my query---the one that keeps going off the rails while it assigns itself an unrelated (but far easier) task to solve instead of what I requested---again with ChatGPT.  It provided me with this illuminating response, though I've removed the boilerplate apology and insistence that it loves to help people.
+
+ > As an AI language model, my responses are based on the text inputs I receive, and I try my best to provide accurate information and assistance. However, **I don't have the ability to recall specific past interactions** or visualize the chat interface. I rely on the text you provide and respond accordingly.
+
+Arguing with it further, it confirms that, no, it doesn't remember parts of the conversation other than what it responds to immediately and a small amount of context.
+
+This explains a lot of the problems that I've seen.  If true---it might have lied, though this has the ring of a bespoke response---this means that OpenAI has deliberately sabotaged their product, presumably to reduce the chances of it saying racist things when racists interact with it.  What a waste of time to get to this point...
+
 ## 9:06 -- Fri 19 May 2023
 
 {% embed https://i0.wp.com/otherwords.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/uber-transportation-regulations.jpg|A hand holding a phone, open to an app, facing a busy street|false| %}

2023-05-20-death-cuff.md

@@ -6,7 +6,8 @@ categories:
 tags: [freeculture, bookclub]
 summary: Discussing an interactive fiction mystery
 thumbnail: /blog/assets/0T7Xq2n9mQexs502W3ow--2--hh4hb.png
-teaser: This week brings us an interactive murder mystery comedy.
+teaser: This week brings us an interactive murder mystery comedy, built around the stock "detective exposes the murderer" scene.
+proofed: true
 ---
 
 This week, our [Free Culture Book Club]({% post_url 2020-05-02-freeculture %}) plays an interactive murder mystery.

2023-05-22-biodiv.md

@@ -0,0 +1,91 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: Developer Diary, World Biodiversity Day
+date: 2023-05-22 07:08:05-0400
+categories:
+tags: [programming, project, devjournal]
+summary: Progress on assorted projects
+thumbnail: /blog/assets/Fungi-of-Saskatchewan.png
+teaser: This week's projects include my Morning Dashboard, Boring CSS, and my Mastodon Trunk Rummager client.
+proofed: true
+---
+
+Today marks the [International Day for Biological Diversity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Day_for_Biological_Diversity), celebrating what biodiversity we have and promoting issues impeding it.
+
+If you'd prefer something more concrete, California celebrates [Harvey Milk Day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Milk_Day), in memory of the assassinated gay activist and politician.  Given current political attempts to criminalize and otherwise marginalize gender and sexual minorities, I can think of worse plans for your day.
+
+![A sampling of fungi collected during summer 2008 in Northern Saskatchewan mixed woods, near LaRonge. This photograph also includes leaf lichens and mosses](/blog/assets/Fungi-of-Saskatchewan.png "Tired pun overload...")
+
+On to programming.
+
+## Morning Dashboard
+
+{% github jcolag/dash %}
+
+I finished the current work on adding my graphs, specifically making the calls to insert the pedometer analysis, and adding the relevant fields to the configuration file.
+
+As usual, I can't guarantee that your setup will work enough like mine that this code will do anything useful for you, but I think that I have it modular enough that you shouldn't have much trouble following it, if it might help you.
+
+## Entropy Arbitrage
+
+{% github jcolag/entropy-arbitrage-code %}
+
+Hm.  It seems that, last week, I may have jumped the gun.  In [last week's developer diary post]({% post_url 2023-05-15-nabka %}), I spent about five hundred words talking about the fancy new plugin that I wrote for the blog to insert emoji, so that you can interact with them like this face {% emoji grinning face with smiling eyes %}, rather than a flat emoji character.  As mentioned, when you hover over the emoji, it'll zoom in and show a "title text" tool tip, to make it clearer what I've added.
+
+And yet, somehow, I hadn't pushed those changes out to the repository.  I did so, this week, so you might want to review the linked post from last week, if you want a walk-through on some issues, there.
+
+You might notice, then, that I'll occasionally need to commit updates to my emoji "database" (a JSON file), particularly when I give one a name that'll cause less trouble in typing.  For example, many---but somehow not all---of the emoji "official" names in the file have underscores in the words, instead of spaces.  Instead of learning what magic rule distinguishes the two, I find it far easier to add a line to the file without the underscore characters.  Or in other cases, if I find a character getting a lot of use with an obscure name, I may give it a clearer name.  For example, I probably wouldn't use "couple-with-heart-woman-woman" {% emoji couple with heart woman woman %} much, but if it ever comes up again, calling it something like *lesbian couple* would make for a far more guessable term.
+
+## Boring CSS
+
+{% github jcolag/boring-css %}
+
+I didn't expect to revisit **Boring CSS** at all, since it looked complete to me, but appearances can, in fact, deceive.  And, other than having the entire CSS specification committed to memory, I can only see one way of discovering those gaps:  Using it.
+
+And, in fact, using the CSS files in the **Mastodon Tool Trunk**'s *Rummager*---for more on which, see the next item---turned up a glaring omission.  I didn't handle buttons in their `:active` state, so the user got no visual feedback on clicking them.
+
+I went with variations on this.
+
+```css
+button:active,
+input:active,
+input::file-selector-button:active {
+  border-style: inset;
+	filter: brightness(80%) saturate(80%);
+}
+```
+
+I'll need to investigate further, to make sure that my quick-and-dirty result matches the design languages---it almost certainly doesn't---but it works for now.
+
+## Mastodon Tool Trunk
+
+{% github jcolag/tool-trunk %}
+
+The *Rummager* looks better by the day.
+
+I fixed one error that I should have caught long before.  Specifically, I moved the JavaScript file into a subfolder, because I expect to add a new file, soon.  However, when I did that, I didn't think to change the reference in the HTML file to match it, then took a few days off working on it, so I didn't spot the problem.
+
+More importantly, I populated the still-not-in-use buttons for each toot---the number of likes, boosts, and so forth---added a basic version of Mastodon's preview of the most prominent linked website (the "card") behind a collapsible `details` element, and moved the media into similar `details` elements and into the toot.
+
+I don't consider the layout perfect, by any means, but it now displays pretty much everything for the initial load of toots, unless I've overlooked something.
+
+Speaking of the layout, it seems worth mentioning that I feel like this project vindicates a lot of my motivation for creating **Boring CSS**.  Without wasting time on picking colors or messing around with the overall styling, I still have a fairly decent-looking app while I focus almost entirely on making things work.  And when, eventually, I need to think about a "real" CSS framework, I won't need to rip out any existing CSS classes to support the new scheme.
+
+## Next
+
+I'll mostly continue on with the *Rummager*.  For the most part, I expect four major tasks over time.
+
+ * Connect the buttons, so that clicking them calls the relevant API endpoint.
+ * Store the list of viewed toots, and probably a last-run timestamp, to Pantry.
+ * Load all toots since the last-viewed toot.
+ * Exclude previously viewed toots.
+
+The first task may use [HTMX](https://htmx.org/), which seems like the latest iteration of what (at least) the Ruby on Rails people used to call "unobtrusive JavaScript."  I'd prefer a library that doesn't require dumping so much information into the HTML code, but for such a small library, I can at least give it a try, especially if it handles state changes without the organizational overhead of something like React; I like React, but I don't want to waste time maintaining the build process and maintaining dozens of component files.  This all may also mean that I'll give HTMX a try and then rip it out, so it may take the entire week on its own to go nowhere.  We'll have to see.
+
+At the end of this work, though, I should have a chronological list (not *reverse*-chronological like most social media) of toots, that doesn't include any repetition.  I have other kinds of toots that I want to eventually exclude---boosts for toots older than a couple of days, for example, or those dominated by an image with no description---but this should work as a starting point.  I almost never see value in those messages, especially the old toots that I have surely seen before, so skipping them will save me the time of recognizing them.
+
+At some point, I should also add a way to submit a configuration file and retain it in the browser's local storage.  That'll let me deploy the page to someplace like GitHub Pages for other people to play without worrying about security.
+
+* * *
+
+**Credits**:  The header image is [Fungi of Saskatchewan](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fungi_of_Saskatchewan.JPG) by [Sasata](https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Sasata&action=edit&redlink=1), made available under the terms of the [Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 Unported](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en) license.