Transitions Galore

Over the past month, my usage of Frontier Models has sharpened quite significantly. First of all, I need to discuss some of my aims here. I believe in something I call Digital Sovereignty. I think at some level I have always believed in this, but did not always practice it. Yesterday, I used the Wayback Machine to find old blog posts made on my older domains that no longer are active and add them into the feed for this website. Now, I feel pretty comfortable that I have a solid expression of what I have been saying since wayback on this website. There is a thematic curve which starts even back then about FOSS (Free Open Source Software) and using protocols. But this was interrupted by the enshittification of the web by tech giants such as Meta( then Facebook), X (then twitter) as well as Google (who was once a proponent of the Open Web) and, of course, Microsoft. Like many people, I had a twitter and facebook account and over time, I was found to be pushing all my public outbursts onto those platforms. Well, I have seen the error of my ways.

Now, I have a website once again which is the repository of my data. Perhaps I shall establish a POSSE (Publish Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere Else) methodology from this Fortress. Incidentally, for my own sake, Fortress is the project name for the software stack I am using on this server. Yes, I am rolling my own software. And that is what the Frontier Model usage has been about the past month.

Not only am I rolling my own server software, but I have been developing a suite of applications on my laptop that is called Bastion that allows me to handle all my data, writing, analysis and everything that I want to do (other then a web browser because why put myself through that?) and it connects to Fortress, so of course I called it Bastion.

But that sounds hard

Well, it is. But it isn't at the same time. See it is just a matter of having an idea of what you want and the way you want it to be built. I know that in the Software Development community there is a fierce debate about "AI Slop" and the fears, doubts, and uncertainty which the rise of this new technology methodology is bringing about. I know because I have had Frontier Models roll out a bespoke version of the old Google Reader software for me that lets me subscribe to RSS feeds for various sites on the web - it is an Open Web still despite the News Media's particular narrative kinks - and then I can make comments on those stories. These comments at the moment are just stored with the document in my reader as well as pushed out to BlueSky, currently the only microblogging service I am using. This also lets me read all the positions which are being debated, and I feel like I am part of the community, or at least lurking.

I will be building elements to my website that include the protocols of ActivityPub so that I can be a part of the Federated Web, I mean I have an XMPP chat server set up, but have yet to begin the invitations to that, and I have plans for that for sure. Oh do I have plans!?!

And Plans is the important part here. I spend a great deal of time talking with Frontier Models about these plans. I brainstorm ideas and create an overall planning document for these ideas, then I talk about the things that have to happen in order for these plans to be executed, and then I talk about the things that I am looking to see the executed plans do so that I can say that they are complete. AND THEN once I have talked through these three stages, I start having the Frontier Models execute the code generation.

But I am not a Coder

I don't read the code that the models generate, I probably should, but I don't. I wouldn't know what I am looking at if I did. I have chosen various programming languages for the models to generate just because why not; Common Lisp, Rust, Go, and occasionally I allow them to fallback to python. Once in awhile, I do look at some of these outputs but not often. I have never understood what programmers mean by "elegant code" as long as it works and doesn't throw errors at me, that is what I am interested in. I am not looking to set up software for other people to use - although if you did want to use it, it will be available on my ForgeJo repos - but be warned it is all "AI slop."

So there. That is my long winded post for today.