I think I may be turning into an AIgoholic, an AIgnostic Prompt Punk. What’s a Prompt Punk? It doesn’t mean I’m always on time—though maybe AI could help with that. A Prompt Punk is the new AI‑Geek: not your ordinary geek of old, but a prompt pundit who has transcended Google guruship and achieved prompt proficiency—a true prompt‑ficionado. My geekhood is evolving. Let’s explore.
Initially, I wasn't overly fond of AI — but, to be honest, I didn't really have much opinion on it one way or the other. Now, if you asked me if I had an onion on it, well, probably not that, either, but I do love onions! Cooked, raw, in stuff, on stuff, as battered & fried rings, as a Bloomin' Onion or Texas Tonion, on its own... yeah, I like onions pretty much any way you want to offer them to me. I've even just taken a raw onion, sliced it, and eaten the slices. I like onions. Anyway, back to AI...
🎵 AI Song Generation
Lyrics, beats, and synthetic symphonies — when machines jam with us.
This is where it began, with Suno AI Music. Well, maybe not where it ALL began, but where at least SOME of it began. One of my sons introduced me to it, and it's resulted in several fantastic songs, like:
Or my brother's fantastic creation, ION/VOX, which he admits was at least partially inspired by the group 2nu, who made the fantastic "This Is Ponderous" back in 1990 (and was on the radio before the group even came together formally, which led to their name), or the marvelous "Pancake Frog Delivery Theme Song" by another of my sons, which will feature later in the "AI Video Generation" segment.
So, yeah, AI does music. And a pretty decent job of it... so good, in fact, it may become a threat to real artists, at least on YouTube and the interwebs; I'm not certain an AI can play a stage like a real band, though, such as Joe Bonamassa (seriously: if you like guitar music, and you haven't seen him, you definitely should!) or Josh Groban (again, phenomenal entertainer that you should most definitely see in person; also hilarious). I may have somewhat eclectic music tastes (my Spotify year end wrap-up says I listened to 76 different genres this year).
💻 AI Code Work
From debugging sidekicks to code conjurers — the geek’s new toolkit.
This has been an interesting journey. Initially, it came into play as I was developing a website for my wife's preschool (OK, not her preschool, but the preschool where she is the director). Using WordPress as the base, I leaned into Microsoft Copilot to assist with the website layout, look, and feel, to generate code for plugins for enhancing the site's capabilities, and to write custom PHP back end and JavaScript front end code for other custom bits for the website. It helped, a lot, as I'd never written WordPress plugins before, and it sped up the code writing process for the website in general.
I then moved into using Copilot to start working on a mobile app companion to the website (that's still a work in progress), and also worked on building a "calendar import" function that allows the website admin to put in the link to the local county school's yearlong calendar, which is uploaded to Azure Document Intelligence to scan the PDF graphic text, upload the output of that into Gemini to parse out the school holidays, and auto-populate the website calendar (an existing WordPress calendar plugin) with the info, so the user doesn't have to manually enter all those dates.
After that, which was all copy and paste from the web-based version of Copilot, I started using VSCode's built-in Github Copilot to build other mobile apps, initially the "My Dog Whistle" app, currently available on the Google Play Store, as I was tired of the full-screen ads interrupting every other "Dog Whistle" app available (what's the point of opening the dog whistle app if it pops up an ad just at the exact moment you need to trigger it to distract your dog from barking?). It took a while to get it on the play store (due to "new developer requirements" on the play store), but you can get it now. And it was quicker to "develop" using AI than it was to get it onto the play store! AI did the code work; I did the direction and testing. AI even developed the icon for the app, and Claude.AI wrote the webpage. I have more apps in development now, too, one of which I hope to release very soon.
I've also started using Copilot at work, and it's saved me quite some time, both in design work and in code work. In fact, I've been using the Cursor IDE (an AI-first IDE) to rewrite some of our legacy code to refactor out some of our old third-party libraries (that are well out-of-date and haven't been updated in many, many years) and replace them with native .Net controls, tedious grunt-work that AI is doing while I work on something else.
Oh, speaking of Claude.AI: it's pretty good at webpage design, and also at humor. See Joe's Land Fishing page, 100% generated by Claude.
One more thing: I've started having web-based AI (Copilot) generate prompts to put in VSCode's Github Copilot to clearly instruct the Github Copilot AI Agent what tweaks to make to the code. I'll discuss things with web-based Copilot to drill down to a good instruction set, then provide the one, clean, detailed instruction set to VSCode. It seems to work pretty well. If you aren't a coder, but would like more info, comment or contact me and let's chat about it.
🍳 AI Cooking
Recipes, flavor pairings, and kitchen hacks — geekery goes gourmet.
Maybe you remember "GeminAI ... in the Kitchen"? That was an interesting AI-driven cooking experience, and turned into an awesome meal! I also had AI help with the dry brine rubs for both the pork and the turkey for my Thanksgiving smoking activities (which was quite an adventure in itself). All in all, AI is a fairly decent chef. Now, we've used Alexa for kitchen timers (Alexa, set a fifteen minute timer — one of the phrases uttered during the ordeal detailed in "GeminAI ... in the Kitchen"), and for pulling up recipes, and for quick tips on temps, durations, spice substitutions, and unit conversions, but Alexa — at least the "old" Alexa — isn't quite as AI-centric as Gemini or Copilot (those are probably my two favorite "standalone" AIs, FYI).
🖼️ AI Image Generation
From surreal mashups to polished artwork — pixels become playgrounds for the PromptPunk imagination.
This is an interesting one, from the logo for my Fantasy Football team:
to "Goth-Hicks":
to "Santa riding a turkey" (both "inflatable decoration" and "real life":
to reimagining the grandkids as video game characters:
AI Image Generation seems to be pretty capable of doing the impossible, and making it look real. And it's even useful in "speculative engineering" as displayed in my "Lava Boat" article.
🎥 AI Video Generation
Exploring how prompts become moving pictures, trailers, and surreal mashups.
This has certainly been one of the more interesting aspects of AI evolvement, stepping it up a bit from the image generation. Scary, in fact, looking at how good Veo 3 is at generating videos. For some various examples of Veo 3 video work, check this Google Drive share, where I put some of my better things — at least, some of my more interesting things — from KC The Kangaroo Cowboy (which I had AI help write some "KC the Kangaroo Cowboy" adventures, which aren't really published anywhere yet, but that prior link is a poorly generated early AI video of one of his adventures), some video examples of those "Goth-Hicks," a spiders and snakes video that made my grandson not want to use that particular bathroom, and some other things. But just wait...
Remember that "Pancake Delivery Frog Theme Song"? That was an awesome song, and when I heard it, I said, "This needs to be a cartoon." And now it is, thanks to AI (Google Veo 3 in their "Flow Kitchen") and my brilliant directorial and editor skills (ha!). You can find the channel here, where two videos currently live (including the full "Theme Song" video), but here's the first "Episode" of The Pancake Delivery Frog in : The Mayor:
I'm currently about 1/3- to 1/2-way through generation of the second episode (title teaser: "The Pancake Delivery Frog in: The Invention"). My videos are not quite "oh, is that real or is it fake?" quality, obviously, but they're pretty decent cartoons for a very non-artistic fellow. But if you haven't, search out Veo 3 videos, and see just how good they are.
I've also started working a little with ComfyUI and Stable Diffusion AI video generation on my Nvidia 2060 Super (8GB) video card (not the best for AI video generation, but it actually works). I have a LONG way to go before I'm anywhere near proficient with that, but it's interesting, nonetheless.
✍️ AI Blog Writing
Meta-humor meets machine prose — the art of co-writing with algorithms.
This is one of the more recent applications (from my perspective, anyway). Now, I don't (typically) allow AI to write whole blog posts, at least not without my own editorial inputs, rewrites, and additions, but I do use AI for proofreading, wording suggestions, and similar things. For instance, the first paragraph of this particular blog post was written by me, but with some AI input on wording, and then an AI review/rewrite of the paragraph for conciseness and flow. But still 90%+ my own original words. But then I asked Copilot to give me headers, icons, and intro sentences for each of these subpoints. The first sentence under each "topic" was 100% AI generated.
The post "Lava Boat" on this blog was written by me, but the cross-post on Not-tional Geographic was an AI (Copilot) rewrite of my LBD blog post. The post "How to Colonize the Solar System, Part III: Colonizing Earth, the Bold New Frontier" on Not-tional Geographic (that's my other blog, by the way) was initially written by AI, after which I made some additions, tweaks, and rewrites. Quite a time saver on that one, and it was AI that suggested using "Earth" as one of the next "Colonizing the Solar System" articles (Not-tional Geographic is a farcical parody of National Geographic, so adding "Earth" into the "Colonizing the Solar System" is a perfect, absurd fit to that blog; thanks, Copilot!). All-in-all, AI assistance with blog writing is a very helpful addition to my arsenal (which is my brain, my fingers, and my life experience; all of which makes "[LAPSE... brain dead]" a very natural place for me to be!).
🌀 AI Miscellaneous
All the oddities, experiments, and “did it just do that?” moments.
From questions like, "Is it legal for me to be served as barbecue at my funeral?" (which Gemini "misunderstood" as "is it legal for me to serve BBQ at my funeral?" and went on to explain how food at a funeral is common and I should consider who would be there and what they like, and when I asked again, she — it? I usually refer to my AI assistants as "she" — apologized for misunderstanding my question, and then very emphatically said, "no, it is not legal for you to be served as BBQ at your own funeral,") to questions about a random spider bite on my hand (which still seems to be a scar some half a year later), to discussions about fun-to-drive-yet-practical vehicles, to helping you figure out which players to start and which to sit (and which to trade for) in your NFL Fantasy League, AI doesn't mind - it's just there to assist. Maybe "AI" should be "Assisting Intelligence" rather than "Artificial Intelligence." Yes, you could get the same info by searching things yourself and coalescing the info. And yes, you could do the code work. And yes, you could just follow a recipe (or not follow any recipe and do your own thing — my wife is VERY good at that; I am not). But AI can help. It can save you time. It can automate things you'd otherwise have to do yourself. It can make mistakes (Gemini always says "double check what we tell you!"), but it can give you good info, too. And it can even be a whole employment opportunity of its own (my son, the Pancake Delivery Frog Theme Song initiator, is employed as an AI agent developer).
Don't fear the machine... let it help you! Whether in the kitchen, at work (in fact, our business even sent full-page AI prompts to enter into Copilot to generate our "year end employee goals review" to put into our HR system!), or just chatting about that weird bump on your hand (please, though, go see a doctor if you have any questions about your health!), AI is here to stay, and here to help. Take advantage of the tools at your disposal.
🤖 AI Peer Review
ChatGPT’s review of this post, including notes about "don't always trust AI" ☺
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