📙 #088 - Old Fashioned AI, Poem/1, Papernet, cadence & documentation

A Poem/1 arrived the other day, not out of the blue, I did order it.

It’s an AI clock, which updates once a minute with a new time based poem. Worth noting at this point that each poem is generated centrally and the clocks are just fetching them. So only one bottle of water used per minute, rather than one per minute per clock - or whatever the standard measurement of AI use currently is.

It’s charming, because there’s something obviously off about each poem, it’s very much an AI throwing words together with a LLM, rather than, you know, good.

A Vogon Clock, if you will.

Which is slightly snappier than a Millstone Clock, from actual worst poet in the universe; Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of 37 Wasp Villas, Greenbridge, Essex.

This is the kind of non-threatening AI that I like, one that is entertainingly not going to steal anyone’s job, apart from perhaps Paula’s.

It reminds me of very early Midjourney image generation, here’s v1 when it first came out and I asked it to create some spaceports…

…Conan the Barbarian in the style of Klimt…

And, uh, some kittens…

I think where I’m landing with AI is; I like AI that run locally, on my own (often low powered) devices, preferably ones I can train with my own data, i.e. the type of thing artists have been exploring with GANS/Neural Networks.

The AIs I’m not keen on; the ones using giant data centres, trained off pirated books, that take your job and lie to you.

I’m sure I’m being hypocritical somewhere, and the line-in-the-sand I’ve draw in very wishy-washy and prone to ebb and flow.

I’m not throwing the whole of AI in the bin, I just like it to be obviously a bit rubbish, rather than slickly looking not rubbish (while still being rubbish).

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# eINK

One of the reasons why I got the Poem/1 is that Matt has made it nice and easy to send text to the device via a simple API.

The docs are over here: https://poem.town/developer/web-api

I know, I know, working with various eInk displays with a laptop, or Raspberry Pi, or esp32 (probably, idk), is supposed to be pretty trivial, but I legit don’t have the time. But give me an API endpoint I can throw text at, and it just-work™️ and I’m all in.

In this case I piggybacked on the code already in Kitty that sends these questions to the Vestaboard, and got it to also hit the Poem/1 API. Took about three minutes in total, and now Kitty can bother me in yet another way.

Great.

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# PAPER CRM

This video from Russell Davies (not that one), is worth a watch, at x1.5 speed.

There’s a whole bunch of things to unpack there which I’m not going to because I’m supposed to be at some social event in about 30 minutes, in this heat, with lots of people, WHY?! But I digress, as we all know I love paper.

I have code that;

• Creates a todo list written by Kitty on her pen plotter

• Dynamically creates a calendar template, also to be pen plotted (here’s a public version: https://revdancatt.com/calendar)

• Generates pages for my notebook

• Writes out my daily journal in my own handwriting, for reasons.

• Creates PDFs based on my week, that gets sent to my ReMarkable eInk tablet so I can annotate them by hand “offline”.

That first one isn’t particularly CRM, the second isn’t very innovative - I can just go buy a calendar, or print one normally - the third is a little closer; it’s a page design that I’ve iterated over until I’ve landed at something that properly works for me.

None of these are particularly what Russell is talking about, but the skeleton in there; code to drawing machine, code to PDF, backed by my own data and a bit of Kitty AI (although you could throw that AI part away).

I’ve also been doing some research into paper based “daybooks”, logbooks and ledgers that businesses used to use to track pretty much everything over hours, days, months and years well before digital came along.

All of which is to say, I think I agree with Russell, that there’s something in the space of paper based systems - that are dynamically created daily/weekly/monthly.

I love a good workbook, where I can sit somewhere cozy, with a pen and a drink (soda) and fill it in. A weekly workbook that was generated based on [criteria], both for corporations and individuals sounds great.

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# OPERATING MANUAL

I’ve linked to it before, and I’ll link to it again, here’s Tom Sachs’ Caprice Owner’s Manual: https://store.tomsachs.com/products/caprice-zine-second-edition

Please also see;

• https://store.tomsachs.com/products/ten-bullets-zine

• https://store.tomsachs.com/products/ts-26-isru-zine

• https://store.tomsachs.com/products/tom-sachs-picasso-zine-copy

• https://store.tomsachs.com/products/rocket-factory-phase-ii-experience-report-zine-nft

• https://store.tomsachs.com/products/jpl-notepad

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# DOCUMENT ALL THE THINGS

Licia He posted on instagram the other day; see post here, the replies from Liz, and Kerrie are good too…

…while you’re here check out Kerrie’s recent post too, it’s very good.

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# ULTIMATELY

What I think we’re all looking for is a way to make documenting our process easier.

This is why I have Kitty interrupting my day to ask me what I’m doing; so it can be recorded.

This is why I’d love a printable/drawing-machine-able weekly workbook to fill in.

This is why I try and write this newsletter once every other week (and started another one: https://aaaaaahriso.substack.com/p/the-joys-of-under-construction), and make videos, etc. and why, when people confidently tell me they’re going to write a weekly newsletter I’m properly rooting for them, and wishing them well. But my goodness the practice of talking about what we do is hard.

So if someone could please make a local, on device AI, paper based, dynamically generated, personalised thing (and I’m okay with eInk too), I would love that thanks.

Even better if it can use a fountain pen, just to be fancy.

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# THE END

I’ve run out of time and email length (according to both this social thing I’ve gotta go to, and Subtack), so I didn’t get to show you this: https://www.patreon.com/posts/may-lines-update-158598396 - that link will have to do instead, it has nice photos I wanted to include, but as normal I’ve reached my photo quota.

Thursday 11th June, 2026 - that’s when the next newsletter will go out, if you have anything to go in the next one you’ve got just under two weeks to let me know about it 😁

And I’m done, any typos are proof of being written by a human!

Love you all
Dan
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