Observations on the world and its inhabitants
Over the past three months, a series of custom Python scripts were built to manage AI-generated text. One attempted to detect slop phrases. Another tried to enforce cleaner output. A third monitored register creep across longer documents. None of them performed reliably. Pangram, a commercial AI detection service, continued to flag output as AI-generated or ...
I had been working on slop. In previous work I found eleven patterns. Words, lists and stock phrases were caught by scripts. But something kept getting through. Text with no slop words still read like something delivered from a lectern, or as a report when none of that was required. This post will be of ...
1. Purpose This brief governs the use of an AI language model to analyse documents and produce a faithful written account of it. It is designed for judgments, inquiry reports, and similar primary documents where accuracy of representation is paramount. There can be no guarantee that it will work for every situation or work with ...
What if you’re using an AI model to analyse and discuss some document. It could be a piece of research from a journal, a policy, or some complex piece of Statute. Most people use ChatGPT or Claude in the standard browser interface. No problem. Attach a long document to an AI conversation and you are ...
Imagine it is 1989. I am sitting before an Amstrad PCW, a cream-coloured machine with a small green screen, a substantial keyboard and a three-inch floppy disk drive. When the disk is accessed, the machine whirs. When the printer begins, it clatters with mechanical determination. I do not think of it as a computer. People ...
You will probably read a few thousand words today if you’re surfing websites for news, opinion, advice, or reviews. Like you, most people will assume that a person wrote those articles. Until recently that assumption was safe. “Be very, very careful what you put in that head, because you will never, ever get it out.” ...
Meld is a free, open-source comparison tool. It runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. Its job is simple to state: put two versions of a document side by side and show you exactly where they differ. Programmers have used it for years to compare code. But nothing about it is limited to code. Any plain ...
Day 2 — Friday He woke to the sound of a cockerel. The cry cut through the last thin layers of sleep from somewhere out beyond the heath. Walker lay still for a moment. It came again and he found himself smiling at the ceiling. The morning light was already strong through the east-facing window. ...
Day 1 — Thursday The drive down from Northampton took the better part of three hours. Walker could have made it in two hours and thirty, but he was in no rush. He was saving the planet just a bit. He kept the car at a steady sixty, the kind of speed that lets the ...
In 1985, the word processor changed everything. It automated margins, line spacing, and spellchecking. Yet, no one ever read a brilliant legal brief and thanked the computer screen. Nobody praised the very basic CPUs of the time for expanding the solicitor’s intellect. The software provided the grid. The human provided the argument. Everyone understood the ...
Satire is one of Britain’s most durable cultural exports. Long before stand-up comedy, television sketch shows, or political podcasts, British writers and performers were using wit to dismantle the powerful, expose hypocrisy, and make the unbearable bearable. This guide explores the traditions, targets, and tones of satire across all four nations of the United Kingdom ...
After a two-week break, work on Book 2 – The Kael’Nyrin Scrolls: The Atlas Edict – of the complex metafictional trilogy resumed. Within hours, something became apparent. The text looked different. Not because it had changed — but because the relationship to it had. Sentences that had seemed acceptable now carried visible excess. Words that ...
Every so often, a news item emerges that is so far outside the usual bandwidth of public discourse that it forces a pause, even among those who pride themselves on scepticism. A recent article, circulating through mainstream aggregators, asserts that extraterrestrial intelligences may be on the brink of openly confirming their existence. The claim is ...
Introduction This document is a complete, honest account of a technical project to connect the Claude Desktop application to a self-hosted WordPress site using the Model Context Protocol (MCP). It records what was attempted, what failed, what was discovered, and what finally worked. It is written for anyone — technical or otherwise — who wants ...
The Slop Sieve is an Python application that was developed as a defensive linguistic tool for writers like me, operating in an era of heightened AI surveillance. As algorithmic “detection” becomes more prevalent, writers who produce precise or rhythmic prose are increasingly at risk of being flagged as non-human. This project history documents the rationale, ...
Recently I moved to Espanso both on Windows and BigLinux for a free and easy way to create shortcuts for key phrases used. There are now several articles on this site about the learning. That means something. Espanso on Windows is easier to setup. It can output images, text, and a whole lot more – ...
It’s more than enough to ‘do your head in’ but as a developing creative writer of Sci-Fi metafictional scenarios, many posts on this blog will present ‘alterations of reality’ for higher purposes. My sojourn into metafiction started with by first novella: The Kael’Nyrin Scrolls: Our Children of Starlight. This will expand into two other books: ...
Why Dialogue Punctuation Matters in British English Getting dialogue punctuation right can transform an author’s fiction from amateur to professional. In UK English, the choice between a comma and a full stop (period) is one of the most common stumbling blocks — especially when deciding between dialogue tags like “he said” and action beats like ...
The evening light was still strong at half past five. The New Forest in July holds its warmth long into the evening, and the path that led from the open heath into the trees was warm underfoot, the air carrying the particular stillness that settles before birdsong shifts register. The Mad Doctor had been walking ...
This post is really a note to myself. The guide is me teaching myself as a new author. The bottom line is that ‘writing’ books is not just about making sentences and having them make sense. It’s about thousands of words painting pictures. This is very different to writing a journal paper or some academic ...
After getting my “digital brain” perfectly tuned on my BigLinux desktop, the next hurdle was getting it onto my Windows 11 laptop. On paper, it looks easy: you just copy a file from one machine to the other. In reality, Windows is a bit more sensitive about how it “reads” those files, and I ran ...
There is a deceptively simple question buried beneath much of everyday human behaviour: should a person spend personal time reading, viewing, or thinking about matters over which they have no control or influence? Approached literally, the answer dissolves into a fog of individual variables — personality, education, culture, neurological development, social circles, and a dozen ...
The following exploration is not intended as financial or strategic advice for any specific individual or entity. Instead, it serves as a platter of food for thought regarding the mechanics of the digital landscape. Most people view advertising as a simple, static transaction: a result is purchased, or it is not. Nearly every business has ...
This article consolidates the full investigation into the metallic / echo‑like artefact encountered during long‑form text‑to‑speech narration in Google AI Studio, the diagnostic reasoning applied, the failed and successful mitigation attempts, and the final stable solution. This took too many hours of work. But it is now resolved after much work with three AIs. Hold ...
For the independent author, the “final pass” of proofreading is often the most daunting phase of production. Traditional advice suggests separating the creative act of writing from the analytical act of editing. However, with the advent of sophisticated AI and custom automation, a new “proactive” strategy has emerged: the Integrated Workflow. By managing proofreading iteratively ...
In the early stages of a writing career, the focus is often on the “mechanics”—the foundational rules of grammar, syntax, and punctuation. While these are essential, the transition from a competent writer to a compelling author occurs during the final checks of a manuscript. This is where prose is transformed into an immersive experience. For ...
Despite explicit instructions, generative AI systems routinely drift into US English spelling and conventions across longer writing projects. For British-English authors who use AI assistance, this creates a persistent and time-consuming editorial burden. The key insight that resolved this was accepting that generation and linguistic compliance should be treated as separate stages. Rather than attempting ...
As some may not be aware, I’ve been developing my own software to convert text into high quality electronic speech. That development continued for several hours today. As I will remind myself – as if I need to – £490 for 1.6 hours for human narration vs AI-driven production estimated at ~£1.51 for 100 minutes ...
Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is widely recognised as the industry standard for software development. However, its core strength—managing complex text files with precision—makes it an exceptionally powerful tool for authors of fiction and non-fiction alike. Luddites and lazy folk should stop right now – leave this blog and get back to Netflix, Instagram and ...
1. The Problem: “All or Nothing” Microsoft Word’s built-in word count feature is binary: it counts everything or nothing. For an author, this is often insufficient. A 50,000-word manuscript might be heavily dialogue-driven or dense with internal monologue, but Word treats “Hello” (dialogue) exactly the same as Hello (thought). There will be times when an ...
