This is James

I’m James Johnson. This is my website. Here I write, draw, create, experiment.

Latest posts

Dec 11, 2024	experimenting	Using the OpenAI API
Dec 5, 2024	experimenting	A quick look at Cursor, and why it sucks
Dec 1, 2024	reviewing	How to live by Derek Sivers
Nov 28, 2024	illustrating	More hatching practice
Nov 28, 2024	experimenting	Hello world on Google App Engine
Nov 27, 2024	experimenting	What hosting services should I use for a personal app?

Highlights

Hatching practice

I've been experimenting with hatching. I learn that I should do pencil sketches from references and add shadow-lines before inking.

Update, memory

Musings on note books and a failed experiment using ChatGPT to record stuff

Learning by writing essays

Why writing essays is a great way to study and learn

Thinking about coconuts

Why are coconuts so big? Why do they have water in them? Are they a nut or a fruit? What is the white stuff for? Did dinosaurs eat coconuts?

On misremembering and AI hallucinations

Does generative AI really understand things? I used to think not, now I'm not so sure

Self-prompting — leveraging your mental cockney builder

We use prompting techniques with AI. We can also use them on ourselves

The WEIRD bias in generative AI responses

“The responses from generative AI depend on their training data. That data is biased, so the responses are biased.”

Tree of knowledge image

I created an image of the Tree of Knowledge, based in part on sacred geometry

My seal

King Charles has a seal, and I wanted one for myself. So I set about designing one.

We need to talk about your information diet

In this essay I look at how we have been programmed by evolution to enjoy cute kitten pictures on Instagram and dumb rage-bait videos on Twitter. We are making ourselves dumber, is there anything we can do about it?

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell image

This work is inspired by *The Marriage of Heaven and Hell* by William Blake

William Blake timeline — an information visualization experiment

I created a visual timeline of William Blake's life

Gods of the visual essay

Here I list some of the people that I think write the most inspiring visual essays

AI is coming for your job

How to survive the coming AI job apocalypse

The Moral Machine - Could AI Outshine Us in Ethical Decision-Making?

Philosophers have been debating about ethics since philosophy began, surely they can provide a set of rules for AI to follow? Let's investigate...

How I improved my digital handwriting

Neat handwriting helps memorization and achieving goals. Here's how I improved my digital handwriting when writing on the iPad

Somnium by Johannes Kepler

I illustrated the first few pages of Somnium by Johannes Kepler

Drunk Schrödinger cartoons

I think the points Schrödinger makes in his book _What is life_ could be made much more succinctly by a drunk Schrödinger.

William Blake postcards

These postcard-sized images are inspired by quotes from his work The marriage of _Heaven and Hell_ by William Blake.

Paradise Lost cartoons

I drew illustrations for the first three books of Paradise Lost

The Medici family tree

I created a family tree of the Medici family, to improve on the amount of information given by traditional family trees.