Sitting in bed reading during the week, Madame emitted a noise somewhere between a screech and a hoot and waved her Pixelbook at me. “Look at this!” she said, with a great grin. I leaned over and with the wrong glasses on completely failed to interpret the page or draw any conclusions from it. Then she said “I just typed in a question about Mexican Marigolds – Tagetes minuta and up came the Potwell Inn alongside the RHS and Sarah Raven. I felt like the little child at the pantomime who gets chosen to go up on the stage and help Buttons find his hat. Such is the indiscriminate nature of AI bots that I was swept to prominence simply writing something about it recently. The RHS will have warned about its aggressive nature, and Sarah Raven sells the seed so she thinks it’s alright. All I wrote was that it’s certainly not a miniature it’s a six foot monster that will leave thousands of seeds in your soil if you let it flower. However it has a reputation for deterring pests and even (and I’m crossing myself here) – deters bindweed. In this drought we’ve had a badger digging up our wood chip paths in search of food every night and even he leaves those devil’s guts behind. So when it comes to organic pest control, we’re staging the battle of the giants on our allotment!
Thank goodness this drought is slowly losing its grip and we’ll soon be released from the chore of endless watering. Given the season we’ve been keeping dozens of seedlings and transplants alive under temperatures in excess of 30C, and I’ve still got to join four more 250 litre tanks together to store water when, (not if), we’re plunged into another one. Sorry about that dreadful pun. One of my favourite occupations on the allotment is a bit of civil engineering.
So things are going reasonably well tand we’ve been getting the work done very early in the mornings while its still cool. Our family seem to have come out on top of all their crises with one having the best weather ever for a family seaside holiday, another being promoted to the kind of job he’s always dreamed of after a period of great uncertainty, and the third finding a lovely flat after being evicted in the rush of Section 21 orders. If there is a hell, it’s going to be crowded with greedy landlords.
Meanwhile I’ve been focusing on developing a completely new way of recording plants, combining new technologies of lightweight cameras, GPS systems and a tiny field speech microphone and transmitter to organise all my plant data into one place – rather than spread over half a dozen notebooks (mixed up with shopping lists and telephone numbers) and constantly lost pens; photos that have to be searched for individually among the thousands and a persistent failure on my part, to record half of the details I need to make a proper record.
Typically, on my first dress rehearsal on the allotment yesterday, I talked too quickly for the recorder to transcribe, the lanyard of the camera kept banging against the microphone, I didn’t follow my own procedure and jumbled up the notes and never even thought of establishing a temporary ID using an image recognition app because I ran out of hands. You might call it a learning opportunity but I’d have to hit you because I knew a glorious and hilarious cock-up when I read the transcript back. Notebook LM (AI) – which was supposed to do the heavy lifting simply shrugged and walked away claiming that without more contextual information there was nothing it could do.
Ah well, I’ve been through this before. Computers are very single minded and can’t make silk purses from sows’ ears, but like all new technology, they demand practice. Luddites, and there are many, dismiss the whole idea of machine learning and artificial intelligence without understanding that it requires the user to formulate exquisitely focused questions; and these can only arise out of a deep understanding both of the subject and the way the computer “thinks”.
This is anything but taking the lazy option, because every plant observation that’s properly recorded, then has to be thoroughly tested against the standard texts i.e. the old way because we’re not yet at the stage where the new technology is 100% reliable. In fact it probably never will be. It’s all very exciting, but it all begins with catching a glimpse of an unfamiliar plant, or of a familiar plant with an unfamiliar detail and knowing that it’s worth investigating.
We’ll soon be off to West Cornwall where I can test and practice the new methodology, hopefully without annoying Madame too much. It reminds me of a story about a famous pianist who was once praised by a fan who said “you’re lucky to be so talented.”-his reply was “- and the more I practice the luckier I get!” Amen to that.
So basking in my quite undeserved online reputation I’ve abandoned the pointless attempt to win the approval of the magisterium and grown my hair almost as long as when I was young and annoying my Dad. To my great surprise it came out curly – and white – and distinctly mad looking. This final thought comes from a much used catechism in church circles.
Question – what are the last six words always spoken in a church that closes down?
Answer – we always do it this way.
Back in the day there was an Anglo Catholic theological college (now closed down) whose motto was “Guard the good deposit” a quotation from St Paul, which was emblazoned on all of their china; including the chamber pots. Change really is in the air, and it’s always helpful to examine the good deposits – we all have funny habits – but really we should be prepared to replace them when they’re wrong and before they start to smell.
Finally some photos from yesterday’s disastrous rehearsal with part of its its unedited transcript. Beta minus I think – could do better.
Cut these cranesville then. This. Oh yeah, it’s got a huge leaky one really long six millimetres. So this one is Rough Meadow cross.
