If you’ve been enjoying this site so far, you’ll know that its evolved in a wild, rambling fashion as we learned and applied things…nothing is truer of the herb pages! They’ve come from a modest little list of herbs that we grew and evolved into a huge, rambling materia medica. But it is that rambling that has been its Achilles Heel (should Heel start with a big H or little one?) as its become so complicated to update.
So I started trying to make them more consistent for ease of use so the reader isn’t jumping around on the page (the writing style reflects the mind of yours truly, of course). Some have some categories, some section’s headings are unlike those of any other and some links no longer work. But to be honest, I did enjoy that, but I already know what I know and can fill in the gaps as I read. So, I decided to tidy it all up and make all the headings and much of the layout far more (but not totally) consistent. On the way through I found lots of duplicated pics where each pic was used on a separate page because I uploaded a new one where I forgot that I already had one. To save space (I only have 13 GB storage here) I wanted to identify the duplicates, change the links to where they are displayed so that only one pic is used and delete the redundant one.
During the time we’ve had this site, WordPress have upgraded their editor a lot and some of the info was still in the coding style of the old one, resulting in a few glitches. I didn’t discover that but it came up in a little scan of the site, along with a couple more admin problems that were tucked away out of human sight.
The far more computer literate Marlon told me that all of these jobs would be a big undertaking in themselves but to combine them all would take months. So I decided to use the built-in options that WordPress offers. It’s an AI system and is why I’m making this post, to let folks know that one has been used. I’m doing this for transparency because I know that some folks loathe the whole idea of using one.
So, I’ve handed some of the hack work to the LLM world – that’s what it’s designed for, not enslaving us or ruining the environment – and , no, I don’t want a data/surveillance centre at Tungkillo either – to save me months of time. However they try to sell it, there is no true ‘I’ in it all, whether artificial or not, no intelligence beyond that which is coded in.
The LLM has been used for real hack work like arranging consistent headings in the quick look up parts, relocating the sharing and subscription boxes on every page. I’ve also used it to categorise the constituent lists – a job that needs a literal degree in biochemistry to do properly. That has been my biggest bugbear for a while. I never used to like the chemistry and found it intimidating but after study and over time, I’ve come to love it and realise how important it is to understanding the energetics and effects of a herb and also it gives me insight into why I should recommend some herbs over others is similar cases. But because the info has dripped in over much time, it was really disorganised so I needed a quick way to pull it together.
No actual content or writing has been done by the system, it’s all still mine. The pics are all originals – ours or credited where folks shared them with us. I’ve used software to enhance some a little, but the originals are still ours.
So, if you read through them, you will see some empty titles and headings. This is where I hadn’t written anything on that topic before but have added the heading in for consistency. Some of them may never be filled and will be deleted later. A great example is the Comfrey page. I wrote that really early in the piece and it lacked a lot of the information I added to later herbs, even though I have much more info and many many better pics of the plants. Because it was written before the new editor and many WordPress updates ago, it was riddled with errors. Comfrey is a plant that I have such a close relationship with that I simply neglected to top it up!
A great part of the work was to learn the problems of using machines that take everything absolutely literally. Some jobs took hours to learn how to get the LLM to do the way I needed and needed many retries. I specifically chose one that isn’t deceptively friendly and would tell me off when there was a problem with my demands. Some of that literaliness (is that a word?) helped me to think of better layouts and titles than I had. I was constantly trying to balance the coldness of using machines with humour and gentleness. Now , for example, ‘Medicinal uses:’ has become ‘Calendula as a healer’; ‘Preparing Calendula’ has become ‘Making medicines with Calendula’. ‘Constituents:’ has become ‘Healing Constituents (classified by LLM). Much gentler and honouring the role of the plant in our healing efforts.
I’ve also managed to use the LLM to do a job that I have tried dozens of times but lack the technical and coding skills to do – and that is to shrink the size of the subscription, sharing and donation blocks, which I have always thought were overly large and in-your-face. It took a lot of system level programming for the LLM to do it and even then it had difficulty doing it but now, I’m that little bit happier with the overall look.
I’ve also starting adding a ‘References and further reading’ list at the bottom of the pages. Copilot (which is already running in Microsoft products anyway) has been use to check my catalogue of references, of which there are thousands. I’m only using those that are open source and that anyone can access, and I have given preference to those that don’t require opening an account or logging in – part of my efforts to make the knowledge accessible to everyone.
So, what I hope has been judicious use of a controversial technology will bring many many benefits in the near further, including a herb book that will not be AI generated. I’ve been totally transparent because I know that some purists may want to leave us because of it and I fully understand honouring your principles.
On another, different note, you lovely subscribers have given enough to pay for the renewal of this site for another year, plus a little extra that went to buying books for our herbal library – we have now, nearly 450 volumes! Thank you so much!
