My first AI project

I have watched a number of tutorials on using Claude Code, and I am still working through the Claude Code for Everyone course. After some thought, I have decided on my first project that I would like to develop using Claude. Over the past few years I have been involved in several projects (Portland Protest News, Kamala Campaign Timeline, and Liveblog47) where I was monitoring multiple news sites/feeds for a specific topic. In performing the research for these sites, I spent a fair amount of time reviewing sites/feeds, deciding what to publish, looking for other stories if the sites/feeds I was monitoring did not have what I needed. Having an agent to be able to do this would be a help. Also, it was difficult to research/locate other stories that were not current (published in the last day or two).

I am going to start with creating an application to collect stories/posts based on RSS feeds and create an archive of news for the United States. Next, I will provide an interface for researching that archive. I am starting with collecting RSS feeds for newspapers and news media sites within the US. This will probably take a bit of time (already ran out of tokens in my current Claude session), but it will give me time to plan out the next steps.

If anyone is interested on collaborating on this project, let me know!

Cry me a river

This morning, Dave Winer published a long post about the new Blurt theme available on WordPress.com. He comments on how this theme competes with his WordLand application, which provides a streamlined editor interface for WordPress blogs, saying “…most of the things it advertised for were very much part of the pitch for wordland.” I am sorry to have to bring this up, but there are a lot of features within WordLand that are not a part of this theme, so this is a poor comparison. There are also many other issues with this post, so let’s get started with a review.

I created a test site to see what the editing interface was like. My first impulse was to click on the “plus” sign at the top, since that is an accepted WordPress shortcut to add a new post. This action brought up the familiar WordPress Gutenberg editor user interface. I typed a short phrase and posted it. The look and feel of posts published on the theme is very similar to Twitter. It also offers a comment text box for reader to add comments.

Next, I decided to explore the menu on the left side of the site. The Compose link brought up a familiar posting interface (i.e., “just like Twitter”). I entered a test post there. I then created another test post to see if I could do any linking or styling of the text, but I could not. This is a key feature of WordLand, so points to Wordland here. So – better editing experience with WordLand, ability to post like on Twitter with Blurt. It’s difficult for me to see how Blurt competes with WordLand.

On the Blurt topic, Andrew Shell says this was a theme put together by two WordPress developers in a week as part of an internal WordPress project called “Radical Speed Month”. From Dave’s response, I assume he does not know the developers and/or has not worked with them, since he did not know this new theme was coming. So what? Who cares? Go do something better, or different!

The majority of Dave’s post complains about how Automattic should have worked with him on this Blurt thing, and on his WordLand project, and how they should act as a “banker and distributor“, and not compete with developers on product development. My response – why should Automattic be working with him and providing him development support, or anyone else for that matter? They are an independent company with their own goals and directions. From historical items in his post, Dave recounts a number of examples where he developed a product and the “platform vendor” built something on his ideas, or did not work with him. Again – so what? Who cares? I think Dave should take a look at this Jason Alexander video talking about actors waiting for someone to hire them, and replace the word “actor” with “software developer”. Go build out the vision for WordLand that you wrote about in September 2025. We’ve been waiting for eight months, where is it?

A first look at the GutenbergLand editor for WordPress

On April 12, 2026, Dave Winer announced a demonstration version of a second editor (GutenbergLand) integrated with the wpIdentity package that powers Dave’s WordLand editor for WordPress.

The editor allows you to add blocks like when using the native Gutenberg editor in WordPress.

Here is a screenshot of WordLand for comparison:

I was able to select my WordLand test blog as the location for my GutenbergLand post, and was able to post some text, then another post where I added a title. In WordLand, a title can be added to a post in the editor user interface, but in GutenbergLand, the title has to be added via a menu command.

From a basic editing standpoint, I would say either editor can be used for creating WordPress posts on WordPress.com sites. Some setup is still required to be able to post to WordPress self-hosted sites (Jetpack plugin is required, see this Github issue).

Starting my exploration of AI

Now that I am retired, I am taking some time to explore AI tools, specifically Claude from Anthropic. In my previous job, I used Google Gemini for answering questions on tool setup/options, or creating short one-off scripts for repetitive tasks. However, these were all performed using ad-hoc prompts, and I wanted to learn how to use CLIs to create things.

I signed up for a Claude Pro subscription, and started a free course called Claude Code for Everyone (created by Carl Vellotti). The first module was an overview of how Claude can analyze files, extract and summarize data, and several other features. The second module was a first step at “vibe coding” – creating an online quiz. Claude created the code, added a repo to my Github account, then deployed it to Vercel (see the quiz here). In many ways, this is a contrived example, but a good way to get my feet wet with this kind of tool. Now I need to think of some apps to create!

Organizing my retirement with org-mode

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am now retired. As I approached my first week of retirement, I had been making a list of things I wanted to do. As my list grew to 25 items, I felt a little uneasy. I needed some more structure…and that is when I turned to org-mode in Emacs.

I created an outline with the first level heading of “Retirement” so I could find it easily within my main org file. I then added two second level headings (Tasks and Weekly Planner). The Tasks heading is the “inbox” for when I think of something new that I want/need to get done. Under the Weekly Planner heading, I added sub-headings for each day of the week. Within each day, I had a standard set of tasks (exercise, dog-walking, practicing musical instruments). I then chose a few items from the Tasks list and copied them to the days in the Weekly Planner. As I complete the tasks (TODO items in Org Mode), I change them to DONE, and moving items up and down in the list depending on my priorities. Finally, I have a “Log” heading where I record significant things for each day (PS – I already that this in my org file).

Here is a screenshot with example tasks:

On Monday, I started using this system. Today (Thursday), I would say it is working well for me. Yay! I have created a sample file if anyone want to try this. Enjoy!

Announcing my retirement

As of April 10, 1026, I am officially retired! I have worked over 40 years in the aerospace industry in the US, it has been a good career. In my retirement, I plan to focus on my health (via diet and exercise) and spending more time with family. I also plan to work on some personal software development projects, since I will have more time. If anyone has something in mind where I can help or collaborate, let me know!