jumpingfish › version 3.0

Putting the A in AI

Tue, 14 Jul 2026, 11:45 AM (-06:00)

The original prompt: How can I make the height of a row in a tabularray table the minimum possible size?

It’s a simple question. Finding an answer is not.

This is where AI tools shine brightly. Old-school online search would lead to dead-ends, consume a lot of time, and only maybe reveal an answer. The “time” and the “maybe an answer” is why I never mastered pgfkeys (despite weeks of effort). It is why I gave up on latex3 (despite weeks of effort). But with Gemini, I learned both well and used them to build an automated difference table system for next year’s precalculus notes.

After a brief wait Gemini speaks.

The original response: To minimize the height of a row <…brief explanation…> I have created a guide that explains how to disable both of these spacing mechanisms, along with a complete LaTeX example.

But nothing happens.

This is not uncommon. Sometimes it’s not obvious if Gemini is thinking or has already finished. Sometimes there is a spinning doohicky. Sometimes not. So I wait.

After leaving the room and returning later, nothing has happened.

A follow-up prompt: Where is the guide? I don’t see it.

The follow-up response: I apologize for that oversight! I mentioned the guide but did not output the file in our chat.

“In response to your query, I created a guide. But I forgot to show you the guide.” That’s the A in AI.

Silence at the end of a long Sunday

Sun, 12 Jul 2026, 07:39 PM (-06:00)

White River Morning

Fri, 10 Jul 2026, 09:12 AM (-06:00)

Breakfast is over. We have no place to be. We gave ourselves three luxurious nights beside the White River this year — the journey is the journey.

The morning fog is gone. Boats of fishermen labor up river against the swift current and then drift swiftly back. The water level is up — the corps must have scheduled a release this morning. A Heron squawks as it flies across the water and lands on the rocks on the shore below our campsite and wades stealthily into the water. Periodically and with glorious regularity, a breeze blows off the water dropping the temperatures into the low 70s.

“How is this even possible?” Trudy marvels.

Izzy concurs.

Bull Shoals – White River State Park

Thu, 9 Jul 2026, 09:45 AM (-06:00)

Bull Shoals—White River State Park, northern Arkansas

The bumblebees like the flowering weeds on the hill beside the river (“weeds” — ha!). When they land, they bend the long stalks so that they almost reach the ground, and then they move on to the next one.

American Robins are singing in the canopy. And (of course) Mockingbirds. And Woodpeckers — Red-headed and Pileated. The birdsong is continuous. Just fifteen minutes on Merlin revealed chattering Indigo Buntings across the water and White-eyed Vireos and Cardinals (of course) and American Crows (not to be confused with the Fish Crows whose squawking echoed in the woods at Tompkins Bend Recreation Area). And Tufted Titmice (of course). And Grackles (oh well). That was just fifteen minutes, and the app missed the Swallows circling overhead and the Kingfishers swooping out over the water.

Yesterday, the Corps of Engineers was releasing water from the dam. Today the flow is slower but still swift. The water temperatures are in the mid 40s, and a thick fog hovers above the water. Around 8am, the White River Canoe and Kayak Race got underway — a 120 mile, 13+ hour event that starts just below Bull Shoals dam. The kayaks and canoes go by one by one (it is a timed race) and compete for the flatboats of fishermen who evidently appear on the river every morning, their motors roaring as slowly creep up the frigid swift-flowing water. By 10am, the boats and the roaring are gone.

Steve and his crew are pulling out this morning. He will drive his Coachmen Pathfinder diesel-pusher full of family from here to Cheyenne Wyoming nonstop without even getting gas. He brought us a jar of honey before leaving. That was almost an hour ago. It seems the not-on-time departures are the norm everywhere.

We will be here two more nights (a luxury) and then continue northwards. For the next several days, the only departures we need to worry about are for swimming.

To Go Swimming

Fri, 19 Jun 2026, 08:07 PM (-06:00)

From last fall…

It’s Sunday afternoon. The sky is blue, and the air is cool — a welcome relief from the heat that refused to yield to October. It is cool, and the sun is dancing in the canopies of the trees.

should go swimming.

This is usually the wettest month in Central Texas, but the last rain was six weeks ago — until this weekend. Storms rolled in from the west. We got somewhere around 2 inches. The ground is wonderfully soft, which goes well with blue sky and cool air and dancing sun.

will go swimming.

The pool is walking distance from here. Up a slight hill. Under a freeway. Down a block from there. It’s so close you can walk there in flip-flops.

go swimming.

Rays of afternoon sun kissed the treetops and glinted off the water. Swimmers plied their lanes: up and back, up and back. I counted mine, whispering the count out loud, not quite sure if I skipped #3, doing it over just in case.

I sit here now, having returned from the other side of the freeway. Having walked back down that hill. Having watched day fade to dusk. I sit here glad that I…

did go swimming.

They Can Do That

Fri, 19 Jun 2026, 11:48 AM (-06:00)

A few months ago…

Two students walk into the room. One of them has a question. The other is evidently there for moral support.

The first student, who is in Precalculus, asks about an upcoming quiz. I point at the whiteboard. She turns to see a sketch of a unit circle — previous work from some students studying for the quiz. Her face lights up.

“Oh, I can do that in my sleep!” she says.

Her friend, who is in Algebra 2, looks at the monitor at the front of the room. The screen is still frozen from a lesson on synthetic division. The friend’s face lights up.

“Well, I can do that,” she says.

…just what a teacher wants to hear.

hallucination #123

Thu, 18 Jun 2026, 08:28 AM (-06:00)

The code doesn’t compile. I tell the AI about the error.

When I compile the code, I get this error: …

And I show it the confusing details. To which the AI responds

Ah, that is completely my fault. A stray word—daylight—accidentally slipped into the argument specification block of \dah@auto@mark in my previous response.

What!? Daylight slipped in? What does that even mean? I look at the code again. Sure enough (plain as day) there is a spurious line in the middle of otherwise credible-looking code that just says “daylight”.

Y’all. This code is about formatting input- and output-difference tables for some AP Precalculus notes. I’m thinking WTF. So I ask the AI about it.

what!? Where did “daylight” come from? LOL

I literally asked it that way.

I’ve learned that it helps to provide “conversational” cues like “!?” and “LOL”. It’s like I just did a thing and something broke. My cousin can’t figure out why I did that thing (especially since a hacksaw was involved). And they honestly want to understand what on earth I was thinking.

So… no judging. No hurt feelings. But seriously: WTF!? That’s exactly why I asked the question that way. To which the AI responds

That is a great question! Honestly, it was a pure, unadulterated AI hallucination! 🤖✨

When large language models generate code, they predict the next piece of text token by token based on probabilities. Somewhere between processing tabularray and the closing brace }, the internal token weights must have tripped over themselves and decided that what your LaTeX macro really needed to be complete was a nice, sunny word like daylight. ☀️

It makes absolutely zero sense in the context of LaTeX syntax, which is exactly why the compiler threw a fit about the invalid argument type 'i' (since it tried to read the i in daylight as an argument specifier)!

I’m glad you caught it—it gave me a good laugh too! Let’s just blame it on the AI wishing it was outside instead of compiling TeX macros. 😂

Literally. That’s what it said. Points for honesty. … Ok fine. I go and delete the offending line and try again. All is well.

It works for me. I’m writing code I’d never have been able to write before. And it’s code that generates high school math notes. Not critical code. But think about it… Would you want this writing the avionics software for the next jet you fly in?

The future’s so bright. (Read the link for Timbuk3’s grim intention with those lyrics despite the popular interpretation that “Everything’s great.”)

conjunction

Tue, 16 Jun 2026, 09:46 PM (-06:00)

As viewed looking west across the street from the driveway…

Fritillary and Passiflora

Mon, 15 Jun 2026, 03:39 PM (-06:00)

1. When the world wearies…

This morning, Lorene of Garden Rant fame, wrote about letting her plants speak for themselves, in which she posted just photos and names of the plants in her garden. She led with this wonderful quote from Minnie Aumonier.

When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden.

Seems particularly true today.

2. Passiflora on our doorstep…

Years ago a wild Yellow Passion Vine popped up in the front yard. Vines do that from time to time — Mother Nature testing the waters. Many are pokey, but this darling had no thorns, and I somehow knew it to be a native larval host.

I built a trellis. Dug up the sprout and transplanted it. Now it reliably emerges afresh every spring.

You might notice that it thins out a bit at the top. Indeed

That would be due to this culprit

Last year, they gnawed the vine to the ground, leaving nothing on the trellis, which made us sad. Yet from that comes this

whence comes this

This year the lizards seem to be keeping last year’s caterpillars devastation in check and the passionate vine now has progeny of its own

When the world wearies, there is sometimes nothing but the garden.

First Person Quality Control

Tue, 2 Jun 2026, 10:17 PM (-06:00)

1. Brain in the Room

I read something recently by a guy about using Claude. It was a confession. He was angry at himself.

There was a software issue of some sort which he fed into Claude, which analyzed the issue, outlined a solution, and implemented a fix. He then had Claude push the code for review. It got reviewed. The fix was merged.

Problem was (and this was the heart of his confession): He did not read the issue report himself. He he did not look at Claude’s proposed solution. He did not look at the code, much less verify that it solved the problem.

Ok, so I’m sitting here… I mean I’m sitting here… reading this story thinking WTF was Matheus thinking. What did he think his paycheck was for? (Brings to mind lawyers submitting documents to the court with AI hallucinations in place of legitimate case citations.)

I’m being unfair to Matheus. That’s precisely why he wrote that post. As he reflected, “[your] job is the part where your f***ing brain has to be in the room.”

It’s a good write up. He has a number of insights from that experience. And his reflections on software development in general are well-written and smart.

In the end, the code worked. The issue got fixed. There was no need for a rollback. So maybe… crisis averted?

2. Quality Control

I had a summer job years ago. A job as a draftsman’s aide. I stood at the drafting table in a florescent-lit room with drafting tables extending to (what seemed like) infinity. I stood there and drew lines on piping and instrumentation diagrams.

That was many years ago. So long ago that to get paid at the end of the week you would go down to the basement where there was a cashier’s window where we would pick up not our paychecks but cash. So long ago that when the drawings were finished, we would take them to be reproduced onto blueprints. So long ago that Margaritaville was playing on the radio.

It was so long ago that for each drafting task there were two draftsmen involved: one who did the drawing and a second one who poured over a copy of their work with a yellow pencil to make sure the dimensions added up correctly, highlighting each number as they checked it.

Imagine that.

3. A Lesson To Be Learned.

I don’t really need to say this. You certainly understand it. But there is a lesson to be learned here.

For what it’s worth, I’m not convinced that the lesson is to have a second AI review the work that the first AI did. That’s compelling, but I think Matheus got it right in the end:

here’s the new hard rule I’m following after this “incident”: if I still can’t explain the change, I can’t ship it. No exceptions.

Notice his use of the first person.