Tag: WordPress

Pulp Brainstorming with WordPress AI

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Note: the following post contains affiliate links.  I receive a portion of any purchases made through these links, at no additional cost to you.  —TPP

On Saturday I wrote at length about my idea for a physical, portable, monthly (now, after some feedback, likely quarterly) publication packed with fast-paced, pulp-style fiction for readers who are hungry to read short stories but don’t want to do so on a screen.  I suspect there is a significant niche audience for this kind of publication, and it dovetails with my calls for conservatives to support like-minded authors.  In an age of AI and online publishing, there is a segment of the population that craves authenticity and good storytelling.

Paradoxically, I turned to AI to begin brainstorming this idea.  Regular readers will know that I am an AI-skeptic.  I believe some aspects of AI are corrosive to creativity, such as doing actual writing (and, therefore, thinking) for humans; however, AI is hugely useful as a sounding board to conceptualize an idea.  That is especially useful when an AI inspires real-world human creativity, and I think it can be powerful as an aid to human creativity, so long as we don’t make it a replacement for it.

That said, WordPress.com has their own AI-powered website builder, and I’ve been looking for an excuse to play around with it.  I was initially torn about the ethics of creating a website using WordPress AI, but the way I look at it is that WordPress is offering a series of text-based prompts to create a website using tools that are readily available to WordPress.com users; it’s just offering up choices to users that they might not realize are native to WordPress.com.

In essence, the AI isn’t creating the website instead of the user, but is responding to the user’s prompts to design a website with the user.  Ultimately, the final product is the result of substantial user input.

Read More »

New Music Tuesday IV: “Moonlight Shimmer”

The Portly Politico4 Comments

I’m continuing to work on my pond-based pieces, and have a fourth piece completed.  This duet incorporates whole tone scales, which possess a mystical, mysterious quality.  The piece is broadly in Bb major, but the second and third sections feature some secondary dominants that, at times, push the key closer to D major.  The whole tone scales also give a sense of atonality to sections of the piece, representing the mystery of moonlight.

Read More »

New Music Tuesday III: “Snail Drop”

The Portly Politico4 Comments

The koi pond at our new house has served as a source of immense inspiration for yours portly.  I’ve spent many late nights researching various species of aquatic life that can thrive in our little pond ecosystem.  I’m most excited about getting some Japanese Trapdoor Snails for our pond.

In the meantime, however, I’ve added some ramshorn snails to the pond already.  They arrived in a bag from an eBay seller in Oklahoma, clinging to the walls of their watery shipping compartment.  I drove them up one frosty night and gently plopped them into the pond, which inspired today’s new piece.

Read More »

Lazy Sunday CCCXLXIV: Fire and Water

The Portly Politico12 Comments

It’s a quick Lazy Sunday this week as Dr. Wife and I hunker down in the cold.  I’m casting my gaze back to two posts from earlier this week, one based in the coolness of the watery depths, the other in the fiery crucible of the modern restaurant industry:

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

New Music Tuesday II: “Koi Dance”

The Portly Politico1 Comment

I’ve been working hard on this week’s piece, “Koi Dance,” for about two weeks now.  It’s a chamber piece featuring two flutes, bassoon, and piano, and draws inspiration from Bedřich Smetana’s “The Moldau”; that piece also features a flowing theme that depicts the movement of water.

I plugged the finished piece into Audacity and applied some additional reverb and a master effect, both of which I think have allowed the sound to “pop.”

Read More »

New Music Tuesday I: “Herald”

The Portly Politico8 Comments

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

Now that it’s 2026, it’s time to make a few changes to the blog.  One of those overdue changes comes to the long-running weekly feature Open Mic Adventures.

According to a hasty review of my records, I ceased playing open mics—and, indeed, most live gigs outside of private bookings—in 2025.  I simply lacked the time and energy—and interest.  I much prefer rehearsing my students so they can play live.

That’s been one of the big changes in my life in recent years.  I enjoy playing live, but as I get older, going to open mic nights and playing songs I wrote a decade (or more) ago lost its luster.  It’s also amazing how once I got engaged (and now married), my desire to show off in coffee shops plummeted.  If I’m going to play to impress anyone—always a dubious proposition—it’s going to be for Dr. Wife.

That’s all to say that I’m not ending Open Mic Adventures, per se—there’s always that chance I’ll get that itch to play and get some good video in the process—but that I’m shifting it into something more accurate:  New Music Tuesday.  The “Open Mic” appellation ceased to be accurate for most of 2025, as I featured more and more of my original electronic compositions.

Of course, good ol’ WordPress.com makes it easy to put together these weekly, multimedia posts.  One thing I’ve come to love about WordPress.com is how intuitive it is to upload all sorts of media.

For example, here is today’s featured track, “Herald,” uploaded as a beautifully lossless WAV file using the “Audio” block:

I found this brief piece scribbled on a red tardy slip I had in my desk. I apparently wrote it down on 8 August 2023, and finally put it into my music composition software this morning.  It’s a very simple, quick piece, indicative of the kinds of etudes I was composing at that time.  As such, “Herald” is a brief piano fanfare, suitable for players at most levels.

Read More »