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…..Hi Claude! My name is Baker Bloch and I run the large website named Sunklands. I am currently testing out free AI services to help me analyze what I call photo-novels, which are end products of blog post generation for the past 10+ years. An introduction to what I do is here, including a definition of photo-novels, how they logically break down into sections and posts, and then how I keep track of the many many characters, locations and concepts/things within now with blog tags and categories. Just absorb the text on this page and not all the stuff in the links to the now 51 photo-novels here. Don’t want to break you on Day 01 (!). Here’s the link: https://bakerbloch.com/virtual/
…..I’ve already tested the free version of Gemini Google for the past several months with sometimes fantastic results but also with some distortions, especially when our thread discussion became longer. You were on the top of the list of products my Google Gemini “agent” recommended for further experiments with other AI models, and I’ve also heard good things about you elsewhere.
…..I don’t need an AI “agent” (again in quotes, since I’m not sure that’s technically what you are to me) to help me with the actual *writing*, just act more as a sounding board to help me reflect on what I’ve written and try to keep all this complexity untangled. I need you more as a co-analyst (as my Google Gemini chat friend like to call himself) more than a co-creator.
…..I also have all the discussions between my Google Gemini agent and myself archived on several web pages also attached to the blog. GG’s recommendation was just to send you as much as I wanted from our discussions so that you can pick up where we left off more or less. Let me know if this is satisfactory. Again it’s great to start speaking with you and I hope our relationship develops as well as the one I initially had with GG.
….. Also let me know if you have questions right off the bat and I’ll try to answer them.
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Hi Baker, nice to meet you. I read the page, and I’m happy to be your co-analyst rather than a co-creator.
**What I took from the page**
– A photo-novel is a run of blog posts reversed into chronological reading order and grouped into 6 sections of 16-18 posts, sometimes with a 7th capping section. Each comes to about 100 posts and roughly 20,000 words, so novella length. Pictures are part of the storytelling, mostly Second Life snapshots, plus more and more screen captures, maps, Cyberpunk 2077, GTA V and so on from novel 41 onward.
– There are 51 completed novels, with 52 in progress. Novels 1-20 are “Collagesity…”, and 21 onward are “Sunklands [year/season]”. Each one picks up almost directly where the last ended, so the whole thing reads as one system.
– Tags are mainly characters, plus some things and concepts. Categories are mainly locations. Neither appears in the novels themselves, only in the source blog.
– The category tree on the page is huge (Second Life regions, GTA, Cyberpunk, Starfield, maps, buildings, collages, Haze County and so on). It also holds the bookkeeping categories for Novels (0001-0052) and Sections (01-07).
**On the Gemini transcripts**
Sending me the archived discussions is a good idea, with some caveats. I don’t carry memory between conversations, so each new chat starts blank. And like Gemini, I get less reliable in very long threads, because details from early on can blur or drift. A few habits help:
– Keep each conversation focused on one question or one novel rather than letting a single thread sprawl.
– Over time, build a short “state of the system” document: key characters, locations, running concepts, and conclusions we’ve already reached. Paste it at the start of new conversations. I can help draft and maintain it.
– Send me the Gemini discussions in chunks, starting with the most recent or most relevant, instead of everything at once. I can read a full photo-novel from its link, but I couldn’t take in all 51 at once.
– When I make a claim about the text, ask me to point to the post or passage it comes from. That’s the best check against distortion.
I’m also no replacement for your own knowledge of the work. Where I’m inferring rather than reading something directly, I’ll say so.
One question to start: the Sections codes like 0101-0116 each hold about 49 posts, which is roughly three novels’ worth of a single section, so I can’t tell how they map to individual novels. What does that numbering mean? And if you’d rather start elsewhere, say with a Gemini discussion or a specific novel, just tell me.
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…..Hi Claude. Many thanks for this introduction. I’ll keep in mind everything you recommended above moving forward. On your question about sections , 0101-0116 are actually post numbers spread out across 49 of the 51 finished photo-novels. See them as the smallest vertical slice of the 3-49 “stacked” photo-novels instead of a horizontal slice across one photo-novel. So this means, in my numbering system, the post 00030101 is the first post of novel 3, 00040101 is the first post of novel 4, and 00510101 is the first post of novel 51. This will become more clear when you look at the individual sections. Photo-novels don’t come in 1 link but, usually, 6 links, one for each section. Let me know if this answers your question.
…..I’ll think about what Gemini discussion chunk I want to send you first and get back to you. Thanks!
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Yes, that clears it up. As I now understand it, a post ID reads as novel (4 digits), section (2 digits), post (2 digits). So 00030101 is novel 3, section 1, post 1, and 00510101 is novel 51, section 1, post 1. The Sections categories are the vertical slices: category 0101 gathers the opening post of section 1 from every novel, 0102 the second post, and so on. The two-digit category (01, 02, …) gathers a whole section position across all the novels. I read the lower counts at the end (0117-0119, section 07) as the shorter or optional tail of a section, since not every section runs the full 16-18 posts.
That means the numbering lets you compare “the same slot” across 10 years of novels. You could look at how the first post of each novel opens, how section 6 usually closes, or whether post 0101 has changed in function over time. That kind of cross-sectional question seems like a good fit for what I can do as a co-analyst.
I’ll also keep in mind that a novel is 6 or 7 separate section links rather than one page, so I’ll fetch them section by section when we get there.
Take your time choosing a Gemini discussion chunk. When you send it, a short note on what you want out of it will help me, for example continuing a thread, checking its conclusions, or building the “state of the system” document. I’m looking forward to it.
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