A working notebook
Field Notes
Observations made while building, debugging, testing, and trying to understand what the system is actually doing.
Format
Short observations, build logs, useful edge cases, and occasional deeper reports.
Sources
First-party notes and clearly labeled local archive copies, with links back to the original when one exists.
Maintained by
Eric Rhea
Current issue
Latest from the notebook
The most recent entries are shown by their documented publication date. No freshness labels are inferred from file changes.
Using taxonomy with AI-driven results
A crowded local-AI menu becomes easier to use after one precise word gives the agent a better way to group the work.
OpenAI's Astra makes a car-to-robot animation
One prompt turns a still image into a short transformation sequence, complete with a native video and its generated audio.
Hermes Estimates the P-39 Airacobra Build
The agent counts the remaining work, explains why the raw runtime is misleading, and gives the unfinished aircraft a realistic range.
The P-39 engine reconstruction falls apart
The engine build goes visibly wrong. The failed attempt stays in the notebook because broken parts still teach the project something.
Imagined Places for the Khufu Exhibit
Four concept images explore possible places and visual directions around the scale-led Great Pyramid reconstruction.
Rabbits hide behind rocks
The island rabbits run for cover, hide as well as they can, and wait for the explorer to leave.
Squirrels climb the trees
A hand-modeled squirrel learns how to travel between trees and climb their trunks.
Scenes appear as you move
Unplanned compositions emerge while moving through the third island experiment.
The robot gets a ship
The explorer robot needed a way to reach the island, so a ship joined the world.
Khufu Between Credit Resets
An early look at the Great Pyramid reconstruction while the browser exhibit was taking shape.
The glitch nearly becomes art
A missed visual result lands somewhere strange enough to keep.
Advisory Hour, kept in context
Browse the complete archive by writing, projects, research trails, and competition season.
Reading paths
Follow a thread instead of a chronology.
Worlds and simulations
John’s World, City Explorer, continuity, generated media, and browser-scale environments.
02Models, agents, and tools
Local inference, model runtimes, agent workflows, prompt systems, and debugging surfaces.
03Playable systems
Game loops, simulation mechanics, small interactions, and builds that reveal their design under play.
04Craft and judgment
Voice, attention, vocabulary, decision context, and the human practice around technical work.
Complete index
Every field note
The index stays deliberately plain: title, documented date, and the thread it belongs to.