<a href="https://www.freepik.com/free-psd/gaming-blank-banner-background_41972388.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Monitor, keyboard and mouse (Opens in a new tab)</a>, <a href="https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/realistic-3d-shapes-floating-background_13397766.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Background 3D composition (Opens in a new tab)</a> by [Freepik](https://www.freepik.com/author/freepik); Blurred <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/rCbdp8VCYhQ" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">starry sky (Opens in a new tab)</a> by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@andyjh07" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Andy Holmes (Opens in a new tab)</a> via <a href="https://unsplash.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Unsplash (Opens in a new tab)<a/>

Blaugust 2023

New to blogging? Veteran of long time content creation? Looking for inspiration on what to write, vlog or stream about? __Blaugust__ has something for you no matter what!

As of now, I've only written a few posts here and there (taking quite some time to rewrite them into something presentable) and I find myself struggling with some consistency in publishing the things I learn about. 

Work, sometimes, gets the best of me and well, life is there too! 😱😆 This is not my first attempt at working on my own website and try to collect a nice bunch of material to showcase when I apply to new workplaces, __but it's possibly the latest best effort that brought a lot of joy into my life and redeemed a lot of love that I have for my own profession__, which before anything has been my favourite hobby ever since I was 10. 🥰

When working on something that is only for me and not for anyone else, events like Blaugust speak to me as a great incentive into pushing myself and try to create something-anything, even when the day seems a bit too short for anything productive.

## So, what is Blaugust exactly?

Without any attempt to write it better than the creator of the event

<blockquote>
 Blaugust is a month-long event that takes place in August each year that focused on blogging and other serialized content. The goal is to stoke the fires of creativity and allow bloggers and other content creators to mingle in a shared community while pushing each other to post more regularly.
 <div class="text-right"></div>— <a href="https://aggronaut.com/2023/07/12/blaugust-2023-is-coming/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Blaugust 2023 is coming (Opens in a new tab)</a> by <a href="https://aggronaut.com/author/belghast/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Belghast (Opens in a new tab)</a>
 </blockquote>

And the beautiful sharing community is something you don't want to miss out! So far I have had such a great time on Discord chatting with a lot of people and seeing what is everyone up to. 😎

I really invite anyone even-so-remotely-interested in joining this event and <a href="https://aggronaut.com/2023/07/12/blaugust-2023-is-coming/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">read more about Blaugust from the original post (Opens in a new tab)</a>. You even get an achievement by reading the manual, yay xD

<hr />

## Shoutout to Juhis 🎉

It's thanks to <a href="https://hamatti.org/about/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Juhis (Juha-Matti Santala, hamatti.org) (Opens in a new tab)</a> that I find myself in this amazing community!

Juhis has always been involved in a lot of amazing activities and this is one of the greatest ones I'm also trying to be part of! Ever since I met him in our previous common workplace, __Juhis has always been a great inspiration as a developer, community manager, event organizer, workshop host and speaker__! *When I grow up I wanna be like Juhis* (even if I'm older, technical details 😆) A lot of the things I have confidence in doing today are thanks to him, and I'm glad I can always learn from this amazing person! Thank you so much! 🌻

Oh, and don't forget to check <a href="https://hamatti.org/posts/blaugust-2023-here-we-come/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Juhis' article about Blaugust (Opens in a new tab)</a>!

## Get to know more about this year's participants!

One of the kindest souls in the community, <a href="https://indiecator.org/about-indiecator/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Magi (Opens in a new tab)</a>, recently published <a href="https://indiecator.org/2023/08/02/blaugust-2023-participant-appreciation-post/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">an appreciation blog post about all the participants of this year's Blaugust (Opens in a new tab)</a>. Their post is incredibly heartwarming and I appreciate a lot the kind words they've addressed toward my Notion blogpost! 😍

<hr />

## The goal

While I don't believe I have it in me to create 31 posts in 31 days (and I'd already be long behind by now 😱), I'm giving myself an approachable deadline of *at least one post per week* and have four new posts in this site by the end of August. Seems reasonable and should combine pretty well with my work! I'll also figure out how many achievements I've gotten from the challenge once the month is out!

## My biggest learning so far

Although the event just started, I've already discovered something interesting about myself!

For some reason, I've never thought about browsing posts about my favourite videogames, and amazingly enough, it was really refreshing to read more about Path of Exile instead of simply watching YouTube videos as I'd always do. I see that a lot of amazing content goes under the radar when I limit myself to only one input approach and it reminds me that there's far more than mindless Instagram scrolling that I could do to spend my time!

And it's kinda weird, I am okay both reading and watching videos about development, but for some reason I've never thought that reading about video games was also a possibility! LOL. 🤯

## So far so good!

Although I might not have written or rewritten-and-published as many articles as I was hoping to during this week, __I've managed to come up with a somewhat okay dark theme for this website__! I've felt so accomplished as it was something I had in my backlog for a long long time! ✨ __It also put me against some small challenges with Disqus embeds__, for which I'm going soon to write an article about — thinking of sharing it also on <a href="https://dev.to" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">dev.to (Opens in a new tab)</a> to contribute to its amazing community :D Yay, me!

Having a hard time finding will to work on your blogging website? Blaugust might just be that little spice of inspiration you were looking for!

A Blasting August with Blagust

Custom

Inspiration

Productivity

A Blasting August with Blaugust

Title and background gradient tweaked out with the DOM Inspector from <a href="https://declare-ai.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Declare-AI official website (Opens in a new tab)</a>

Declare AI

One of the latest interesting discussions on Slack at work has been about the value proposition of <a href="https://declare-ai.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">declare-ai.org (Opens in a new tab)</a>, a website created (*without any assistance from a Generative AI*) by <a href="https://naildrivin5.com/bio/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">David Bryant Copeland (Opens in a new tab)</a> that recognises the excitement around AI and wants to help people inform and be informed about its uses.

(bit off topic but, I am perplexed by the fact that David's own website doesn't have any comment about AI Content Declaration; perhaps they felt they had said all about the topic in the main website. Or perhaps they just wanted to make sure it is clear to people that their work has nothing to do with any sort of AI, maybe out of frustration for the new wave of low-quality/low-effort content blatantly created with AI and not wanting their work even remotely put on the same plate)🤷.

While I recommend checking the website (as I couldn't write any better about it than you could deduct from checking the actual site), the process it proposes is as follows:

```mermaid
graph TD
 A(Was Generative AI used in any way?) -->| Yes | B(Did Generative AI produce the entire work?)
 A -->| No | X(None)
 B -->| Yes | Y(Total)
 B -->| No | C(Did Generative AI contribute creatively?)
 C -->| Yes | D(Creative Assistance)
 C -->| No | E(Non-creative Assistance)
```

<blockquote class="text-sm">Not sure if the diagram can be read in an accessible way, therefore let me repeat it here (I will use a structure that proposes first the condition that end the flow). We start asking ourselves Was Generative AI used in any way?; if the answer is no, then the answer is None (as in no contribution from generative AI). If the answer is yes, we are prompted to another question Did Generative AI produce the entire work?; answering yes will land us on Total, as in total AI contribution; if we answer no, we are asked the last question Did Generative AI contribute creatively?; yes brings us to Creative Assistance and no will bring us to Non-creative Assistance.</blockquote>

It is up to your own judgement to determine if you used the AI in a creative way, but <a href="https://declare-ai.org/1.0.0/assess.html#creative-contribution" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the website offers you a nice way to determine what could be considered creative assistance and what not (Opens in a new tab)</a>.

And once you go through this hierarchy, <a href="https://declare-ai.org/1.0.0/declare.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">you can make a public declaration about it (Opens in a new tab)</a>, in the best way that suits you and with the examples proposed. It allegedly also proposes to add this information in the form of meta tags... because why not?!

Now now, will I use it? *Not yet*! I would like to see it having more popularity; but what I like to do is to be open about the source of my work! And that's why __I gladly mention at least the most important prompts I ask about to ChatGPT__ at the end of each blogpost. On this website, my go-to way to use ChatGPT is to get inspiration on how to start discussing about a topic, steal good-sounding adjectives (as my English can only benefit from expanding my vocabulary), and in general to get over a writer's block that often prevents me from sharing more here, and learn more about something.

More than often, I read what ChatGPT proposes to me, and I'm immediately like nope, definitely not that! as it often goes with a very bland structure, lots of repetition, and unneeded conclusion paragraphs that give no particular value to the topic asked. But more than once, when I want to make sure I understand something about a particular topic, __it performs as a great teacher that never gets tired__, no matter how *stupider* my questions become. And it's really a teacher that I'd wish for everyone to have.

Many feel ashamed to mention they'd use any sort of generative AI and they'd prefer to keep it hidden. Instead of having a sense of appreciation for this technology, __a lot of people tend to judge negatively the skills of people using AI__, assuming that they're lazy, not knowledgeable, not actual professionals and that they'd not be able to succeed without such tool. I personally find unfair to question people's skills' worth based on how much they like to use AI, as I don't think my critical thinking is compromised any more than it'd be if I were to acquire information from a YouTube video, an online article, a book and so on. With that premise, I use ChatGPT as __one among many sources__ to acquire knowledge and understanding of a topic, and __it never is__ for me __the only source of information__.

Rather than hide its usage, __I absolutely love the idea to share with people how it helps me go past a lot of hurdles__. Before ChatGPT, I also have never been particularly shy about sharing where I've learned something, or what sources I have browsed to learn and/or do something. I really love to share with people because I would not be the person that I am today if people didn't share the things I've digested to this day.

We seem to forget that not too long ago, we were all assuming __developers were just copying stuff from StackOverflow__ and asking questions over there. So how does that exactly differ, in terms of originality and competence, from what ChatGPT offers us these days?

<hr/>

Have you ever wondered how many people make use of ChatGPT for writing their blog posts? What's your take on the topic? __Should people be more clear to which extend they use AI or would you just be happy to have valuable content in front of your eyes, regardless of how it came to be?__ Let me hear your opinion in the comments!

oh-no.ooo

Inspiration

Articles

A Blasting August with Blaugust

Snippets

declare-ai.org - ... so, who wrote that?!