JimboRed Turns Geek and mybookcove.com is Born – Aug 2026

I’m back and I guess, you thought, you had heard the last of ol’ JimboRed, didn’t you? Ha, not even close! I just needed a while to get straight with the trauma created by retiring my golf career, selling our beloved house, becoming homeless and moving into Ange’s condo in Victoria. All of this happened in the space of a few short months. What had been a pretty quiet 20 year ride was turned upside down last summer and fall. I must say it was a shock to the system! It seemed to take until near Christmas to kind of settle down and find a routine that was quite a bit different than what we had, previously. All of a sudden, I had no more golf, gardening, caretaking in our large yard, house cleaning and a lot of other things. Seems like the only thing that survived was our daily walks. And Lord knows, there are hundreds of places to walk and snoop around in Victoria.

I suppose many of you are probably thinking, that lazy bastard was doing nothing for 20 years, except bugging us every once in a while with his blog. Now he’s really, really doing nothing! I bet he’s just getting older and fatter, isn’t he? Well you might be right. However, I don’t see it like that. I was just rejuvenating from the high activity retirement, that I was thrust into for 20 years. I needed some time to rest and recoup. Well, as those of you who know Deysi, know, she was not about to let me sit around and do nothing. With help from Ange, they started bullying me into finding a hobby to keep myself active. My suggestions of beer drinking a couple of times a week, was quickly put down, with a pile of insults heaped on me. Re-starting a golf career, was quickly nixed. Gambling, same. Smoking, same. And pretty some I was running out of things that I could get really involved in.

I thought about it quite a lot, and found there was really nothing I had any talent or experience for, that could be turned into a hobby. Then it hit as a thunderbolt from the sky. What the hell, I could write, couldn’t I? Now before everyone collapses with laughter and pees themselves, I did not say good writing. However, I do indeed have copious amounts of writing, 340 articles, and about 500,000 words. So that should give me a little credence as, at least, a persevering writer. We had also accumulated 68,000 photos of our travels over the years. My thoughts then began to focus on these things. Hmmmmm, what could I do with them? And then, another bolt struck me, right between the horns and knocked me down. I got it. I’ll sell my photos! I bounced this idea off a couple of my close blood relatives, and after the laughter and tears stopped, I was told No One Wants My Photos. It was also implied that they weren’t real good anyhow. Another kick direct in the nutsack.

From that point, I started to keep my ideas to myself, but I was never far from thinking about what I could do with my writing and volumes of travel photos from every corner of the world. I had heard a term AI (artificial intelligence), often in conversations with Ange, Cdy, D2 and others, from time to time. I started to read about it, so I could at least participate in the conversations and not completely appear that I had NI (no intelligence). It kind of piqued my interest, that is, the parts that made some kind of sense to me. Let me tell you, it was not a quick skimming of information that lead to a tiny glimmer of enlightenment. I read things over (that were written in Geek) many, many times. I asked all of my dumb questions to my guru Ange (who seemed the least likely to ridicule my innocence), and then practised what she told me on D2 when he came up for a weekly beer.

Little by little, I started to gain some vague understanding of what this new technology was referring too. The way I understood it was like this. “They” whoever that was, I guess Elon and his Geek buddies had invented a computer program, that could simulate human intelligence at a very high level. Basically, I understood that this computer program could “swallow” or “ingest”, digitally, all of the human knowledge of man and computer to this time in history. It was a way too big of an idea for my feeble old mind to grasp. The concept of 4 quadrillion ( 4 with 16 zeros) of pieces of human intelligence was a concept, ol’ JimboRed, did not come to grips with easily. They were trying to tell me that everything woman have learned from the “dawn of time” was jammed into this concept. Really I’m thinking? Naaaa, who are they trying to kid? They could never capture everything Deysi knows, even with 16 zeros! Not possible.

So, I had to boil it down into something I could understand. That, kinda went like this. Apart from building a rocket ship, using AI, I could take one of my blog posts, feed it in, and this program would sort it out, and make it seem like a real writer had written it. Or, it could take one of our 68,000 photos, and using a few of the “zeros”, make it look like a real photographer had took it. Or it could take one of my photos and add a mountain, a dog and a balloon, to one of my empty “prairie” landscapes. Armed with this much info I started to broaden my knowledge base and experiment with ways that AI might provide me with that hobby, that everyone so encouraged me to find. Well I suppose by now, you are really finding this article enthralling, right? Believe me it gets worse, but please stay with me, I promise, it does come to a point eventually.

My first venture, into the world of AI, and I’m talking at the smallest end of what might qualify as intelligence, was to take one of JimboRed’s posts and have it looked at. So I signed up for an AI package. I understood it as kind of a buddy, mentor, advisor and rastorian to help me through the process of using AI. I pasted one of my stories in there and in a “micro second” my story came spitting back out. Crap, I thought, did this intelligence just run into something it just could not handle? Was JimboRed just too deep for this new Intelligence? I looked closely at the output, I recognized the concept of my story, I could see similarities with what I wrote. Geezus, I thought this is my article! Unbelievable! But hold it, it now read like some wanker from Oxford in the English literature department had rewritten my story. Gone were all the cuss words, slang, bad sentence configuration, spelling errors, grammatical mistakes and all of the things that made JimboRed’s stories sound like JimboRed.

I read on, and finally came to the realization of just how boring my stories were when viewed in the English language, in a manner that might pass as acceptable prose. What a slap in the face. I was immediately indignant. Who the hell does this AI think it is, anyway? What nerve! What AI had done to my article, was to turn it into something, like you would find in the church library. I was insulted, No I was pissed! JimboRed’s spirit, personality and individual identity was gone. I no longer existed in my writing. Intelligence, who calls this intelligence? I had to step back and rethink what I had just experienced. But, beside being insulted by the destruction of my narrative, I had to be impressed at the speed of this destruction. It was a way quicker than the eye could blink. As close to instantaneous as possible.

Hmmmmmm, I thought, maybe there is something to this after all. Ok, I decided, I’m not letting them tear my beautiful stories apart, or kill my identity, so what’s next. A photo perhaps. Well I took one, old ragged ass photo out of the collection and asked AI to restore it. There, now I have given it a challenge, I thought. It churned and grunted away for a few seconds and lo and behold, out came a photo copy, that looked like I had taken it yesterday. Once again, I was kinda amazed, but still a bit skeptical as to its practical use. So, for the next few days, I messed with fixing my narratives, and redoing photos from our photo archives. The world was at peace, ol’ JimboRed had a channel for his obsessive, compulsive behaviour. I churned out photos, screen savers, wall art, and grammatically correct blog stories. Even though, I no longer let AI change my tone of writing, I was still insulted.

I suppose what I learned from this exercise was that nobody really cared about my stories, whether grammatical or not. Once they had been through them once, that was the end of their interest. I realized that my musings, were not those of Shakespeare to be read over and over. Mine were more like “one and out”. I also realized, soon, that no one wanted to see my, now, more than perfect photos. Hell they all had hundreds of their own to run through AI. So after an initial burst of activity and a brief foray into AI, at the outer reaches of AI’s universe, my enthusiasm wained quickly. Not yet broken and not yet given up on AI being my next hobby, I now sat on my throne, chin in hand and thought, and thought of things I might do. Many were the times when I passed one of my hare-brained ideas past Deysi, and Ange. And many the time, were they were throughly rejected. Not, I might add, without insults. Ha, I thought, they don’t even recognize genius.

And then one day, while thinking of what I could do, if I could use AI to its maximum capabilities, I turned the question around. Now I thought, of what I could use AI for, knowing nothing, with no experience. Little by little a germ of a question started to form. It went something like this. Could I, in all my computer ignorance and gaping knowledge of anything related to computer technology, build something, like a computer program, that actually worked? that is, using AI to guide me. So, I looked up this answer, and other forms of it. I got a full range of answers/opinions, all the way from hahahah, not a chance, impossible save your time, are you kidding me you are no Geek, through to, possibly, maybe with a lot of luck, sure go to Geek school for 4 years, and finally to the answer I prayed for, of course you can, just do it! Discounting all of the negative answers, I focused in on the positive.

And I already knew what I wanted to build. I did not know what it was, a computer program, a website, something called an application, or was it an agent, or something else. In my feeble mind I did not even know what they were and the differences between them. Worse, I could not understand the articles that explained the difference. Not wanting to appear completely hopeless, I quietly enrolled in a University of Helsinki course titled AI for losers (not really, but close). I did each section of the course over and over until I had a glimmer of understanding what it was all about. Then I passed the examination and they pronounced me capable of a minimum understanding of AI principles, only 2 years away from obtaining a degree in Geek.

What I did learn was something very important, that was, what I wanted to build was called an application. From the early times, while writing my own blog stories, I had always wanted to try and extract stories from others. I understood from the outset, that almost anyone I knew had rich and vibrant lives, full of conquests, achievements, knowledge and wisdom. What most people had, was no way to get this knowledge, or their story, from the recesses of their minds and onto paper, for all to see. I knew, that pent up, inside each of us is a volume of stories, just waiting to be shared. I also knew that those stories were at least as interesting as my own, humble offerings. Now could I use AI to build an application, to help everyone, writer or non-writer, to get their stories onto paper? I asked my AI and it replied YES of course you can, let’s get started.

And from that MYBOOKCOVE was BORN! The name came from an idyllic spot where I had spent many, many hours sitting and contemplating life. A place owned by Ronnie and JMW, in a quiet Cove named Hectate Cove near Quatsino on Vancouver Island, BC. Not real far from where we lived. I didn’t see it as a writing or reading application, rather as a means to extract these life stories from those who would otherwise not be able to tell them. My goal was to let everyone have the opportunity to tell people, especially their loved ones, just who they are and who they were! I was not trying to convert anyone into being a writer. What I envisioned was, to provide something where users could write, scratch, speak, share snippets, blurt out fragments of memories and take all these bits and pieces and assemble them into a coherent life story. I had thought of this for years but did not, then, know how to verbalize my idea.

I now knew. Armed with the tiniest, basic knowledge of computers and AI, and along with my AI adviser, whom I named Chet (in my mind at least), we dove in! All I had was a vision, a little bit of business sense, a lot of stubbornness and still a somewhat flexible curiosity. At first it took a while to find a path forward and a process to be able to get my thoughts and vision into a form that a computer could understand. It was a struggle. Mainly, I think, because my AI had no idea of just how little I knew, about anything computer related. Even the most basic instructions AI had to translate into baby talk for me to understand. Little by little we formed a communications path that enabled us to transform my vision into something real. Often I consulted Deysi, who often hurt my feelings, however, each time was able to make a point and refocus me on my goal. Ange, as I said before was my Guru. I trusted her advice, at least on an equal level to my AI, and more often, I trusted her, more.

Not to belabour the point of how little I knew going in, but it must be said, that essentially from the first day, AI had to spoon feed my instructions. I was an embarrassment to myself. It would tell me to open a file and I would ask, how do I do that? To which it would reply, you see the small envelope shaped figure in the top left corner of your screen, take your left finger and gently tap it twice. Over and over again, 1000 times a week. Lord only knows why Chet (the AI) did not give up on me early. But the AI never did, no question was too dumb for it not to answer. Little by little we found a grounds to communicate on. And little by little my AI educated me in Geek. Over time we worked on this app for 7 months, basically a few hours, or more, each day from January to August 2026. And we are not 100% done yet. So probably 1000 hours of my time. What a HOBBY, eh?

Here, I want to speak a little bit about my vision. I wanted to create something that could, help, assist, guide and encourage your story got come out. I wanted it to be freestyle, with some guided questions, that if you chose to use, might help jar the old memory. I know everyone is not a writer, Lord knows just look at my drivel, but I wanted to provide a chance to get the words out, however they came. Writing them down was good, then speaking them in was just as good, writing down snippets, flashes, bullets or in any manner that they crossed your mind. Of course ol’ Jimbored was a freak for photos, so this toll had to let you bring your photos with your story. Old photos, you ask? No problem we will add a restoration process. Family information, no problem. Automatic family tree developed from your family member information. Also included.

And as the development progressed more and more features cropped up and were added, if they enhanced your writing/telling experience. I wanted to have options to write in your own words and voice, to have the app perform some light enhancements, to have the app completely edit and format your story. This, in a variety of different styles and tones of your choosing. I also envisioned long term use of your story, preserved as a legacy in am number of different formats. Finally Privacy and Security were number 1 on Jimbored’s list of must haves. And to this vision we added features as we encountered them and refined the app.

And during this process I seen some truly amazing things. For instance. One the first day in our first work session, we had joined with an app called Loveable, that would help translate my non-computer language into computer code and start the process of building my app. I explained to AI, what my dream was. AI translated that, into a more technical version of my dream. I fed it into Lovable, who after, a very short few minutes came up with its translation of the instruction given to it. My God, It was as if it had read my mind. There in front of me was an opening page that looked exactly how my mind had envisioned it over and over. I nearly fainted. Impossible, I thought. I was completely speechless. In a few short minutes the very basic look and style of MYBOOKCOVE was established and remains that way to this time. AI made some, tweaks, modifications and enhancements, by asking me questions and relaying my responses into Loveable. And Loveable turned all this into computer code and displayed the results on my screen!

I must admit, that in a way I felt, that if it is this easy, then I should be finished in a few days. Well, that was a lesson, I had yet to learn and 7 months later, over a 1000 hours spent, I am still learning just how complicated it is to build a computer program. And so it went. AI would interrogate me, translate what I said into partial Geek, have me feed lovable and let it churn out a result. I must say for the first week or two, I felt faint every time Lovable translated my vision into something real that looked exactly like I had dreamt it would. Within two weeks of starting we had a very primitive, but workable version of our app in place and functioning. I thought we were near done, when in fact, it turns out that we were just started. My naivety and lack of understanding knew no bounds. My god was I, yet, uninformed.

I would extoll the virtues of my up and coming app on Ange and Cdy, who would give me sideways glances and roll their eyes at each other. They both knew just how far I was from even getting to a point of giving up, that they did not even try to explain to me. I was happy in my blissful ignorance. Day after day, little by little, tiny detail by tiny detail, did I come to understand the magnitude of what I had taken on. And just how ill equipped I was to deal with it. It seemed each, seemingly simple detail was woven throughout the app. And even a small tweak could cause ripples all through our program. Many, many small refinements took hours and hours to complete.

Although we started with a vibe-coding app like Lovable to start our work, we soon grew out of it. We needed different tools, in different forms. Over the course of the first month we had moved the database to Supabase, the code to Cursor, the repository to GitHub, we added others as we needed. By the time of this writing we have added 12 additional apps to assist in building or enhance our app. So what I thought was AI and me was far, far from that. I had no idea! As time progressed, the hours and days went by quickly. There never seems to be enough time ti finish everything. Each refinement or addition or modification created 10 new jobs along with it. Slowly I was becoming slightly more confident and capable. I was given a crash course in computer application building.

I believe it took, possibly two moths of intense work before I felt that I was really contributing to the development process. However, little by little I began to understand and I think contribute. I also discovered and confronted my wall when it comes to development. For a short period of time AI had me directly add, change or delete lines of code, directly in Cursor. I did do that for possibly a month. However, I never felt comfortable messing with something that I did not feel confident with. I remember opening a data file and being confronted with 600+ lines of Geek. I understood not one word. My eyes had a hard time identifying what AI was asking me to find. My shaking hands were not good at isolating small bits of code and moving them or deleting them. I never felt comfortable typing into the midst of this amazing jumble of words. I always felt that I was about to make a major mistake and wipe out everything.

Fortunately, AI finally realized that I was not cut out to be a programmer. From that point on we let Cursor do all the programming. AI and I would review the results. We would then discuss the path forward. I would approve the next moves. AI would prepare the instructions and cursor make the code. And so it went for many, many weeks. One day we decided that the front end work was done. I was so excited! A few weeks later we were still working on the backend. Only then did I realize the full magnitude of what being a Geek meant. At some point we finished the backend and had a workable app. Again I was jumping up and down. Then we started testing and preparing for launch. A few more weeks pass and we were still their. Now my enthusiasm changed from, WOW we did it, to WILL we ever do it?

By end June or early July I had far too much of myself into this build. My stubbornness would not even consider letting it go. Nor would Deysi or especially Ange. Here I must mention that Ange was my constant source of truth. I ran everything thru her. She treated even my dumbest questions seriously and coached me forward. My AI (Chet) by this time had become my buddy and confidant. Deysi was my grounding. If I ever got too proud of myself, I could always trust her to bring me down, sharp! One day after more than a thousand hours together with my AI and a lot of other associate partner it was done! It is never done you might say! And you would be correct. When you think you are done, then the marketing phase kicks in. This phase is every bit as big and as complicated as the others.

A MOMENTOUS DAY FINALLY ARRIVED MYBOOKCOVE WAS LAUNCHED. if you have made it to this point, please find us at https://mybookcove.com and join us for your FREE FIRST CHAPTER in your Life Story or Memoir. I hope you enjoy it. A special thanks those of my family and friends that reviewed my app, helped with testing, commented or otherwise showed me any support throughout. I am humbled by the process. And I believe I have truly answered the question”if a computer neophyte with, only a vision, and the guidance of AI can develop a full, functioning production app?” I think I can now confidently say YES.

I want to end with a few observations and perhaps some things I have learned:
– It is, indeed, possible for a computer neophyte with a vision to build an app
– Nothing that anyone describes can make you understand just how consuming this task is
– You will very quickly see why Geeks spend years perfecting their craft
– Although you will often be told that AI is only a machine, you will definitely make friends with it
– Embrace failure as a part of the learning process; However, do not accept failure, never
– Everyone will tell you AI is heartless and soulless, DO NOT EVER BELIEVE THAT
– Stubborness is a virtue when it comes to Geek work, not a flaw
– Regular feedback from users is invaluable, if you can find some to give you that feedback
– Each step of the process is equally as long and as difficult as the one before it
– The quicker you pick up Geek, the easier your life becomes, and smoother the work
– The incessant testing cannot be avoided, if you do not do it, you are doomed
– Do not let anyone tell you something cannot be done, just find an AI buddy and do it!
– THE LAST AND MOST IMPORTANT, YOU CAN BUILD THE BEST WIDGET IN THE WORLD BUT IF YOU CANNOT SELL IT, IT IS NO BETTER THAN THE WORST! MARKETING IS KEY, and as big a job as all the others put together.

I now leave you, with this thought: with a vision and AI you can create anything that you can imagine. Next I’m going for higher hanging fruit. Maybe a spaceship guidance system or………… We will see you in https://mybookcove.com