Unusual Eclipse Watching Tips Over on yon Facebook, there was this list of eclipse watching tips floating about. Some of it was pretty funny and so I reshared the list. I've been trying to trace the origins of these tips to something other than the original poster (OP) but I'm
The Easter Story Explained Some years back, my youngest son asked me about Easter. What it was all about? More importantly, what's with all the eggs? Luckily, as a parent, I was (and am) endowed with the power of complete universal knowledge and, naturally, explaining how Easter works is child's
The Quantum Pen Before we get into the story, I need to set this up. A couple of days ago, I signed up for Perplexity.ai's Pro offering. In case you've never seen it, Perplexity is a kind of AI powered search engine. While it has access to AI
The Problem with "The Three-Body Problem" I don't often do reviews, but when I do, they're not usually in my blog, but they are very opinionated. You have been warned. Okay, so it's more personal observation than actual review, but there you have it. I promise to keep it short.
We Are As Gods I've been reading a fascinating book, "God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning", written by Meghan O'Gieblyn. Technically, I've been listening to it on Audible. It's a fascinating book which covers, among its pages, the subject
Blame the Tool, or the Tool User? A long time ago and far away, a Captain in the British Army retired from service and moved to an estate near Ballinrobe in Ireland. His name was Charles and he moved into Lough Mask House, a property owned by a wealthy landowner by the name of Lord Erne who
Who Stole The Pockets?! Sherman, set the Wayback machine to 1983, to a time when MTV ruled television. You're captured by the endless stream of music videos, falling into each one like that woman at the diner falling into the comic in the "Take On Me" video. In this case,
Goodbye, Privacy! "You have no privacy. Get over it!" If you've been around tech long enough, you've probably run across former SUN Microsystems CEO, Scott McNealy's famous (or infamous) quote. That goes back to 1999 and it raised a boatload of hackles back in
The Thanksgiving Day War! Hey everyone, It's me. I know I'm fashionably late to the party—a couple of days behind for the folks in the U.S., but hey, just over ten months ahead for us Canadians, right? But let's not get bogged down in the details.
Lest We Forget... Remembering the past is what this post is about and on this November 11, 2023, I once again find myself thinking about wars past, wars present, and sadly, the wars to come. This year, in particular, there are two high profile wars going, one in Ukraine, and the other in
The Real History of the Middle Finger. Maybe. Some stories just keep coming round and round again. That's why God invented Snopes; to helpfully and hopefully explore the veracity of stories shared by your friends on social media. Put another way, there are places to see if a story is bullshit. That stuff shows up everywhere,
Superhero Fashion 101 On Halloween night, while waiting for kids to come begging for candy, I sat on the couch and started throwing strange but simple prompts at DALL-E 3, and basically just having fun. In case you haven't spent much time with DALL-E 3, it's different in that,
The Soul for Getting Down: The Spirited History of Halloween Parties Feeling a little on edge? Like someone is looking over your shoulder? Do you hear a creaking sound in an otherwise silent room? Wait! Was there something moving in the shadows? You could swear you just heard a low kind of moaning sound, as though the saddest, loneliest creature in
A No BS Guide to Getting Rid of Your Back Pain! Let’s start with my tragic backstory. I suffered with crippling back pain for more than twenty years. I’m talking about being out on my back, unable to drive, barely able to walk, or work. I spent every moment trying to deal with the pain while doing my best
Everything's Coming Up AI Roses TRIGGER WARNING! This post paints AI in a largely positive way. Readers who feel threatened by positive outlooks may want to avoid this one. Too often, discussions about AI's future pit humanity against machine, as if preparing for some cataclysmic showdown. Yet, this perspective fails to recognize the
Bromelain for Nasal Polyps: Personal Experience If you don't know what I'm talking about here, consider yourself lucky and just move on. This isn't likely to be too interesting for you and it might just gross you out. If you do know about nasal polyps, or you know of someone
Confusing Religion and Technology "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." – Abraham Maslow I'm not entirely sure why, but I've been putting off responding to this. I suppose it's partly because I had such a visceral reaction to it. Maybe I
Your Smartphone Camera's Deep, Dark, AI Secret As viral art apps from Stable Diffusion, to Midjourney, to DALL-E 2, stoke fears about machines stealing human creativity, it’s worth remembering we’ve been training AI to enhance our creative skills longer than you may realize. Every snapshot you’ve taken with your smartphone camera in the last
AI Generated Videos, In Minutes! Years ago, when we bought our first Google Home unit (as soon as it was available), I described the technology as "magic". I demonstrated it to my kids, pointing out the fact that you could ask the Assistant for the weather, or to explain something, or translate from
The Quill vs. The Algorithm: Can Writers and AI Coexist? As I write this, the WGA, the Writers Guild of America, has been on strike for three months; the strike started May 2, 2023. Just over a month later, the union, which represents screenwriters who work on movies and television (including streaming media), was joined on the picket line by
Generative AI Goes to Church On June 9th, 2023, ChatGPT took its place in the pulpit and started preaching to a packed assembly at St. Paul's Lutheran church in the Bavarian town of Fuerth, in Germany. Theologian, Jonas Simmerlein, created a 40-minute service using ChatGPT, but also included other AI elements throughout. On
Philosophy The New Bicameral Minds Every morning, I get up early and start getting lunches ready for the kids, prep the table for breakfast, sweep around said table, fill water bottles, and so on. This is my Monday to Friday routine, at least until school gets out in a couple of weeks. While I go
Balancing Doomsday and AI A couple of years ago, there was this combination science-fiction, disaster, not to mention heavily satirical film called, "Don't Look Up". The movie was written, produced, and directed by Adam McKay and David Sirota. The film included a star-studded cast that included Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence,
AI Whisperer: Job of the Future? I was thinking about this idea that a high-paying job of the future is going be prompt engineer. An "AI whisperer" if you like. This person is able to talk to the AI in a way that consistently provides the output they are looking for. One place where
Yes, You Are Living in a Simulation I've always loved the question, "Are you living in a computer simulation?" The question was made famous in a 2003 paper by philosopher Nick Bostrom, who suggested that we are almost certainly living in a simulation. You can go back and read the paper after you&
