I have my opinions about cryptocurrency. All of which have come true – in spades. Like many, I have a fascination with watching each crypto train wreck after train wreck unfold.
If you like predicting train wrecks, PricePredictions has a little AI bot that tries to predict crypto prices.
HowToGeek has a wonderful little introduction on how to start write your first Stable Diffusion prompts.
Update 02-2023: Here’s 10 really amazing resources to help you to generate really great prompts and art.
They start with some simple AI image generation and move on to more and more complex examples that includes a brief introduction to some key parameters, changing and including broader image sources, and then generating various famous artistic styles.
They finish out the intro with some links to help you learn more:
Links:
Remember old-school movies that were damaged, in black in white, and everyone ran around at 2x speed? With AI processing, they can fix many of those problems. Olden Days youtube channel has a number of great restored videos like this.
Amazing to see that when fixed, this looks just like a snowball fight one might see today – proving that we aren’t all that different from the people of our past as we’d like to think.
These restoration techniques have come a long way in just a few years.
Other links:
The Internet Archive has every issue of the old Nintendo Power magazine online – for now. It appears Nintendo has been issuing lots of takedown notices for even old content like this.
Enjoy while you can
I am definitely sold on snow socks. Just like him, I couldn’t believe they were as good as chains. It seems so counter-intuitive. Yet, in some cases (like stopping distance), they are even better than chains. Snow socks are slightly easier to put on than chains too.
What’s nice about snow socks is that you can use them on bare pavement – unlike chains that often quickly get destroyed unless driving really slow. With socks, you can drive on bare pavement for a while until you find a safer spot to pull over to take them off.
I also found they were astounding on ice as well. The first time I used them, I was on a stretch of road that looked like glass. It was so slick I could barely stand on it when I got out of the car. I put the socks on, and drove without a single problem. Amazing. I will probably never go back to chains.
His video does a great job of comparing the two in actual conditions. His conditions were lots of fresh snow, but I can confirm on hard-packed roads and/or straight ice, they work just as exceptionally.
The only downside of socks is that they can get little holes if you drive on a lot of rocks or dry pavement for too long. However, in several years of occasional use, they are very small and do not affect the performance. Personally, I found chains only lasted about 2-3 seasons anyway – and socks cost just about the same; so I don’t see this as a big deal. If they get too shredded, I’ll just buy a new set.
Hiromi Uehara, in my opinion, is one of the greatest largely unknown pianists of our time. She is part of the rising Japanese inflation with jazz that has become a growing centerpiece of modern Japanese culture. The thing that most makes her stand out (and makes has amazingly unique in the normal jazz scene) is her absolutely crystal clear technical ability and mind blowingly accurate control of her dynamics. It is like listening to a concert-pianist technical expert, one that has mastered every nuance of the piano’s tones and dynamics, and yet is playing what is usually a more ragged jazz genre.
Here’s a song of hers that I have been listening to and keep listening to again and again. The crystal clear runs without a hint of slur or slop along with dynamics are astounding. Each listen I’m more amazed at how there is not a single sloppy note or missed dynamic in the whole piece – and that each note plays perfectly into the mood and feel she is weaving:
It makes me believe the purported story by someone who attended a master class by house band member Tony Grey. Grey is a bass player who record and toured with Uehara. He told the class that every morning he and the other bandmates would wake up with a hand written note that detailed every single mistake they got wrong the night before.
Here’s another astounding piece that demonstrates an ever increasing progression of the most crystal clear jazz improvisation on top of a well known tune. She first imitates a harpsicord by putting metal rulers on the strings, but I think it really gets amazing starting around 3:04, 5:15, and 7:05.
The demonstration of technical perfection while progressing through every jazz style in the book blew my mind again and again. A modern Japanese artist performing a German composer’s music remixed in the jazz style from African Americans on an instrument invented in Italy. Amazing.
Nobody seems to want to upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11. Now late 2022, only about 15% of users have upgraded or bought machines with Windows 11 – despite it being out for well over a year. Even the Steam Hardware Survey indicates a 28% install rate on some of the newest/highest end gaming systems.
There’s a whole host of gripes about Windows 11. There have been performance and compatibility issues that are not present on Windows 10. Others greatly dislike the UI changes (this is my big gripe). Still others mention being told their hardware is incompatible. However, you may, like many others, find yourself FORCED to upgrade to Windows 11 whether you want to or not. Windows has a nasty habit of pushing such upgrades without asking.
If you want to make sure you don’t get a Windows 11 upgrade but still keep getting Windows 10 updates, you can try this trick:
First, navigate to Windows Update, then hit Pause Updates on that page.
Run
services.msc, find the Windows Update service and Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS), right click on them and pick Stop.Next, browse to
C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\, and delete the contents.That is it. The two services will eventually restart on their own, and next time it checks for updates it will only get Windows 10 updates.
Edit – If you want an extra layer of assurance, run the tool InControl from GRC, this free utility changes a few Microsoft sanctioned registry keys to specify what version and feature update of Windows you want to remain on. There are also details on those registry keys for those that would rather manually configure it themselves: https://www.grc.com/incontrol.htm
Links:
I love this video. “Sho Ko was of course scratching at the door to go out. I wondered what would happen when I opened the door.”
Nope is what happened.
I ran across this interesting article on The Trek.co about what footwear people wore while hiking the 2190 mile Appalachian trail. Taking many weeks to complete, the trail is a grueling test of equipment. Most trail hikers ended up wearing out 4-5 sets of shoes – matching the recommendation to retire shoes after 500 miles of hiking.
The most interesting point to me was that hiking boots were not high on the list of footwear hikers have been wearing. While still recommended for snowy sections, the vast majority of the hikers used trail runners. When I started hiking decades ago, I actually preferred hiking easier trails in more rugged tennis shoes too. I somewhat feel vindicated. 🙂 The data they collected for the last 2 years shows boots were only worn by around 10% of hikers. There was also the trend that people that started with hiking boots were more likely to end up switching to trail runners during their journey.
Shoe satisfaction showed 91 percent of respondents who began their hike in trail runners said they were happy with their choice. On the other hand, only 64 percent of hikers starting in hiking boots were satisfied.
For all shoe types, fit was one of the most important factors in switching footwear; which just reinforces the age-old wisdom to get plenty of long miles in your boots/shoes before major trips to make sure they don’t have any hot spots, issues with swelling feet, or other similar problems. I personally find the adage of ‘breaking in’ boots/shoes to be complete bunk. In my experience, if the shoes don’t fit and aren’t comfortable right off, they never become so later.
You can read the rest of the excellent article since it also has recommendations and breakdown of hiking shoes, socks, and other equipment they most used. The summary was this:
Here’s some great links to find interesting and fun things in Portland.
Summer events: