Trying out a new Starbucks that just opened. This location was clearly designed to primarily be a drive thru and pick up location. It looks tiny from the outside, but actually has a lot of seating.
I like the way that @manton has improved crossposting in Micro.Blog.
So happy that Project Tapestry is funded. Congrats to @Iconfactory@iconfactory.world and let’s keep going until we reach the stretch goal!
In a crowded Starbucks. I glance up to see if they’ve called my name. I didn’t hear them, but it’s been a while. A woman waiting for her drink looks at me and spells my name with sign language. I nod and then realize what she did. B-O-B is pretty easy in sign language, but it was still pretty cool.
We Asked A.I. to Create the Joker. It Generated a Copyrighted Image. - The New York Times
I don’t have an issue with the concept of AI, but especially with imagery, how you train the model matters. The most popular generative systems were trained on copyrighted material and that’s a problem.
A good week for South Carolina basketball. The men beat Kentucky. The women beat LSU on the road to remain unbeaten. 🏀
More than 30 years ago, I used a Mac for the first time in high school and was instantly hooked. I finally saved up enough money to purchase my first Mac my sophomore year in college. A Power Mac 7500 that I used for a very long time until I bought an iMac. Happy birthday, Macintosh.
So I’m working my full-time job, taking a class and teaching a lecture class this semester. I’ve got a pretty good plan for managing my time, but every so often, I wake up at 1:30 with an idea in my head and end up working for a couple of hours in the middle of the night.
Seth Godin on Variety and the Long Tail:
It’s easy to miss the feeling of a monoculture if you grew up with it. Hits gave us something to talk about, adhere to or even work against. There are so many pockets of culture, it can’t help but feel a bit more lonely from a certain angle.
I might also add: It’s easy to miss the feeling of the early web if you grew up with it.
Honda shows off EV concepts – and two new logos
A new look and branding for Honda EVs
Honda showed off two new EV concepts under the new Honda Zero brand at CES — the Saloon and the Space-Hub. Most of the coverage is focused on the futuristic looks of the concept cars. As someone who grew up going to the Chicago Auto Show and seeing the cars of the future, I’d temper any expectations that the final designs will be this radical.
The Atlantic: If There Are No Stupid Questions, Then How Do You Explain Quora?
Provocative content started to take over, perhaps because it led to more engagement and then, in turn, to more advertising revenue.
Also available on Apple News+ for those of you with the Apple One bundle.
The user experience for setting up a kid’s account on most services is terrible… I understand why people just set up normal accounts for their kids and type in fake birthdates. It’s frustrating.
Over the holiday, I had to search on Google for some obituaries and I’ve learned there are tons of sites that scrap obituaries, funeral home sites and social media and then flood Google results with AI-generated, ad-covered garbage.
Both of the textbooks I need for the class I’m taking this semester are available as ebooks, but my options are Kindle or a proprietary publisher owned system. Of course, I can read them on my computer, but now I’m pondering buying a Kindle.
Reset, Continued: 2024
I adopt a theme each year and last year, the theme was Reset. That theme included focusing on physical and mental health, writing more, getting organized and rediscovering creative endeavors. I made progress with three out of four goals.
- I wrote more, getting my first journal article published and I have several others in the works. I’ve written more here on Micro.Blog in 2023. So mission accomplished.
- I did a good job getting organized, but I need to stay organized. There are still some areas I need to work on, but I feel like I made some progress.
- I worked on a bunch of my typeface designs and even though I’m not ready to release anything, I feel like I was able to dedicate some time to visual projects.
That leaves physical and mental health. I was particularly physically active for the first few months of the year, but hit a rough spot around April and lost momentum. I never got back in a rhythm.
Got word a couple of days ago that a coworker of mine passed away unexpectedly. She’s got two young kids. Just devastated for the family.
It’s Christmas Eve and two of the presents we ordered haven’t arrived. One is scheduled to arrive Dec. 26. The other one hasn’t shipped.
How to fix American democracy, from ranked-choice voting to open primaries - The Washington Post
There are some interesting ideas for reform in this article. I was especially interested in the idea that maybe the House of Representatives needs to be significantly larger.
2023 Favorite Eight
I always pull together my favorite eight shots of the year (as a contrast to those algorithmically generated “Best Nine” posts). I love that it gives me an excuse to go back over all of my images from the last year and relive a lot of great memories.
- Our oldest decided to attend the University of South Carolina and had a great first semester.
- Liz and I are notably bad a selfies, but this outtake was better than the actual selfie and I love it.
- The girls were a little excited about seeing Taylor Swift in concert. (It was an amazing concert and I’m glad we all got to go.)
- We have a high school graduate.
- This is a big kitty yawn, but it looks so fierce.
- Ryan is still playing lacrosse and bounced back after some adversity this summer to have a great rec season.
- We attended my nephew’s football playoff games. This was the final play in overtime that sent them to the state championship. They won that game, and won a state championship.
- Birthday hike for my oldest included a stop at Looking Glass Falls in Pisgah National Forest. It was so cold, that the rocks were covered with ice.
This is the fifth year I’ve done a Favorite 8. You can see my previous posts from 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 on my other site, Sketchbook B. And I posted my 2022 here on bobwertz.com.
I was thinking about buying my middle child a non-smartphone camera for her to experiment with. She loves taking pictures and has a great eye. I looked at what’s available and realized that the market only offers really cheaply-made cameras, or really expensive cameras. Virtually nothing in between.