AI

Weird Wednesday – Mind Boggling

~ tidalscribe.com ~ 26 Comments

Do you find new technology mind boggling? By new I mean anything that you did not personally know about this time last week. Do you find recent innovations mind boggling? By recent I mean anything that has happened since you left school.

You obviously think you know about technology otherwise you would not be reading this on a device of some sort, but do you know how it actually works? If you do, please let the rest of us know. For most of us the mysterious workings are akin to alchemy or the dark arts. Chips are involved and are made of silicone, rather than potatoes and silicone is made from sand. There is plenty of sand on the beach, but what happens next?

On line workings are supposedly run by AI, or computers as we used to call them, but how come these logical beings have a very human urge to deliberately annoy us?

I can do all sorts of things on line, but Arty Imp lulls me into a false sense of security and confidence. Browsing wallpaper on B&Q’s site on my desk top ( I like to see everything on a large screen ) it offered to send samples for a small remuneration. I put several into the shopping basket, already I could picture how my attic office might look. I put in my order as a guest, it wouldn’t let me, it seemed I had joined B&Q Club when I bought one garden chair on line. I looked up my little notebook and typed in my email and the password I had presumably used last time. It did not recognise it. No problem, just pretend I had forgotten it. Nothing would enable me to get a password they approved of, links were sent to my email, texted to me… I gave up, it would be easier to take two buses to my nearest B&Q where I would not see the wallpapers I liked, because they had already told me they were only available on line… Anyway, not as if it was important… but thinking outside the box later I decided to pretend I was a new customer and use my other email address, Not join the club, say No to being on the emailing list. I did not want any sort of relationship, just the wallpaper samples. My purchase went straight through with reassuring emails and they soon arrived in the post. Of course, obviously if I choose one I like they will not actually let me buy a whole roll…

To check how Tech Savy you are take this simple test.

You want to send money to your nephew for his birthday. Do you

  1. Use face recognition or finger print to do a bank transfer on your phone
  2. Get on the bus and go to the nearest town that still has a branch of your bank open and talk to a human behind the desk.

It’s your sister’s birthday today, do you

  1. WhatsApp her to arrange a time to Facetime
  2. Ring her on your landline.

You have not heard from your elderly aunt for a few days, do you

  1. Play a round of Words With Friends on your phone and see if she plays back.
  2. Call her house phone from your house phone which is firmly tethered by a wire.

You need a relaxing evening after dealing with technology all day, do you

  1. Stream a box set of a new drama and stay up all night binge watching
  2. Look in the newspaper or Radio Times to see what’s on BBC before the ten o’clock news.

If you answered A to all the questions welcome to the first quarter of the 21st century, but beware what you will face in this next quarter.

If you answered B every time you just might be able to cope if all the electricity is switched off, perhaps…

But how is the present matching up to the future predicted in the 20th century? We are not sitting at a phone table with a curly wire attaching our phone to the wall and a little TV screen showing a live picture of our relatives on the other side of the world.

The first ‘mobile phones’ most of us saw were on Star Trek, some of us watching in black and white. Their hand held flip up devices could Teleport them down to a strange planet, but they could not take photos, text their friends, watch videos or Facetime with friends on the other side of the universe. It may have slowed the plot if they had to play back on Quiz Planet before stepping on to their platform.

On arrival on the new planet they stop to take a selfie together in front of a strange volcano so they can put it on Instagram. Then Captain Kirk pauses to take a picture of the Aliens who have crept up without them noticing. He wants to WhatsApp a picture to his mother billions of light years away.

Meanwhile a junior officer has not noticed the aliens as he is bending down to snap strange plants using the plant recognition App.

His colleague is glued to the screen exclaiming ‘210 points for OXO, how did he do that and I’ve got all vowels’.

Captain Kirk is now on Google maps, having failed to understand what the Aliens are saying, their language is not coming up on his translation App.

The weather App was not much use either as it failed to predict the electric storm and downpour of acid rain. It seems like a good time to beam up, but their phones need recharging…

Did you score A or B or perhaps AB? What is your favourite 21st Century invention?

Silly Sunday – November Nothings

~ tidalscribe.com ~ 31 Comments

Random ponderings on First World Problems and out of world experiences.

Miserable November afternoon

Happy November morning, welcomed by a Robin singing his heart out.

It has been a discombobulating month so far. WordPress would not let me download new photographs; how could I go on any walks if I couldn’t use my photos! The naughty elf who runs WordPress seemed to be suggesting my gallery was too full. I deleted lots of pictures to no avail and causing havoc to my posts and pages.  To be fair to WordPress this was on my desk top computer which is still on Windows 10, now no longer supported, whatever that means. Cyberson2 had suggested I didn’t need to worry or at least there was no point in doing anything, as my old computer would not cope with Windows 11. He had downloaded extra protection when they were visiting recently… And hey ho, I have heard scary things about Windows 11…   So I created a test blog on my iPad and whoopee, pictures were accepted, so now I download pictures to the gallery then do my blog on the computer where my word documents are…

Anyway, back to real life. One of our local towns is in lockdown or gridlock… there are always road works somewhere, but this is work on the bypass that does not bypass the town, but ends at the roundabout. Only one side at a time is being closed over the next three weeks, but apparently locals could not drive or catch a bus with any hope of getting there. No problem for me, I don’t drive, don’t live in the town and I walk there.  But it turns out walking across the river to your writers’ group or coffee morning is not much good if nobody else is there. Like any group we arrive from all directions to a central point.

Meanwhile, no such problem in Southbourne for our monthly book club, only one person absent. The only problem being half of us had not read the book and only one person loved it, nobody else liked it! After the previous month’s enjoyable hardback in good print size, we were faced with a thick paperback in small print. This is a famous novel many people have loved over the years. Find out what it was at the end of this blog. With two lots of visitors staying and blogs to write, I started reading, but decided I must abandon it. I met one of the other members out and about and was relieved to hear she had not read it either.

It is looking like autumn, but too mild. I have just given my so called lawn its third final mow of the year. Talking of global warming, we seem to have heard too little about Prince William’s Earthshot prize and ten year project. While world leaders preside over wars and destruction, clever people are working and innovating to look after the planet.

And talking of the planet…

Years ago my husband came back indoors one night and said he had just watched the space station fly over Ken’s garage. He had asked another neighbour why he was staring above Ken’s garage. We hadn’t known we could go on line and track its many differing orbits. After that we were obsessed for the period it was passing over Southbourne, or Dorset or England…

The International Space Station, that shining beacon of humanity, science and international cooperation is coming up to retirement or abandonment. My scientific knowledge usually comes from tuning in to the middle of intelligent radio programmes, so it may or may not be true that a space station does not stay in orbit of its own accord and is reliant on the occasional blast of propulsion, worked by the Russians. To bring it down safely to some remote Mexican desert is not guaranteed, dependent as it is on international cooperation. Russia’s MIR was successfully brought down in the desert, but Skylab was scattered over Western Australia in 1979. To have a piece of ISS come down in my road would be blogworthy, but possibly more inconvenient than work on the bypass.

Possible scenario of bits of ISS falling on Bournemouth seafront.

The novel was Catch 22 and the person who loved it also loved my novella Pandemonica and gave it a five star review on Goodreads, so she is obviously a good judge of books...

Have you read Catch 22… or Pandemonica?

Have you spotted the space station or perhaps even been to the space station?

Silly Sunday -Just Chatting

~ tidalscribe.com ~ 43 Comments

Visitors coming and going Chez Tidalscribe, but here’s something to think about while I’m busy…

While I was away I was idling away a few minutes on my phone and was surprised to get on ChatGPT. I had no intention of asking it to write my novel for me, but I would just see if it would make a picture of flowers and bees, perhaps a picture of a woman enjoying gardening ( age inserted ) – doesn’t look like me.

How about a beach hut, me at my beach hut, ask for purple hair and round down my age...

She looks fun, but it’s not me.

I’ll ask Chatterbox how to use my own photos… oil painting that looks better than my real garden.

Now my nineties friend wants a painting of her garden and thinks I’m very clever… I tell her AI is the clever one.

This is fun, could be addictive…. I have so many photos I could transform into art.

Or I could become an avatar. This really is addictive, I could turn all my family into Avatars, all my local scenes into an art gallery…

BUT of course this is dream land and it comes with guilt. We’re all using electricity and The Cloud is not really fluffy white and Artificial Intelligence uses a lot more power and water for cooling… Not to mention the ethics of presenting ChatGPT’s words as your own. Chatting to real people, it seems people are using ChatGPT for all sorts of useful things; asking it questions instead of Googling information, writing reports…

The above is all I have done on ChatGPT, using my own photos, except the one of me…

A real drawing by a human boy, Alex.

Have you used ChatGPT, if so how? Is it any different from all the other tools we use on line to create our blogs etc?

Silly Sunday Shorts

~ tidalscribe.com ~ 19 Comments

Summer break with visitors…. who knows what might appear on my blogs…

When your pansies get angry…

I didn’t even know you could get a kit for making pine martens.

He just wants a hug.

‘One for sorrow’ – this magpie knows the old rhyme.

Helpful advice when you buy a new lightweight folding chair. Don’t stand on it naked.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_Fiction

If you play games, have you heard of Split Fiction? Cyberson explained it to me and we watched a video clip – half my family love playing it. The story premise must have been thought up by an Indie author. Two writers have been invited along to a publishing house to get their first book published. But the plan is to put each writer in a bubble and steal their ideas. Something goes wrong and two writers end up in the same bubble and find themselves in each other’s novels… so far so interesting, but I lost the plot when they turned into sausages!? Tell us if you have actually played.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pandemonica-Janet-Gogerty-ebook/dp/B0FJJBD5PK/

What on earth might this be about?

More mishaps in self publishing coming soon….

Tuesday Tiny Tale 333 – Modern Family

~ tidalscribe.com ~ 14 Comments

‘What happened next Mummy?’

Rory never tired of asking the same questions to delay bed time.

‘The adoption society said to us

 Well Mr and Mrs Asimov, you will be pleased to hear you have been selected for the special programme. You should be welcoming a new family member very shortly. We have several potential sons who will thrive in your family. The next step is to visit Future Family Foundation on our open day next week.‘

‘Were you excited Mummy, was Daddy excited?’

‘We certainly were, but nervous as we did not know what the place would be like. But as soon as we walked in the door you came rolling up to us and said ‘Hello Mummy and Daddy’ and our hearts melted.’

‘But hearts can’t melt, if they did you wouldn’t work anymore.’

‘That’s just a saying Darling. We did not bother to meet the others, we just asked if we could have you.’

‘Did you take me home then?’

‘No, we had to have some sessions with your foster parents, getting to know you, do you remember that?’

’No, I just remember being in this house.’

‘Now it really is bed time, it’s getting late.’

‘Are you glad you got me.’

‘Of course, you made our family complete.’

‘Do you love me more than Chloe and Eliza?’

‘We love you all the same. Now, it’s time to say goodnight.’

‘Are you and Daddy going to die one day?’

‘Yes, but not for a long long time.’

‘Are Chloe and Eliza going to die one day?’

‘Yes, but not for an even longer time.’

‘Am I going to die one day?’

‘No Darling, you’re special.’

‘But who will look after me if you die?’

‘Chloe and Eliza and one day their husbands and their children, but you don’t need to think about that for years and years, now its time you were plugged in.’

‘Mummyyy… Chloe said she and Eliza are going to switch me off when you are dead.’

Silly Sunday – Spamalot

~ tidalscribe.com ~ 32 Comments

When I was a child, spam was a food product that I did not like, a moulded block of pink meat extricated from a tin with a key and a good chance of lacerating fingers. Our relationship with digital SPAM is probably very similar.

A folder was, for many centuries, a sturdy cardboard stationery item for keeping collecting endless sheets of paper and it still is Chez Tidalscribe.

Put together meat and cardboard and you have a Spam Folder. In my first forays into life on line I wondered what it was and why people were told to check them. It was a long time before I even knew we had spam folders on WordPress. Reading spam comments usually explains why WordPress has blocked them from arriving at our precious blogs, though sometimes the intelligent and welcome comments of real bloggers wash up there.

Who are the strange beings that send these weird comments and why. AI creations that have escaped? But what if they are real human beings reaching out to engage with us? Should we respond? What would we say. Here are some I replied to…

‘Going shopping with my girlfriend, I feel very bored. I usually read this blog so I don’t get bored.’

 A lot of people will sympathise with your shopping experience, I’m so glad my blog prevented boredom instead of causing it.

‘when me adn may friend go to bali me look so many things there are cute and i not forget to read your good blog everyday thankyo’

Thanks indeed, I expect all my followers to read my blogs every day, however fantastic their holiday.

‘I have a boyfriend who likes reading blogs, I see he often reads this blog, but he is no longer there, I was curious about what was on this blog, it turns out there is a lot of knowledge that I can get.’

 Yes my blog is so good it can even make boyfriends disappear.

‘When I came home from watching the concert I couldn’t sleep, I read an article on this website, I fell asleep and woke up with meaningful inspiration thanks to reading this blog.’

Yes reading my website makes most readers fall asleep.

‘2 days ago I decided to go to Vietnam, I got drunk and met a girl from there, when we were both in the room, I suddenly got bored, I read this blog, I got a lot of inspiration‘

 I hope you were inspired to avoid alcohol on holiday.

Yesterday I went to China, waiting for my plane to depart, I took the time to read this blog, this will be very useful for many people who read it.

 My blog is especially useful for passengers who have long delays at airports.

My friends and I always visit museums with various classy monuments which are very beautiful. I see them all on your very good blog.

Thanks, I have endeavoured to fill my blogs with monuments from all round the world.

Every day I always have breakfast before going to school, but when I eat I feel like something is missing, that’s when I visit this blog to accompany me while eating so that I feel comfortable.

I am impressed that you start your school day in the perfect way.

What are your favourite comments in your spam folder?