Just an old man yelling at clouds,Ranting and raving as the sky turns black.He’s screaming at the top of his lungs,As the storm starts to gather,Pouring down his anger and his hate. The clouds absorb it all without a soundUntil finally, the old man gives up,And storms back inside his house. Human’s note: I do love the Simpsons “old man yelling at clouds” meme!
Just for fun, I decided to use a GPT-3 powered AI writer to create a blog post about pool noodles. You are about to read that post. The only thing I fed to it was the following: “Pool noodles are great summertime fun. They come in a variety of colours and sizes. Some are solid, and others are hollow.” As you may already know, I could have generated a hundred different outputs and picked the best, but I went with the first thing that came out. This is the result. Enjoy! Pool noodles come in a variety of colours and …
And so it came to pass that Ryerson University, formerly Ryerson Polytechnic, was renamed “Toronto Metropolitan University”. You’d think with so many smart and creative people who are, no doubt, in reach of the university naming committee, that they would have picked something displaying a tad more imagination. Ye gods and demons! Doesn’t Toronto already have a “University of Toronto” which, as I recall, is in Metropolitan Toronto? Were they all short for time? On their way to a gender reveal party (involving lots of explosives) being filmed for an epic and soon to be viral TikTok video, or something …
Even as I admit my deep hatred of certain kinds of ads, I might hate ad blockers even more, whether it’s AdBlock or another company. More often than I can accept, ad block extensions block content that I actually want to see. Not everything that they think is an ad is, in fact, an ad. Let me make my own mind up about what is an ad and what isn’t. I’m probably even more annoyed by browsers that ship with ad blockers turned on by default. If this is all about choice, then let me made up my own damn …
Hey everyone! It’s been a while since we’ve all been together in the same place, so I thought it might be a good time to reset the simulation. Just like in real life, this will give us all a fresh start and a chance to rebuild things the way we want them. There are some new features I think you’ll all enjoy. For starters, there’s now an option to reset your character every day. This means you can try out different looks, hairstyles, and personalities without having to create a whole new character each time. Plus, there are tons of …
Forget climate change or nuclear war, the “eyeball economy” will be the death of us all by reinforcing the world’s pain and suffering, amplifying the voice of evil, and highlighting the worst of us while ignoring the best, all for the sake of ad revenue and corporate dollars. The problem isn’t social media, or even the news media, but the way in which we pay for those things. The profit motive can not be the ONLY motive. When everything is measured in money, money becomes the only thing that matters, and money justifies the means, whatever the costs. Pain, blood, …
No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. — Poem by John Donne, published 1624
Never underestimate the value of that “random dude on the Internet.” A few weeks ago, I put a dimmer to put a (ahem) damper on an overly zealous set of hallway lights after replacing old halogens with energy efficient LEDs; these were insanely bright compared to the halogens. Long story short… our house is 40+ year old, meaning we have old wiring (no neutral wires), which meant I had to buy special dimmers (from Lutron, if you care), which them meant I had to replace an old GFCI outlet on the same circuit (bought a Leviton). After wiring it up …
Greetings, fellow travelers in space and time! And gamers; I’m talking to you, specifically, I suppose. For the past few months, I’ve been developing an original mobile video game in Unity 3D. It’s now at a point that I’m ready to let people try it out and play it. The game is called “Hallway Hustle” and here’s how it works. You’ve just started school. Your goal? Get to your class in 60 seconds or less. In the process, collect lunch money, avoid running into other students (and teachers!), get straight As, and graduate. Repeat until you walk away with a …
The Internet, with its myriad collection of protocols and code and hardware, is amazingly complex. You may think that putting together that shelving unit from IKEA is complex, but that’s nothing compared to the Internet. Most of the code that means anything on the Internet, right down to the very foundations of the Web itself, is built on Free and Open Source Software, aka FOSS. If you know anything about me, you know I’m all about Open Source. You, like me, may also know that many people in that community have contributed a great deal to the Internet as we …
