My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on March 28, 2023

While experimenting with Google’s Bard last weekend, Katelyn had the AI software write a poem about her husband. Impressive although questionable when it comes to being personal? 

For the fun of it, I asked Bard to write a poem about my “Wonderful Daughter” and then sent it back to her for the fun of it. Katelyn sent a smile and we were both amazed at the computer AI’s ability to generate an “artistic” poem based on the accumulated poetry data … and so I thought it would be interesting to do the same thing with ChatGPT. Google’s Bard did generate a faster response in my test, but both were pretty impressive … considering that even if most of us “could” write a poem … it wouldn’t be nearly as quick or likely half as good as either AI engine. We are in for a very interesting future. 

Bard’s “Wonderful Daughter” poem on left, ChatGPT’s on the right

Category: AI, Computer, Productivity, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: ai, bard, chatbot, chatgpt, daughter, katelyn, wonderful

Posted By RichC on March 27, 2023

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Category: Education, Memories, Music | No Comments »
Tags: mp3, music monday, musicmonday, sanford townsend, youtube

Posted By RichC on March 26, 2023

After a quick charge of the battery, the 1982 Mercedes Benz 300d Turbodiesel woke from its winter slumber and headed to the grocery store. I had forgotten how much different the old headlight are in comparison to modern lights … or perhaps it is just my aging night vision?

Anyway, the driveway Wyze cams caught the action as I was coming home from a Saturday evening Kroger run and figured the two angles of video (both on one video clip) could be added to the blog.

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Category: Automotive, Diesel, Gadget, Mercedes, Video | No Comments »
Tags: 300d, Cam, diesel, mercedes benz, security, turbodiesel, wyze

Posted By RichC on March 26, 2023

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Category: Archive, Personal, Photos | No Comments »
Tags: annalyn, babysitting, ellerie, granddaughters, perrysburg, taylor

Posted By RichC on March 25, 2023

Much of Friday was spend trying to recover tax oriented data that has been on the Windows virtual drive on my iMac computer. Earlier this year, I started taxes and had been slowly adding data and archiving items in a folder so I could file taxes this year. All the downloads were in place and everything was running as it should … except my back-up plan was ONLY Apple’s TimeMachine. 

During a recent Windows update, I suspect the computer either went off or did a restart based on something on the Mac OS side. I really wasn’t paying attention. BUT in the end, the “blue screen” popped up on a restart and continued as I pursued every possible troubleshooting angle in order to repair the virtual drive and reboot Windows10. It didn’t work.

So back to re-installing the last good Windows.pvm (Parallels) version … or so I thought. The backup is on a USB 2.0 drive (slow) and after a full night of recovery, wasn’t far enough back to work. UGH! I’m in the process of trying again and will restore overnight tonight. Crossing my fingers as I’m already in the process of trying to figure out what to do if this doesn’t work. 

Category: Apple, Computer, Software, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: backup, computers, imac, parallels, timemachine, windows

Posted By RichC on March 24, 2023

Who among us wouldn’t smile back at this unique plant? Very unusual looking to say the least?

Although Friday Filler — or is it Filler Friday(?) — isn’t really a thing on MyDesultoryBlog, it does tend to be a way for to fill space on Friday with a Filler Foto when there’s no time to write or post.

Although it could have been a flower with lips (see Urban Garden Seed.com).

Category: Blogs, Humor, Nature, Photos | No Comments »
Tags: filler friday, friday filler, garden, photo, smile

Posted By RichC on March 23, 2023

As is the norm for most of today’s families, sending text messages and photos is one way we stay connected. Last week Katelyn sent a photo of the girls snacking out of the back of her Volkswagen Tiguan and it reminded me of the times we did the same with our kids … and  also with our granddaughters the past couple of summers.

As a family, we often “tailgated” on trips in the 1990s. Back then I drove a couple of leased Toyota 4-Runners on vacations and our hiking trips … which reminds me of the Nalgene bottle conversation with Katelyn … and the photo on my desk (below). When hiking this past summer in the Canadian Rockies, she felt it was time for me to retire my old bottle … but then after seeing this photo, she understood why it is more than a water bottle to me — definitely Throwback Thursday #TBT kind of memories!

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Category: Automotive, Memories, Personal, Photos, TBT | No Comments »
Tags: BMW, family, hiking, lunch, nagene, TBT, tiguan, x5 35d

Posted By RichC on March 22, 2023

Although it looks like A LOT of work, I appreciated the construction design and quality of a homemade band sander. The plans are available, but a bit pricey considering there are sanders available AND someone who can weld and paint this up … can probably work from this photo to build one for their garage or workshop? 

Category: Archive, Photos, Tools | No Comments »
Tags: homemade, plans, sander, tools, workshop

Posted By RichC on March 21, 2023

When working with Bing‘s webmaster tools, I noticed that some search results for MyDesultory Blog.com were missing. After a bit of reading, it looks as if I may have crammed too much into the index HTML page? According to their guidelines (it doesn’t impact other search engines), a heavy index page (+125KB) removes a website from their indexing.

So, I’m going to try lighting up the homepage by removing the “tag cloud” and long list of “recent posts” that were at the bottom. Hopefully it is not a commonly looked at feature (more for my own shortcuts) and that it will help thin down my HTML. If it doesn’t bring the site back into Bing’s good graces, perhaps it is time to eliminate the growing and unused list of tags and categories?

On a further expansion of my spending and new computer build-out, I’ve added a new 15.6” IPS $99 portable CocoPar-brand display (Amazon “renewed” model – Gulp!) It is powered from the Thunderbolt/USB-C port on the MacBook Air M2 and will hopefully travel with me to give me added display space. It is nearly impossible to duplicate my two 27″ monitors, but having to try to do everything on the MacBook was not comfortable. Hopefully this will help as my small iPad on Apple Sidecar was not cutting it?

Also I’ve give up on trying to get comfortable with the Mac OS Stage Manager feature and am going back to just running multiple Desktops/Spaces to keep my windows and deskspaces organized.

Category: Apple, Blogs, Computer, Shopping, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: Air M2, amazon.com, blog, desktop, desultory, macbook, spaceship, tweaks, update, website

Posted By RichC on March 20, 2023

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Category: Music | No Comments »
Tags: jackie blue, mp3, music monday, musicmonday, ozark mountain daredevils, siriusxm