My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on July 19, 2019

Disturbing and “creepy” (as Katelyn messaged) … although I don’t mind looking a bit younger. 😉   Photoshop in the old days was fun to play around with, but nowadays, video and photo manipulation is beginning to frighten me. Taylor sent me this age-changing photo from our weekend at Put-In-Bay using FaceApp.

Although there is a more serious concern:

FaceApp, the controversial app which uses AI to age user photos, has become the viral story of the month. Yesterday, July 17, there was a highly-charged debate as to whether the app posed a privacy threat, as covered by Thomas Brewster for Forbes. And the answer is fairly simple: “No, FaceApp isn’t taking photos of your face and taking them back to Russia for some nefarious project. At least that’s what current evidence suggests.”

Driven by celebrities, it has been difficult to escape the viral craze of the St. Petersburg app this week. Now, a day later, concerns have apparently shifted from privacy to national security—with the news headlines set to be dominated by the potential legal issues around an app that has now captured more than 150 million faces, after Chuck Schumer, the leading Democratic senator, called on the U.S. FBI and FTC to launch an investigation.

MORE at Forbes

Category: Innovation, Personal, Photography, Photos, Social Media, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: aging, faceapp, facebook, katelyn, manipulation, ohio, Photos, photoshopped, put in bay, richc, taylor, tech friday, techfriday

Posted By RichC on July 18, 2019

I’m archiving the last few photos from my iPhone from this past weekend updates to Condo master bathroom. I finished what I was able to do without an extra set of hands and will do the rest the next time Brenda is in Florida with me (it is hard to set a toilet with a wax ring/mounting bolts all alone). With the plumbing finished and vanities set and caulked (posted yesterday) … the switches and plugs were next on the list. Previously I had moved the wall razor/hairdryer plug so as to be able to fit the planned corner mirrors (layout photo below/right for height and width above the faucet).

One of my favorite appliance items in this older condo is the bathroom heater/exhaust vent made by NuTone. Besides the superior quality of the "older" versions of the NuTone products (and Broan/NuTone products), which are repairable unlike newer plastic versions, there is a "name-sake history" with the company’s founder J. Ralph Corbett. NuTone was a hometown Cincinnati-based company, and once the "largest American producer of home electrical products (starting with a simple door chime).

Ralph and Patricia Corbett were perhaps the best known philanthropists in Cincinnati. With their Corbett Foundation, they benefited many local arts venues, including Music Hall, the University of Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music, Riverbend Music Center and Northern Kentucky University.

Category: Archive, Misc, Personal, Photos, Tidbits | No Comments »
Tags: bathroom, cincinnati, condo1718, corbett, delray beach, electrical, florida, foundation, master, mirror, nutone, ohio, patricia, philanthrophist, ralph, remodel, update

Posted By RichC on July 17, 2019

Finished up the vanities in the master bathroom at the condo this past weekend and all went well in putting in 5 new valves and 2 drains. I shocked even myself in that all “went as planned.” Unfortunately the struggle began when mounting the polymer rather than wood molding across the back to top off the bead board and create a clean edge against the less than perfect back wall. The photo above shows the creative clamping when using adhesive rather than damaging the molding with nails. It actually looked pretty good “until” I started to add a bead of silicone caulking to fill the tiny gap and prevent any water/dirt from the marble sink tops and behind the wall. For some reason the 1 year old silicone would not bead smoothly and balled up … it was nearly impossible to clean back off and reapply new. Oh, well … I guess this proves I’m still an amateur?

The exterior painting project that has been completed on a few of the other buildings has started while I was in Florida and unfortunately that meant that I had to keep the hurricane shutters down and park my car in a different lot. Oh well, at least I was able to supervise a little bit.

Archiving a “before painting” photo below with the windows all taped with plastic.

Category: Archive, Misc, Personal, Photos | No Comments »
Tags: bathroom, caulking, condo, condo1718, delray beach, florida, plumbing, remodel, update, vanity

Posted By RichC on July 16, 2019

In the space race with the Soviet Union (USSR) during the 1960s, the United States “rocketed” ahead on July 16, 1969 as NASA sent the three men of Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins into space at 9:32AM EST.

The Apollo command module and Lunar Module (LM) sat atop the huge 363-feet tall Saturn V rocket which weighed in at 6.5 MILLION pounds. I sat mesmerized in front of our small flickering, round-cornered, Zenith TV as a 10-year-old with my mom, grandmother and brother (dad was at work), just as I did for the moon landing four days later. It was an amazing time to grow up.

Category: History, Memories, Space, Video-TV | No Comments »
Tags: apollo11, astronaut, History, lunar, memories, moon, nasa, race, rocket, soviet union, space, television

Posted By RichC on July 15, 2019

My wife does not appreciate the common everyday American branded sinks, vanities or faucets … and wanted something a little more unique for the Condo master bathroom (sort of like the other bathroom update last year – see photo at bottom of post). I really didn’t think that much about it until realizing that not all plumbing overseas is to the same standard as in America … but it is working.

Not that it is bad, just different. By taking my time and slowly fitting and double checking the flexible fittings, rubber o-rings and special gaskets for the waterfall faucet and push-pop drains, I was able to get both new vanities and sinks working  I took a seasoned plumber’s advice though and added putty and Teflon tape to the downpipe gasket and nut. Smart move …  all is working and no leaks for all 5 new valves and two new drains (converted from one sink/vanity to two). I’ll post and update the condo master bathroom remodeling later this week.

This is the guest bathroom done with the kitchen that I finished in 2018,
hopefully the master bath will turn out as nice this year?

Category: Archive, Misc, Personal, Photos | No Comments »
Tags: ani gif, anigif, bathroom, condo1718, delray beach, faucet, flordia, gif, master, panorama, remodel, sink, update, vanity

Posted By RichC on July 15, 2019

Heard this one-hit-wonder this past week and thought it would make a great addition for Music Monday. The once Bay City Roller members, David Paton and Billy Lyall, formed the group Pilot in 1973 and in 1975 “Magic” hit the charts.

Category: Music, Video | No Comments »
Tags: magic, music monday, musicmonday, one hit wonder, pilot, youtube

Posted By RichC on July 14, 2019

As we approach the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon in 1969, I’ve been enjoying both television anniversary shows, articles and the book Moondust – In Search of the Men Who Fell to the Earth. The Andrew Smith book, in particular, has been enjoyable as it blends events from the author’s memory as a young boy at the time with the historic challenge of landing a man on the moon.

Smith’s memories as a kid reminded me of my life and my thoughts as a young boy in 1969. I can still remember sitting in the sun porch with my parents and grandmother (my grandfather died 4 months earlier) watching the small round-cornered console black and white television as the blurry men in spacesuits bounced around on the surface of the moon. It was an amazing achievement for the time … and considering we’ve never returned to the moon since the 1970s, it stands amazing to this day.

One of the points in particular that hit me (even today when reading this Space.com article), were the thoughts and logistical obstacles Michael Collins had as he orbited the moon. He waited alone and was responsible for the rendezvous with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin when they returned from the surface aboard the LM (Lem) to the Command Module.  He contemplated returning alone in the event something went wrong. Collins in Moondust remarked that the Lunar Module’s limited 3500 pounds of thrust had to rocket the Eagle, 2-men and “moon rocks” (my addition) back to the rendezvous altitude. Collins pondered that he could orbit only to about 50,000 feet, but that any lower would be too risky considering that the highest mountain on the moon is over 35,000 feet (Mt Everest on earth is 29,000 feet).

All in all, if you are looking for a great book about the astronauts “who fell to the earth” and a few of the authors’ memories of the time as we near this month’s 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, you will like this book.

Category: Books, History, Memories, Space | No Comments »
Tags: andrew smith, apollo, book, History, memories, moondust, space

Posted By RichC on July 13, 2019

Category: Art, Nature | No Comments »
Tags: amazing, Art, beauty, nature, stingray

Posted By RichC on July 13, 2019

As of Friday night 7/12/2019, Barry is a slow moving tropical storm baring down on the US Gulf Coast. According to projections, the wind is not the primary concern, although it is expected to be at hurricane strength as it makes landfall. The bigger problem is the already high "near record" Mississippi River height with an expected storm surge of up to 9 feet and drenching rains adding more water. If I were anywhere near Barry’s landfall, I’d be seeking somewhere dryer to wait out the storm. It is going to be a very wet weekend from Texas to the Florida panhandle.

Category: Weather | No Comments »
Tags: barry, flooding, hurricane, rain, surge, tropical storm, weather

Posted By RichC on July 12, 2019

There are challenges from users and governments facing several of the companies who make money advertising to the millions of eyeballs and the marketing of users personal data. We all want “free services,” but most people dislike the collection and selling of their personal data or having to sift through advertising … especially when it emulates a news or personal feed. BUT … besides the privacy issues associated with high profile social media sites like Facebook and Google, there is the recent mandate that they step-up their game when it comes to what users share on their platforms. Google’s YouTube component has been hammered with what shows up “next” in “kids” feeds to the point the company has moved to create a “playground” if you will of kids safe videos. The plan is that questionable content would not show up on a YouTube stream (good luck with that considering the billions of videos with embedded content – the algorithms better be good). This entire screening has taken on “policing speech” duties for supposedly non-biased employees who write the code to automatically screen and for “people” to make judgmental decisions.

Since I’m primarily only on Twitter, I’ve noticed the pro-active efforts that might be succeeding, but also has created a outrage when screeners without notice or any arbitration have locked out users (their prerogative I suppose?). To understand the challenge would be to know and notice some of the high profile users who have lost their privileges. It has been heavily skewed towards provocative conservative speech, but for Twitter’s part they claim their evolving rules are protecting people, classes of people and groups from “hateful conduct” (a fairly broad and encompassing term).

Twitter’s recent update focused on “dehumanizing speech around religion.”

“After months of conversations and feedback from the public, external experts and our own teams, we’re expanding our rules against hateful conduct to include language that dehumanizes others on the basis of religion,” the company wrote on its Twitter Safety blog.

(more…)

Category: Business, News, Politics, Social Media, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: debate, facebook, google, hate, rules, social media, tech friday, techfriday, twitter, youtube