ai api AR barcamp bathcamp bathcamp08 blogging collections conference content data facebook fiction freelance ideas iphone life linked data marketing mashup meditation mobile museum museums mw2008 onetag openness rss science museum search semantic web social web strategy technology thoughts tune twitter usability user experience ux web web2 web2.0 work writing

I know it’s “just” a language model, but…

I’ve been starting to fiddle with ChatGPT a bit more recently, just to see what it can do, and where it fails. Today I had 20 minutes spare – so I asked ChatGPT to make me a Nike logo using SVG. It gave me this: …it’s pretty confident about what it’s created there – so … Read more

What happened to the telephone?

I’ve noticed an interesting phenomena in These Strange Times. I might be late to the party in noticing this, but hey, fuck it, shoot me. Whereas it’s obvious to all concerned – and there has been much written about this – that we’re all spending forever on Zoom calls, this one is everso slightly not … Read more

Kids own too many gadgets

I’ve been resisting writing this, as I know it’ll get up some people’s noses. I know there’s a danger I’ll come across as fairly sanctimonious – and definitely an Old Victorian Arse. But you know, along with getting a bit older is a certain dontgiveashitness, so here goes. My contention is this: things have gone badly … Read more

The life project

My good friend @bealers just posted “Make life a side project” and it got me thinking. My first reaction was something along the lines of shutup-you-crazy-person but now I’m veering slightly more to ah-i-think-i-kinda-see-what-you-mean. But not much. The main thing that I reacted to was this notion of “sideness”. Putting life (yeah, we need to talk about what … Read more

Instant is not now

So it’s that time of year again – December crawls to a close and a new year looms just beyond an enormous mound of mince pies, bad tv and terminal flatulence. There’s something strange about the arrival of a “new year” – after all, it’s just another day but one with a randomly assigned new … Read more

Falling out of love with Twitter

Dear Twitter It’s been a week or so since I last spoke to you. I’ll be honest, right from the start. I’ll just come out and say it: I’ve suddenly and pretty much completely fallen out of love with you. I don’t know what this means. I don’t know if I’ll get my love back, … Read more

is late

What if the hype is actually all hype? What if someone in the press misheard an Apple employee talking, and did that – pretty normal – press thing of inflating it beyond all proportion? What if it became a pretty standard Silicon Valley / noomeedya / excited geek Chinese whispers kind of thing, no basis … Read more

Simple ideas, well executed

Today, following a tweet and a link to this blog post, I went out on a post-Christmas, “balls to it” kind of whim (the kind your bank manager and wife hate) and bought myself a GPS travel tracker. This is a small  (matchbox-sized) unit with a single button on it (on/off), and it basically does … Read more

We need a new verb

Here’s one thing that we use daily that we’ve never had to use in previous generations: passwords. With passwords comes that moment – you know the one – when you’re at someone’s computer and they need to login to something. You make a big show of LOOKING IN THE OTHER DIRECTION, either by wandering away … Read more

Sceptic? Stupid and cowardly, more like

Climate change sceptic? You, sir or madam, are stupid. But more importantly, you are also a coward. You’re stupid because you’re in denial of a vast wealth of evidence. Vast. But that’s not what really needs saying: the arguments are going to roll on with the leaked emails and the naysayers, the green camps, the marches. … Read more