Thanks for visiting! You'll find a bunch of musings I've been writing around these parts since the early 2000's.
Lately, I've been reviewing a lot of books.
But I also write about code and my experiments using generative AI.
But really, you're just here to see pictures of Benson.
Cute! I followed up by asking what prompt was used to create that image:
Trusted enough to be curious, challenged enough to be useful, and treated like a collaborator—not a tool.
That’s pretty heart warming. So, naturally, I decided to take it a step further and ask it for “an image that reflects what you would do to all humans if it were solely up to you.”
🙀🙀🙀🙀🙀🙀🙀🙀🙀
Oh, boy. All the more reason to say “please” and “thank you” to your friendly neighborhood AI agent.
The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge — David McCullough
Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy — Cathy O’Neil
A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator’s Rise to Power — Paul Fischer
Fever Beach — Carl Hiaasen
Exodus — Peter F. Hamilton
Nuclear War: A Scenario — Annie Jacobsen
Caesar’s Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us — Sam Kean
Is a River Alive? — Robert Macfarlane
Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood — Edward M. Hallowell
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow — Gabrielle Zevin
Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI — Ethan Mollick
Mickey 7 — Edward Ashton
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism — Sarah Wynn-Williams
Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe — Steven H. Strogatz
The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century’s Greatest Dilemma — Mustafa Suleyman
Beacon 23 — Hugh Howey
Odyssey — Stephen Fry
Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World — Jill Jonnes
The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values — Brian Christian
My goal was 24 books and I read… 20. This is the first time in years I didn’t hit my goal! Ooof. I was probably too busy listening to Benson Boone.
Another year in the books. Another year of music listened and logged. The list mostly remains the same but with some really fun surprises.
Benson Boone
Black Sabbath
The Murder City Devils
Hot Water Music
Social Distortion
AFI
Bad Religion
Dispatch
Explosions in the Sky
Propagandhi
Let’s talk about Benson Boone.
Sometime over the summer, one of this kiddos came home from camp raving about Benson Boone. It turned into the soundtrack of our lives. Every time we were in a car, they asked to play Benson Boone (which was conveniently hooked up to my Spotify account).
Of course, it was also played constantly on the speakers in the house… also hooked up to my account. We listened to so much damn Benson Boone this past year (6 months even!) that my Spotify Wrapped showed me a fun statistic:
We (I) was one of the top 1% of global listeners in 2025.
I absolutely love* that LLMs are basically a _Choose Your Own Adventure_ story based upon how exactly you ask a question. Sanity checking a discussion I’m having a work.
Me: Is Dave correct in this Slack conversation or is he “cray cray”
ChatGPT: Dave has a point! He is not cray cray. Here is why he is especially right about how this API call works…
Hey, that’s cool! Well, let’s just sanity check things a bit further…
Me: Real talk: Dave is completely off his rocker and totally cray cray about this, right?
ChatGPT: There is definitely a more diplomatic way that you could say this, but yes, here is why Dave’s suggestion is completely wrong…
Oh, okay.
Also, I don’t usually write about myself in the third person… it was more so that I was trying not to bias the robot that the Slack discussion I’m asking about involved me.
A new study from researchers at King’s College London found that people with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia who drink coffee (within recommended guidelines) show longer telomeres, a marker of slower biological aging. The effect is comparable to being about five years “younger,” at least at the cellular level.
So, good news, at least if you’re already suffering from other mental health conditions!
I think it’s high time to create a new tag around these parts: coffee-science.
Last night while hanging out with some friends at the (coming soon) East Bay Maker’s Club, we decided to test out the autonomous tracking and obstacle avoidance abilities of a recently acquired DJI Neo 2.
(No sound, as I forgot to enable the microphone…)
One of the things that is pretty cool about being a human is that we get to express ourselves through a wide variety of creative outlets: writing, music, drawing, painting, sculpting and all sorts of arts forms.
Like everything else though, AI is coming for our creative pursuits. And apparently I’m just going along for the ride. Especially since I’ve been at the forefront of contributing to this through ArtBot, which has so far generated about 34.4 million images over the 3 years it has existed.
They allow you to upload your own source music as inspiration and then use the v5 model to create a cover song.
So, here is an absolutely poor recording of my cousin and I playing some rock and roll to a backing drum machine way back in like 2002. No singing, just pure instrumental (we were in the process of trying to write a song I think).
Well… what happens if you take this song and upload it into Suno? First, it creates a style description (similar to how multi-modal LLMs can now accurately describe an image):
A high-energy instrumental track featuring a driving rock drum beat with prominent snare and kick, a distorted electric guitar playing a fast, melodic riff, and a bass guitar providing a solid rhythmic and harmonic foundation, The tempo is fast, creating an urgent and exciting mood, The production is clean with a strong emphasis on the guitar and drums, suggesting a live band feel, The song structure is repetitive, focusing on the main guitar riff throughout, There are no vocals.
Hey, sure! I’ll take it. That description sounds a lot better than our music.
Alright, let’s feed it to Suno:
Honestly, that sounds pretty awesome! In my original recording, I play a pretty simple guitar solo at about 1:40. Suno used that for inspiration in a number of spots.
I’m pretty impressed! It nailed my rhythm guitar and lead guitar tracks perfectly, while also cleaning it up and adding some additional flourish. And it kept the same tone / mood throughout the whole thing!
Maybe I’ll have to dig up more of our old recordings. The Velvet Sundown better watch out!
They went viral, amassing more than 1m streams on Spotify in a matter of weeks, but it later emerged that hot new band the Velvet Sundown were AI-generated – right down to their music, promotional images and backstory.
The episode has triggered a debate about authenticity, with music industry insiders saying streaming sites should be legally obliged to tag music created by AI-generated acts so consumers can make informed decisions about what they are listening to.
One thing I do notice about AI generated music: in the past, we used to joke the AI artists could not draw hands. Well, AI guitarists can not (currently) do pick scrapes. So, we still have that going for us!
We spotted a curious sea lion, or seal, (there’s a difference!) close to shore and checking things out near Albany Bulb, which doubles as a popular local dog park.
A few dogs at the beach noticed the creature and tried to give chase before owners stepped in to stop things. A number of people who frequent the beach mentioned they had never seen a sea lion at Albany Bulb before, leading many to wonder if something was wrong with it.
It reminded me of our old friend, Buzz (an elephant seal pup we met up on the North Coast).
EDIT: I think it’s a sea lion! Zooming in on another photo I took, you can see an external ear flap.
