Photos

I love this image (Android ‘privacy sandbox’ story on Ars Technica)

The article and comments are both worth reading, but I adore the delighted stock photo man having the Android mascot peering over his shoulder at what he’s doing on his phone. It perfectly fits what the story is about and endlessly amuses me. Well done, Ars Technica creative director Aurich Lawson.

Photo of the Day: My computer wallpaper

And it is an actual photo I took, of my left monitor with an appropriately fall-themed wallpaper.

Speaking of fall, tomorrow (Friday, October 21) is when fall may actually begin, weather-wise. Look:

What is “rain”?

The photo:

You can see the pixels! I kind of like the effect, actually.

AI interprets my fuzzy college ID photo from 1990

Using the tool found here (story on it from Engadget here), I input my blurry college ID photo from 1990 (we barely had color photos back then) and here’s a before and after shot. While it clearly has trouble with glasses, I think the AI made my lips look sexier than reality, so I can’t really complain about the results.

Before: Blurry. After: Come hither.

I like that it didn’t know what to do with some of the artifacts, so it enhanced those as well. This stuff is probably going to be freaky good in a few more years.

Tower of Doom

I am not sure how I feel about all the mega towers going up around Metro Vancouver, but mostly I think I don’t like these giant concrete monoliths.

So when I took a photo of one at Lougheed Town Centre, I took the liberty of changing the sky, adding lightning and changing the lighting (using Luminar AI) to give it a kind of Mt. Doom quality. But it needs more lava or something.

And here it is in handy before and after format!

Vibes

UPDATE, JULY 4, 2022: I am going to periodically update this post with more examples of how "vibes" is being inserted into articles and things where it never would have been before, because it is still the NEW HOT WORD.
Vibes!

The below added July 4, 2022, from an article in The Atlantic. The writer could have written “the economy” but no, we got VIBES happening.

October 26, 2022: YouTube wants me to know it’s refreshed its vibe:

How did “vibes” become the new hot topic (on the web, which is now our replacement for reality, unless your country is being invaded by Russia)? How did this happen? What will replace vibes when vibes are no longer hot?

Am I doing vibes right? What is my vibe? I just don’t know.

Related: When did people decide it was hip to refer to products being offered in different colors as “colorways” when “colors” works just fine?

Why are people so weird?

Also, a fancy cat: