technology

I posted a bit ago about my decision to begin backing away from social media, or at least to try and stop relying on it so much from a blog/author standpoint. Since then, I came across an explanation of what’s behind some of the efforts to replace The-Social-Media-Platform-Formerly-Known-As-Twitter. The Fediverse. I hadn’t really understood the mechanics behind it, and I still don’t, but I have enough of a handle on it now to at least be interested. The best way I’ve heard it described is as follows: If I’ve got a gmail account, and you’ve got a hotmail account (seriously?),

I posted a few weeks ago that I was working on redoing my website. It was a bit of a rocky process, but I’m happy to say that I’m now done with it, more or less. Back when my website was first set up, more than 10 years ago, I paid a friend to do it for me. At the time, one of the big struggles was trying to figure out how to have enough content to make it seem like a real web page. I just had one book that hadn’t even been published yet, and so I was

I figured I’d better take some time to post a quick explanation for why the website is going to be looking different over the next bit. I last update things back in . . . 2013? Around ten years ago, give or take. And when I came back to the blog after my hiatus, I took some time to actually look around the website. Only to discover (of course) just how woefully out of date it is. How out of date? I don’t even mention Perfect Place to Die or Don’t Go to Sleep anywhere. Nothing about where to buy

As I was talking about social media with some friends and family the other day, we were bemoaning just how bad it’s become. How inundated we are with ads and unrelated content in our feeds. Worse yet, we were reminiscing on how it used to be. Facebook in the early days, when you saw the content from your friends, and that was it. When you could actually see everything your friends posted, and you knew you wouldn’t miss anything. When you actually had control over what you saw. It occurred to me that I would pay good money to have

I blogged a while back about advances in artificial intelligence (also here), and I’ve since had a fair bit of fun putting different prompts into ChatGPT and seeing what it comes up with. Not that it’s come up with anything particularly good, but it’s definitely come up with things that are amusing or surprising, considering the source. (This reminds me in many ways of the reaction a child gets for saying something that seems like a child wouldn’t come up with. There’s a lower bar to clear to make someone impressed.) But I’ve been surprised to see how fast people