ESMITHY.NET

Experimenting with Stable Diffusion on my own machine

AI generated artwork has been in the news a lot lately, from the person who won an art contest with a computer-generated image, to Microsoft recently announcing that they'd include AI image generation in their Bing search engine. I've fiddled a little with online services for AI image generation, but …

Security Camera Stills As Art

Sure, you can schlep a camera around looking for beautiful things to photograph, or you can just let your security camera do the work and get some serendipitous art.

Color Variance Triptisch

Color Variance Triptisch

Bleak Winter

Bleak Winter

Darn Suction Cups

Darn Suction Cups

Watcher

Watcher

Flight

Flight

A word is worth a thousand pictures

I found this sticker inside one of a pair of new shoes:

First Picture

I didn't have any idea what this was saying. My wife suggested it meant that I ought to watch out for diamonds... and maybe nets.

I found this sticker in the other shoe. I think it means the …

Quotes

"No matter how cool your interface is, less of it would be better." -- Alan Cooper

"Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute." -- Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman

Google Voice Search Multiple Personality Disorder

I was using my Galaxy Nexus for some turn-by-turn navigation today and it was an odd experience. Half the instructions spoken by the Navigation app were in a typical synthesized voice, while the other half were in a chipper, natural sounding voice.

"In five hundred feet, turn right. Then YOUR …

I can't figure this one out...

It is true that I'm a fan of Orson Scott Card -- Ender's Game is one of my favorite books. The relationship to professional wrestling generated by Amazon's recommendation engine is... puzzling.

Customers interested in Orson Scott Card should be interested in WWE

Handy Tax Tip

Kind of off-topic for this blog, but since it is tax day, I thought I'd share this handy tax tip that I found at the IRS website in a document titled "How long should I keep records?"

For all of you folks out there that file fraudulent returns -- if you …

The NSA Questions My Lifestyle

The National Security Agency (NSA) has a video about their polygraph testing, which was critiqued by AntiPolygraph.org, and recently reported about on Slashdot. In 1991, while still a college student, I applied for a summer internship with the NSA, so I got to take one of these tests myself …

Consumed by Technology

Despite the fact that I earn a living with technology, and that even many of my leisure hours are spent in front of a computer, I'm feeling especially consumed by technology lately. By "consumed" I mean more of the "waste or burn away" sense.

I'm beta testing a wireless music …

A Billion Mice

On December 3, 2008, Logitech (my employer) announced that it had shipped its billionth mouse. While I didn't contribute much to that as an employee (I work in a non-mouse division), I have helped as a consumer: I think I personally own four Logitech mice.

As part of the company …