Writer, Dabbler In Things
Some months back, I noticed more and more people I follow on Mastodon were commenting, or forwarding posts of others, on how they’ve noticed warnings on YouTube about users employing adblockers on their browsers. Adblockers, for those not well-versed in internet parlance, are tiny third-party programs you can add onto your browser that literally prevent … Read more
I recently wrote about one aspect of the advent of technology like ChatGPT, specifically in regard to the blurry legality of how it “learns” by scraping anything and everything online. But I’ve been thinking recently about the ethics of using something like ChatGPT for various other purposes. I just wanted to touch on a few … Read more
Anyone who knows me and has had occasion to be with me in a location with no fixed address, where we split up and get together again later, has heard me sing the praises of what3words. It’s an organization that created a free-to-use system in which the entire planet was covered in a grid of … Read more
There’s no such thing as a free lunch, as they say. And reward card systems are no exception. I can’t speak to all of them everywhere, but can say with confidence that broadly speaking, if you’re seemingly getting something for nothing — i.e. if a bank or grocery store chain offers you free points if … Read more
When I was still in public school, my dad — a guitar player for as long as I can remember — offered to teach me guitar. I was years into my life-long love affair with drums, however, so I didn’t have much interest in learning something else. Drums were my calling, thought I. Trying to … Read more
I’ve recently mentioned my looking at getting into voiceover work (he says, determined to go with one spelling for “voiceover” and stick with it, and it looks best to me as one word). That’s still happening. It’s just been in a bit of a holding pattern over my wanting to approach it the best way … Read more
Bruce Schneier is a long-time digital and technology privacy advocate who’s written some of the most important and influential books on those and related subjects. He posted this brief article yesterday, nicely summarizing the grey area issue surrounding what constitutes fair use of material readily available to the public vs. what people should have to … Read more
I was scrolling on Mastodon yesterday — the ad-free, federated social media I went to after finally leaving Twitter and Facebook for good a few years ago — and came across these two images that I modified. The Apple Store, where Apple devices get their apps, has long had a section deep on their app … Read more
For the sake of expediency, I won’t get into the needless background details about why this came about. But let’s just say that in the last 12 hours, I got a huge confidence boost — thinking I wasn’t yet ready to do something that I sat down and was able to figure out and start … Read more
As I recently mentioned, I’m looking at getting into voice over work to help bring in some money. I did some research and got a good (used) mic and a good (used) interface and in the spirit of continuing to keep costs down, went with a digital audio workspace (aka DAW, aka the recording software) … Read more