FeedCity

Please, make it stop.

Dirty as all get out, but seems to function nearly flawlessly. A full clean, oil, and adjust is mandatory as will be new ribbon, but in surprisingly solid condition for all the accumulated filth. Not all bad for a thrift purchase of $11.00.

Industrial typewriter cleaning Following the Eaton Fire catastrophe, our house is finally being cleaned. While the duct cleaners were here, I thought I’d break out a dirty Olympia SG3 and use the 175psi air compressor and industrial 300 pound air filtration to “dust” my machine. I now want one of these for the typewriter workshop! … Continue reading

Thursday session

A fun experiment in between bug fixing… I added a films page to Micro.blog, with posters for Letterboxd links people have recently included in blog posts. Might evolve into a more complete feature later.

Worked on some book-related improvements in Micro.blog this morning. We try to integrate with all sorts of things — Google Books, Open Library, Libby — but a lot of it is not exactly officially sanctioned. Added more Goodreads scraping today. In for a penny, in for a pound!

ChatGPT's drawing function has gotten a huge upgrade. I've been doing tests for the last 24 hours. First I gave it a screen shot of WordLand and asked for a nice colorful poster for the product. Then I had it make a movie poster for Mutiny on the Bounty with different actors, and As Good as it Gets, and then a stunning rendering of an El Salvador news photo in the style of Edward Hopper. It refused to do an R Crumb rendering or Doonesbury, but it was OK with Hopper. WordLand poster by ChatGPT. Mutiny on the Bounty starring John Belushi and Jeff Bridges. As Good as it Gets starring Jackie Gleason and Melissa McCarthy. An Edward Hopper rendering of Secretary Noem at the El Salvador prison.

I’ve been using Ko-Fi for almost 2 years at this point to run my One a Month experiment and so far it has worked I’d say ok. I like that there is—or at least there was—an option to pay a yearly fixed fee to get access to all the features rather than being tied to a % of what...

One of the reasons one doesn’t ship typewriters in packing peanuts without completely first wrapping the typewriter with something first is that the typewriter will be full of packing peanuts by the time it arrives at its destination. Thirty minutes to clean peanuts out of every part of the machine is annoying.

In generally solid shape out of the box. Some paint worn off body along the corners and a bit dusty with some white out to clean up. It’ll need some tweaks to the a few minor spots, but it should clean up to almost new pretty quickly. The one glaring issue is a needed tweak … Continue reading

Starbucks is running a promotion for their spring lavender coffee drinks. Earlier this week, I was in a Starbucks that had lavender plants resting in a glass pot with coffee beans at the base of the pot. I’m not sure what to say exactly about this, but it did make me smile so I thought I should share it on my blog. Lavender flowers in a glass pot with coffee beans at the base. The glass pot is at the counter in the Starbucks. P.S. I always get confused spelling lavender. I sometimes write lavendar with an “a”. P.P.S. Somewhat unrelated, but “Lavender Haze” is a great Taylor Swift song.

If you’re wondering why you can’t find any pineapples in Brighton, thank Fatto a Mano, where for a limited time you can exchange a pineapple for their Bella Disgrazia pizza. Fortunately they also accept tinned chunks!

Wednesday session

AI companies with billions to burn are hard at work destroying the websites of libraries, archives, non-profit organizations, and scholarly publishers, anyone who is working to make quality information universally available on the internet.

adactio.com/links/21813

Simon Willison has added notes (a.k.a. microblog posts) to his blog. I’ve really been enjoying his takes on AI. He’s usually the first I see jump in to explore a new model’s capabilities.

a:focus-visible {
  outline-offset: 0.25em;
  outline-width: 0.25em;
  outline-color: currentColor;
}

…makes any website better

This morning‘s early morning missive from WordLand.. Talking with friends about What To Do. I actually have an idea. We all try to lead a parade, with a big viral idea, if only everyone would follow me, it might just work. A lot of us have that feeling. My advice — it doesn’...

I’ve blogged about apologies before. They carry a lot of weight with me. We’re human, we make mistakes, we learn.

Just as I don’t trust people who can’t apologize, I’m also wary of people who can’t accept a heartfelt apology. It says more about you if nothing short of perfection is enough.