Ponderings and Musings

Our friend Diggs was in town for a couple of days. We had a nice dinner out.

The Lathem Time Company is best known for their time clocks. They have also made synchronized clock systems for many years. At the end of the 2000s they introduced their AirTime system, a wireless synchronized system that allows customers to install a clock anywhere they want without having to deal with traditional wiring. The system is controlled by a small master clock, which gets the current time from the NIST Atomic Clock and transmits to any compatible clock within a 500 foot radius. Other master clocks can pick up these signals and transmit them as well, expanding coverage. The entire system is battery powered, and Lathem had a solar charged version of wall clock as well.

Other companies do something similar, Primex and Sapling coming to mind. However, Lathem, being an “older school” clock company, built their Airtime clocks to the same standards of the clocks they’ve offered for decades, with offerings of a metal case, large numbers, etc. Unfortunately, Lathem discontinued the line a few years ago. I don’t like the plastic clocks available from other companies. It’s a shame Lathem stopped their Airtime line.

Now, one can buy clocks in both digital and analog flavors that synchronize directly with the NIST Atomic Clock, but the AM band used to transmit this information often fails to get to clocks on the interior walls of large buildings. Hence Lathem’s system where the master clock can be placed in an ideal location and then transmit the data to clocks anywhere in a facility.

The clocks rarely come up on eBay, as the system was never very popular, but this clock from a school in South Dakota makes a good addition to my man cave.

I’ve posted this video before. My soul needed to hear “Running Up That Hill” this morning, and I really enjoy this cover by Australian based “SingItLive”.

Ajo.

We decided to go for a ride yesterday. The news was making such waves about Hurricane Hilary that I decided it’d be fun to drive westward to see what all the hype was about.

We ran into a little rain, but we were also 24 hours ahead of schedule.

The drive from Tucson to Ajo via the appropriately named Tucson-Ajo highway, (State Route 86) is enjoyable, if desolate. The vast majority of the route crosses through the Tohono O’odham Nation. We took a slight detour to drive through the business district of Sells, where we saw a few wild horses and roaming cattle in the streets. We also passed by Kitt Peak National Observatory, but many signs let us know the road up there was closed so we didn’t get to see what that was all about. Instead I snapped a photo from the main road.

We had lunch in Ajo at the Agave Cafe, where there were two other customers and friendly folks working behind the counter. It was an enjoyable experience and it was nice to strike up some conversation with the other folks. One woman was visiting from Ticonderoga, New York. When she found out we had lived in the Mohawk Valley she asked if we missed it and we said, “not really”, the weather in Tucson is much more enjoyable.

We made our way up to Gila Bend and then to Maricopa before jumping on Interstate 10 to make our way home. Overall is was a very pleasant day.

I’m always looking for an app that allows me to focus on writing and only writing, without the interruptions and such often associated with the Internet.

If I was a hipster you’d probably find me sitting in Starbucks with a manual typewriter, banging away creatively and thinking I was impressing everyone within a 1/2 mile radius with my ability to type on a Royal manual typewriter, but I’m not a hipster so I settle on typing on my iPad or laptop.

After reaching out on Mastodon to find something that resembled a word processing program from the 1980s or early 1990s, I abandoned that approach and decided to go back to the IA Writer application on my iPad again. I forget that I have this program because I have an unfortunate tendency to want to try out the latest and greatest shiny thing, but here I am, typing away in “typewriter” mode on the application and it’s working exactly as I wanted it to.

Some of the joy around writing this blog is that I am able to quiet the noises in my head, bring focus to my thoughts in a positive way, and hopefully get into that flow state the enhances my mood and makes me feel more alive and in tune with what’s going on around me.

I often feel like having my iPad Pro is redundant in my setup; my laptop (MacBook Air) does just fine with all of the tasks I want to do, but I find myself getting easily distracted while working on my laptop. My thought wanders and before I know it I’ve moved to another screen, fired up a web browser, and I’m looking for photos of a Kmart in 1986 to reminisce about the scent of their awesome popcorn that was oddly served near the jewelry counter instead of in the back at the Kmart cafeteria.

Guess what I did between the last paragraph and this one?

I’ve posted this Ted Talk before. I watch this talk by, at the time, Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts (who would join Apple shortly after this). Her discussion about energy and feeling and “trusting your gut” hits home for me. I firmly believe we need more of this in the world, and less focus on calculating every move.

I took a photo during the workday. Wow I look like my father.

With the Writers’ and Actors’ strike going on in Hollywood, I’ve been hearing rumblings of folks considering using AI, and I use that term loosely, to write television series for the masses.

Now, I’m not going to go into my long winded explanation of why AI, like ChatGPT and such, is not really Artificial Intelligence but rather Language Model processing, or better yet, just a “smart regurgitator”. Think of it like a dim-witted politician that takes talking points, modifies the words a bit, and then spits out the talking points the best they can, hitting accuracy around 70%.

Anyway, those that believe computers are magic think they can type an idea into ChatGPT and pop up 10 episodes for a brand new television sensation that will sweep the airwaves with very little work. We can’t be eating into conglomerate profits! Do as much as you can with as little as possible.

The thing is, something similar to this was tried in 1969. The TV show “Turn-On” was ABC’s answer to “Laugh In”, and in some parts of the country, was cancelled before the first episode even finished airing. Some stations pulled it off the air at the first commercial break.

It’s unlike anything on TV at the time, the humor was way ahead of its time, and to watch it is a very bizarre experience. It’s been buried for decades, but the first and second episodes have found their way onto Youtube. (Let’s hope the link sticks).

If you ever wanted to see what a TV show produced by “AI” looks like, this is it. Even though “AI” as we know it today wasn’t used, there is no doubt in my mind that we’re going to end up with something like this in the near future.