“Sometimes, you have to step outside of the person you’ve been and remember the person you were meant to be. The person you want to be. The person you are.”
— H.G. Wells
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Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, awareness, be true, inspiration, Thoughts on October 31, 2024| Leave a Comment »
“Sometimes, you have to step outside of the person you’ve been and remember the person you were meant to be. The person you want to be. The person you are.”
— H.G. Wells
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, kindness, Thoughts on October 29, 2024| Leave a Comment »
“Don’t forget to tell these special people in your life just how special they are to you.”
— Bob Ross
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Posted in Science!, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, #C3PO, AI, creativity, innovation, Thoughts on October 28, 2024| Leave a Comment »
A few thoughts on AI from one of the leading sci-fi writers of the day.
Behold! Science has caught up to fiction, and the age of Artificial Intelligence, long promised by science fiction in film, literature, and video games, is here! And in this golden age…tech companies expend vast amounts of energy to create search engine assistants trained on partially or fully stolen data, who tell us it’s okay to eat rocks and put glue on pizza, and chatbots who “hallucinate” answers to queries, i.e. confabulate bullshit based on a statistical regression to the textual mean. Our “AI,” as it turns out, is less intelligent than a chicken, even if it has a better vocabulary.
Will the technology continue to change? Certainly, and with rapidity. Will it move more concretely from “applied statistics” to a more humanized “artificial intelligence”? We shall see!
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, creativity, persistence, Thoughts, Writers, writing, writing advice on October 27, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Write. There is no substitute…But start small: write a good sentence, then a good paragraph, and don’t be dreaming about writing the great American novel or what you’ll wear at the awards ceremony because that’s not what writing’s about or how you get there from here.
The road is made entirely out of words. Write a lot…it’s effort and practice. Write bad stuff because the road to good writing is made out of words and not all of them are well-arranged words.
— Rebecca Solnit
So write bad stuff. Good stuff too, just try not to worry too much about which is which.
Just keep going.
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, creativity, inspiration, life, purpose, Thoughts, Writers, writing on October 25, 2024| Leave a Comment »
“That thing that gives you butterflies, that lights you up. That world you see when you close your eyes. Chase that.”
— Eddie Pinero
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, creativity, inspiration, knitting, makers, Thoughts on October 24, 2024| Leave a Comment »
…but it doesn’t have to be boring.
(This also reminds me of a clock I would love to make: 365 Knitting Clock by Siren Elise Wihelmsen)
Slow, but so cool!
Here’s to bringing inventive creativity to even the most ordinary of tasks!
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Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, creativity, do you have chill?, inspiration, Thoughts, Writers, writing on October 23, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Stretched out in bed as morning rays usher in the day, it helps to remember that
today’s weather
the world’s weather
what to write
note: look up major volcanic eruptions in the modern era
if the cat moved two inches to the right I could breathe
bills
donations
bills
ouch, why do my feet hurt
location of the Golden Spike
the garage is a mess
write write
the neighbor cut down the milkweed before it went to seed
odds of a power outage this winter
dinner
breakfast
a certain Tuesday in November and
what comes next
write write write
should have bought more than two boxes of Girl Guide cookies
but at least they’re mint
work work work work work
doesn’t matter
yet, just
Now.
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, annoyances, Apple, computers, dubious upgrades, software, Thoughts on October 22, 2024| Leave a Comment »
I just upgraded to Safari 18 on my Mac and ran into a problem. Under most circumstances at the moment, it’s not possible to drag and drop the URL icon to a folder, desktop, or document.
This is deeply annoying. It’s a function I use for work. All. The. Time.
Yes, you can drag the URL and get a link with gobbledygook as the identifier.
— example link, no page header included: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255802563?sortBy=rank
(Good luck remembering what that link is for, especially when it’s snuggled up to several dozen of its friends.)
But if you want a normal link with the page header hot linked, like, you know, every person ever, you may be out of luck.
— what I’d rather have: safari 18 lost the ability to drag URL to… – Apple Community
The drag-and-drop method works sometimes, if you only have one window open and haven’t clicked on any links, or you drag sideways while muttering imprecations incantations, or hit the command button before (but not during) the actual click, or you’ve sacrificed a venti latte double mocha with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles to the IT gods, but otherwise not so much.
If I’d known about this I would have waited to update. If I could roll back I would. Maybe you won’t have the same problem, but maybe you will. Here’s hoping you can learn from my mistake.
I look forward to a fix.
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, inspiration, Thoughts on October 21, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Mondays aren’t my favorite days but one minor pet peeve I have is that inevitable day job question: “So, what did you do this weekend?”
Because let’s face it, a lot of times the answer is on the order of “I raced around trying to take care of all the stuff I couldn’t get to during the week, then collapsed and tried to recover enough to come back to work.”
Just me?
Even if you did do something interesting, it’s a challenge to walk the fine line between discussion and bragging. “Who me? Why, I climbed my 17th four thousand footer!” (I did not.)
Next time I have a work meeting and people are starting up another round of “Who is the coolest weekend warrior?” I think I’ll take a different tack.
What I’d really like to know? What fun thing did you see, taste, feel, read, make or do?
It doesn’t have to be a big deal, in fact, it’s probably better if it’s not. Just an everyday thing that caught your attention, cheered you up, or reminded you of what’s good in the world.
For me, this weekend’s good thing were the astonishing red leaves on the maples in my neighborhood. The tree across the street is always pretty, but this fall it is particularly beautiful, and the neighborhood has many other maples with leaves in vibrant shades of red, orange and yellow. Their brilliant splashes of color take me back to walks in the woods as a kid, seeing the magic of the changing season with fresh delight.
So next time the topic comes up at work, I’ll ask about the small moments that bring joy.
What was your favorite thing about this weekend?
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, art, artists, creativity, Thoughts, Writers, writing on October 19, 2024| Leave a Comment »
“The arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity. It’s our attempt to influence things, the universe internal to ourselves and external to us.”
— Mae Jemison, Doctor and Astronaut
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