Illustrating a silly song…
12 minute read
March 25, 2025, 2:30 PM
So after two “downer” Journal entries in a row, I pledged on social media to make the next Journal entry a fun one. While I was operating the train and running various Today’s Special songs through my head as I did, I came up with something: the “Blue Cow” song by Clive and the Cowboys. That one goes like this, singing about various silly things along the way. I’d been wanting to do some humorous illustrations with an AI engine for a while, and this seemed like a perfect opportunity to do that. This time, I used Meta AI, largely because they seem to do a better job with illustrations than Bing (which I have played with before), plus Meta, unlike Bing, doesn’t throttle you after fifteen inquiries.
In doing this, I tried to keep as close to the original lyrics as possible, deviating only if the original lyrics either wouldn’t make sense as a query, or if they produced weird results and I had to refine. As I go through this, I’m putting the lyrics underneath the photos, and then if you click the photos, you’ll see the AI query that I used. For Meta, to get it to do illustrations, you start your query with “Imagine” and then give the description of what you want.
So here’s the result.
Continue reading…Categories: Artificial intelligence, Today's Special
Saying goodbye to a childhood icon…
9 minute read
March 19, 2025, 2:37 PM
Categories: Canada, Today's Special
And now she’s in Mobile…
5 minute read
March 10, 2025, 9:26 AM
This is one of those subjects where you just have to let out a big sigh. I never really thought that I would see the day, but the SS United States, also known as the “Big U”, left Philadelphia under tow by the Vinik No. 6 and was taken down the east coast, around the tip of Florida, and up the Gulf of Mexico to Mobile, Alabama, where she is to be stripped of everything that isn’t metal, and then sunk to become the world’s largest artificial reef and be something of a diving tourist attraction for her new owners, Okaloosa County, Florida, while at least one of her funnels as well as her mast will be preserved to become part of a museum about the ship on land nearby. I feel like this is something that nobody really wanted to see happen to the Big U, but after more than 28 years spent sitting at Pier 82 in Philadelphia, she had overstayed her welcome, and the owners of the pier went to court to have her evicted. And at that point, with her losing her longtime berth, and no prospects for a rehabilitation on the horizon, it came down to whether it was better to scrap her or to sink her. Okaloosa County, Florida stepped up and she was to be sunk.
And of course, like everything with the United States, even her departure was long and drawn out. She was originally supposed to leave Philadelphia to begin her preparations for sinking on November 15, 2024, and Elyse and I had planned to see her off, booking a room at the Hampton Inn in Pennsville, New Jersey in order to watch her go underneath the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Then that date was scrubbed, so I cancelled the reservation. Then another date was announced that I couldn’t make, and that date came and went, with the Big U’s remaining at her longtime pier across the street from IKEA. She finally left Philadelphia on February 19 – a day that I had previous commitments that precluded our going. However, we did follow the Vinik No. 6 on MarineTraffic as she passed the Delaware Memorial Bridge that evening, and then cleared Cape May to enter the open ocean. I also enjoyed seeing all of the various photo updates showing the ship going down the Delaware, and then out at sea for the first time since the nineties. Then I got a certain feeling of sadness when she arrived in Mobile, because that meant that it was time for her preparation for her date with the bottom of the ocean to commence.
Categories: Ships