Category: Hobbies

Believe it or not, that’s all AI.

While on the road in New Orleans, I created this picture with Gemini and sent it to my wife. Some things to consider when viewing this photo:

  1. I didn’t have any blue jeans with me.
  2. I never bought that shirt.
  3. I took the background picture this morning and the shirt picture last night.
  4. The pic of me, I took on the train.
  5. Notice that my watch is missing because the AI created the hands without a reference photo.

So, next time you see something you don’t believe, you know that AI can do that.

Trying a New eBook Reader

I recently read an article about an ePaper tablet that is a book reader and more. It  is and Android device with the Google PlayStore installed so that I can add applications that I usually run on my tablet (like WordPress, which I’m using to type this post). It natively reads ePub documents, which is great since most of my books that I buy from Humble Bundle come in ePub form. Having to convert all of my purchases to mobi files was a tedious step in purchasing books from a 3rd party vendor with my old reader.

Is it a replacement for my tablet? I don’t know yet. I do like having an ePaper device with a keyboard though. As I try more things I’ll know what it can do and what it can’t. I expect that video playback would be difficult. I’ll post an update when I know more.

A Useful Radio App

One of the best apps that I’ve found for ham radio on the road is the Repeater Book App. I’ve used it for years on both Android and my iPhone. It has all of the content of the Repeater Book website but uses the GPS on your phone to tell you which repeaters are closest to you.

Once you choose a repeater that you would like to use, it has all of the pertinent information to set that repeater up on your radio: frequency, offset, PL tone, wide/narrow band, etc.

I thought all of this was great. However, what really puts it over the top is that it caches its content on my phone. I discovered this while camping at Brooks Memorial State Park, where I had no service, data nor voice. I popped open the app on my iPhone at one point, forgetting that I had no data service, and had a list of repeaters at my location. Then I saw a message that said, it was using cached data.

I find this to be the best feature of the app because the best time to find a repeater is when you don’t have cell service.