Steve Holden's Blog

Testing AI Graphic Generation: Microsoft Bing vs. Midjourney

I have been curious about the differences between artificial intelligence (AI) image creation tools, and I saw this prompt on Midjourney in the daily theme thread:

Pixar, Beautiful Korean queen focus on front with smile, Hanbok, blue, red, gold, elegant, gorgeous, cute cats, queen of the pink moon, hyper realistic, fliry vibe, fantasy, elaborate, radiant, --no moon --ar 16:9 --v 5.1 - Variations by @jingwen0404 (relaxed)

And this is what was generated:

I put the following into Bing Image creation:

Pixar, Beautiful Korean queen focus on front with smile, Hanbok, blue, red, gold, elegant, gorgeous, cute cats, queen of the pink moon, hyper realistic, fliry vibe, fantasy, elaborate, radiant

And this is what I got:

Very different outputs IMHO.

Thoughts & Tips For February 2021

This photo is part of my Blurry collection.

CURRENT HAPPENINGS

January seemed to be on cruise-control here at our home.  All is good health-wise and no major COVID-19 impacts.  One super great blessing is that Christy's school where she teaches has been able to hold classes since September with no major issues.

The attack on the Capital was horrific. It is shocking to me that so many in the Senate and the House are so supportive of the Cult of Trump. I'm not confident much will change with the impending Impeachment #2.

The kids are back in school, and we are back to juggling spaces, times for video calls, etc.  But we are getting pretty good at that!

LOOK FORWARD TO

Conrad is turning twenty-two this month and seems to be enjoying SDSU. He and a friend did a fun video recently called "The Shed" (YouTube)!

It looks like Christy and I are going to be headed back to The Oaks (our photos from our 1st trip) in April which should be a great retreat as we celebrate our 27th Wedding Anniversary.

I am going to be Dungeon Mastering (DMing) for my Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) group two little side adventures over the next month or so. One is an "epic" battle and another is going to be a "snatch-&-grab."

TECHNOLOGY, TIPS, & SUGGESTIONS

Here is a great visualization of the Pomodoro Technique for breaking up focused work into time slices that I've found to be pretty effective especially when working a big project:

I also ran across this graphic on tips for camera settings that I've saved off in Google Keep for easy access:

This article -- "Comic-Con 2019: Former CIA agents explain 6 ways to conduct and evade surveillance" -- has some technology tips worth reading from a perspective of how to be more private and secure with your phones and devices.

QUOTE I'M THINKING ABOUT

“If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. - Mary Engelbreit

Thoughts & Tips For July 2020

Photo by Steve Holden. MORE LIKE THIS!

CURRENT EVENTS

On the health front -- all continues to be AOK with regards to COVD-19 for us and our immediate families.  We continue to be vigilant and focused:

• #wear_a_mask,
• #wash_your_hands,
• #social_distance, and
• #stay_home_if_sick.

Related to #blacklivesmatter, and increasing social justice & ending racism, I do like this new YouTube show Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man: 

I am learning a lot, and working on a bunch mental changes as I become aware of them.

CAMPING

We recently did some camping in the local mountains near Julian in a San Diego County park called William Heise County Park.

It was a lot of fun and relaxing.  We had some good food also:

Wynola Pizza & Bristo

Julian Beer Company

TECHNOLOGY AND TIPS

• I am trying out these bone-conducting water proof headphones for swimming -- AfterShokz Black Diamond Xtrainerz -- so far I like them a great deal.  More updates as I get more use out of them.
• I recently listed to three Audible books that were "free" for being an Audible Subscriber.  If you aren't an Audible Subscriber, the price on these are pretty reasonable:
  1. "How to Defeat a Demon King in Ten Easy Steps" by Andrew Rowe.  This is a fun book about taking on (from a D&D perspective) a very important quest, but doing it in a not so traditional way. 
  2. "Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World" by Michael Pollan.  A great detailed account of how caffeine came into the modern world and the impact caffeine has had via coffee, tea, and now a ton of other drinks.  I learned a lot, but it didn't change my caffeine consumption much.  I have over the years reduced my caffeine use later in the day.  I use to drink a soda late in the day on the way home from work.  That stopped several years ago.  Then I stopped consuming caffeine by 3 pm. And after this book I moved that back to 2 pm without much trouble, and much better sleep.  Maybe 1 pm should be the next experiment?!?
  3. "I Hear You: The Surprisingly Simple Skill Behind Extraordinary Relationships" by Michael S. Sorensen. This is an excellent book, especially right now with #blacklivesmatter, and the conversations happening around racism, justice, inequality, and opportunity.  The listening skills outlined in this book are simple and easy to learn.  If you want to listen better, then I highly recommend this book.
• If you are running Windows 10 then I strongly encourage you to buy a 16-GB USB Flash Drive, and follow these recommendations to make a recovery drive.

OTHER TOPICS

• My in-person David Allen Getting Things Done (GTD) classes for July and August are moving to August and September respectively. We are still at maximum telework at work and being onsite is limited to mission essential tasking. I did finally get access to the digital GTD online course content per some licenses we bought for work. My next step is review that material, and then determine when and with what collaboration tool-suite to run a pilot.
• I am still playing a good amount Dungeons & Dragons with some friends online.  The main books that I bought were the: DM Guide, Player Guide, Monster Manual, and DM Screen.  The tools we are using to play online include: Zoom/Discord (for video collaboration), Beyond D&D, (for character sheets & DM resources) and Roll20 (for sharing maps, combat, etc).  Two of my favorite mapping tools are: Inkarnate (for world, geographic, city, and town mapping) and Dungeon Scrawl (for dungeons, buildings, combat level maps, etc).  If you want a demo, then let me know.

QUOTE I'M THINKING ABOUT

We all have choices to be made ... attributes that matter ...

Chose Discipline over Weakness
Chose Fortitude over Rashness
Chose Courage over Cowardice
Chose Clearheadedness over Disorganization
Chose Selflessness over Selfishness
Chose Sacrifice over Cowardice

Source: "The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom" for June 13, 2020.

Thoughts On The Sony RX 100 VI

I've had my Sony RX 100 VI since early June and I have been using it a lot since then.  Most of the photos and movies were taken as a "travel" camera during a recent trip to Europe. 

I've also been carrying it around with me just about everywhere I go, and I have found the pictures to be so much better than my Samsung Galaxy S8+. 

I recently read this review on Wired about the Sony RX 100 VI. I agree with most of what is written in this review, but I haven't seen the poor low light performance reported or the overheating at 4K video (I haven't tried to do 5 minutes of recording to be honest.  At the most 30-45 seconds at a time).

I posted some of my pictures taken at the GTD 2019 Summit in Amsterdam on Google Photos (most of them are mine, a couple are from the official photographer who used a different camera body and lens).  Most of these were in low light.

 

Traveling from Ottignies, Belgium to Normandy, France (via Paris)

The trip from Ottignies to Normandy started out great.  We went from Ottignies station to Belgium Central station, and then took a high-speed train (French - Thalys) from Belgium to Paris, France.

We were very concerned about our transfer from our arrival station (Gare du Nord) in Paris to the station (Saint Lazare Train Station) that goes from Paris to Normandy, but we were blessed with a great seatmate on our trip to Paris.  He gave us some great recommendations on what to do in Paris (stay tuned), and then when we arrived in Paris he took us personally from our station to the station we needed to go to via the Metro.  It was super easy with a guide, which would help us a ton when we came back to Paris -- and set the tone for the rest of the trip that we could easily take public transportation in Europe.  Wow a friendly French person helped the language challenged American!  Thanks!!

The trip from Paris to our stop in Normandy was pretty straight forward once we got on the train.  The WIFI wasn't as good as on the German trains, but that was OK.  We decided to end our train trip in Caen instead of Bayeux (which was closer to our Airbnb), because the Avis car rental company location was easier to get to.  It was a great decision because in Caen the Avis rental car location was a short walk from the train station and easy to find.

In the end the drive from Caen to our place in Normandy worked out great. Deciding to get the rental car while we were in Belgium was a great decision as we would not have had a good time without it.

Here are the full photos from Belgium to Normandy.

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Thoughts & Tips For November 2018

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Very Sad News

The majority of this post was written before I learned that my wonderful mother - Marlies Holden - passed away unexpectedly yesterday (10-31-2018).  I am currently at the airport leaving for Sacramento.  Please pray for me, my family, and all those hurting right now.

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Image by rawpixel.com

Health Update

Again ... the Pilates physical therapy courses I have been taking have been making a big difference in my overall physical health.  My core is stronger and it has been almost 5 months since my major back pain incident -- basically everything is going better than expected (no pain, no real negative effects).  I am slowly getting back to running, but trying to keep that limited by doing intervals of running for 1 minute and then walking for 30 seconds (repeat 28x times).

Technology

I just ordered the new Kindle Paperwhite and I'm looking forward to the upgrade.  I really like reading on my Kindle vice phone or iPad.  

Thankful For

My work related trips in September were good and productive. I really enjoyed the National Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio; and highly recommend going if you have 4-6 hours:

And the trip to Omaha, NE was great because the weather was very enjoyable (these are pictures from an afternoon run):

My last David Allen Getting Things Done (GTD) class for FY2018 went well.  And the concert with Maggie Rogers and Mallrat was awesome:

Future

We have some tentative plans to go to the mountains the weekend of Veterans Day, and then a trip to Palm Springs area just before Thanksgiving.  The week of Thanksgiving should be fun as we always host Thanksgiving dinner, and the family and some close friends play a friendly game of touch football before eating.  And then we can also start decorating for Christmas.

Tips

I watched on the plane back from Omaha, NE a very interesting documentary called "Neat." Basically it is well done history of bourbon in the United States.  It really captured my attention, and I think I going to be deep diving on the topic of bourbon for a while.

If you are using Google Chrome, then I highly recommend checking out the extension Clipboard History 2.  It keeps a running log (as long as you want) of items you have cut-n-pasted.  I find it really useful to cut down re-typing links or other material when writing.  It also is a handy history of what you have been working on.  If you cut-n-paste passwords though, you might want to look at the settings around clearing the history after a certain number of items, and maybe not do a cloud sync of your clips.  I haven't looked into the security of the data protection in the tool.  Better safe than sorry.

Quote I'm Thinking About

“Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece.” – Ralph Charell

Thoughts & Tips For October 2018

Image by rawpixel.com

Health Update

Things are slowly getting better.  The Pilates classes I have been taking are really making a difference.  My core is really getting stronger.  I did pretty well on my 2nd Sprint Triathlon beating my expected time by a couple of minutes:

Technology

I finally broke down and got some Bluetooth workout/running/gym headphones.  I think I picked these because of the price, they were from Anker which I think has good Q&A, and the overall reviews.

Thankful For

This past September had a lot to be thankful for.

My friend Mark Horstman from Manager Tools was in San Diego teaching a group of leaders at my work how to do Better Interviewing.  I highly recommend this training:

I got to see my favorite band Chvrches with my family.  My daughter and I were in the front row with my friend Bruce from Texas.  It was a very memorable show:

Also the opening band was Lo Moon and they are awesome:

My niece's wedding was also wonderful:

And my last training class for Getting Things Done (GTD) at work in FY2018 was great.  It is awesome to be able to help others better manage their lives in a productive and effective way:

Future

I have a couple of work related trips that should be very interesting and I am planning to learn a lot at them.

Another great musician - Maggie Rogers -- and her opening band Mallrat are coming to San Diego in September and I'm so looking forward to seeing them live.

Tips

Do you have a Roomba that is running slow because of old batteries?  This was out situation over the summer.  I'd charge the Roomba and then it would only be able to do half the room before needing to be recharged.  I got this battery replacement and it is like we have a new Roomba.

I have probably said this before, but 3x5 cards seem to be the best possible note taking solution for me.  I recently bought some cards that were "not the cheapest" and had some  thickness to them.  The newer cards are very nice to write on and because they are firm and solid, more enjoyable to use.

Quote I'm Thinking About

“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.” — Jack Kornfield

Thoughts & Tips For July 2018

Picture from RawPixel

Thrown For A Curve

On the morning of June 5th I tried to sit down in my office chair before going to work, and suffered some major lower back pain and sciatica down my left leg. In an instant, I was pretty much in deep pain and immobile. Luckily my son Conrad was able immediately take me in to see my doctor, and I was given some medication to ease the pain, relax the muscles, and hopefully heal the back pain area.  I am slowly recovering, but I am still experiencing some tingling in my left foot, so I have an MRI being scheduled and physical therapy planned for early July.  I pretty much can't run (which is a big transition for me), however I can swim, walk/hike, and ride a bike so that is better than being on bed rest for sure.  Currently most of my exercise is being supplemented with 45 minutes of daily stretches and strength training.

Technology

I was able to move to Windows 10 on a new Dell tablet at work before the end of June 2018 deadline.  All in all it is working great, and I like having Type-C connectors on my work tablet and my personal HP Chromebook 13G1. For instance, the same power adapter can be used on both.

Thankful For

My 5oth birthday party was great.  I had it at one of my favorite breweries -- Burning Beard.

I am thankful that I have improved as much as I have, and I need to realize how much my current mobility is when compared to June 5th.

I wasn't able to finish the MBSE class in early June because of my back injury, but the 2nd course at the end of June was good.  I passed, so I'll be completing my certification in Systems Engineering (Level 2) soon.

Future

I am offering three more Vital Smarts' 1-day Getting Things Done (GTD) classes at work -- one in July, one in August, and then one in September.

DEFCON is coming up in August.  That should be fun.

We also have a camping trip to San Elijo State Beach planned for the end of July.

Tips

One of things that made it possible for me to sleep during the first two weeks of back pain & sciatica was a TENS machine that I got on Amazon last year  to help with healing an Achilles injury I had.  I am now a super big fan of the TENS devices.    

I am pretty excited to share my Retro 80's Synth playlist (also on Spotify) that I started as part of www.chvrchespodcast.com. It is especially cool when fans of the podcast say they are enjoying the playlist.

Quote I'm Thinking About

"Your word is pure magic, and misuse of your word is black magic.” - Don Miguel Ruiz

Black & White (B&W) Photo Review

A while back my friend Kreg Steppe challenged me to post a black & white (B&W) photo everyday for 7 days on Facebook.  Here are my seven photos with some background information on each one.

Photo #1:  Construction Material

This photo was taken on my Samsung Galaxy S8+ in the Fall of 2017 while I was on a walk during lunch near my work.  There was a ton of construction going on with the water and sewer system being upgraded by the City of San Diego on the main road going out to Cabrillo Monument.

Photo #2: Maui

This picture was taken in 2014 when Christy and I went to Maui for our 20th Wedding Anniversary.  It is one of those pictures that I converted to B&W because it was pretty washed out in light.  It was more than likely taken with a Canon Rebel SLR.

Photo 3: San Elijo Beach

This photo was taken in 2015 while we were beach camping at San Elijo State Beach.  I also used this photo to make the MP3 backgrounds for the CHVRCHES Fan Podcast Bumpers made by fans of the band CHVRCHES.  It was also taken by a Canon Rebel SLR.

Photo #4: The Streets Of Brussels

This picture was taken on June 26, 2012 in Brussels, Belgium.  We were doing a walking tour of the city with our Belgium Family (Yes, the same great people who filmed the wild San Diego Boat Crash video!) and this just caught my eye.  It was near the Royal Palace, but up by the streets before the public walkways. This was taken by our Canon Rebel SLR.

Photo #5: Atomium

This was also in 2012 when we visited Belgium and Germany. Before this picture, we got to visit "Mini Europe" and have some adventures on the public transit system. This was taken by a Canon Rebel SLR.

Photo #6: Ferris Wheel

This was taken in the Summer of 2017 at the San Diego County Fair (also called the Del Mar Fair by San Diego natives).  This was taken on a Canon Rebel SLR.

Photo #7: Stairway

This photo was taken at the Portland Airport in the parking garage in 2016.  We went up to Portland from San Diego right after the 2016 Election, and there was some rioting in the Portland area before we arrived. We didn't see anything "live" rioting, but we did see some damage in the Downtown Portland area during our exploring of Portland.  This was taken by a Canon Rebel SLR.

Photo Tip - Try Black and White (B&W)

I am not an expert in photography but here is a tip that has been useful for me.  

When I get a picture that has some sort of issue like to much light or not completely in focus, I do a conversion to black and white (B&W) to see what I get.

Here is a recent example (using Picasa 3 on Windows) that looks pretty good to me:

Do you have any other suggestions for situations like this?