Posted inMiscellany Writing/Weblogs

“Sketched Out” is a great pictorial take on AI and art in the New York Times magazine

How is AI going to affect art? This important question is addressed creatively, thoughtfully, and, yes, artistically, by Christoph Niemann in a special recent issue of the New York Times Magazine, Learning to Live with AI. My wife subscribes to the Sunday New York Times, so I was able to see Niemann’s piece — a combination of sketches and words — in the print edition. Since I’m a subscriber to the digital New York Times, here’s a gift link to “Sketched Out” that should work for subscribers and non-subscribers alike. To whet your appetite for reading/viewing the piece, I’ll share…
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Posted inWeblogs

My migration from Typepad to WordPress is complete, thanks to Glorywebs

Today I left this 5-star Google review about my experience with Glorywebs, a tech firm based in India with a presence in the United States. After Typepad, my blogging service, announced that it was shutting down on September 30, 2025, I contacted Glorywebs for help in migrating my three blogs with 8,400 posts and 12,000 photos into the WordPress platform. In a bit more than a week Glorywebs provided me with three well-functioning WordPress blogs that have all of my exported Typepad content. The Glorywebs team was a pleasure to work with. Responsive, knowledgeable, easy to communicate with. And they…
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Posted inWeblogs

Glorywebs is a great choice if you’re migrating a blog from Typepad to WordPress

On August 27, Typepad, my long-time blogging service, announced that they're shutting down on September 30, 2025. Like lots of other Typepad bloggers, that announcement of just a window of a bit over a month to save blog content kicked off my search for expert help in migrating a large number of posts and photos from Typepad into WordPress, the premier blogging platform. I have about 8,400 posts and 10,000 photos on my three blogs, Church of the Churchless, HinesSight, and Salem Political Snark. I'm computer literate but in no way did I consider myself competent to handle this migration.…
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Posted inWeblogs

The agony and the ecstasy of Typepad, my blogging service, shutting down

The past week feels a lot like a divorce, something I experienced in 1989 when the woman I'd been married to for 18 years and I split up.  [There is supposed to be the Typepad logo here, but Typepad no longer will publish blog posts with images, at least for me, so I had to delete it.] In this current case, the split-up is between me and Typepad, the blogging service that I've used for 22 years. Just as with my first wife, the divorce was the culmination of a lengthy period in which two parties steadily grew more distant…
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Posted inHome life

We got a TOTO bidet. Using the toilet is much more pleasant.

Life is stressful these days. Well, actually, life always is stressful to some extent. It just seems that the state of our nation and the world is more distressing now. So I'll take comfort and relaxation wherever I can find it. Including when I sit on the toilet in the bathroom that I use the most, being adjacent to my bedroom. (My wife, Laurel, and I sleep separately.)  A few weeks ago Laurel had the bright idea of getting a bidet. She'd gotten back from visiting relatives in Indiana who had a bidet. Laurel didn't try it, but they praised…
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Posted inWeblogs

Typepad shutting down on September 30. I’m crushed, but not surprised.

It hurts. There's no other way to say it. I've been blogging on Typepad since 2003. So when I sleepily looked at my email inbox early this morning and saw the subject line "Important Notice -- Typepad Shutdown  Announcement," I both woke up and felt distressed instantly.  I have three blogs with about 8,400 posts. My whole life, or at least my life since 2003, is reflected in those posts. Losing all that content would really bother me. This is what I told Typepad support back in March of this year, as reported in "Typepad told me they aren't going…
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Posted inEntertainment

I came to Game of Thrones late. But I loved the series once I got into it.

Don't know how many people there are like me -- someone who heard of Game of Thrones when it first aired in 2011, took a quick look at it, and decided it wasn't for them. Probably quite a few. These are the folks I'm writing this blog post for, because earlier this year I had an urge to give Game of Thrones another chance. After watching the first few episodes of Season 1 on HBO Max,  I became so addicted to the series that was all I watched during my "me" time every day until I'd gotten through all 73…
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Posted inSalem

Englewood Forest Festival was a delightful Salem experience

Today Laurel, my wife, and I headed off to the Englewood Forest Festival at Englewood Park in NE Salem. Amazingly, I don't think we'd ever been to the festival in all the years we've lived here.  Our loss. Because the festival was a delight. The towering trees really do make it seem like the festival is in a forest, albeit an urban one. Once we'd parked, which was kind of an adventure given the narrow streets and number of people attending the one-day event, we browsed the many booths that line the park paths. Pleasingly, it appeared that organizers keep…
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Posted inGrowing older Humor

Hearing “right on” from a young clerk, I thank her for keeping hippie lingo alive

To establish my credentials for writing about hippie lingo of the 1960's, I present into evidence this photo of me that dates from the late 60's during my yoga phase, which followed my psychedelic phase. It was taken (unposed, I should add) by a friend from my childhood home who had sponsored a gathering where I led a group in some yoga postures and meditation.  To add to my hippie credentials, I wish to point out that I went to college from 1966-71 at what I liked to call the "Stanford of the South Bay," San Jose State College, so…
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Posted inSalem

Wow! Bentley Michaels has performed 3,000 times at Enchanted Forest Theatre

The Enchanted Forest theme park, Salem's charming local version of Disneyland, has been a part of my life since I moved to Salem in 1977 with my wife at the time, Sue, and my five year old daughter, Celeste.  We'd go to Enchanted Forest often. After my granddaughter, Evelyn, was born to Celeste and her husband, Patrick, in 2007, it didn't take long before Evelyn was enjoying Enchanted Forest as much as Celeste did when she was young. And Evelyn was living in southern California, close to Disneyland. Didn't matter. Enchanted Forest has a unique quality, born of the love…
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Posted inStarlink

Global Starlink outage shows peril of relying on giant tech companies

When Starlink, Space X's satellite internet service, is working, it's a gigantic plus for people like me who have no other viable broadband options. But when Starlink goes offline, as it did today, it can be a huge pain. As I've learned over the past 4 1/2 years after I became a beta tester soon after Starlink was rolled out, when it comes to troubleshooting, users are pretty much on their own -- at least initially. There's no phone number to call for customer support. You have to put in a support ticket via the Starlink app. Sometimes those are…
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Posted inDogs Home life

Our dog misses my wife, but she’s putting up with me

Mooka, our Husky mix, is considerably more attached to my wife, Laurel, than she is to me. Laurel does the dog training. Laurel takes Mooka for her favorite morning walk. Laurel takes Mooka to the dog park, another favorite place.  I feed Mooka in the late afternoon and give her a pre-dinner walk most days. But I'm under no illusion about who is the Alpha in Mooka's mind. It's Laurel. So when Laurel left last Friday for a four day trip to Indiana to see her relatives, I knew that Mooka wasn't going to be thrilled about being left with…
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Posted inSalem

Salem’s downtown parking app worked well for me today

I allowed for some extra time to park in downtown Salem today, as I wasn't sure how smoothly the Beep Beep Salem app would work on the first day of paid onstreet parking and I didn't want to be late for my Tai Chi class on Court Street. But Beep Beep Salem worked great on my iPhone, undoubtedly because the iconic dog on the home screen is a skilled programmer. (I suppose the $25,000 the City of Salem paid to Flowbird to adapt their parking app for local use also could have had something to do with it.) As I…
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Posted inSalem

I’m ready for paid downtown parking with the Beep Beep Salem app

Thursday, July 10 -- that's when free three-hour on street parking in downtown Salem ends, and the new era of paid parking up to twelve hours begins.  These signs started appearing more than two weeks ago. I took this photo on June 19. It would have confused me if my Tai Chi instructor, who leases space on Court Street, hadn't posted a notice from the City of Salem saying that paid parking doesn't start until July 1, later postponed to July 10. Here's excerpts from a  June 26 Salem Reporter story, "Concern, confusion as Salem rolls out paid downtown parking."…
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Posted inHome life

If your Generac won’t connect to wi-fi, here’s a tip that might help

A couple of years ago my wife and I got a Generac whole house generator after suffering through the Great Salem Ice Storm of 2021, which left us without power for twelve days (our 7000 watt Honda generator worked fine, but it isn't anywhere near as convenient and powerful as the 24,000 watt Generac). Aside from an oil leak, which was fixed by the company, Northside Electric, we bought the Generac from, the only problem we've had with the generator is a spotty wi-fi connection. Wi-fi is built into the Generac, but it requires some connection steps via the notoriously…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Save The Mail Depot in south Salem (sign a petition)

My wife and I have lived in south Salem for 35 years. Throughout all that time, The Mail Depot on Liberty Road, near Walgreens, has been by far our preferred place to mail letters and packages, as they offer USPS, FedEx, and UPS services -- so you've got a choice at The Mail Depot. The USPS (United States Postal Service) branch on Commercial Street is much less convenient. Farther away. Longer lines. Only one mailing choice, the postal service.  Which makes it really disturbing to learn that the USPS is planning to cancel its contract with The Mail Depot, which…
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Posted inHome life Web/Tech

Trump administration screwing around with expanded broadband access

Of all the fucked-up things the Trump administration is doing, this doesn't rank in the top FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Repair) category. But it sure bugs me big-time, because I dearly want more broadband options available in Oregon as soon as possible. I speak as someone who has precisely one viable broadband service available to my wife and me out here in rural south Salem, Oregon: Starlink. I've been a Starlink customer since a beta invitation came my way in January 2021. Starlink is way better than the dreadfully slow CenturyLink DSL we suffered with for many years of…
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Posted inSports

Here’s hoping Oregon State has a great Men’s College World Series run

Tomorrow, June 13, Oregon State plays its first game in the 2025 Men's College World Series: 4 pm Pacific time against Louisville, televised on ESPN. I've been looking forward to this ever since the Beavers won two out of three games against Florida State in the Corvallis Super Regional, thereby punching their ticket to Omaha and the College World Series. This could be wishful thinking, but watching Oregon State play in the post-season makes me think the team is destined for a national championship. I fondly remember the three championships OSU won in 2006, 2007, and 2018. The current incarnation…
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Posted inGrowing older Health

Death Clock app tells me I’ll die on December 7, 2039 at age 91. I’ll take it.

Thanks to a story in the Washington Post, "How many years do I have left? An app gave me helpful insights," today I learned how long I have to live -- based on the answers I gave to 29 questions. The story gave some examples of the questions. Although the specific date of death is obviously not intended to be accurate — the app’s disclaimer says it’s “for fun only” — it does tie your personal habits to your likelihood of living into old age and tells you what lifestyle changes might buy you more time. Thus Death Clock AI’s…
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Posted inScience

Scientist AI proposed as a way to keep us safe from “agent” AI models

There's a lot of talk nowadays about the dangers that AI (artificial intelligence) models such as ChatGPT could pose to humanity as they come closer to AGI -- artificial general intelligence. That would make AI models akin to a super-intelligent person, but with powers potentially much vaster than any person now possesses. It's easy to see how things could go horribly wrong. (Just imagine an AI version of Elon Musk that is 1000 times smarter with no way to control its actions.) The situation seems hopeless given the rush to create AI models with very little regulation. No country wants…
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