Office VBA and ChatGPT

There has been a lot of buzz recently aboutChatGPT and other generative AIs. It's reached the point where even mainstream TV news programs have had segments about it. However, I haven't yet seen mainstream mention of the fact that ChatGPT can write programming code, although podcasters like Steve Gibson have discussed that at length. 

Office Watch has picked up on the code generation and published a couple of articles showing how ChatGPT can write Office VBA code. In my last job, I wrote many VBA macros for Microsoft Word and scavenged many more from the Internet. (Thanks, Paul Beverly!) ChatGPT would also have been useful. While the code may not work for complex macros, it does seem to be good enough to give you a starting framework to work from.

Here are the two articles from Office Watch.

• Easily learn and make Office VBA with ChatGPT
• More adventures with Office VBA and ChatGPT

A third article describes Microsoft's plans to use AI to help people write documents. 

Given how structured technical documentation can be, technical writers have a right to be worried.

Featured Links - January 30, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

CJ relaxing on Saturday night

• The Mystery of the Dune Font. "Putting a name to the typeface that defined the visual identity of the science fiction series and its author, Frank Herbert"
• Long COVID Has Never Been Taken Seriously. Here’s Where It Left Us. "I’m 28 and one of many disabled from the pandemic. We need a public health plan for this." Even if you're not into typography, it's worth looking at for the many illustrations and cover scans.
• The Specter of 2016: McGonigal, Trump, and the Truth about America. "We are on the edge of a spy scandal with major implications for how we understand the Trump administration, our national security, and ourselves."
• Rare Giacometti chandelier bought for £250 in London may sell for £7m. "Piece acquired by English painter in antiques shop in 1960s has been confirmed as lost work by Swiss sculptor."
• PSA: Don’t make the same mistake I did of fully relying on Chrome’s Tab Groups just yet. "Saving groups for later is "broken", despite the presence of a save button."
• Dutch meteorologists say Musk's Starlink network disrupts weather forecasting. "Meteorologists are very concerned about the rate at which Elon Musk is expanding his Starlink satellite network. The rapidly expanding network, with new users every day, is disrupting satellite measurements that are indispensable for accurate weather forecasts, Ad Stoffelen of the Dutch meteorological institute KNMI told NU.nl."
• Dancing on the World’s Thin Crust: On the MIT Press’s Radium Age Series. More books in the MIT Press's wonderful series of reprints of early 20th-century science fiction and fantasy.
• The Champlain Sea. "Canada is known for many large bodies of water. Great Slave Lake, Lake Winnipeg and, of course, the Great Lakes. There was one lake though, that was so large, it was called a sea. While portions of it still exists, the sea itself is long gone. That sea shaped Canada, long before any cities appeared on the landscape."

Photo of the Week - January 29, 2023

Up until the past week, it's been an unusually mild and dry January, but that came to an end Wednesday with a short but intense snowstorm. This is the burning bush in our backyard. I think it's fire is out now. I forgot to adjust the exposure for the snow, so I tweaked the image a bit in Photoshop Express  to boost the contrast.

Fujifilm X-S10 with 16-89 mm. WR at 22 mm., 1/210 second at F8, ISO 320, Kodak Tri-X 400 film simulation

 

Saturday Sounds - The Who - 1982/10/20 - Seattle, WA

This concert has been my exercise music for working out on the elliptical machine this week. Several of the songs are from the album, It's Hard, which they were promoting at this time.

The band is the post-Keith Moon Who, so it's not quite as energetic as their 1970s shows, but still enjoyable. The video quality isn't great but the sound is fine. I saw them twice, once in 1973 when they were touring to support Who's Next and in 1989, with this concert falling somewhere in between in terms of quality. 

Older Articles About Disinformation and Misinformation

Over the last couple of years, I've become increasingly concerned about the spread of disinformation and misinformation in social media and the news media. 

The two terms are closely related. As I understand it misinformation is inaccurate information and disinformation is false information. Both are intended to mislead and can be considered propaganda, depending on their source.

I've set up a separate topic on the blog to cover both although, for simplicity, I've labelled it Disinformation. 

These links will take you to older articles on misinformation an disinformation.

A Goodness of Humanity Story

It only took him two minutes, but it made our day.

Nancy and I were out in our driveway this morning after last night's snow. There was only about 10 cm., but it was heavy snow, and the windrow at the end of the driveway where the plow had been by was like cement.

Across the street, a pickup truck was plowing out the gas station. The driver must have noticed our grey hair, because he drove over and plowed our driveway. 

We thanked him profusely and he drove off, leaving us with big smiles and renewed faith in the goodness of humanity.

A Rant About Closed Captions

 On John Scalzi's Whatever blog, his daughter Athena has published a rant about subtitles (actually closed captions) and how awful they are on HBO's latest hit show, The Last of Us.

I, like many others, have been watching The Last of Us on HBO Max. I have also been watching it with subtitles, and I’m shocked at how garbage they are. You would think that such a huge, expensive, and widely-anticipated show would cater better to its subtitle-using audience, but you’d be severely disappointed.

What do I mean by “bad” subtitles, though? How can subtitles be bad, and what would good ones look like? I’m glad you asked! I was frustrated by the subtitles for The Last of Us, because they left out entire words on several occasions, they don’t indicate who is speaking, or in what tone anyone says anything, they don’t include things like sighing, gasping, exclaiming, or include any background conversation. They also include no SFX, which means no “monster screeching”, “zombie clicking”, “guns shooting”, “explosions”! How are you going to leave out the zombie noises entirely, in a zombie show?!

I am totally with her on this. 

I don't usually have closed captioning turned on as we don't watch a lot of non-English-language shows or movies, but there are some shows where I need them (Scottish accents, for example). Our TV is a decent size (55") but I'm nearsighted so I need large captions. And not every site or service lets you customize them.

Because I am nearsighted, for closed captions I like a large yellow sans-serif font on a black background. YouTube is good. For example. I like a large san-serif font in yellow with a black background. Amazon Prime has good settings although setting things up online doesn't seem to carry over to the app. I have the same problem with Netflix. Crave seems to be OK when I view it on the phone but I can't find a setting to change it.

Athena's other points are good. I don't generally need the character name in the caption but it's nice to have. Many shows don't leave them up on screen long enough. I can understand that when the dialogue is fast-paced, but often there are pauses after a character speaks that would allow for a longer delay.

Subtitles, which appear when a character speaks in a foreign language, are another matter. Most of them are awful. Star Trek Discovery is my prime example. The subtitles when Klingons speak are all caps in a florid font that is almost impossible to read. Subtitles and captions should NEVER be in all caps. Drop shadows are also bad, especially if they just overlay the film or show's background. 

Fitbit Sense – First Impressions

I've been thinking about getting a smartwatch/fitness tracker for a while, but have been put off by the cost and the difficulty I have in reading small screens. Earlier this month my doctor suggested that it might be a good idea to get one, especially if it had an ECG for AFib warnings. So I started looking for one.

Why I bought the Sense

I immediately wrote off the idea of getting an Apple watch. While some people consider them the gold standard for health monitoring, getting one would mean having to get an iPhone or iPad and potentially an Apple computer. That's not happening.

Given that I have a Pixel phone, a Google watch might make sense, but the first iteration of the watch has several version 1.0 issues. And I didn't want something that I'd have to charge every day. I also ruled out Samsung Galaxy watches. They're nice devices, but expensive and have limited battery life. 

That left Fitbit or Garmin. My wife has been using a Fitbit Versa 3 for a couple of years now and likes it, so I started looking closely at Fitbits. Since I wanted the ECG capability, that meant either a Charge or a Sense. The Charge is cheaper but the screen is too small. That left the Sense or the newer Sense 2.

My normal tendency when I buy tech is to get to the most recent iteration. That didn't make sense this time. Google bought Fitbit a while back and the Sense 2 is the first Google version of the Sense. Unfortunately, they've removed some key features from the Sense 2, for example, media controls and some third-party apps. There are other things that the Sense has that the Sense 2 doesn't, as described in this video. The addition of Google Maps and Google Wallet doesn't much matter to me. So given that the original Sense was still available and cheaper than the new version, I went for that.

What I like

The Sense is reasonably comfortable. It comes with two bands, one longer than the other. I'm using the shorter band right now but may switch to the other as I'm right at the end of the band. Most of the time I don't notice I'm wearing it.

The display is easier to read than I thought it might be. Because of my issues with low contrast small type, I have to keep the brightness at maximum. Most of the time I can get by without my reading glasses.

For a complex device, the Sense is easy to use. I tweaked a few of the defaults and am still exploring the options. There are many more health and fitness tracking features than I am likely to use. Right now, as long as I can monitor my heart rate, number of steps, and sleep patterns, I am happy.

The watch features are basic. It comes with a few faces installed and you can get more, free and paid for, in Fitbit's Gallery. There are alarms and a timer. As for smartwatch features, you have voice control through Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, a calendar, and Fitbit Pay for contactless payments. There are many more apps that you can add from the Fitbit Gallery. 

Most of the customization is done through the Fitbit app or through the  fitbit.com website. You can change some things directly in the watch, but I find it's generally easier to use the app or the website. 

There's also a Premium tier, which adds more tracking and reporting features. The watch comes with a free 6-month subscription to Premium. I'm not sure if I'll keep it after that; I need to use it more to see if it's worthwhile.

What I don't like

While the watch's interface is clean and easy to use, the app is quite complex. It's taken me a while to find a few things (like how to add and remove apps and clock faces and how to customize them.) There's even more on the website, which is easier to use than the app. Yes, I still have to read through all of the manual. I was a technical writer. I write manuals; I don't read them.

While using the app to set up one of the features, I ran into an interesting bug. I had reached the final screen, which wanted me to scroll down to read some legal boilerplate before I could tap the Accept button. It wouldn't scroll. I called Fitbit's support line (which connected me to a human in about 1 minute - I was impressed) and while I was talking to the rep, I figured out what the problem was. I have my font size set to maximum. Reducing the font size to the smaller default revealed the top of the pane containing the text that I needed to scroll through. It wasn't just my phone either; my wife reproduced the problem on her Samsung phone. So Fitbit has another item for their support knowledge base and perhaps a QA ticket for the app.

I've noticed some lag when trying to access things on the watch. It's not severe but it is noticeable. From reviews I've read, it appears that the Sense 2 is faster.

Today, the Sense wouldn't sync to the app after I came back from a walk. I fiddled with it for quite a while before finally finding the solution online. Basically, it boiled down to turning everything off and back on again. I have no idea why it happened and will keep an eye out for it to see if it happens again. 

Finally, one thing to note about the Sense, Sense 2, and other recent Fitbit devices. Google is deprecating features, probably to push people to the Pixel Watch. Over the weekend, I read that they are removing the Pandora and Deezer apps from the Sense after March 31. That's bad enough, but even worse, if you have downloaded music from those apps, you'll lose the ability to play it. That's bad, Google, just plain bad. Spotify is still available for the Sense, but I wonder for how much longer. 

That's it for now. So far I'm happy with my purchase. 

David Crosby's Last Interview

Relix Magazine, the long-running journal of the jam-band musical scene, has just published David Crosby's final interview. It was conducted by Anna Webber in early January.

Before we discuss Live at the Capitol Theatre, I’d like to jump back to a lingering question I’ve had ever since I saw Remember My Name. The film opens with you telling this remarkable story about Coltrane bursting into a bathroom while soloing, at a time when you were in there taking solace from the intensity of the music. Did he specifically follow you in there?

No, he didn’t know I was there, and he couldn’t have cared less. He didn’t follow me into the men’s room. He went into the men’s room because it sounded good in there. It was a tile men’s room, and it had an echo.

This was a club on the South Side of Chicago. It was maybe a thousand seater. He wandered off the stage while he was still playing. He wasn’t through with the idea. Then he decided that he liked the sound of the men’s room, kicked open the door and walked in while he was still playing. [Laughs.] 

Some Science Fiction and Fantasy TV Coming This Year

2022 was a banner year for science fiction and fantasy TV shows. We had some big blockbuster series, (Rings of Power, House of Dragons, The Wheel of Time) that drew a lot of eyeballs even though they weren't that good. We also had some that maybe didn't get quite the audience but were brilliant (The Peripheral, The Sandman, The Exapnse). And there were a lot of other shows that were somewhere in the middle.

Based on this list of shows published by Gizmodo, it looks like 2023 will be another good year. Here are some of the shows that I'm interested in watching. (There are more but I can't subscribe to every service out there.)

• The Lazarus Project: The UK series about a secret time-travel project that springs into effect whenever an apocalypse is imminent makes its U.S. debut. (January 23, TNT)
• Mila in the Multiverse: This live-action Brazilian series follows a 16-year-old who travels through the multiverse trying to find her mother—while dodging a gang of universe-exterminating baddies. (February 15, Disney+)
• Carnival Row: Orlando Bloom (who plays an ex-detective) and Cara Delevingne (who plays a revolutionary fairy) return for the second and final season of this fantasy noir. (February 17, Amazon Prime Video)
• The Mandalorian: It doesn’t feel like that long since we’ve caught up with Din Djarin and Grogu, thanks to The Book of Boba Fett, but the space western actually hasn’t aired its own new episode since that bonkers season two finale in late 2020. (March 1, Disney+)
• Doctor Who: With its 60th anniversary in 2023, the classic yet constantly-reinventing-itself sci-fi series will roll out a trio of specials starring David Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor before introducing Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth. (November 23, Disney+)
• Star Trek: Discovery: Never fear, 2023 will be yet another year stuffed with all things Trek. We already pointed out Picard in February; later in the year, Discovery’s fifth season will arrive. (Paramount+)

It's not mentioned in the article, but the show I am looking forward to the most is season 2 of Good Omens, which should air this summer.

Featured Links - January 23, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Winter trees

The Water Myth. "It is a common belief that you have to drink 6-8 glasses of water per day, but this myth comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of some basic physiology."

NASA Reveals Tantalizing Details About Webb Telescope’s Successor. "The Habitable Worlds Observatory now has a name, a rough timeline, and a whole lot of hype."

My Week With the Future of Garbage Bins. The internet of things comes to garbage bins. You might laugh but this product makes sense.

The World Through a Copyeditor’s Eyes. "Advocate. Prose custodian. Adjunct to the life of the mind. A person in my role wears many hats—and keeps many secrets." Although my title at work said "technical writer", I spent a lot of time editing. This article is quite accurate. 

Zaha Hadid's, Under Construction, Chengdu Science Fiction Museum Will Host Worldcon 2023. This is an amazing building and will be a fitting setting for the WorldCon, assuming it's finished by October.

The Astounding Physics of N95 Masks (YouTube link): They don't work the way you might think they do.

An enormous Martian cloud returns every spring. Scientists found out why. "What's causing this natural wonder on the Red Planet?"

Starlink Is ‘Forced’ To Finally Start Caring About The System’s Light Pollution And Harm To Scientific Research. I've posted about this before. It's about time that SpaceX is being forced to do something about it.

Photo of the Week - January 22, 2023

Here's another picture of wintering boats in our local marina. I took it with my Pixel 4a. The only manipulation was to boost the colour a bit to compensate for the dull day.

Marina in the winter

 

Saturday Sounds - David Crosby - 20 Essential Sounds

As I posted yesterday, I was saddened to hear of the death of David Crosby. Along with Jerry Garcia and Paul Kantner, he was one of the musical icons of my life. He didn't have the influence on me that those other two musicians did, but his music had an emotional impact that continues to this day. 

Rolling Stone has published a list of 20 songs (with YouTube links) that they consider essential. It's a good list. although there's nothing from his 21st-century recordings. 

For an example of that, check out his wonderful 2018 performance with The Lighthouse Band from the Capitol Theatre, now available for streaming or as a DVD. Here's another example, a Tiny Desk Concert from NPR in 2019. It too is lovely. 

We're Toast 35

This post is a collection of links that support my increasingly strong feeling that the human race (or at least our technological civilization) is doomed. It is part of an ongoing series of posts.

Falling apart

• The Big Rp-Off and the Failed Coup. "How fundraising contributed to violence."
• Brazil’s New President Faces ‘Scorched Earth Scenario’ Left Behind by Bolsonaro. "For environmental protections in Brazil, a long rebuilding process lies ahead."
• Exxon’s 1970s Climate Projections Were Scarily Accurate. "The oil giant's internal climate models correctly forecast the climate change we're seeing now—all while the company pushed denial in public."
• Predicting Future Weather Disasters. "Dr. Jeff Masters, Dr. Peter Sousounis and Prof. Perry Samson discussing the possibilities for majow weather disasters over the coming five years." YouTube video, recorded December 3, 2021,  but still worth watching.
• With stroke of his pen, Gov. Mike DeWine defines natural gas as green energy. Well, he can sit outside my house and breath the exhaust from my gas furnace and see how green that is.
• Humans plunder the periodic table while turning blind eye to the risks of doing so, say researchers. "Mineral element consumption/extraction is rising at a rate of around 3% a year, and that will continue up to 2050," states Josep Peñuelas, CREAF and CSIC researcher and the other co-author of the study. "In that scenario, it is possible that we will have used up all our reserves of some of those elements (gold and antimony) by 2050, and of others (molybdenum and zinc) within a hundred years."
• Twitter’s staff spent years trying to protect the platform against impulsive ranting billionaires — then one made himself the CEO. Another example of extreme economic inequality in action.
• New report shows alarming changes in the entire global water cycle. "Earth's water cycle is clearly changing. Globally, the air is getting hotter and drier, which means droughts and risky fire conditions are developing faster and more frequently."

David Crosby, RIP

I'm deeply saddened by the news that David Crosby has died at the age of 81. I never saw him perform live, but have enjoyed his records ever since hearing the first Byrds singles as a teenager. Recently, I watched a webcast of his 2018 concert at the Capitol Theatre which was absolutely lovely and made me regret not seeing him perform the last time he was in Toronto. 

Crosby had many problems during his life, but his last decade is an example to all of us of how to age gracefully. His music will be with us for a long time.

Font Wars At The State Department

The US State Department is changing the font used for internal documents and it's causing some controversy. The State Department has been using Times New Roman since 2004 but is now switching to Calibri. The change is ostensibly to make it easier for employees using screen readers or who have other perceptual issues that make it hard to read a serif font.

Not everyone is happy. 

The change comes as a means to help employees who are visually impaired and was recommended by the secretary’s office of diversity and inclusion. However, the announcement has received criticism and complaints that the Calibri font is not aesthetically pleasing.

One Foreign Service officer told The Post that a water cooler discussion about the font change “took up, like, half the day,” and ranged on both ends of the approval spectrum, while another said, “I’m anticipating an internal revolt.”

Although the change is facing pushback, this is not the first time the State Department has implemented a font change to internal documents. The font was exchanged for Times New Roman in 2004, but at that time had received criticism because it was changed from the Courier New 12 font, otherwise known as the typewriter font.

If they are really concerned about legibility, they should be looking at Atkinson Hyperledgible, which I'm now using as the default font on my browser and on my Kindle. At least they aren't going back to Courier New.

Disinformation About Dead Canadian Doctors Keeps Spreading

Back in October of last year, I posted about Druthers, a right-wing, conspiracy-laden "newspaper" that I received in the mail. The lead article suggested that a large number of Canadian doctors have died as a result of getting the COVID-19 vaccine. This is, of course, not true. 

Unfortunately, this conspiracy theory continues to spread. Last week I came across a long Twitter thread by Ashleigh Stewart, a Toronto journalist, who looked into the story in much more detail. Here's a bit from a couple of the early tweets in the thread.

A big conspiracy theory says the Covid vaccine could have killed 80+ Canadian doctors

I spent months investigating & speaking with the doctor's families. Most died from heart attacks, cancer or suicide

But it won't go away. And those behind it are Canadian doctors themselves.

A November iteration of the Canadian doctor conspiracy theory features 80 photographs & names. They're all real people. But none that I could find died from the Covid-19 vaccine

But many people believe it. And now the vaccine abuse is being directed at grieving families.

Of the 48 doctors I could determine the cause of death of: 10 died from cancer, 3 in car accidents, 1 while climbing K2, 1 drowned, 5 had heart attacks & 6 died by suicide. Others battled ongoing/ abrupt illnesses or the family preferred not to say. 1 was not even vaccinated."

The Twitter thread goes on to look at the source of the conspiracy theory and the effects it's having on the families of those doctors mentioned in the article. 

Global News has since published her more detailed story about it: "Kraken, Elon Musk and dead Canadian doctors: Disinformation surges 3 years into the pandemic". 

The article looks at the doctors who originated and continue to promote the theory (I'm boggled that anyone with medical training could do this, but there we have it), the response of the country's governing medical bodies and provincial and federal governments (pretty useless), and its continuing spread, especially after Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter. 

After welcoming back a slew of people previously barred from Twitter for spreading COVID-19 disinformation under Musk’s new leadership, the platform went even further on Nov. 23 – quietly dismantling its policy against COVID-19 misinformation.

But disinformation didn’t quietly creep back – it exploded.

After the online release of misinformation documentary Died Suddenly on Nov. 21, the phrase “Died Suddenly” trended on Twitter for days. That helped it reach more than 10 million views on alternative video website Rumble in a little over a week.

Disinformation is now being shared by huge accounts, including those verified with Twitter Blue.

It's scary and upsetting reading. God help us if we get hit with a pandemic disease that has a death rate a couple of orders of magnitude higher than COVID-19 (H5N1 or MERS, for example). The lack of social cohesion demonstrated in this relatively mild pandemic will be our doom. (Historically, pandemics have had much higher death rates). 

Featured Links - January 16, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about. 

Birds on the ice

• New Radar Images Are The Highest Resolution Pictures Of The Moon Ever Taken From Earth. "A radar transmitter using less power than a microwave delivered these images."
• Mechanical mockingbirds. "As AI pushes into the arts, it will have serious consequences for audiobook narrators, authors, and readers."
• Keeping omicron infection risk low requires 50 times more room ventilation. Another reason to keep wearing those masks!
• Twitter V. Mastodon V. Post V. Other Possibilities. A long but very good, detailed comparison of Twitter to its major alternatives.
• Collector discovered Isaac Newton’s lost personal copy of Opticks. David DiLaura called his discovery 'a once-in-a-collector’s-lifetime event.'" No kidding!
• ‘Wings like cracked eggshells’: Richard Branson faces turbulence over safety of space flights. "Investors are pursuing legal action against Virgin Galactic, claiming its carrier aircraft and space vehicle were not designed for regular space travel." I've always thought that the shuttlecock design was dicey, but after reading this I would never fly in one of their spaceships. 
• A year on, we now know why the Tongan eruption was so violent. "It's a wake-up call to watch other submarine volcanoes." 
• The weird and short story of twin-fuselage An-225 Mriya. I would love to have seen this fly. 

Photo of the Week - January 15 , 2023

These are boats wintering at our local marina. I would not want to do that. It was a very dull, grey day so I adjusted the exposure and colour a bit in Photoshop Express. 

Fujifilm X-S10 with 16-80 mm at 65 mm.,  F8 at 1/1000 second, ISO 1600, Velvia film simulation

 

Saturday Sounds - Traffic - Santa Monica 72

Traffic were a British folk/progressive rock group popular in the late 69s and early 1970s. From Wikipedia:

Traffic were an English rock band formed in Birmingham[1] in April 1967 by Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Chris Wood and Dave Mason.They began as a psychedelic rock group and diversified their sound through the use of instruments such as keyboards (such as the Mellotron and harpsichord), sitar, and various reed instruments, and by incorporating jazz and improvisational techniques in their music.

I listened to their music regularly when I was in university and saw them perform in Detroit sometime in 1971, if memory serves. They were an interesting live band with a wide range of musical styles. Some of their more popular songs are "Dear Mr. Fantasy" (covered by the Grateful Dead, among others) and "Low Spart of High Heeled Boys".

This concert from 1972 is pretty close to what I remember of their live show. The sound and video quality are quite good for 1972. 

Photography Links - January 13, 2023

Here are some articles about photography that I found interesting or useful.

Getting wired 

• DPReview TV: The best and worst cameras and lenses of 2022. "It's that time again! Chris and Jordan recap the best and worst photo/video gear of 2022 while partaking in a competitive drinking game. This year we're joined by unqualified legend Alex Mitchell who hosts a retro video game competition for the ages!"
• The Best Photographs of 2022. From the British photography magazine, Amateur Photography.  
• Filmmakers Build Ultra-Fast f/0.3 29mm from Old Leica Projector Lens. 'Achieving an aperture of less than f/0.5 is technically impossible, but the team at Media Division created the “Impossible Lens,” an f/0.3 29mm equivalent lens.' AFAIK, the fastest lens you can buy for a modern camera is F0.8 although F0.95 lenses are becoming common.
• How Pros Use Lightroom's Luminance Slider to Make Editing so Much Easier. An interesting video explaining a little-used Lightroom feature.
• Google's Pixel 7 Pro Challenges My $10,000 DSLR Camera Gear. "My full-frame Canon camera is better, but Google's flagship phone opens creative options far beyond snapshots."
• How Landscape Photographers Can Make the Most Out of Dull Lighting. "Landscape photography does not always have to be about dramatic sunsets and striking light. In his latest video, photographer Michael Shainblum demonstrates how to bring out the nuanced beauty of an overcast day."
• Surprising Results Shooting Raw and Converting in Camera Versus in Photoshop. You can do this with Fujifilm cameras and the results are likely to be better than using an editing program.
• Famous photos from history beside the cameras used to capture them. There are more pictures in the Twitter thread linked in the article.

The LastPass Debacle and Password Managers

Passwords are a pain. With all the hacking going on these days, you need to use a different strong password on every site. Keeping track of them is a hassle unless you use a password manager. 

LastPass is one of the most popular password managers. Unfortunately for those using it, they've been badly hacked and can no longer be considered a safe option. If you want the gory details, listen to episode 904 of the long-running Security Now podcast in which Steve Gibson and host Leo Laporte discuss what happened to LastPass and what you can do about it. 

If, like me, you aren't a LastPass user, skip ahead to about the 1-hour 30-minute point in the podcast where they begin a discussion of alternatives to Last Pass. From the discussion, it sounds like BitWarden and 1Password are the top choices. 

If you don't want to use a password manager, they offer a simple trick to increase the security of your passwords. From the show's transcript:

STEVE:  And Password Haystacks teaches us the lesson that you can just put a bunch, like put 20 periods after it, and that makes it way stronger, way more impossible to brute force.  And it's, you know, it's not a difficult thing to do.

LEO:  Well, in fact, that is the advice somebody gave.  If you are writing your passwords down and putting them in a little book, is that's not the password by itself.  Add a 10-digit number that you know well.  Always, you know, write it down.  And that will not only lengthen the password appropriately, it will also make it useless if the bad guys find the book.

That's something I will start doing until I can get a password manager set up.  

More About Mastodon

I've been using Mastodon for more than a month and while it hasn't completely replaced Twitter for me, I am using it more frequently. In this post, I look at some of the Mastodon clients I've been testing, provide some tips based on my experience, and include some links to useful resources. 

Mastodon clients

First, I started out using Mastodon with the advanced web interface, which has a columnar layout similar to Tweetdeck for Twitter. It's reasonably usable but lacks some features that I thought would be useful (mainly the ability to hide accounts in lists from the home view). If you're just using Mastodon on a computer, you are probably stuck with it.

However, there are many Mastodon clients for Android and IOS. I first started to use Mastodon on my Pixel 4a and Samsung tablet using a browser. This is barely OK on the tablet but is not very workable on the phone. So I started looking for Android clients. First was Tusky, which is better than the web interface but still somewhat limiting. 

Eventually, I switched to the Fedilab client, which is much better. The one feature I was desperate for, as mentioned above, was available in the beta, so I signed up for it. So far, I've had no problems, and being able to keep from seeing duplicate posts in my home view and lists has made using Mastodon much more pleasant. Unlike Tusky, Fedilab is not free, but the $3.99 price is very reasonable considering the many extra features, most of which I haven't explored yet. 

Tips

Here are a few things that work for me or that other people have suggested to make Mastodon work better for you. As always, YMMV. 

• If you are using the web interface, switch to the Advanced view. 
• Use lists to categorize the people you are following. 
• In the Home view, turn off the display of boosts and possibly replies. You can always view replies by clicking on a post. As for boosts, see the next tip. 
• If your client permits it, mute people from your lists in your Home feed. (The beta of Fedilab permits this and it's the main reason I use that client).
• Don't bother with the Federated feed (the World icon). It scrolls by too fast to be useful. That may also be true for your Local feed if your instance has a large number of members.  
• Use hashtags. They are a good way of getting information about a topic without having to directly follow a bunch of people. 
• If you follow someone who is a power user, see who they are following and look at them.
• If there are topics you are not interested in or that bother you and you do not want to see in your feed, use filters to hide them. 

Resources

Here are some articles and posts that I've found worthwhile.

• Some Tricks To Making Mastodon Way More Useful. This long article by Mike Masnick of TechDirt has much detail on how to work around some of Mastodon's limitations, especially with the use of lists and hashtags. 
• Fedi.Tips. "An unofficial guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse." This is probably the best source of information I've found so far about Mastodon. 
  
• Mastodon 101. "An Introduction to Mastodon with Newmark J-School Professor Jeff Jarvis." Jarvis is also one of the hosts of the long-running podcast, This Week in Google. He knows his stuff and how to communicate it effectively. 
• Retiring Pinafore. A long article by the developer of the Pinafore interface to Mastodon. This one will probably be of most interest to developers or Mastodon power users. 

Featured Links - January 9, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about: 

Kayaking on the bay

• Our cell’s genes are rewired in MILD COVID. "Stunning data from Nature. White Cells (monocytes) switch gene expression from an established innate immune profile to a pro-clotting signature in COVID. We’re immunocompromised." This is scary and has huge implications for the long-term health of people who have been infected and the state of our healthcare systems.
• Leaked Jan. 6 Committee Report Exposes Twitter’s Post-Insurrection Chaos. "Company employees lashed out at leadership over an ad hoc content moderation policy that they blamed for enabling Donald Trump's insurrection."
• Life as a Lie. "Trump, Santos, and Putin." Good analysis with some disturbing conclusions.
• New Measurements of Galaxy Rotation Lean Towards Modified Gravity as an Explanation for Dark Matter. I've always had a problem with the idea of dark matter. Perhaps we can finally do away with the idea. 
• China to launch new station modules and collaborate with Europe on science missions in 2023. 2022 was a big year for China's space program and next year will be bigger. 
• Panasonic announces 'life changing' smart glasses. "Panasonic and Biel Glasses have announced a new pair of smart glasses to aid mobility for the visually impaired." Interesting technology, but I doubt that it will get widespread use, even in the disabled community, without making them much smaller and less obtrusive. 
• Londoner solves 20,000-year Ice Age drawings mystery. A London furniture conservator has been credited with a crucial discovery that has helped understand why Ice Age hunter-gatherers drew cave paintings."
• 'Hallowed space': Divers pull 275 artifacts from 2022 excavation of Franklin ship. I can't wait to see a museum exhibition or a documentary film about this. It is such a remarkable story. 

Photo of the Week - January 8, 2023

I took this with my Pixel 4a on one of my walks around the neighbourhood.

I hope they don't get out

Saturday Sounds - Full Circle - Ian and Sylva

Note: I wrote this post last week, a couple of days before Ian Tyson died. I'll have another post about his music later in the month. 

I am sure that no one reading this has ever heard this album. It came out in 1968 and according to Sylvia Tyson (in a conversation I had with her after a concert a few years ago) sold "about 11 copies". One of them was mine. 

Full Circle featured a top-notch group of Nashville session musicians and Ian and Sylvia's lovely singing. I'm not sure why this album grabbed me so intensely as I wasn't particularly into country and western music at the time. But grab me it did and I still listen to it today.

Highlight tracks: "I Learned From Leah", "Woman's World", "Stories He'd Tell", "Tears of Rage" (which is my favourite version of this song).

If you enjoy Full Circle, you'll probably enjoy "Lovin' Sound" released a year earlier. You can find both on a compilation CD.

Stop Getting Tricked by Bad Science Writing

There's a lot of bad science writing out there. Some of it is just sloppy writing, some of it is hyperbolic clickbait, and some of it is deliberate misinformation.  

Given the importance of science in our life, getting accurate information matters. There are some things you can do to make sure what you're reading or viewing is accurate and unbiased, as this article points out.

Probably the most important is to watch out for exaggerated claims. Look for the word "breakthrough". A good example is the news earlier this year about the fusion experiment at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories. While scientifically interesting, it's unlikely to have any measurable impact on our lives in the next several decades. On the other hand, the Webb telescope is, if not quite a breakthrough, a major advance in astronomy. 

For example, in November the front page of the BBC’s website described a trial of a new drug for Alzheimer’s disease, lecanemab, as a “momentous breakthrough”. On the one hand, this was hyperbole: the study showed that the drug slowed the advance of the disease by about 27 per cent on one specific dementia screening test. A researcher quoted in the BBC story even said the results were “not dramatic” – but the headline remained regardless. The drug also had some worrisome side effects; clearly a lot more development is needed. On the other hand, though, it was a real advance in a context where every past attempt at designing drugs for Alzheimer’s has failed.

I've posted quite a bit about disinformation in the last couple of years and sadly will probably continue to do so. For more about the subject, see these posts.  

This Week In Tech The Old Guys Look Back

I listen to a handful of podcasts each week and most of them are from Leo Laporte's TWIT.tv network. Among them is This Week In Tech, which always has interesting guests and informative discussions of the last week's events. Right now, I'm listening to their year-end special, The Old Guys Look Back. 

In this case, the old guys are several podcasting stalwarts: Leo Laporte as host, with Paul Thurott, Steve Gibson, Jeff Jarvis, and Doc Searles. All of them are hosts of their own podcasts and have been doing it for years. 

Topics in this episode include the war in Ukraine, the crypto crash and FTX, Elon Musk and Twitter, the tech worker revolt, passkeys, the AI revolution, and several more events that made tech headlines during the year. 

This Week in Tech is always a good listen and this episode is especially good. Highly recommended.

Featured Links - January 4, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Tea Sea on New Year's Day 

• Three years on, the pandemic — and our response — have been jolting. "Here’s what even the experts didn’t see coming." By Helen Branswell, who is always worth reading.
• 22 Things That Made the World a Better Place in 2022. "From spinal implants that allow paralyzed people to walk to smashing an asteroid off course with a rocket, this wasn’t just a year of negative headlines."
• The top science stories of 2022. "NASA nudges an asteroid, weird things emerge from water, and scientists tackle a new epidemic."
• Snow Crash: the 30-year-old novel that predicted today’s twisted Metaverse. "Prophetic sci-fi author Neal Stephenson tells Dazed what his seminal story got right and wrong about today’s terminally online world."
• The Best News Bloopers of 2022. Some light humour to start the year.
• Time for a pharmacology tweetorial (of sorts) on one-eyed sheep. "It’s an odyssey that began on Idaho ranches in the 1950s and ended over half a century later with the approval of several new cancer drugs for basal cell carcinoma and AML." This is a fascinating story that illustrates the roundabout way that scientific research sometimes takes to deliver results. 
• The sci-fi and fantasy books I'm looking forward to in 2023. "19 new reads to read this coming year" by Andrew Liptak.
• The Year Ahead in Energy. "In 2023 we will see the first real movement in a global energy transition—and will hit lots of bumps in the road along the way."

What I Read in 2022

As has been the case in recent years, most of my reading has been newspapers and magazines. I subscribe to the New York Times and the Toronto Star and regularly read about a dozen magazines through the Toronto Public Library and the Libby and Pressreader apps on my aging Samsung tablet. I also use the tablet for graphic novels, though I didn't read any last year. (I just bought the Neil Gaiman Dark Horse Collection from Humble Bundle which will keep me busy for a while). 

For books, I mostly use my Kindle now. I have found that using the Atkinson Hyperledgible font makes it much easier for me to read; my reading speed is about double when I'm reading using that font. 

These are the books I managed to read in 2022.

• Perseopolis Rising, James S. A. Corey
• Tiamat's Wrath, James S. A. Corey
• Leviathan Falls, James S. A. Corey
• The Year's Best Science Fiction: 34th Edition, Gardner Dozois (ed)
• The Next Civil War, Stephen Marche
• The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eleven, Jonathan Strahan (ed)
• Dark State, Charles Stross
• Invisible Sun, Charles Stross
• The Genesis Machine, Amy Webb and Andres Hassel
• Shadow Captain, Alastair Reynolds
• A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine

Movie and TV Reviews - December 2022

 Short reviews of TV shows and movies we watched in December. 

Movies

• Troll: A decent B-movie. Good for a Saturday night with popcorn and beer. (Netflix)
• Everything, Everywhere, All At Once: I'm not sure what to think about this movie. I had no clue what was going on after the first 20 minutes or so but still kept watching it. Definitely made for the Tik Tok generation, not mine. (Amazon Prime)
• Black Adam: I've seen several negative reviews of this, but we enjoyed it. It's not Citizen Kane, but it's well-made and moves along quickly. (Crave)
• Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery: I don't understand the fuss about his movie. It's fun, fast paced, and I liked the Elon clone, but it's no better than an average episode of Midsommer Murders. David Craig's accent really got on my nerves after a while. The first one was much better. (Netflix)
• Amsterdam: I'm not sure how much of this movie is actually based on real events, but it is an enjoyable film. I do wish the director had chosen pure black-and-white instead of sepia for the colour though. (Disney+)
• See How They Run: This is a murder mystery set in London in 1953, not long after the premiere of Agatha Christie's classic play, The Mousetrap. It's twisty and arch and quite enjoyable. (Disney+)

TV Shows

• Death in Paradise (seasons 10-11): The main attraction of this show is that it's set in the Caribbean. (Britbox)
• The Peripheral: I had high hopes for this and they were mostly fulfilled. I was surprised at how much the show diverged from the novel but the writers did a good job of adapting Gibson's story and extending it. The ending was rushed and the season should have been a couple of episodes long. Still, it's one of the best if not the best show we watched all year. (Amazon Prime)
• Vera (seasons 10-11). Good twisty plots but Vera's vocal mannerisms are getting on my nerves. I'm tempted to count how many times she calls people "love" or "pet". (Britbox)
• Antiques Road Trips (seasons 19-20): This show gets a little cute at times but we like seeing the off-the-beaten-track places they go to in the quest for the perfect antiques. (PBS)
• Whistable Pearl (season 2): I like the setting for this, but found the plots a bit implausible. The first season was better. (Acorn TV)
• Nova - Rebuilding Notre Dame: This repeated some material from the BBC documentary I saw earlier this year, but it's still fascinating to see how complex the restoration is. It definitely gives you an appreciation for the skills of the cathedral's medieval builders. (PBS)
• The Witcher: Blood Origin. I didn't care much for the first two seasons, but this is worth watching just for Michelle Yeoh wielding a sword. (Netflix)
• Midsomer Murders (season 23): The venerable and classic British mystery drama returns for yet another season. Nothing new here, but that's fine with us. (Acorn TV)
• Jack Ryan (season 3): Another action-packed spy thriller with a twisty, tense plot. Lots of money went into this one and it shows, although it would have been better two episodes shorter. (Amazon Prime)

Happy New Year!