Sound and Fury in the Gutters
I woke up this morning to the sound of rain running in the gutters as lightning flashed outside. We are hunkered down, waiting out the anticipation of winter’s arrival.
The Coffee Crisis
Emergency StatusDue to the death of our coffeemaker yesterday, it is an emergency instant coffee day (yuck). It is a thin, bitter shadow of a morning ritual, but when the gutters are overflowing and the lights are flickering, one makes do.
Perhaps it’s time to invest in a stovetop percolator for these types of emergencies. Or, more realistically, I could finally learn to use the pretty French Press we were gifted years ago, currently sitting as a silent, ornamental reminder of better brewing days.
Compare the Options
The Quiet Inside
Inside, the world is smaller and brighter. My grandson is sitting on the floor watching Miss Rachel, her cheerful cadence providing a strange, melodic counterpoint to the thunder rattling the windowpanes. It is the quintessential hunker-down posture: eyes on the screen, oblivious to the freezing precipitation gathering its strength just beyond the glass.
Last night I threw some prompts at Gemini last night as an experiment. Told it to generate some song lyrics. Then I dumped the lyrics into Suno. Added a persona I’ve been using. Here’s a first run…
Blacktop Metronome
I’m having a lot of fun with all of this. I think I’ll keep it. Now I’m just gonna sit back a dream of snowy days and comfy fireplaces. Here’s an image I generated a couple of days ago that fits the bill…
Never mind that silly AI. For your pleasure and edification, I offer the Flying Fish Sailors paean to our shared love: Give Me Coffee.
And by the way: that falling ‘rain’ you’ve added is really distracting for me, and makes your page hard to read. It could be something about my vision that gets set off.
Sorry for the rain falling. I didn’t even see it on my screens until you pointed it out. All I notice was a dotted background. And actually I just gave the AI a bunch of stream of conscious phrases and It decided to generate everything at the top. I then added the song and the image at the bottom.
For the longest I was against everything AI. But after using it to clean up and colorize old family photos to share with my kinfolk I started using it to edit my photos. Then I tried the AI music generators since I’ve always like songwriting but never had a voice. Then I decided I had better learn to use the tools everyone else is using.