Blog Post No. 536
Something happened at the end of February that lasted until about a week ago. I don’t want to say it’s unexplainable because I’m sure there is an explanation, just not one I’m capable or willing to explore. During those three weeks I had a huge increase in views and visitors to this website. In one week I got more views than I usually do in some months. Most of those folks were American and most of them here came from Facebook. It was as if I paid for one of those Facebook ads, but as far as I know, I didn’t.
Every artist is being told to fear the coming onslaught of artificial intelligence. It’s already an issue with visual artists, especially digital artists. Even with the looming threat, the biggest issue I have is that people are calling these amazing programs artificial intelligence when they are more like really sophisticated machine learning. (The difference being an artificial intelligence can make their own decisions and machine learning just follows complicated if, than instructions). What these programs can do seems like magic and it’s really scary as a person who’s dedicated a lot of his adult life to a creative, artistic endeavor like writing, but thankfully, for now, these AI are more of a nuisance for writers than doom and gloom.
As you can read in the title, my epic run is over. Thankfully (as far as I know from home testing) I haven’t gotten the dreaded COVID, but late last week, I succumbed to the common cold. Having not been sick for so long (I have to admit) I was a bit of a baby about it. Thankfully, I had a rare weekend off, so I was able to do what had to be done to kick the butt of any cold or flu. Nothing.
In the coming weeks, I’ll hit a really weird milestone. I don’t remember the exact day (because who would) but it will be three years since I’ve had fast food. Initially I stopped getting fast food because of the lock down and not necessarily for the obvious health benefits. Even without the extra fat and sodium, I can’t say I’m eating especially healthy at home. I actually can’t stand when people spout nonsense about fast food being toxic or not real food. At least in Canada, there are enough regulations to ensure that the burger and fries are meat and potato. They’re just full of fats, carbs, salt, and sugar which in excess are terrible for you. The biggest takeaway for me has been how much money I’ve saved.
In an attempt to avoid editing, I was cleaning up my desk the other day and came across an old cassette tape. It was marked “three” in my teenage chicken scratch and had no other information on it. I popped it into my player (which needs to have its belts changed since the speed consistency was all over the place) and on the tape were snippets recorded off the radio from the summer of 1997. I had to deduce the date based on the songs that were in the top charts for the day and the advertisement for the station’s summer music festival that was supposed to be happening in a matter of weeks.
At the end of the 2000s, I spent some time in another city for school. The city in question is a bit larger than the one I’m from, but it’s also fairly close. It takes less than two hours to get there on the highway. Personally, I like to take the back roads, which makes the trip a little closer to three hours. I did that drive a good dozen times that year, driving past small towns with a couple of stop signs (or sometimes the highway went right through them). Since the drive was leisurely and my mind wanders, I liked to imagine what my life would be like if I moved to one of those towns.
There’s value in keeping in touch with the people who matter in your life. (Value beyond relieving guilt, I mean, though alleviating guilt is a personal win for me every time). I wouldn’t say that I’m the worst at keeping in touch, but only because so many other people I know say that they are. That doesn’t mean I’m great at it , though. I just happen to be fine with being alone for so much of the time.
I’ve written about music a lot on this website. Some of the earliest posts are about 
Before I sat down to write this week’s post, I wasn’t 100% sure what I was going to write about. I had a few half-thought-out ideas, but nothing that felt strong enough for a post. Then, I went through some old posts to determine exactly when I started the Invasion Novel (because I’m not done talking about that thing, yet and won’t be for some time). Turns out, the first post where I talk about actually starting the novel was in 
I’m not going to lie. The title of this post is a bit of a bait-and-switch. To be completely upfront, there is only one book planned for this year and even it’s only in the planning stages. I’ve started writing my part of it, though, so I want to talk a little about it. I briefly mentioned a potential 
Ben Van Dongen 