Yes, that is a photo of me in a red speedo…
9 minute read
December 1, 2024, 12:00 AM
Some of you may have been surprised to open the website today and find this photo staring back at you:
Continue reading…Categories: Artificial intelligence, Schumin Web meta, Social media
Revisiting ChatGPT…
22 minute read
November 1, 2024, 11:55 PM
Recently, a former colleague of mine shared a post on LinkedIn by Benjamin Stein (no, not that guy) that read, “Go ask ChatGPT: ‘Based on our previous interactions, what do you know about me that I may not know about myself?'” My colleague said in her post that she was using ChatGPT to help with a job search, and shared some of the things that the bot said about her. Not bad.
I responded to her post about my own experience with ChatGPT, saying, “All I know is that ChatGPT knows exactly who I am, probably because of my large online presence, and it told quite a few whoppers about me,” and then cited the Journal entry that I wrote about it last spring. My colleague responded that she loved the entry, but considering that the original entry is now more than 18 months old, as well as the rapid pace of advancement in this kind of technology, I should run it again to see what it comes up with. I liked the idea.
So I ran the entire process over again, asking the exact same questions, i.e. “What do you know about Ben Schumin?” and “Tell me about The Schumin Web,” and running each inquiry five times, using the default model, GPT-4o. My methodology for scoring each of the responses was exactly the same as before, counting the number of factual claims, and then determining the accuracy of each one. Accurate claims scored a point, inaccurate claims scored no points, and a mixture of accurate and inaccurate information scored half a point. Then take that number and divide it by the total number of factual claims made, and that’s the final score in the form of a percentage. As was the case before, I still don’t know what an expert in this sort of thing might do to rate the accuracy of these responses, but this is the best that I could come up with, plus this is the same method that I used before, giving us apples-to-apples results.
Categories: Artificial intelligence, Schumin Web meta, Social media
The Power Rangers sandbox…
10 minute read
October 11, 2024, 1:56 PM
For those of you who are fans of old-school Power Rangers like myself, one story arc tends to stand out: the Alien Rangers story arc. For those not familiar, the Alien Rangers story arc was the story that served as the bridge between Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Power Rangers Zeo. In the first episode, “Rangers in Reverse”, one of the villains, Master Vile, planted a device called the Orb of Doom, which reversed the Earth’s rotation, which, through the magic of fantasy, also reverted the Power Rangers (and everyone else) in age. The Rangers also lose their powers in the process, as they are unable to morph in their much younger form (they looked like they were about middle school-aged). With the now-kid team out of commission, they get other rangers from the planet Aquitar to help defend the earth, and they keep Lord Zedd and crew at bay until the main team is able to restore time and replace their powers by retrieving and reassembling the Zeo Crystal, which they had broken up and put into a time hole a few episodes prior. While the team from Aquitar was the active Power Ranger team, the show took the title Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers, and used a modified theme song. As far as the story went, it was masterfully done, destroying the Rangers’ old powers and then sending them on a quest to retrieve the Zeo Crystal, which would reverse the time regression caused by the Orb of Doom, and also give the regular team a new set of powers. And then at the end of it all, the Command Center gets blown up, providing a nice little cliffhanger ending to lead into the next season.
However, if you look at Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers, you find something else going on inside. In-universe explanations aside, the entire Alien Rangers story arc was a giant experiment with different situations than we were used to on the hero side of things, and the temporary nature of the story meant that they weren’t committed to anything that they did during the test, because the regular heroes would eventually be restored to their original ages and get new powers, the Alien Rangers would go back to Aquitar, and the show could continue on in a similar format as we had been used to – which is exactly what happened. And the transition to Zeo was a perfect opportunity to do it, since that was the first of the show’s many annual suit changes, and it made for a nice buildup towards what would be the new status quo. Most people don’t give this story arc all of the credit that it deserves for advancing the franchise, thinking only about the way that it advanced the story, and not the many concepts that it piloted over its course, many of which would be implemented in later seasons.
I also get why they did it as a test, because heroes have far more staying power than villains. Think about it: villains, despite generally getting better lines than the heroes, are more easily replaced, and often do get replaced. Think about it: by the time that we had gotten to the third season of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the villains had changed fairly significantly in how they operated, while the heroes largely operated the same way as they always did. In the first season, the main villain was Rita Repulsa, who was a direct dub of Bandora from Zyuranger, i.e. the Japanese source show. Then in the second season, Rita got tossed into a dumpster (literally) and launched into space after Lord Zedd took over as the new villain. Rita Repulsa was brought back later on in the season, and in the third season, they added additional villains using costumes from Kakuranger, which formed the source material for the third season. And then when they did the first movie, they had a one-off villain in the form of Ivan Ooze, with the regular villains’ being present, but otherwise playing a minor role. Then going beyond that, Zeo threw out all of the villains that we had previously known, and brought in the Machine Empire (who were direct dubs of the Ohranger villains). Then Turbo replaced them with Divatox and her minions. And to round out the “Zordon era” of the program, in Space, Divatox took a back seat to Dark Specter and Astronema, and another set of minions. All the while, the hero characters evolved more organically, save for one instance where four out of the five Turbo Rangers were abruptly replaced (everyone except the one that we really wanted gone, of course), but other than the transition episode, the show acted as though they had always been there.
Categories: Power Rangers
I wasn’t expecting that so soon…
5 minute read
September 22, 2024, 1:05 PM
It figures. Not even twelve hours after I posted the Journal entry about my trip to New Jersey and Long Island, which included coverage of the Kmart store in Bridgehampton, New York, I saw a post on Reddit that indicated that said Kmart store was closing, and shared the following image of the store:
Photo: Reddit user LordRavioli29
Categories: New York, Reddit, Retail, Schumin Web meta
That was darker than I realized…
4 minute read
August 6, 2024, 8:07 PM
Recently, while operating the train, I was singing the “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” opera from Today’s Special to myself in the cab. For those of you who are not familiar, in the episode “Opera“, the main cast put on a short opera telling the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, singing the entire story as befits an opera. The whole thing is really cute, and if you’ve seen it, you probably remember that it finished like this:
Categories: Today's Special
If you want us to take you seriously, learn how to write…
8 minute read
July 19, 2024, 7:55 PM
It always amazes me at what kinds of stuff people allow to be published under their name, especially when they’re doing it with the expectation of making money. More specifically, it amazes me at how poor some of the work is that they publish with the aim of furthering their business endeavors. I have always been of the opinion that if you’re trying to market yourself, you should always put your best foot forward. The idea is that when you are selling yourself, you should be on your “A” game, because that’s the best that you’re ever going to be, when you’re trying to woo potential new clients. And if you can’t be bothered to do that when you’re trying to sell your services, what else are you slacking off on?
It’s like what they say about errors on a job application. The conventional wisdom there is that if there is any kind of error, no matter how minor, on your cover letter or resume, be it typographical, spelling, or grammatical, your resume is going in the trash. Let’s take a line out of my own resume from my description of my time as a bus operator:
Safely operated 40’ and 60’ buses on predefined routes, providing scheduled service to the general public.
Looks decent enough. Good spelling, good grammar, and no typographical errors. I’d hire me. Now here’s the same line, but this time, I have deliberately added a typographical error:
Safely operated 40’ and 60’ buses on predefined routes, providing schedueld service to the general public.
Did you see it? “Scheduled” is now “schedueld”. It doesn’t change the meaning of the sentence (unlike, for example, when “public” inadvertently gets shortened to “pubic”), but if I submitted that to someone in hopes of getting hired, I would have no business being upset when I don’t get any calls back, because I didn’t do my due diligence in making sure that I had put my own best foot forward. I couldn’t be bothered to make sure that I got the words all written correctly, and so there is no reason to think that I wouldn’t miss something far more sensitive on the job that could cost the company a lot of money. The company can easily dodge that potential bullet by not hiring the guy who has already provided documented proof of a lack of attention to detail.
Categories: Social media, Some people, Work
The future of the past…
19 minute read
June 27, 2024, 6:32 PM
Recall back in December that I spoke of the need to redesign this website in order to take advantage of various new features and functionalities that I’m not currently making good use of. Lately, unfortunately, I have not made any headway on that due to my being backlogged on new content. It’s like Jon Taffer of Bar Rescue fame once said, where an owner was too busy working in their business to be able to work on their business. However, I did recently take a look at screenshots and other materials for various concepts from past redesign efforts to serve as some level of inspiration, and while I didn’t feel particularly inspired by these old concept designs, I thought it might be interesting to share them with you, to think about what Schumin Web might have looked like had I gone further with these various ideas rather than what I ultimately opted to go with. I don’t regret not going with these various concepts because a lot of these were just explorations, but I definitely learned something about the site with each iteration.
First, recall that before the current “Modern Blue” design, which was introduced in 2012, I had been using a design that I had called “Faded Blue”, which was introduced in 2004 and was later modified into “Blue Squares” in 2008. One new thing back then was that the advertising banner, which had previously been at the bottom of the page, would now be at the top of the page. The first concept for that design was… not good. Here is the initial concept for the Journal:
Categories: Artificial intelligence, Schumin Web meta
A weekend loop trip…
22 minute read
June 12, 2024, 8:24 AM
From May 30 to June 1, I took a trip down to the Hampton Roads area in Virginia. Hampton Roads is by no means an unfamiliar place, even though I don’t get to go there nearly as much as I would otherwise like, but the way I got down there was a bit unconventional. Instead of going down the west side of the Beltway to I-95 in Springfield heading towards Richmond and then hanging a left on I-64 to go through New Kent, Williamsburg, and the like to get to my hotel in Newport News, I instead went down the east side of the Beltway to New Carrollton, where I got on Route 50 and took that over the Bay Bridge and then continued as far as Salisbury, where I made a right turn at US 13 to head down into Virginia towards the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. From there, I headed through Norfolk, through the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, through Hampton, and finally to my hotel in Newport News. I was also doing this trip completely unsupervised, as Elyse was going to a bus event up in Hershey that same weekend.
I made a few stops along the way, mostly to do some photography with the drone. My first stop was at a large park on the east side of the Bay Bridge, where I was planning to get some shots of the bridge itself:
Categories: Friends, Hampton Roads, Maryland, Photography, Roads, Today's Special
Raise a glass for ICQ…
8 minute read
May 24, 2024, 5:32 PM
Categories: Netculture, Schumin Web meta
A proper visit to Charleston…
28 minute read
May 9, 2024, 10:14 AM
From April 17-19, Elyse and I made a weekend trip down to Charleston, South Carolina. It’s funny how this worked out. After our visit to Charleston last October, we both were left wanting more. We saw lots of potential in Charleston, and wanted to go back, but we weren’t sure whether we wanted to drive back again, vs. flying. Charleston is eight hours away, which is quite a long haul, and it’s almost entirely through rural areas once you get out of the DC region. In other words, not very exciting. But then when we looked at airfare, we realized that it was really expensive, and that with all of the goings-on at the airport plus multiple flights, we wouldn’t save any time compared to driving, plus we would be limited as to what we could bring with us, and would probably need to rent a car down there. All of that said, that pushed me into driving territory, because then we could bring whatever we wanted, go on our own schedule, and have fun on the way down and back. Plus then we would have the HR-V in Charleston.
On the southbound leg, I tried to keep the trip as close to all-business as I could. I only planned on making four stops: one in the Richmond area, one in Skippers, Virginia (the last Virginia exit on I-95), one somewhere in North Carolina, and then one at the Buc-ee’s in Florence, South Carolina. That would get us to Charleston at a somewhat reasonable hour as long as we kept to it.
Richmond was intended primarily as a food stop. My original idea was to stop at the Sheetz at the Atlee exit, and do Sheetz, and I pitched that to Elyse a few days prior to our trip. It’s funny – when I pitched the idea, Elyse’s response was something to the effect of, “When were you going to tell me about this?” and my response was simply, “What does this look like?” Elyse said that she didn’t want to do Sheetz, because we always do Sheetz, and then suggested we find a barbecue place. I was like, “You had me at barbecue.” Looking it up, I found two places that weren’t too far off of I-95. One was a place called Q Barbeque up in Glen Allen, and then the other one was Oak & Apple right in downtown. I chose Oak & Apple, because it was right in downtown Richmond, and closer to the freeway. More or less get off of the exit, go like two blocks, and boom, there it is.
Categories: Converted buildings, Fire alarms, Netculture, New Flyer D35HF, North Carolina, Photography, Retail, Roads, Ships, South Carolina, Transit, Travel
Where does it go from punishment to exploitation?
8 minute read
May 1, 2024, 9:36 AM
Recently, this post by Nadia Ware came up on my news feed in a Staunton group that I’m in:
Categories: Social media, Staunton
No, I do not have to get anyone’s permission for that…
11 minute read
March 30, 2024, 1:35 PM
It has always amused me about how often people play the permission-of-the-subject card with me. Usually, it comes from someone who is a bit salty about coverage of their activities that may portray them in a negative light. However, recently, someone played this card on a post that I made on Schumin Web‘s Facebook page in regards to a wildfire in Virginia that I recently photographed with my drone. The post was about a photo that depicted a house burning to the ground that I am planning to run as part of a Journal entry about a weekend trip that Elyse and I had recently made:
Categories: High school, Middle school, Montgomery Village, Photography, Schumin Web meta, Social media
How’s that for gratitude…
11 minute read
March 19, 2024, 9:23 AM
Some people, I just don’t understand. I had been involved in a Facebook group called “You know you’re from Gaithersburg, Maryland if”. The group’s purpose was to share nostalgic content about Gaithersburg, Maryland, which is the town right next to Montgomery Village, where I live. However, the group had extremely lax moderation, and by “extremely lax”, I mean “none”, as there was no one keeping an eye on things to make sure that good posts were getting through and off-topic or spam posts were being removed. As a result, most of the group’s content consisted of advertisements for moving companies, air duct cleaning, gutter replacement, furniture cleaning, carpet cleaning, and car detailing. In other words, it was spam city. The only reason that I stayed in the group was to maybe get a piece of historic Gaithersburg content. After all, I was in the group in the first place because I was interested in getting a bit of local history from the perspective of locals. I’ve only been familiar with Gaithersburg since 2007, and have only lived in the Gaithersburg area since 2017. So as far local history goes, I’ve only been around to witness a small slice of it. I rely on other people to provide the rest.
Then one day this past December, while Elyse and I were out having lunch, I got a notification from Facebook saying that they wanted to promote me to admin of this group because the group had no active admins. In other words, what I had suspected was true: the existing group admins had taken a permanent lunch break, so Facebook picked someone from amongst the membership to run the group. I just had to tap “accept” on my phone, and they handed me the keys to the castle. All of a sudden, I was in charge of a group in which I had been a somewhat passive participant for several years.
Categories: Gaithersburg, Social media, Some people
Thinking about various church experiences…
22 minute read
March 9, 2024, 8:30 AM
Recently, I found myself discussing the Vacation Bible School that my sister and I attended in the mid nineties while I was in middle school. It came from a post on /r/exchristian on Reddit, asking, “What do you still have memorized?” My first reaction was to cite the offertory song that this program had us sing while they passed the plate around. In thinking about it, I was struck by how misplaced the priorities were when it came to what this offering was to be used for (more on that later). But then it also led to my recalling various other church experiences that I had while growing up, and how much of a mixed bag these things were. Some experiences were quite good, while some them were not exactly all rainbows and sunshine.
For some background, I attended church from 1989 to 2003. I was never that much of a “religious” person to begin with, having spent the first eight years of my life without it. My father grew up Jewish, and has practiced no religion of any kind for most of his adult life, i.e. he is ethnically Jewish, but does not follow the religion. Meanwhile, Mom grew up in the Presbyterian Church, and attended church regularly until she began college, and then did not attend church at all from 1969 to 1989. Thus my early formative years contained no significant religious indoctrination, short of attending a Baptist preschool during our first year in Rogers, and the religious side of things in that program was super light. I don’t remember doing much religious stuff there short of a few trips to the sanctuary and the “God is great, God is good” prayer before our daily snack. Outside of this, Mom would occasionally discuss religious subjects with me, though nothing too deep, but even then, I was kind of a skeptic. When Mom would try to explain this “God” person, the way that he was described defied everything that I had observed in the world, and so I was like, okay, sure, and not really buying it, even at a very young age. Likewise, I saw no purpose to the prayer that Mom and I did each night before going to bed for some time, because I never really thought that we were speaking to anyone other than ourselves.
Then in 1989, Mom finally found a church that she liked. As I understand it, when we first moved to Arkansas in 1985, Mom had First Presbyterian Church in Rogers pegged as somewhere that she had wanted to go from the outset, but she was unimpressed with the minister that was there at that time. By 1989, that guy had left and a new person had taken his place, and Mom liked the new guy a lot more. We typically went to church on Sundays, we did the after school program that they did on Wednesday afternoons, and then we also did the Vacation Bible School week during the summer.
Categories: Arkansas, Reddit, Religion, Stuarts Draft
When your photo of Giant becomes popular, and you don’t quite understand why…
3 minute read
February 6, 2024, 9:54 AM
Recently, when skimming around the Internet, I found a large number of YouTube videos using this image:
Categories: Copyright infringement, Giant Food, YouTube