Friday Thoughts #9
We had a long weekend last week and escaped the city to my parent’s place at Point Lonsdale. Most of the extended family crew were going down at some stage over the weekend. I had plans … for some runs, photography, and celebrating my niece’s third birthday. Unfortunately, I began to feel unwell at about 8 pm on Friday. I’d had my Shingles and COVID vaccines earlier in the day, and they laid me low with what was undoubtedly the worst reaction I’d had to a vaccine. I spent most of Saturday morning in bed, then lazed around. I decided I needed to go for a walk on Saturday afternoon, but I felt like I was dragging my body home.
By Sunday, I was getting better, just a bad headache and some fatigue, so I could enjoy the birthday party and walk for a bit longer. I’ve been more fatigued this week, but I’ve managed two runs and the gym. Today’s my rest day, so hopefully, I’ll be ready for my weekend runs.
I’ve had two of our photobooks delivered this month. I decided to try the lay-flat book from Blurb for last year’s Tasmania trip. It looks fantastic, but the pages are thicker, making the finished book massive. Although I love the look, I don’t have room for too many books this thick on our shelves, so I’d probably save this style book for ones with spectacular photos (Tasmania ticks the box for this) and only a smaller number of pages.
The second book is from our trip to Sydney in 2021. For this one, I decided to try Photobook Australia. They have an 11×11 inch book, slightly smaller than the large Blurb square format, which I prefer and reasonable prices. Unfortunately, I’m not as happy with the colours in this one.
An interesting take on ChatGPT. If you’re not using ChatGPT for your writing, you’re probably making a mistake. And no, ChatGPT did not have a hand in any content in this post.
I have tried Perplexity, which I think is pretty good. Here is a thread I began when curious about the local Indigenous people’s seasons, some of which will probably find its way into a future post.
But these programs can’t help you think or understand, so writing for yourself is the way to go if you care about that.
I’ve been a journal keeper since I was young, but it has ebbed and flowed. I’ve got paper journals, my blog, and, more recently, I’ve used DayOne. Sometime this year, I want to develop a regular journaling practice. I’m bookmarking these articles to come back to them:
What is Journal Entry? How to Capture Your Life and Memories
30 journaling Ideas to Try in 2023
Over to you. How has your week been? Do you regularly journal? What’s been catching your attention lately?
6 Comments
Elisabeth
I looovvveee photobooks. I have too many pages to do layflat, but my best friend always does this (with Shutterfly).
I only make a single book of our year, but my brother/SIL do one for each trip they take which I think is such a lovely idea.
And your Sydney pictures bring back such great memories. I remember being so excited to see the Opera House for the first time (we made a point to walk down to see it). We were there for about a week, and I saw the Opera House everyday! It’s just such a statement structure and basically impossible not to see all. the. time! I’d love to go back…
Melissa
If you do come back you must make it to Melbourne. We don’t have the spectacular back drop of the harbour but there are a lot of cultural sights, and we have beautiful rural places to visit not far from town. And of course the best coffee and food in Australia!
NGS
I think the point that you make about using writing to really understand and think is really important. Sure, I might use technology to help me write a series of boring emails or something, but I don’t write a lot of things that don’t require my personal take on things. *sigh* I worry about what this technology is going to do to our ability to think and explain ourselves.
Melissa
Yes, me too. Especially the generation coming up.
Jenny
You got the covid and shingles vaccines on the same day? You are brave! Just the covid one knocked me out for a full day. Now I’m afraid to get the shingles vaccine because I don’t want to be sick for a day- which is completely ridiculous because that would obviously be better than getting shingles.
I don’t know what to think about the AI debate. My son is a big fan of it and knows the ins and outs much better than I do. Maybe I’m just old, but I still think it can’t replace real, personal writing FROM A PERSON. We’ll have to see how this all plays out.
Melissa
Yes, I agree about not being able to replace writing from a real person, but I can see how they might be useful on things like informational websites etc … they are like they’re written by a bot a lot of the time anyway. They’d still need a real person to proofread though because of the issue with the bots not knowing anything.