Category: Technology

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Thursday/ high school is done 😃

The second major update to Apple’s iOS 18 for the iPhone is out (iOS 18.2), and with it, the first Apple Intelligence image generation features, ChatGPT integration with Siri, and a few other changes and bug fixes.

I experimented with Image Playground a little today. (Image Playground came bundled with iOS 18.2 and is an‌ app for creating stylized images based on prompts, and images of you and your friends).

Check out this animation-style high school graduation photo of me. (So this is after Image Playground had processed it, of course. Sorry, I’m not going to post the original photo). 
The original photo was black and white, so the image generator had to guess my hair color (actual color: light brown), the color of the school blazer (actual color: also green, great guess), and tie (actual color: green).
The source photo had a blank background and I added a ‘Party’ effect stipulation before generating the image.
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Monday/ the MIT Museum 🧬

The MIT Museum, founded in 1971, is part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. It hosts collections of holography, technology-related artworks, artificial intelligence, architecture, robotics, maritime history, and the history of MIT.  [Source: Wikipedia]

The MIT Museum at the Gambrill Center (completed 2022) occupies the first three floors of the multipurpose building at 314 Main Street. The museum is designed to “turn MIT inside out” (according to MIT Museum Director John Durant), inviting the community at large to join the conversation and participate in the creation of research projects and solutions.
Kismet, an early social robot (built in 1997) from the MIT Artificial Intelligence. It had movable ears, eyebrows, eyelids and lips.
Endgame, a chess machine invented in 1950 by Claude Shannon after he published a groundbreaking paper called “Programming a Computer for Playing Chess”.
Atom model kit, circa 1943.
Medusa (1985), a computer-generated holographic stereogram by the MIT Spatial Imaging Group and the MIT Media Laboratory.
The famous Milk Drop Coronet (1957) photograph, made with pioneering high-speed flash photography.
Black Panther comic Jungle Action #12 featured the first Black superhero, and featured an MIT alumnus as fictional supervillain Erik Killmonger (bottom right).
A genetically engineered pink chicken. The real chicken has pinkish bones and pinkish muscles as well.
3D Models that explain hoe CRISPR technology works (used for gene splicing and editing).
A journal book from the museum store.
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Friday/ look ma, no hands 👐

November is here. Happy Friday.

I have another 30 days+ of complimentary Full Self Driving (Supervised) switched on for my Tesla Model 3, courtesy of Tesla.
One of my favorite functions is the self-parking function. (Tesla calls it Autopark). I pick one of the parking spaces that my car ‘sees’ (it shows it on the console), and then let go of the steering wheel so that the car can park itself.
The parking function only works for perpendicular or parallel parking and not for angled parking. For parallel parking, there must be a vehicle in front of or behind the space you want to park in.
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Monday/ a white one ⚙️

Here’s a Cybertruck clad in white wrap, that we had spotted in Columbia City today.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a classic ice white look for one’s wheels— but how about a whitish wrap with a little pizzazz, such as the Satin Flip Ghost Pearl (from the website buywrap.com)?

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Saturday/ looking for watermarks 🔠

I still dunk a batch of used stamps from my large stash into warm water now and again— to separate them from the paper they were pasted on.

The stamps are put on paper towels to dry out until they are damp, and then I press them between sheets of paper under a stack of heavy books for 24 hours.

There’s the watermark, the RSA (Republic of South Africa) in a rounded triangle, embedded in the paper* used for printing the purple 2½c stamp down below in the water. It’s a very delicate process, separating the stamp from the paper, and then gently rubbing the back with one’s fingertips until it is no longer slippery (meaning that all the glue has been rubbed off).
Is that something that Tesla’s Optimus robot will ever be able to do for me— put the stamps in the water, gently rub the backs to get the glue off, dry them out, and press them under books before bringing them up to my study for me? I seriously doubt it.

* These watermarks were probably made with a so-called dandy roll. During the wet-paper phase of the paper-making process, a light roller is pressed onto the paper. The repeating pattern is embossed into the paper, compressing and thinning the fibers in that area. The thinner areas allow more light to pass through, making the watermark visible.

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Monday/ a new phone 📱

My new iPhone landed today, and it was a lot easier (than three years ago) to transfer everything over from my old phone to the new phone.

The iPhone 16 Pro in black titanium.
I picked the Pro because I wanted the nicer camera, and I always go with black phone, black case. No bling for me. I’m not even going to try to write a review (since there are already so many on YouTube, and I am no expert).
My new iPhone 16 Pro is on the left, with the iPhone 13 Pro on the right.
The 16 is a smidge larger, and the display bezel is thinner, adding up to a slightly larger screen. I’m using Apple’s silicone case since the leather cases are no longer available.
The silicone case feels nice enough, and hey- no animals were harmed in the process of making it, right?
I used the direct phone-to-phone wireless transfer that is available nowadays (the other method is to use Apple’s iCloud). The transfer took a while, because I moved over some 400Gb of data 😱, mostly photos and videos.  (I’m a trigger happy photographer, and what about it? And yes, I do store my pictures on the cloud as well).
At the outset the estimated time was 17 hours, but as the hours went by, the transfer time estimate shrunk as well.
In the end, it took just under 8 hours to transfer everything.
The little island at the top of the screen (where the camera lenses are) is new for me (my old phone had a notch, not an island). If you play music, a tiny little album icon and sound bars appear there. (That’s Jennifer Rush, singing Ring of Ice).
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Sunday/ electrify your ride⚡

Three amigos went to the Electrify Expo 2024 here in Seattle today: an electric vehicle festival that visits different cities to showcase EVs of all kinds.

Visitors to the expo could look at, and drive, electric cars and trucks, and ride e-bikes, e-motorcycles, e-scooters and e-skateboards.

This Ford F-150 Lightning Platinum starts at $85,000. Range is 300 mile-range and horsepower is 580.
The 2025 BMW iX (it’s an SUV; ignore the camera angle), offers up to 324 miles per charge and up to 610 horsepower.
It’s going to gobble up $100,000 of your cash.
I believe this is a 2025 BMW i4 M50. I could not find this outrageous deep turquoise(?) color on the BMW website, though.  MSRP starts at about $70,000.
BMW X4 Sports Activity Coupe.
2024 Tesla Model Y Performance in quicksilver. Starts at $52,000; range is 279 miles and the electric motors put out 455 horsepower.
We’ve seen the Tesla Cybertruck before, but today we got to clamber into it and see what it’s like inside. The frunk (front trunk 😁 ) is open.
The Cybertruck Foundation Series All-Wheel Drive starts at $94,000. The tires on this beast are 33.5″ in diameter.
A view from the inside. The windshield is enormous, of course, as is the glass roof. The steering wheel and rear-view mirror are smaller than I guess I had expected them to be.
Here’s another Cybertruck, displayed by an enthusiastic private owner. (She owns this Cybertruck with its custom rainbow metallic wrap, a Tesla Model S Plaid, and a Tesla Model 3 Performance). She loves the truck’s steer-by-wire and its tight turning radius.
E-motorbike offering by BMW, the BMW CE 02. It goes about 55 miles on a full charge, and costs around $8,000.
Check out this Honda Motocompacto E-Scooter. This folding scooter weighs all of 42 pounds and can fit into the back of a conventional hatchback.
It tops out at 15 mph, with a 12-mile range, and riders over 265 pounds need not apply. Cost: about $1,000.
A souped up Tesla Model 3. I’m not sure what’s going on in the frunk!
Whoah— three Cybertrucks coming in from their test drives. The wait for a Cybertruck test drive was more than 2 hours. We were in line to take a Tesla Model X for a spin, but there was a little confusion and we ended up hopping into a Model S Plaid instead.
Lucid Air at the back (512 miles range), then left to right Tesla Model 3, Tesla Model S, Tesla Model Y.
Inside the Model S Plaid for a test drive.
(No, we did not do anything crazy such as trying out ludicrous mode*— just a little circuit around University Village. We had a Tesla representative in the passenger seat. He is actually a Tesla service technician at the Bellevue service center).
*A performance mode on Tesla vehicles that increases peak torque by about 60%, catapulting the car forward from 0 to 60 miles per hour in as little as 2.5 seconds.
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Saturday/ here comes the bus 🚍

King County Metro’s latest ‘rapid ride’ bus route opened today: the RapidRide G Line along Madison Street.

Its promise is to have the most frequent transit service in the region for riders in Seattle’s Capitol Hill, First Hill, Central District and Madison Valley neighborhoods.

The bus comes every 6 minutes for most of the day, except on Sunday.

The line runs along Madison Street between Martin Luther King Jr. Way and First Avenue, and turns on 1st Avenue to go back to Madison Street.
Here we stand on Madison and 13th, with the bus bound for downtown.
From the Seattle Times online: The New Flyer model XDE60 buses, which cost $1.3 million each, are the first in Seattle to have a left-side door, allowing passengers to board from four stations, between Eighth and 13th avenues, in a center median island that allows the bus to stop without being held up by drivers turning right or pedestrians in a crosswalk.
Inside the bus. I can see myself on the little monitor by the door on the left side. It’s tap to pay, inside the bus (Orca card readers at the doors), or outside before boarding, at the bus stop. There is still a cash pay point at the front of the bus for travelers with no Orca cards.
Android users can add their Orca cards to their Google wallets, and use their phones to pay, but we cannot yet add Orca cards to our iPhone wallets.
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Monday/ new phones 📱

Apple has announced the new lineup of iPhones today, and I can order one this Friday.
I have an iPhone 13 Pro (three years old), so it’s a happy coincidence that my upgrade this year catches the Apple Intelligence-enabled (aka Artificial Intelligence-enabled) phones.

What will that mean, eventually? (Not all the AI features will be available right away).
Well, the AI tools will fall into three main categories:
a smarter Siri (the voice-enabled assistant);
assistance with text (proofread your text, rewrite it to adjust the tone and wording, or summarize selected text with a tap); and
assistance with images (tools to create original images based on text prompts, or from a rough sketch, and powerful editing functions for photos).

As usual, there are two phone sizes at the high end (the ‘Pro’ phones). I’ll stick with the smaller one, the 16 Pro, and with the dark gray that’s called Black Titanium. On the far right is a new bronze color called Desert Titanium.
There is a new camera control button on the side, and the ‘action’ button from last year’s iPhone 15 is still there.
[Screen shot from The Wall Street Journal online]
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Thursday/ under the UV lamp 🚿

My little ultraviolet lamp arrived today: one that is specifically designed to inspect postage stamps. (My pictures below).

Starting in 1969, South Africa began to add phosphorescent frames to stamps from its first definitive series of stamps*. Starting in 1971, the phosphorescent element appeared throughout the paper. It is almost impossible to distinguish between these two types of stamps without the aid of an ultraviolet lamp.

*Definitive series of stamps for the Republic of South Africa. The Union of South Africa became the Republic of South Africa in 1961 when it gained its independence from Great Britain.

Republic of South Africa First Definitive Series, Redrawn
Issued 1969-1972
Perf. 14×13½ Photogravure, chalk-surfaced paper, printed with phosphor bands
282 168 ½c New blue, carmine-red and yellow ochre | African Pygmy Kingfisher
[Source: Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue: Commonwealth & British Empire Stamps, 2016 Edition]
Republic of South Africa First Definitive Series, Redrawn
Issued 1969-1972
Perf. 13½x14 Photogravure, chalk-surfaced paper, printed with phosphor bands (LEFT, issued 1969, with bands badly misplaced! ) and without phosphor bands (RIGHT, issued 1971)
277 169 1c Rose-red & olive brown | Coral tree flowers
[Source: Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue: Commonwealth & British Empire Stamps, 2016 Edition]
Republic of South Africa First Definitive Series, Redrawn
Issued 1969-1972
Perf. 14×13½ Photogravure, chalk-surfaced paper, printed with phosphor bands
284 132 1½c Red brown and light purple | Afrikaner bull
[Source: Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue: Commonwealth & British Empire Stamps, 2016 Edition]
Republic of South Africa First Definitive Series, Redrawn
Issued 1969-1972
Perf. 14 Photogravure, chalk-surfaced paper, printed with phosphor bands
285 133 2c Ultramarine and yellow | Pouring gold
[Source: Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue: Commonwealth & British Empire Stamps, 2016 Edition]
Republic of South Africa First Definitive Series, Redrawn
Issued 1969-1972
Perf. 14 Photogravure, chalk-surfaced paper, printed with phosphor bands
286 134 2½c Violet and green | Groot Constantia wine estate
[Source: Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue: Commonwealth & British Empire Stamps, 2016 Edition]
Republic of South Africa First Definitive Series, Redrawn
Issued 1969-1972
Perf. 14 Photogravure, chalk-surfaced paper, printed with phosphor bands
287 135 3c Red and deep blue |Burchell’s gonolek
[Source: Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue: Commonwealth & British Empire Stamps, 2016 Edition]
Republic of South Africa First Definitive Series, Redrawn
Issued 1969-1972
Perf. 14 Photogravure, chalk-surfaced paper, printed with phosphor bands
293 138 10c Brown and pale green | Cape Town Castle gate
[Source: Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue: Commonwealth & British Empire Stamps, 2016 Edition]
Republic of South Africa First Definitive Series, Redrawn
Issued 1969-1972
Perf. 14 Photogravure, chalk-surfaced paper, printed with phosphor bands
294 139 20c Turquoise-blue, carmine and brown orange| Secretary Bird
[Source: Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue: Commonwealth & British Empire Stamps, 2016 Edition]

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Monday/ the Lynnwood Link🚆

Here are my pictures of a ride today on the new northbound extension of the  Sound Transit light rail system to downtown Lynnwood.

Here it is: the $3 billion extension from Northgate to Lynnwood with four new stations, 16 years in the making.
Voters approved it with along with Obama’s election in 2008; planning was done from 2010-2016, design from 2016-2019, and construction from 2019-2024.
The 1 Line extension hugs 8½ miles of Interstate 5 and crosses over it north of the Mountlake terrace station. A fifth station will open in 2026 at NE 130th Street.
[Map from Sound Transit website]
Northbound and approaching the existing Northgate station here. Interstate 5 traffic on the left. Much of the extension is elevated compared to Interstate 5, though, due to the uneven terrain there.
Here is the view from the elevated rail and platform at the Lynnwood City Center station. There is a large parking garage at the back (not visible here), a parking lot on the left, and the canopies and bus stops of the Lynnwood Transit Center. Buses can be taken from here to Everett in the north, or to either of the ferry terminals at Edmonds and Mukilteo.
Glass mural artwork on the boarding platform at the Lynnwood City Center station. The artist is Preston Singletary. The art was inspired by his Tlingit heritage and family, and influenced by his father’s recent death.
Here’s the train at the Lynnwood City Center station, with the parking garage at the back of it.
One of two identical sculptures called “Shift” down on the grounds below. The artist is Claudia Fitch and are a nod to the lamps from Lynnwood’s Interurban trolley system, which operated from 1910 to 1939.
Here is Claudia Fitch’s “City Hummingbird” and “Kitchen Window Curtain” at Lynnwood City Center Station, to honor the history of neon road signs that once lined Highway 99 as well as the nature Pacific Northwesterners see in their own backyards.
[Description of artwork and text from Seattle Times]
Getting ready for the 30-minute ride back to Capitol Hill train station. The overhead graphic of the 2 Line (blue) and 1 Line (green) shows that more stations will open in the near future. Stations have numeric identifiers as well, which should make it easier for foreign language speakers and visitors to find the stations that they need to use.
A peek into the future, looking at a little section of rail north of Lynnwood City Center station that has already been constructed. The next push north is scheduled for 2037 with stops at West Alderwood near the mall, Ash Way, Mariner, Highway 99 in South Everett (possibly) and Southwest Everett Industrial Center near Paine Field. Two final stations at Evergreen Way and downtown Everett are aimed for 2041, depending on funding.
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Monday/ Cybertruck spotting ⚙️

We spotted this Cybertruck at noon today, at the junction of South Alaska Street and Rainier Avenue South. (Looks like a black Tesla Model 3 on its right, in the second picture. It could also be a Model Y).

A filing from Tesla on June 24 for a recall revealed that there was a total of 11,688 trucks ‘in the wild’ or shipped to customers.
There might be 25,000 out there by the end of the year, with production volumes still being ramped up.

Tesla sees as its full-volume production total at 250,000 units per year.
Will there still be buyers for a truck that sells for more than $100k, at that point?
(The Foundation Series starts at $102,235, but cheaper trims such as an All Wheel Drive for $96,390 and Rear-Wheel Drive for $76,390 could be on the way.)

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Thursday/ a freebie 🍊

These little mandarins from Peru are sweet, seedless and plump, and I got them for free at Amazon Fresh. 🤗

As I attempted to scan the barcode and put them into my smart grocery cart, the scanner did not recognize the barcode. There was no 4-digit produce code to type in on the bag, or on the shelf. Searching for ‘mandarin’ on the cart’s lookup menu also yielded no result.

The store clerk in the aisle could offer no other solution either, and just tucked the mandarins into the back of the cart, saying I don’t have to pay for them.

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Saturday/ setting it up 💻

I had my grubby paws on my pristine machine yesterday and today, setting it up with my preferences and applications.
Nicely done:
—Easy to sync contacts, notes and settings shared with my iPhone.
—Super easy to set up use a non-Apple mouse via bluetooth (for now, using a Logitech Signature M650 L).
—Easy to add widgets to the desktop.
—Added Google Chrome, YouTube, YouTube TV and Netflix browser links onto the task bar for quick access to Chrome, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, YouTube, YouTube TV and Netflix.
(I don’t use Safari nor the MacOS calendar).

Not so nice/ not possible to do:
—As of 2024, there is no Netflix app for MacBook!
So it’s possible to login & watch online at netflix.com, but I cannot download movies to watch offline on the plane on my MacBook Air the way I do with my iPad.
—I will have to get a hub to expand the connectivity options (the machine only has two USB-4 ports). My 2017 Canon digital camera needs a USB-A port to connect to the MacBook, for example.

Here’s the desktop with the widgets I have added. (The big world map only appears if the clock widget in the right corner is double clicked).
I have also added several browser links to the task bar: Google Chrome, YouTube, YouTube TV, Netflix, and others. I should remove some app links from the task bar.
There is a ‘launch pad’ link on the taskbar (second from left) that will bring up a screen with all the apps on the MacBook Air.
The launch pad screen is similar to a smartphone or smart pad screen, with the apps arranged on one or more screens per the user’s preference.
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Thursday/ a new machine 🍎

My Windows notebook computer is 7 years old, and it so it was time for a new one. I am making the leap into the world of macOS, though, by replacing it with an Apple MacBook Air.

Yes, I have long had iPhones and iPads, but those don’t have the menus and file management and applications that Apple’s notebook and desktop computers have. So I have a lot to learn.

*MacOS, originally Mac OS X, previously shortened as OS X, is an operating system developed and marketed by Apple since 2001.

Fresh out of the box. This is ‘midnight’— a very dark gray gun-metal finish that is said to be a fingerprint magnet. I could have gone for the classic Apple silver, but no, I really wanted this one. This is the 13″ (13.6 in) Macbook Air M3. I bumped up the base 8 GB of memory to 16 GB and the SSD from 256 GB to 512 GB for my machine.
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Wednesday/ a ransomware attack 👾

Seattle Public Library suffered a ransomware attack on its network just before Memorial Day weekend.  (Libraries in Toronto and London also suffered cybersecurity breaches recently. The disruptions to their services lasted several months).

Services at the 27 branches of the library are slowly returning, but have still not been fully restored.

Workstations at the Capitol Hill branch of Seattle Public Library were still offline as of today.
From the magazine rack: the latest issue of Analog magazine.
Analog Science Fiction and Fact is a renowned magazine that combines captivating science fiction stories with scientific exploration. ‘Established in 1930, it has become a premier publication for enthusiasts of imaginative storytelling and cutting-edge science’. -magzster.com.
After the ransomware attack, Seattle Public Library issued books and items in analog mode for awhile, using pen and paper to record what was lent out.
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Sunday/ back to the city 🛳

Our weekend on Kitsap Peninsula was over, and we took the Bainbridge-Seattle ferry to get back to the city late this morning.

The Agate Pass Bridge (steel truss bridge built in the 1950s) on Highway 305 connects Kitsap Peninsula with Bainbridge Island.
Here is our departure from the Bainbridge Island Ferry Terminal. The new overhead pedestrian walkway for walk-on passengers (on the right, middle of picture) opened in February. The seismically safe steel-fortified walkway set on concrete and steel columns replaced a 50-year-old wood-supported walkway.
We could see this seagull’s nest from the ferry (in one of the terminal pillars) but it was hard to see all of the spotted chick/s in the nest.
Approaching the Emerald City and there is the rainbow flag on the Space Needle.
The annual Pride Parade was underway in downtown as we arrived at the Seattle ferry terminal.
This year is the 50th anniversary of the first Pride parade in Seattle in 1974.
🌈 Happy Pride!
A view of the city skyline from the lower car-deck on the ferry.
We sailed on Marine Vessel Tacoma. She is a Jumbo Mark II class ferry, constructed in 1997, and can accommodate 2,500 walk-on passengers and 202 vehicles.
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Wednesday/ curbside charging ⚡️

The City of Seattle has set a goal to reduce transportation emissions by a whopping 83% by 2030.
Providing more public charging options for EVs is part of a comprehensive portfolio of transportation electrification investments.

This wood pole charger on 15th Ave East on Capitol Hill is one of the first batch of 24 such chargers that had been installed around the city. These chargers are open to the public, available on a first-come, first-served basis and cannot be reserved. 
A Tesla supercharger* it is NOT: these are Level 2 EV chargers that can charge at rates up to 9.6 kilowatts (kW). Fast chargers in off-street locations such as parking lots can charge up to 50 or 60 kW. 
*Most V3 Tesla superchargers can charge at rates up to 250 kW.
The charging rate is $0.21/kWh.
Let’s do the math:
For an Electric Vehicle (EV)
To ADD 30 mi of range to a small EV, it takes about 1 hr of charging at 9.6 kWh.
Therefore $0.21/kWh x 9.6 kW x 1hr comes to $2.02.
For an Internal Combustion Engine (ICE)
In Seattle, gas is close to $5/gal.
Let’s say a compact ICE car gets 30 mpg.
To ADD 30 mi of range to the ICE car, it would need 1 gallon.
Therefore 1 gallon x $5/ gal comes to  $5.00.
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Sunday/ 👀 Tesla spotting

Three amigos went out to Bellevue South station to ride the 2 Line light rail train today, and to check out the parking lot at the Tesla Service Center nearby at the Tesla Service Center in Bellevue.in Bellevue.

The current end of the 2 Line, Redmond Technology Center station.
Hey! I spotted my first Tesla Cybertruck in ‘the wild’.
This is on Bel-Red Road between Overlake and Bellevue.
At the Tesla Service Center in Bellevue. (Red, white and blue for Memorial Day weekend, right?).
The Cybertruck has a custom after-market matt black wrap on that goes well with the black trim and wheels of the truck.
Heading back home, and crossing Lake Washington with Interstate 90’s floating bridge. The thick blue line on the display means the Full Self Driving (Supervised) function is active.
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Sunday/ no turns! ⬆️

I walked by the East Madison St – 14th Avenue intersection this afternoon where my Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) function made a boo-boo yesterday (just to check it out again).

The green light shapes are ‘Straight Ahead’ arrows, and there is a NO TURNS sign on the beam as well.

Even so, as the car approached the intersection from Madison Street, the FSD turned on the turn signal, and turned left onto 14th Avenue.
There was no oncoming traffic, and I should have tapped the brake or held the steering wheel (to override the FSD controls) to keep going straight.