The aticle and the podcast (don't worry, it is NOT an AI podcast) explain how we were able to generate the AI podcasts we presented during the last two days.
The audio podcast feature was introduced only ONE WEEK AGO! Rarely have we been so close to the cutting edge!
The product itself first launched in 2023 as Project Tailwind, and has since been rebranded and expanded in big ways. Just last week, the team launched Audio Overviews, which generates a podcast — with two chatty hosts, plenty of back and forth, and a truly remarkable penchant for the phrases “deep dive” and “buckle up” — based on the information you provide. It’s fascinating, it’s complicated, and it’s getting better really fast.
This one looks not at the SolderSmoke Daily News blog, but instead at the SolderSmoke podcast itself.
I was delighted to see the inclusion of Pete, Dean, Farhan and Mike Rainey! This was really great.
Look, it is not perfect. There are errors. But probably about the same number of errors that you would get from real, human hosts, right? Voltaire told us not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And I find this to be amazingly good. Look, it is so good that it is kind of scary, right?
Before you get too critical realize how this has been done: I did nothing more than load the SolderSmoke Podcast Archive website into GPT-like model. Then I asked it to produce a deep dive podcast. That's it. About 5 clicks. It developed the podcast in about 3 minutes. I did the same thing yesterday but with the SolderSmoke blog. And this is only the beginning.
Image quality compare from Simon Willison and Claude!
One of the many aspects of Simon Willison's blog that I've enjoyed is the set of posts about coding tools with LLMs (AIs.) The latest one was handier than most for me. It takes an image and downsizes more and more, presenting the different version on a web page so you can judge which one will work best for your website's view while cutting down on the amount of data your web site serves for that image.
So, here's the faster version of this blog's occasional header
Chosen from a variety of options:
You might wonder if I went meta on this and used the tool to reduce the size of the screenshot of the tool, and I aboslutely did!
With the recent explosion of artificial intelligence (AI) art generators that are making the news of late for all the wrong reasons, I decided to see if I could put it to good use and design some futuristic QSL cards.
Having recently been contacted by the Special Callsigns QSL Manager and being advised that there were 18 QSL cards waiting for me, I decided it was time to create some QSL cards of my own for future use.
Having never used any form of online AI and not having any artistic abilities I was amazed how easy it was to create images using nothing more than a paragraph or so of text to describe what it was I wanted to create.
Since all the QSL cards I received were for contacts on the QO-100 satellite, I set out to create a visually futuristic QSL card that was based around a radio HAM operator and satellite communications.
M0AWS – 1st attempt at creating a futuristic QSL card image using AI Art
To my surprise the results of my first image generation were surprisingly good. The AI generated an image that resembled the simple text that I entered, although I never requested a one legged HAM operator!
Pleased with my very first attempt I gradually improved the description of what I was looking for, adding more and more detail to the text and including things that I wanted to see in the image. Over a fairly short period of time this approach started to generate some very interesting images.
M0AWS – AI Art QSL Image attempt 2M0AWS – AI Art QSL Image attempt 3M0AWS – AI Art QSL Image attempt 4
With each iteration I gradually got closer to what I was trying to achieve but, never quite got exactly what I wanted so, I decided to rewrite the descriptive text adding even more information than before. The text was now a full blown paragraph with quite specific things described including the angle at which the scene was being viewed from.
The other option I wanted to try out was the theme functionality that the AI offered. This allows you to set a theme for the image from things like steampunk, cartoon, manga, real world and many more. The results were quite impressive and added yet another angle to the image generation.
M0AWS – AI Art QSL Theme 1M0AWS – AI Art QSL Theme 3M0AWS – AI Art QSL Theme 2
I disappeared down the theme AI Art generation rabbit hole for quite some time and generated some very interesting and fun results. The best by far though was the Thunderbirds themed image, this did put a smile on my face!
M0AWS – AI Art QSL Thunderbirds Themed
At the other end of the spectrum I tried the Salvador Dalli theme, it produced an image that was very like the work of the famous artist but, wasn’t quite what I was looking for.
M0AWS – AI Art QSL Salvador Dalli Themed
After much fun I eventually settled on the image I was after, a futuristic scene of a radio HAM with a satellite ground station over looking a mountain range and city below.
M0AWS Satellite QSL Card generated using online AI
I’m really pleased with the results from my ventures into AI generated art. The next challenge is to create a QSL card for HF bands Contacts.
In this MiscDotGeek article, we’re trying something… different. This is an experiment. You know my writing, you know my style. Read the article. Poke holes in it. Why? See at the end (don’t cheat!) High Altitude Balloons: Unlocking the Potential of Near Space Exploration Have you ever wondered what the view from the edge of …
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