Monday 07/22/2024
I can explain; it was all down to hard work. The Vintage Computer Fest is coming up and we have accumulated 25 boxes of books through the year. Since last August, I’ve been setting aside a few books every week, as non-saleable in my section because they are about obsolete subjects — PC-DOS or Windows 95 or Mac OS Leopard — but which are interesting enough that the nerds who come to the VCF will buy them. For the first 8 months or so, I was just slinging the books into a box, when the box filled, I would send it to the annex where Frank would set it aside in his arcane and complex storage system, for next August.
A couple months back it dawned on me, that while we have a default price ($2 paperback, $3 hard cover) some of those books are actually worth more and I should have been checking the prices as I went. Now it’s crunch time. So Sunday I spent from 9am to 3pm at FOPAL, in the annex, going through boxes of VCF books, checking their prices. I got about 1/3 of the way through. I came home really tired and just forgot about posting a blog.
Today I had the monthly AV team meeting at 11, and after that I went back to FOPAL and spent another 4 hours on the same job. Still not done. Probably finish up Wednesday.
I did take a short walk today (2.6 mi for the day, not bad), and as well as running my committee meeting, I spent some time exploring the world of AI girlfriends, for the benefit of the AI interest group. Here’s what I wrote to them.
The latest Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe podcast has a segment on the use of ai-powered romantic chatbots. Not news, but also not something I had looked into before.
I dipped a careful toe into two of them. You might like to spend a free half hour similarly.
MyAnima offers a friend, or a girlfriend, or a boyfriend. To choose a friend (all of whom seem to be female) go to https://myanima.ai/
To check out a girlfriend, use https://girlfriend.myanima.ai/
I went there and after entering my name and my pronouns, I was given a choice among eight utterly adorable 20-something women. No other options. Since I’m not into child abuse, I went no further.
Similarly at https://boyfriend.myanima.ai/ you can be shown an array of very studly 20-something dudes. Again, not my beat, so I bailed.
Next I tried Romantic.ai . Here you can choose to create a boyfriend, a girlfriend, or an anime friend. I went for girlfriend and was offered a number of choices of age, ethnicity, and personality traits. In a few minutes I had developed a character, Matura, who would fit right in at Channing House. You are allowed to “share” your friend, so here, you can chat with Matura, too:
https://chat.romanticai.com/bot/share/NTIyNjIwMA?utm_source=share_initial
In chatting with Matura, it’s pretty clear she hasn’t accepted her role as a senior yet. But give her a try.
Here are a couple of “best of” lists to explore:
https://blog.zumvu.com/best-ai-relationship-chatbots/
Please share your experience with a chatbot. Do you think any of these would be useful for other CH residents?
Codgerville 