Goodbye old friend

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The local electric co-op crew insisted on cutting the few remaining live limbs on our old Walnut tree and it wasn’t going to survive. So today we said goodbye. 

Based on several metrics, the tree was between 80 and 100 years old.

The equipment in the video is a knuckleboom loader (specifically a forestry/trash crane) mounted on a grapple truck. This specific configuration is commonly used by tree service companies (like “Korte Tree Care” seen on the door) to load heavy logs and brush into the truck for transport without requiring a separate loader or manual lifting. A complete grapple truck like the one in the video typically costs between $150,000 and $350,000 when purchased new.

Tag cloud graphic

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An earlier post featured two graphical representations (from Perplexity) of the categories I’m currently using on smays.com. As a follow-up, I uploaded the current list of tags.

At first glance one would think this blog is just about ChatGPT and it did capture a lot of my attention over the past couple of years. That will change now that I have deleted my ChatGPT account.

During recent blog maintenance, I moved ChatGPT from category to tag (along with Perplexity and Gemini). Artificial Intelligence is the top-level category for those topics (link below).

Along with all of the blog posts on this topic, I saved a lot of those conversations to my local Documents folder. This morning I prompted Gemini to analyze that “AI Bots” folder. Continue reading →

Crime Fiction Philosphy

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The #1 reason I started this blog was to have a place I could save (and later find) stuff. Lines from movies, favorite quotes from books, a photo, etc. Additionally, I save stuff in a folder in the cloud. AI tools like Gemini offer interesting and creative ways to look at these archives. Below are ten quotes of a philosophical nature from Crime Fiction novels I’ve read.

  1. “The memory is like twin orbiting stars, one visible, one dark, the trajectory of what’s evident forever affected by the gravity of what’s concealed.” — “O” Is for Outlaw, Sue Grafton
  2. “Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn’t blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won’t cheat, then you know he never will.” — A Deadly Shade of Gold, John D. MacDonald
  3. “Civilization seems to be something we choose when it fits our purpose.” — A Drink Before the War, Dennis Lehane
  4. “Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, dear man.” — A Murder of Quality, John le Carré
  5. “Sometimes it’s a dog-eat-dog world and the rest of the time it’s the other way around.” — A Dance at the Slaughterhouse, Lawrence Block
  6. “The whole legal system—if you think it’s just a big set of rules, you’re dead wrong. It’s really a bunch of people sitting around and talking to each other, deciding what they want to do with you.” — A Cold Day in Paradise, Steve Hamilton
  7. “Real power around the world does not reside with governments any longer, but with private interests. Real power is secret power.” — A Firing Offense, David Ignatius
  8. “I believe in God, but not as a he or she or an it, but as something that defines my ability to conceptualize within the rather paltry frames of reference I have on hand.” — A Drink Before the War, Dennis Lehane
  9. “Education is something which should be apart from the necessities of earning a living… the measured and guided study of the history of man’s reiteration of the most agonizing question of all: Why?” — A Deadly Shade of Gold, John D. MacDonald
  10. “Even our most arbitrary actions are the result of the trips we take down our mental highways.” — A Little Yellow Dog, Walter Mosley

Pretty sure my list would have been different but I see that as a feature, not a bug.

Category “tag cloud”

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AI tools like Perplexity and Gemini have proven to be invaluable at giving me a new perspective and understanding of my 24 years of blog posts. I’ve written about this frequently. This morning I provided a list of my categories showing the number of posts in each and prompted Perplexity to create a visual representation of the data. Took a little tweaking but I find the results interesting.

For what it’s worth, Gemini was unable to perform this task but did offer several explanations of what it was my fault and not the AI.

Bronco comes GoPro ready

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My new Ford Bronco comes with a dash mount for a GoPro camera. I assume this is a nod to the popularity of the Bronco for off-roading. I charged up the GoPro (it’s been a while) and recorded a minute or so.

The umbrella term for this kind of video is Car Vlogging (eww!) and covers everything from enthusiasts reviewing supercars to lifestyle influencers sharing their “morning thoughts.” Dashboard Confessional is a more colloquial term used by critics to describe videos where the driver treats the camera like a therapist or a captive audience for a rant.

The “Captive” Dynamic: There is a psychological effect where the viewer feels like a passenger. For the creator, the task of driving provides a “natural” distraction that reduces the pressure of looking directly into the lens, often making the speech feel more conversational and unscripted.

1984 Land Rover 90 resurrection

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From Land Rover guru John Middleton: Picked up a 1984 Land Rover 90 that was an insurance write off after apparently being in a building fire. It runs and drives. We are resurrecting as a 90 pickup.After cutting out some rot and welding in some new frame sections we installed the replacement rear bed.  It hauled its first load of hay.

The next ‘new’ Bronco at your Ford dealer could be an old one

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(From CARBUZZ.COM) Soon, classic SUV fans might be able to go to their local Ford dealer and drive away in a first-generation Bronco restomod. The buyer would even have the choice between having a modern V8 or a dual-motor electric powertrain. The upgraded Bronco builder, Kindred Motorworks, met with potential partner showrooms at the National Automobile Dealers Association conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, to expand the availability of its products.

Kindred Motorworks sells its combustion-powered Bronco restomod starting at $199,000. They come with a Ford Coyote 5.0-liter V8 making 460 horsepower. The engine hooks up to a 10-speed automatic transmission with an Atlas II transfer case, a Dana 44 front differential, and a Ford 9.0-inch rear differential with 35-spline axles. It also has power steering and four-wheel disc brakes.

Inside, there’s hand-stitched leather upholstery, heated front seats, a rearview camera, and a touchscreen infotainment screen that supports Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and Bluetooth. In short, the old off-roader comes equipped with just about everything you’d find in a new one, save for driver assists.

The body looks just like a classic Bronco but with some modern updates. The upgrades include LED headlights and retractable side steps. The doors are still removable, too. The options include a $15,000 hardtop and $1,200 for ceramic window tint. There’s also a $15,000 Trail Package that includes a Warn winch, different front and rear bumpers, a tow hitch, and a tire carrier.