My best friend lost his Dad yesterday. Understandably he's extremely upset, and I feel awful for him. I never know what to do in these situations - "how are you doing?" just feels such a stupid thing to say. Like it's nowhere near enough. Of course he isn't doing well, you fucking idiot!

His loss has brought about feelings of loss following the death of my own Dad. Who we lost back in 2008 to cancer, when he was 47. Watching him just wither away was heartbreaking. Especially at the age of 23.

Now, nearly 20 years on, I rarely get upset about the loss. I still think about him all the time, but seeing what my friend has been going through has jumped it right to the front of my mind. Especially since the loss of my sister is still so raw.

I had a dream about my dad last night, the first I've had in a while. The dream was nothing special, I don't even fully remember what happened in it. But what I do vividly remember was that his voice wasn't right. And then I realised, I don't remember what my Dad's voice sounded like.

I have no videos of him, and no recordings on his voice. For a year or so after he died, I used to call his phone as it would go straight to voicemail and I'd get to hear his voice. Eventually the line was cut though. I wish I'd recorded it, just to have something.

I don't even have many photos of him. Most of them are from when I was a baby. I only have 1 photo of him and I as adults, which was taken on the day I passed out of basic training in the Army.

LTR: My dad, me, my dad's dad.

Just one conversation

Not being able to remember his voice isn't the only reason I'd love to talk to him again. He was funny, and always made me belly laugh. He loved to sing too - and was bloody good at it!

I'm also a very different person now than I was in 2008. I'd like for him to meet his grandsons, and I'd like to know what he thinks of the man I've turned into. He only met my (now) wife once or twice - he'd have loved her, and she'd have loved him.

All very narcissistic, I know. Be he was my dad!

Conversely, I'd love to know what kind of an old man he turned into. Would he still be as funny? Or would have turned into a grumpy old curmudgeon? Would we still go for a couple beers every Friday? Would he come here for barbecues in the summer? I'd have loved that.

There's no real point to this post, really. These thoughts have just been spinning around my grey matter for the last few days, and I wanted to work through them, which I think I've done a pretty poor job of.

So yeah, losing a loved one is shit. It never leaves you, and I feel horrendously sorry for my mate.

I'll try and make the next one more positive...

I was in the office today, working away, and I often have my personal laptop, a Framework 13 next to me so I do things like check notes and emails, listen to music, etc.

I reached over to grab something on the other side of my desk and managed to knock an entire fucking cup of coffee all over my beloved laptop. It immediately died, I assume because of some kind of safety net built into the device.

I cleaned my desk up, and headed straight home to strip it down, clean it up, and dry it out. My first pass at cleaning removed a load of coffee with a combination of contact cleaner (which is a solvent suitable for electronics) and my little air compressor to blow it all out.

I switched the laptop back on - it made a horrible noise, the screen flickered and it shut off.

FUCK!

Going further

Next thing was to remove the mainboard to get deeper into the guts of the laptop. Shock horror, there was more coffee behind there too! So I repeated the cleaning process again, only this time a lot more thoroughly.

Here's what it looks like now:

I then found a few little spots of corrosion on the board. I'm really worried it was a result of the spillage on live components, and have therefore ruined the mainboard.

So I took to DuckDuckGo to see what the best remedy is, and apparently it's isopropyl alcohol (IPA for short). I've ordered some for delivery tomorrow, and will continue cleaning it up to see if I can get this thing to live again. If not, I may have to buy a new mainboard (around £600).

In the meantime I'm back on my M1 MacBook Air and I'm hating it. The operating system feels almost user hostile. I know it isn't, because I used to love it, but now I'm so used to using Linux again, this feels horrible.

Hopefully I'll be able to get back to my Framework in the next couple days. Wish me luck!

This post piqued my interest, and surprise suprise, I have opinions. 🙃

I've spoken about my opinions on AI and image generation before and my opinion hasn't changed on that. I have, however, switched from ChatGPT to Claude, for reasons.

Using AI for feature images?

Like I said in my previous post about AI, I don't think it creates art, but it can be useful for diagrams and some imagary. I listed some examples of my usage in that post, go take a look.

For feature images, I think it's fine, I suppose. I don't think it has a bearing on the writer's ability to write good content thought. I think most people can spot AI-generated prose these days. If my spider-sense starts tingling, I'll close the tab. But if I only see an AI-generated feature image, it's fine.

I think images creation and the ability to write nice words are two different skills. Using AI to create a feature image doesn't tell me that the person has a particular lack of creativity, as creativity comes in many forms. Ask Brandon Sanderson to create the cover art for one of his books, and I imagine he'd struggle. Does that make him any less creative? No. It just means he's a creative writer, not a creative artist.

For the record - I have no idea if Sanderson is good at drawing. It's just an example, okay. Please don't email saying "well ackchyually..."

Would I do it? Probably not. But I don't see the point in feature images anyway. I stopped using them many years ago, as generally they add nothing to the post, and are more for the writer to make the post look pretty than anything else.

So when I see these kinds of feature images, my first thought tends to be meh... and my assumption is that the writer probably didn't have the time, or lacked the skills, to create an image. I'd personally prefer they didn't add one at all if that's the case, but that's just me.

Maybe we should all be a little less judgmental. 🤷🏼‍♂️