Raymond Kinman is an artist. Specifically, a master woodcarver. He is also famous for his carvings that have been used at Disney theme parks. Yes, Disneyland actually uses hand carved signs!
Raymond Kinman carved sign at Disneyland, 2003. Photo from my DisneyFans.com photo archives.
I had no idea when I took that photo at Disneyland in 2003 that this was actually a hand carved piece. I guess I just assumed it was some fiberglass mold:
You can learn more about Mr. Kinman and see photos of some of his Disney projects at this site:
Today’s topic is, once again, A.I. I have written about A.I. While I hate A.I. slop as much as anyone, I see great value in it as a tool when used by artists, musicians and other creative people. Just like a great guitar can’t make a bad guitar player sound good, a great A.I. doesn’t make a random person able to create works of art or the next Top 40 hit. (Though, since art and music tastes are subjective, it could certainly produce something you really love to see or listen to. There have been many “bad” songs that have gone to #1, and many “bad” paintings that have become legendary.)
But I digress. Again.
Here is Mr. Kinman’s Facebook group where he shares updates:
And here is what he recently posted about A.I. I think this is worth a read as it comes from a master artists with 50+ years of experience.
I’m going to take on something controversial here, so if you’re interested, you’re going to have to slow down and take a minute to read this…’cuz I’d really like to hear your thoughts. I’m going to make the case for why I think using AI can actually be a very good thing for artists.
First, I’m not unaware of the downside. If you think AI is a bad thing for the world, you’re not wrong. I have a fairly decent understanding of the technology and how it works, at least from a layman’s point of view, and I can see nearly an infinite number of ways this could go wrong for humanity. Yeah, the environmental impact. All of it. There is an astonishing upside too, but I’m going to leave that argument alone for now because that’s a rabbit hole I don’t want to go down.
Instead, I want to make the case for what AI is doing FOR the arts and how this has the potential to become a very good thing for artists.
Think about what happened when photography was invented.
Before the camera, one of the primary ways an artist could make a living was painting portraits of wealthy and powerful people. If you wanted a convincing image of yourself, you needed somebody who had spent years learning how to reproduce the human face, the human body, clothing, light and texture with extraordinary accuracy. Then photography came along and suddenly a machine could do that job far faster and more accurately.
You can imagine how frightening that must have been for painters. Why would anybody pay me to spend weeks or months painting a portrait when they can have a photograph taken in minutes? This spells disaster for the artist. The end of painting.
But it wasn’t.
Something much more interesting happened. Photography freed artists from having to spend their careers proving that they could reproduce reality. Artists were suddenly free to explore what else painting could become. Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso and countless others didn’t have to compete with the camera. They could ask entirely different questions about art. Photography didn’t kill painting. It helped liberate it.
I think AI may be doing something similar, and I want to show you what that looks like in my own work.
Stone and wood complement one another beautifully, and I had this idea I wanted to explore. I wanted to carve a translucent alabaster relief of a beautiful, tasteful female form, backlit so the stone would glow in the shallow areas, and set it inside a deeply carved wooden frame. I’ve never done any stone carving before, my work has always been in relief woodcarving.
The problem is that I don’t draw very well, and I’m certainly not an illustrator. I can sketch a little, enough to work out my ideas anyway. Everything starts there. The human touch. So I made the little sketch you see here. Then I took the idea to AI.
Screenshot
I asked it to help me visualize what I was imagining. I asked it to push back on my own biases and show me what I wasn’t seeing. I asked it to show me possibilities I hadn’t considered. I asked what I needed to learn about carving stone, what tools I might need, how translucent alabaster behaves with light, and what might actually be possible.
In other words, I asked it to help me see. And it does this astonishingly well.
Screenshot
The second image is not the sculpture. It isn’t even the finished design. It’s a working model of an idea. That distinction is super important to me. Now I have something I can look at, question, change and develop. I can take this model to a real illustrator and have a human being refine it into a workable design. Then I can take that design into my shop and carve the actual sculpture entirely by hand. I’ll be the one holding the tools. I’ll be the one reading the stone. I’ll be the one making the cuts and figuring out what the material will and won’t allow me to do.
I’ve spent nearly fifty years learning how to draw, carve, design and see. AI hasn’t replaced any of that experience. What it has done is give me a way to explore ideas and understand them at a speed I never could before.
If I don’t understand composition, AI can give me a pretty picture. If I DO understand composition, it can give me hundreds of possibilities to examine, reject and develop. If I don’t understand carving, it can give me an image of something that looks like it could be carved. If I’ve been carving for fifty years, I can look at that image and start asking whether the forms actually make sense in wood or stone.
The technology doesn’t eliminate the need for artistic knowledge. In many ways, it makes that knowledge more valuable because I still have to know what I’m looking at. So I’m not interested in having AI make my art for me. I’m interested in using it to expand what I’m capable of imagining.
Photography didn’t end painting. It changed what painting could be. Maybe AI is going to do the same thing for all of us.
For me, this is what I mean by The Human Touch. The tech helps me see farther than I could see before, but eventually the idea comes back into human hands.
It should be obvious that if all you have is a sedan, you probably won’t be moving any furniture. Likewise, if all you have is a 2-seater car or pickup truck, you won’t be taking any extra people with you on a road trip. Households that have multiple vehicle types are far more flexible with what they can do. While I only have a hatchback car, I also have an electric scooter and make great use of that for short errands, saving gas and maybe polluting the planet just a bit less than driving my car would.
The same can be said about operating systems, whether than be a desktop computer OS such as macOS, Windows or Linux, or a mobile operating system such as Android, iOS, or iPadOS.
During my days as a Windows PC user, all I could run was Windows stuff. Linux became a thing, allowing folks like me to dual-boot and take advantage of a world of open source software plus Windows software. I never ran Linux on my Toshiba laptop, but I did dual boot into Microware OS-9000 (but that’s a story for another time).
I really learned the value of running more than one OS when I switched to Macintosh in 2001. I was suddenly able to run a new (to me) world of Mac software, as well as continue to run all my Windows programs via Connectix’s Virtual PC emulator (later Microsoft Virtual PC). I gained so much by being able to run the Mac stuff I wanted, and still have access to Microsoft Money or PC-only development tools like BASIC Stamp and such.
Google Maps versus Apple Maps
All this to say … right now, iPhone users may have a map advantage. I generally use Google Maps for the majority of my searching, but over the years I have found a number of cases where the Apple Maps satellite view is more up to date than what Google has. For instance, up until recently, Google Maps was showing the Lost Island Theme Park in Waterloo, Iowa as a large patch of dirt — even though the park had been open five years.
Google Maps of Lost Island Theme Park via Street View (7/22/2026)
Meanwhile, Apple Maps was showing the park built out, though not updated enough to have the new roller coaster they added last year.
Apple Maps of Lost Island Theme Park (7/22/2026)
Had I only used Google Maps, I’d still be looking at dirt. (NOTE: The top screen shoot from Google was created on July 22, 2026 — it shows dirt because this is the image Google uses for their Street View upload site. If you go to maps.google.com you can see their more updated image that shows the park there.)
There are likely many examples where the other case is true and Google Maps has more updated aerial imagery.
All this to say … if you use an iPhone, you should have Google Maps installed in addition to Apple Maps. If you use an Android phone, there is no Apple Maps app available, but you can at least access it via the web browser at https://maps.apple.com
Don’t limit yourself. You can have more capabilities ;-)
And all you Open Street Maps fans can comment away telling us how much better than is than either of these choices.
Stef, a Happiness Engineer with Jetpack, quickly responded to my support ticket. They have confirmed that my site is not commercial, and reclassified me as a personal site. This will allow me to continue viewing the Jetpack Stats without needing to pay for an upgraded commercial account. Thank you, Stef!
Normally, I don’t think it is fair to complain about “free” stuff. Jetpack does not force ads on my content, so, as far as I can tell, using their plug-in on WordPress for personal sites truly is free. I do, however, pay for a backup service they offer, so at least they get some money out of money.
Sadly, that backup plan is no longer available, and has been replaced by a more expensive offering which I would not be able to justify for a personal site like this. Still, better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it available.
Today Jetpack Stats informed me I need to upgrade to a commercial plan for this site. For some reason, I have been flagged as a commercial site. Commercial sites can use it free if they have under 5000 visitors a month which, apparently, this humble blog exceeds. That alone is surprising, since I mostly post about a 1980s Radio Shack computer, and embedded C programming ;-)
I just wanted to assure my thousands of ‘bots that scan this site regularly that I:
Have no ads on this site.
Do not request donations.
Do not have affiliate links.
About the closest I ever get to “commercial” is when I put an Amazon link to something ;-)
I thought I’d post this so the Jetpack Support folks have something to see when/if they check out my site to verify my claim.
A few years ago, I wrote a short series about my experiences growing up during the video game revolution that started in the 1970s. I hope to finally publish this series later this year, once I have time to find related video clips and photos.
But before I get to this, I thought I’d set the mood with a bit of video game-related trivia about Sub-Etha Software…
As you may know, Sub-Etha Software was not a gaming company. We mostly did application and utility software. However, we did release a graphical adventure game and a Space Invaders-style game, and did resell some games written by others.
In May 1993, at the 2nd annual “Last” Chicago CoCoFEST!, Sub-Etha Software announced something rather silly: a PONG programming contest. (Yes, Pong — the mother of all video games, released by Atari in 1972.)
According to my Fest report of that event, awards were to be given “based on memory efficiency, speed, originality, special effects, and playability for RS-DOS, OS-9, or OSK”. The winner was to be announced in October that year at the Atlanta CoCoFest.
TODO: link to fest report somewhere
I created a small OS-9 Level 2 demo program that played Pong on a text screen, along with details about the contest.
The winner was GNOP byChris Hawks of HawkSoft. This MM/1 (OS-9/68000) program kept the ball frozen in the center of the screen, while the entire box play area scrolled around it, with the paddles having to be controlled as the whole playfield moved. This was a very original take on Pong. HawkSoft made this program available for $5.
This, alone, makes for a cute story, but there’s another tidbit I do not know if I ever shared.
In 1993, Atari Corporation was still around. Their last home computer, the Atari ST, was being discontinued while the company turned its attention to a new video game system: the Atari Jaguar. The Jaguar would debut in November that year as the first home gaming system to use 64-bit chips (back in the day when the cutting edge gaming systems were all claiming 32-bit). Although the Jaguar never really caught on, it had some phenomenal games and was, at least initially, manufactured in the USA by IBM.
But I digress.
The point is, Atari was kind of between successes at the time (and actually would cease to exist just three years later when it was “reverse merged” with a hard drive manufacturer). For some reason, I thought it might be fun to contact Atari and see if I could get permission to legally use the name “Pong” for an official Color Computer version.
That’s right. I was actually trying to license Pong for the CoCo!
I contacted Atari about this (I don’t remember how, but I expect it was via a telephone call) and I recall whoever I spoke to was open to discussing a proposal, but I never pursued it further. Admittedly, I was really just wanting permission to use the name, as Sub-Etha would not have had any resources to pay any significant licensing fee. (Actually, it’s possible I may have contacted an Atari rep via the GEnie online service since they had an active presence there back then.)
I regret not following up on this silly idea. If I had been able to work something out, the CoCo could have been forever listed on the Wikipedia page as one of the only (if not the only) “official” Pong games that ever existed not done by Atari (or whoever owns them today).
Interestingly enough, Pong did make a comeback in 2012 when Atari released a 40th anniversary “Pong World” game for iOS. This version actually started out as an entry in a Pong Indie Developers Challenge where $100,000 was up for grabs to the best new versions of Pong.
Perhaps if Sub-Etha Software had offered that kind of prize (rather than the $1 we offered the winner), we would have had more entries back in 1993.
So there you have it… Another bit of “almost was” history from Sub-Etha Software. Apparently, we had a good idea, but had it 19 years too soon and without enough money to get people interested ;-)
1993 wasn’t my last encounter with Pong… While working for RadiSys, the company that bought Microware (creator of OS-9), we were working with a CPU virtualization company on a product that would allow the real-time OS-9 to run concurrently with Linux on a multi-core CPU. The idea would be the OS-9 side could be used for intense real-time operations, while Linux could be used for application level user interfaces and such.
A Pong demo was created, that showed OS-9 running one paddle and Linux running the other. (I do not recall having anything to do with this demo, but I found it amusing enough that I posted a video of it to YouTube back in 2006.)
I don’t know if this product ever came out or was ever used, but maybe the new owners of Microware OS-9 still have some Pong code kicking around their offices somewhere… ;-)
I switched to Mint Mobile, and the first month worked out well. My phone logged 16+ GB of data on this “unlimited talk, unlimited text and unlimited data” plan. It was cheaper than what I had on T-Mobile, which is amusing since Mint is owned by T-Mobile. T-Mobile also owns Sprint, and now US Cellular. Great coverage, and even cheaper plans for folks who don’t need “unlimited” data.
I prepaid for the longest term they offer – 12 months – and got in on a $15/month deal. But if that had not been an option, I could have gotten a plan with more data than I normally use for less than I was paying.
And all of this makes me think back to what I used to pay when the iPhone came out on AT&T ages ago. Back then, my limited minutes pan was $40, then I paid extra for text (not unlimited), and $20 to add data. Geesh.
Hello from the U.S.A. Anyone here who has ever imported items from Europe has learned about the V.A.T. (Value-added tax – Wikipedia). A few years ago, I wanted a THEVIC20 – a replica Commodore VIC-20 computer that ran an emulator capable of running Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore 64 software:
Unfortunately, the manufacturer never released it in the U.S.A. so my only option was to import one. I ended up buying from one of the European Amazon stores (I think it was England). If I recall, there was a fee for currency exchange, as well as a pretty high shipping fee to the U.S.A., and then … V.A.T. This made it much more expensive than if I had been able to pick one up at my local Best Buy.
Replica Commodore VIC-20: TheVIC20.
To make matters worse, my unit was defective, so I had to pay to ship it back to England to return it, then buy it again.
I really wanted a THEVIC20. My first computer was a VIC-20, you see. But mine was a VIC-20 “Color” computer, not a VIC-20 “Colour” computer. Close enough, though.
Whatever value this tax adds, I am sure the Europeans appreciate it.
But I digress.
Earlier this year I learned that I could record 360 video footage and then upload it, along with a GPS log, to Google Street View and get my footage published as a Street View “blue line”. Cool.
While most of my submissions worked fine, others did not.
The wrist-worn GPS Remote I use with my Insta360 X5 camera would sometimes have gaps in the GPS or jumps in the GPS data and this would be rejected by Amazon. I have previously written about how you can (or try to fix) these issues using programs/scripts.
After having a few GPS logs fail to record on the GPS remote, I started using logs recorded on my smartphone as a backup. I have also read that the GPS in the phone would do a better job and be more accurate.
However, even with that, sometimes the data still wouldn’t be good enough for Google.
Remember the Sony GPS-CS1, anyone?
This reminded me of when I first started geotagging my digital photos. We didn’t have smartphones with built-in GPS yet. This was back in the era of Palm Pilots and Blackberries. At the time, I bought a Sony GPS-CS1 standalone GPS logger. It looked like this:
For many years, it hung off my camera bag. I’d power it up at the start of the day, let it record all day, then later download the GPS data via USB and then add it to my photos using a program called HoudahGPS, which I just found is still available:
Eventually, I switched to using a program on my iPhone (GeotagPhotos 2) or this purpose. With that, I didn’t have to worry about replacing AA batteries or manually downloading. The gps log would just appear on my computer thanks to my phone syncing with cloud storage.
But I digress. Again.
$150 back then is…
At $150 in 2006, that Sony GPS-CS1 would cost about $240 in 2025 as I write this:
So imagine my surprise when I started looking at a modern device to serve as replacement or backup for my Insta360 logger or my smartphone and found one for about $240!
This company was located in the USA, but the product was made in China. And, for some reason, they ship from Canada. Were they trying to bypass some tariffs or something?
I had to pay $25 for “international” shipping, and they warned I would be responsible for tariffs and such, paid to the shipping company (DHL).
This morning, I received a text from DHL with my “import duty payment” notice.
Those fees were… $92.54
So if I take the $134 of the unit plus those fees, I get around $226 – slightly less than what I paid for my original data logger back in 2006 after adjusting for inflation.
While any of us should prefer paying less, I guess I still “paid less” even with the extra fees compared to what it cost 20 years ago ;-)
There is an old Disney urban legend that Walt Disney was cryogenically frozen and, when medical technology has evolved to cure his cancer, he will be thawed out and cured. In modern internet times, this tale really took off with Disney fans, leading to several books and even a movie:
If I recall, my name is in the credits of that movie … because I backed it on Kickstarter or whatever fund raisingsite it was using at the time. ;-)
But I digress…
It has been claimed that Disney’s “ice princess” movie was released under the title Frozen so when people web search for “walt disney frozen” the search engines will return hits about the movie Frozen instead of the urban legend. “Ah! It’s a cover up! It must be true!”
And this is clearly not true, because if you web search for that, you get a bunch of front page results about the urban legend, well before you get to anything about the animated movie.
I propose Microsoft create a new game for Windows called “Bugs” — perhaps some modern update of Dung Beetles (known as Mega-Bug on the CoCo).
That way, when you web search “microsoft bugs” you get results about the game, and not about the frustrating thing that just got pushed to your PC in the latest Microsoft Windows Update.
My late friend, Steve Bjork, had quite an interesting life. While I do not know anything about his childhood an upbringing, he did share tidbits about his later years. In the 1970s, he worked for Magic Mountain (known as Six Flags Magic Mountain after 1979) in Valencia, California.
A number of movies have been filmed at Magic Moutain over the years, including National Lampoon’s Vacation which used the park as a stand-in for the fictional Wally World. It was also used in one of the Beverly Hills Cop movies.
But long before those 1980s classic was: Rollercoaster.
Filming on this epic 1977 disaster (?) movie began in 1976, according to the wikipedia entry on the film. Steve had mentioned he was an extra in this movie, and I had thought maybe he just went down and lined up to audition. (That is how it worked when me and some friends “auditioned” in high school for a movie that was filmed in East Texas.)
Steve mentioned he was in a scene loading a roller coaster. I wondered if we could find him. Thanks to the help of Eric, who was able to locate where I could watch this movie, I began scrubbing through the film looking for any scenes showing a roller coaster load area.
Finally, at around the 1:44 mark near the end of the film, we found him. Ladie’s and gentlemen, a young Steve Bjork!
Steve Bjork in Rollercoaster (1977) at about the 1:44 mark.
As the coaster car pulls back into the station, several costumed park workers quickly go to the car to start unlocking the lap bars so the riders can get out. At the far back of the room is Steve. The movie stars are riding in the back and you get to see Steve in two different clips of this scene.
For comparison, here is the earliest public photo of Steve I could find, which appeared in the January 1983 issue of SOFTLINE magazine:
Steve Bjork in SOFTLINE, January 1983, p54.
I have not checked to see if he can be spotted elsewhere in the film, so if you decide to look for him, let me know if you find something new.
