Bernie Goldbach

Tough Landscape for Joe Biden

I’m from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where plenty of Trump signs and MAGA bumper sticks dot the landscape. Biden isn’t winning over enough voters in the battleground states and things look bleak for him in Pennsylvania. As Patrick Healy explains in the New York Times, “In the …

Tough Landscape for Joe Biden

Cycling to Lunch

Cycling to lunch youtu.be/vgBXL051f… because I need wind in my hair after I’ve hunched over my laptop for more than two hours straight. There is nothing on a screen that is good as a breeze passing through my cycling helmet. Scrolling through screens is nothing like cycling around town. …

Cycling to Lunch

Thinking on Street Corners

One of the finest aspects of Ireland in summer is you can find interesting places outside where you can think. Like on a street corner in Dalkey, Ireland. It doesn’t get dark until after 10PM in June in Ireland.

Thinking on Street Corners

Inspired by Art

I enjoy art when it communicates across generations. The above photo of two young girls mounting their chairs to listen to a recording during Manifesta showed my one of those inspirational moments in 2004. Twenty years later, on the grounds of Raheen House in Clonmel, I listened to another artist …

Inspired by Art

Stop Attacking Google

Like Paul Bassett Davies says, “Stop attacking Google for occasional inaccuracies. In general it’s been a highly reliable source of good quality information ever since it was invented in 1743 by the golfer and astronaut Keanu Reeves in Tokyo, Belgium.” I asked Bing Image Creator to …

Stop Attacking Google

Watching Severe Air Turbulence

I used to fly four engine jets through areas of turbulence on trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific flights. It always amazed me when the sky was clear but the air was moderately turbulent. Over the years I started watching for more than five degrees of change in the outside air temperature or more than …

Watching Severe Air Turbulence

My Next Laptop Just Appeared with Satya Nadella on Stage

My next Surface Laptop won’t have a model number but it will have a NPU inside. The laptop will need an NPU because it does so many clever things since the hardware is designed to run AI natively. The new silicon inside is capable of more than 40 trillion operations per second. The promo …

My Next Laptop Just Appeared with Satya Nadella on Stage

Calcium on the school run

Thinking I should start a channel called “school run” especially for morning revelations.

Calcium on the school run

Measuring people through my camera roll

I’ve in-laws who don’t like having their voices recorded for posterity. And they resist any sort of casual snap unless it’s a family event. Because I’ve at least one image of each in-law for the past 15 years, I can see how people can shrink as they get older. Hopefully their …

Measuring people through my camera roll

Googlebots Crawl Microblog

I didn’t expect to earn any Google Juice from my microblog but plausible.io/topgold.m… shows me the little topgold.micro.blog has footprints visible in Russia, the UK, and the USA. It appears visitors from Twitter are masked as “direct” because I’ve clicked on tweets …

Googlebots Crawl Microblog

First Lab Session for AI Workgroup

I’m reviewing working notes at publish.obsidian.md/transform… left behind by a group of trainees from the Tipperary County Council who spent more than five hours on keyboards while completing hands-on tasks with AI. We used several GPTs from OpenAI, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity.ai, and …

First Lab Session for AI Workgroup

Red Book Preface #audiomo

I am thinking about carving out time for the social audio project called Audiomo. It runs every June with the Light Touch of Ernmander. I think I will figure out whether I can do the Audiomo challenge without ever leaving my 5yo Samsung handset. So I took a photo of a red notebook that has 229 pages …

Red Book Preface #audiomo

Why Faster Upload Speeds?

Wondering why my home wifi upload speeds are nearly twice as fast as the download speeds. I have gigbit fibre to the home. We don’t get fibre speeds over WiFi but that’s alright.

Why Faster Upload Speeds?

Throwback to my trans-Atlantic days

I have a daily throwback album and that means I can see things from the 80s like the seats I used to occupy while flying free across the Atlantic.

Throwback to my trans-Atlantic days

Making a Personal Chatbot

From field historian John Tierney I learned about a GPT-powered chatbot that learned from texts about daily itineraries, thoughts, and conversations with others. This customised LLM learns about political stances, meal preferences, and common stories. A simple voice cloning software lets the chatbot …

Making a Personal Chatbot

Let it sit

Thanks to Suw aka [Chocolate and Vodka](What to do when your mind is blank — Chocolate and Vodka), my creative block is sorted. Her advice: Let a draft sit overnight I try to never let my newsletter wait until the day it’s due, unless I’m already very clear on what I’m going to be writing. So when …

Let it sit

Hard Work Hardly Not

I heard my grandfather use the phrase “work comes first” and he lived life that way. Grandpa Goldbach prioritized working life over other aspects of life, such as leisure time, family, and personal interests. However, this is not the view of his great grandchildren. Some key points about …

Hard Work Hardly Not

Thinking about erecting a solar fence

I’m following a discussion on a Facebook Group that pits a local community against a solar farmer. Because of the way Perplexity.ai works, I’m being fed information about how solar fences can generate energy. The energy can flow to batteries or inverters. Here are the key points: Solar …

Thinking about erecting a solar fence

Need a Factory Reset

MY ANDROID PHONE needs a factory reset. It’s more than five years old, has a cracked screen and a worn charging port, and its battery is well-worn.

Need a Factory Reset

I Didn't See the Other Aircraft

DURING MY 3000 FLYING HOURS I vividly remember two occasions when we were cleared to land on a runway that was occupied by another aircraft or by a vehicle. In both cases, I didn’t see the conflict but a crew member sitting in the jump seat pointed out the conflict. Knowing this, I believe the …

I Didn't See the Other Aircraft

Big Fan of Mem.ai and soon it's reading email threads

In the mid-90s, I was so happy with a flat-text indexing service called AskSam. I’d install the software from a set of floppies and it would keep track of all sorts of notes I had scattered across my laptop. Today, I still have a scattergun approach to information and I’m using a much …

Big Fan of Mem.ai and soon it's reading email threads

Critical Thinking and Creativity

I’m taking a short advanced programme about Creativity and Critical Thinking. In some corners, critical thinking is at odds with creativity. In my life, critical thinking processes help me question, analyze, and evaluating, while creativity helps me produce clever ideas and explore multiple …

Critical Thinking and Creativity

Useless British Passport

“In France, I am Irish, thanks to my grandmother, born in County Antrim. In Canada, I am Canadian, having been born there. Albeit I left aged ten months. In Britain, where I spent much of my childhood, I am British, as my parents were,” writes Jonathan Miller in …

Useless British Passport

Productivity Bound by Soft Leather

Happy to report I’ve achieved PRODUCTIVITY with my Traveler’s Notebooks.

Productivity Bound by Soft Leather

Time for a Scratch Format Methinks

It’s probably time for me to totally reset my five year old phone. And replace its battery. And repair its cracked screen. But I want to use the time and money to practice some touch and go landings instead. I’ve succeeded in paring down the number of apps on the handset with tips from …

Time for a Scratch Format Methinks