What comes to mind when I say "Winamp"?

Well, lately I've been thinking a lot about Winamp.  Dragging and dropping MP3's to your heart's content; having downloads going all day and all night ready to be added to your playlist.  Not to mention seeing what other people used as a Winamp skin and then trying to one up them.  Perhaps you had one of these?  Once your music was in Winamp, it didn't really matter where you got it from - just don't tell Metallica.  Winamp was this tool where every time we got a new computer in the house growing up - all of two times - it was one of the first things to download and install, followed by Limewire of course...Napster for the OG's.  And then my parents would complain about all the popups that constantly came up on the desktop because lord knows what we were actually downloading *shrug*

Why are you thinking so much about Winamp?

Winamp bred my love for music beyond what my Sony Walkman could ever do.  Also the damn metal part on the headphones would get stuck in my hair and then pull my hair out when I took the headphones off...so there's that as well. 

I had a demo for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 on my computer that didn't have music so I curated and looped a Winamp playlist and played the only level, Marseille, while listening to early 2000's alternative, punk, and hiphop, which wasn't too far off from the game's actual track-list anyway.  I'd play that one level for hours while looping my playlist.

When I think of the early 2000's, I think of a culture that saved and stored everything so it could be put in things like Winamp to be used.  Nowadays the notion of saving any media to a hard drive is rarely a thought.  Give me internet access and I'll find it.  Ironically, give me internet access and I'll find too much and then I won't choose anything at all.  That said, every once in a while you do end up finding something pretty awesome - so let's keep it moving below.

What the hell happened at the end of Season 2??

I'm not gonna lie, I completely forgot about this show. With two years between season 1 and season 2, how could you not?  Season 1 of Alice in Borderland was really, really, good.  I don't know what it is about the Japanese but they love storytelling that involves a dystopian Japan, whether it be through giant monsters attacking the island, cyberpunks riding red motorcycles, or in this case, regular citizens finding themselves in an abandoned Tokyo immediately forced into life or death games inspired by what you would play at recess.  Kinda sounds like Squid Game doesn't it?  Whenever I tell people about this show the reaction I always get is, so it's basically Squid Game.  I guess both shows involve people playing games to survive?  But what I love about Alice in Borderland is that there's a ton of mystery behind why they're in this dystopian world, why playing cards symbolize the difficulty of the games, and essentially how the characters plan on surviving. You assume the games in the show are just there to kill characters off and then you realize that they actually do so much for plot and character development that you're left with a ton of holy sh*t! moments.  

Mind = blown

I just finished Season 2 and man oh man, what the hell happened?  Who's still alive?  Who's actually dead?  Are there more games to play?  Is there a season 3 coming?  Did they know?  Did they not know?  How did they know?  How could they not know?OK OK OK - I'll stop before I give away actual details of the show in case you're interested in watching.  GO WATCH.

The Twitter Garage Sale

If you live in San Francisco, over the next few days you might see some pick-up trucks driving around with really expensive furniture in the back.  And if you're really lucky you might see a giant blue bird logo being towed through the streets.  That is because Twitter just auctioned off a ton of stuff.  Here's a few items you missed out on:

This light up logo thing with wooden boxes and green fake leaves included  -$40,000

This @ symbol that you could use at a baby shower for someone naming their baby "@" - $15,500

And for the grand finale, this 6 foot bird logo statue that would go great with your collection of other 6 foot social media logos - $100,000

On top of these prices you also had to pay for shipping and it looked like you had to hire someone to go into the building to actually pick up the items you purchased.  So, did you really want that 6 foot tall Twitter logo after all?

"I don't like this weather."

That's what my 4 year old said to me as I walked with her into school the other morning.  It actually wasn't too bad out for a winter morning in Toronto, all things considered.  That said, I couldn't agree more with her.  It's bad enough we need to wear layers upon layers just to get out the door but the one thing you won't see me doing is wearing winter boots.  I've amassed a unique enough shoe collection over the years that I now have strategic pairs for any weather condition, no matter the f*ckery winter throws at me.

Here's a snippet of the rotation where I hope it inspires you to live boot free throughout winter as well!

The main pair I wear in the winter, which I guess are the closest to boots that I've ever gotten, are these Chuck Taylor Gore-Tex Converse's.  They're water proof, have a lining on the inside, and are all black Converse so they pass for stylish shoes.

I've been wearing these Nike Pegasus 30's all winter just to bum around in when I need to be a hobo at the grocery store.  The true test is shovelling snow in these shoes - I've yet to have any wet toes.

I'm about to start putting these replica Jordan 1's in the rotation and wearing them for whatever given that they're...well...fake.  When will I stop talking about these fake shoes, you ask?  I honestly didn't expect to keep bringing them up this much either, but here we are. 

I actually have a pair of Air Max 90 Infrareds that I'll occasionally wear in the winter when the weather isn't horrible but for now I give you what AI created.  No really, I just told Midjourney to create Infrared Air Max 90's in snow and there they are.

If you're curious about the full list, you can see my entire current winter rotation here.

Speaking of AI...

It's getting very interesting how advanced artificial intelligence is becoming for mainstream, non-techy people - to the point where you really don't have to think all that much to get output that looks super professional. 

Back from 2015-2020 I lived and breathed data science and artificial intelligence and around 2016/2017, to build a model that could understand something as binary (yet still very complex) as positive or negative emotion in a chat was considered this HUGE feat.  Now that kind of technology comes as a standard pre-canned piece of software from any major cloud provider (Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc.).  What we've recently seen over the past few months is the advancement of "AI prompts" aka saying the right thing to get the AI to do what you want it to do.  You're probably familiar with what's called "AI skills" if you have any form of a Google Home type of device in your house. A skill is something you say to these devices in order for it to do what you want it to do - "Hey Google, play music". Think of an AI prompt as an even more specific skill which leads to an even more specific outcome.  What this is all eventually leading to is the ability to create things like text and imagery in a matter of seconds with very little thought and effort.  Crazy right?  The robots are coming!  

I've been messing around further in ChatGPT as well as MidJourney.  There's a lot going on in those worlds but more on all of that next week.