“What if this is as good as it gets?” Good enough.
Author Archives: Steve Mays
Blog maintenance: Video
When I started blogging in 2002 it was really hard to include video in a post. YouTube was still three years away. Google had a video player for a while but streaming just wasn’t a thing. The first video files I uploaded were tiny because they had to download before they could be watched. But all that changed with faster computers and more bandwidth. And, of course, smart phones that could record video.
YouTube made it very easy to upload and share video from a website like mine. I have 677 posts on this blog that include video. Most of those were created by someone else but I’ve created a couple of hundred. My first was in February of 2006.
There are other streaming platforms besides YouTube. Vimeo, TED Talks, and WordPress has a player for streaming mp4 files. Fifty-nine of my posts use something other than a YouTube embed.
My posts with video now fall into several categories under Media & Entertainment:
Of the 200+ videos that I’ve posted here, 44 of them were me talking to the camera. Not sure these would be considered “selfies.”
Audio
Seventy-nine of my posts include audio. Interviews, funny songs, old radio jingles and commercials, etc. Some of my favorite stuff.
Quotable
“By populating the world with so many different minds, each with its own point of view, God gives us a suggestion of what it means to be omniscient.”
— Quicksilver (Neal Stephenson)
AI voices for radio jingles
1949 Ferrari 166 MM Barchetta
Mr. Wolf is no stranger to rare and beautiful automobiles but even he sounds a little impressed by one of his recent jobs.
1949 Ferrari 166 MM Barchetta. 1 of 10 short hood Barchettas, I believe it is roughly the 30th Ferrari built, though I could be off by a large margin – Ferrari information is notoriously cloudy. Serious race history, driven extensively by Biondetti.
The gravity of this thing is incredible, just having it around to appreciate in person, in private… I spent some time each day sitting next to it while having my espresso.
A bit of tinkering, rewiring a few things, fiddling with the exhaust and carburetors, and – the best part – designing and fabricating a battery hold down. The original went missing some time ago.
I asked him what he was doing to a car “now worth something like $10,000,000.”
It’s an odd, push-down-from-above battery hold down, and all of the parts are gone, and no reference photos exist. So I got to spend a couple days thinking, sketching, welding… What would a bunch of scrappy Italians have done in 1949?
Basically, a lot of time and effort to make something simple, unimpressive, and invisible once the battery cover goes on, and I’m thrilled!
He describes the owner as “a very cool old fellow, and a longtime Ferrari historian. Very knowledgeable, really knows his stuff. I once re-jetted the triple Weber carbs with him at 11pm outside a hotel in 45 degree weather, preparing to climb the Sierras the next morning.”
Truck load of mulch
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Barb’s Garden (May 2024)
The DJI Osmo Pocket 3 has scores of features and hundreds of settings but I’ve been reduced to just capturing a few minutes of straight-on video. (I’m just guessing about the number of features and settings because I’m still discovering new ones every time I turn the camera on)
All of those options allow one (who knows what they’re doing) to create amazing cinematic shots. If you don’t know how to configure and use this camera, it is frustrating. Even with countless how-to videos on YouTube. I’m determined to get comfortable with this camera but I know there will be times when I’m tempted to just grab my iPhone and start recording. Shoot, I haven’t scratched the surface of what the iPhone camera can do. This is probably what it would feel like to take your first flying lesson in an F35.
Dungeon in old Missouri penitentiary
“Best community sports site”
RepublicTigerSports.com is the brainchild of David Brazeal, a long time friend and former co-worker. You won’t find a better community sports site. It features “live game broadcasts, highlights and audio interviews, photos, stats, scores and summaries.”
David gets some help with photos when he’s doing live play-by-play but he does all the content and sells all the advertising. It is a very successful website but a huge undertaking for one person.
David and I recently had a text conversation during which he shared how he was using ChatGPT to help manage content on the site. He recently did a post called “Shout Outs for Seniors”:
“I collected nominations in a form. Fed the exported form data to ChatGPT, spent about 15 minutes and it created the HTML bookmarks at the top of the page linking to each nominee, the H4 headline tags, etc. Rather than having to do all that by hand.
I’ve got the writing prompts honed in on Claude (rather than ChatGPT) so it writes pretty close to my style. For baseball games I have started just looking at my box score and recording a voice memo recapping what happens. I upload the audio to Dropbox, ChatGPT watches that folder and transcribes it. I feed the transcription to Claude and get a rough draft of my game recap. If I have quotes, I feed it my quotes and tell it to use them verbatim. Make a few tweaks when I’m finished and it’s ready.
The voice cloning really creeped me out when you first mentioned it, but I am paying for an ElevenLabs account. I’m not using my voice yet, because it’s not good enough. But I have tinkered with the API and will probably be adding a “listen to this” audio player to every article at some point in the future. I’ve got it working, but haven’t put it in place and haven’t calculated what it would cost.
Ideally I would be able to append each story with 2 seconds of text in the API: This audio version sponsored by Central Bank.Followed by the article.
The bottom line is AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude are making it possible to accomplish tasks that once required hours David doesn’t have as a one-man operation. And the athletes and their families are the big winners.
RadioGPT
I first read about –and started plays with– this technology in February of 2023. I wondered at the time how long it would be before radio station owners took notice. No time at all, it seams.
Futuri Launches RadioGPT, The World’s First AI-Driven Localized Radio Content
Cleveland, Ohio, February 23, 2023 — Futuri is revolutionizing the audio industry with the launch of RadioGPT™ — the world’s first AI-driven localized radio content solution. RadioGPT™ combines the power of GPT-3 technology with Futuri’s AI-driven targeted story discovery and social content system, TopicPulse, as well as AI voice tech to provide an unmatched localized radio experience for any market, any format.
RadioGPT™ uses TopicPulse technology, which scans Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and 250k+ other sources of news and information, to identify which topics are trending in a local market. Then, using GPT-3 technology, RadioGPT™ creates a script for on-air use, and AI voices turn that script into compelling audio.
Stations can select from a variety of AI voices for single-, duo-, or trio-hosted shows, or train the AI with their existing personalities’ voices. Programming is available for individual dayparts, or Futuri’s RadioGPT™ can power the entire station. RadioGPT™ is available for all formats in a white-labeled fashion.
RadioGPT™ also generates social posts, blogs, and other content for digital platforms related to the content on the air in real-time. A TopicPulse Instant Video add-on creates AI-driven short videos on hot topics for social use. By adding on Futuri’s POST AI-enabled podcasting system, stations can take broadcast audio and immediately publish it on-demand with POST’s auto-publishing feature.