June 2, 2025
By: Stephen Toback
In my evaluation of various AI avatar generation tools, they all are striving for "photo-realistic" or "hyper-realistic" avatars - synthetic or cloned. I'm finding that all of them have moved firmly into the "uncanny valley" and I don't have hope...
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May 23, 2025
By: Stephen Toback
I've heard a lot about the new video engine from Google (Veo3). The samples I've seen we're impressive, but my test has always been, can I make video that we could actually use. For the first time in the 3...
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May 15, 2025
By: Stephen Toback
I recently had a chance to experiment with Colossyan.com, a tool that lets you create AI avatar videos from text scripts—and even in different languages. To test it, I used the Italian translation of a script on the Lense-Thirring effect...
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May 1, 2025
By: Stephen Toback
Or... maybe not. https://warpwire.duke.edu/w/jdQIAA/ Positives: Super inexpensive Markers are great Text is super bright Runs off USB power (just plugged in into the hub on my desk Very portable Issues that need to be resolved: Stability - not practical if...
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March 12, 2025
By: Stephen Toback
Brandon Johnson and I have been working to develop a streaming "kit" that can be checked out as one possible way of filling the gap of the lack of internal live streaming services at Duke. The goal is for something...
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January 23, 2025
By: Todd Stabley
I’ve been doing a few updates at home, and as part of that ordered three pendant lights to replace the existing ones in the kitchen. When they arrived, I was disappointed to find that the part that attaches to the...
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January 10, 2025
By: Stephen Toback
I recently parted ways with YouTube TV due to its price increase and my family's lack of television use. One thing that my wife missed was watching Friends. Friends were recently put behind a paywall on services such as MAX,...
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January 3, 2025
By: Stephen Toback
Please comment if you experience this as well, but sometimes, AI just flat out does not work. Sometimes it's brilliant, but there are times when even the most simple things absolutely don't work. I hope someone who understands AI better...
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By: Stephen Toback
Apple's "Image Playground" is aptly named. It seems more like a children's game than any sort of AI image generator. Not really sure of the purpose. It wouldn't let me paste a prompt into the interface and the amount of...
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January 2, 2025
By: Stephen Toback
I decided to take what I learned in migrating my band's website to html from the Squarespace platform and apply it to migration of my personal website. Here are some of the lessons learned that can hopefully help you as...
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