Sunspots - Thursday November 20th

 Solar flux is 123 and the SSN 60. A=3 and K=2.

London trip

We went to London on a coach with our village theatre group to see the musical "The Devil Wears Prada". The coach dropped us and picked us up quite close to the theatre. It was a good, happy, performance. We always have time before the performance to get a meal.

No radio today

 As were in London much of the day, I was not on the radio today, but hope to be tomorrow. Probably 6m 5W FT8 and 10m 500mW WSPR.

Kierkgaard quote about life

 There is a famous quote by the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard about life. It is pretty profound.

"Life can only be understood backwards. But must be lived forwards."

AI voice?

As many know, I had a stroke in 2013 that left me with a totally poor voice that many find hard to understand. Before my stroke I made quite a few YouTube videos, so I have quite a few samples of what I used to sound like.

My wife has suggested I use these to create an AI voice of me as I once sounded. I have never tried AI for this, but it sounds a good idea. The first stage will be to collect some audio samples from YouTube and then recreate my old voice using an AI tool.

If you know of suitable (preferably free) tools,  please let me know as soon as possible.

Sunspots Wednesday November 19th

 Solar flux is 120 and the SSN 66. A=5 and K=0.

More from Times Radio

This video was on YouTube earlier.  It includes a piece about the disappearance of Sergei Lavrov who is the Russia Foreign Minister who seems to have "dropped off the radar" in recent weeks. Apparently he is very bright and has been a real supporter of President Putin of Russia.

Search engine gripe

Have you noticed that when you search for something often the site at the top of the search (which many people click first) is NOT the main site you are looking for?  

Unless you are very careful, you are linked to some other site. I noticed this recently when I tried to donate to a charity. The first site was nothing at all to do with the site I was after.

Today, I was looking for another site and the first link (presumably paid for) was nothing at all to do with the site I was after.   Personally I find this morally wrong and sneaky.

AI and data centres

There is no doubt that AI consumes hugs amounts of power. We have some way to go to match the memory and processing power of the human brain. I am sure this will get better with time although we are a long way away at present. 

So far I have been very impressed with Gemini AI that renders old black and white photos in colour in just seconds.

This creates a moral dilemma: we all want the benefits of AI without its power-hungry nature.

10m 2W FT8 (Tuesday)

My gear was turned on at about 1020z.

UPDATE 1832z:  So far, spotted by 354 stations. See map.