2023 Spring Recess Updates

I wanted to make the most of this year’s Spring Recess. Below are a few things that I accomplished during this late semester respite: a computer storage upgrade, installing Mac OS X Leopard on QEMU, finding Star Wars action figures on eBay, beginning a generative AI and pedagogy bibliography, and spending time with Y.

Upgraded My Desktop Computer’s Boot Drive

I took advantage of a BestBuy deal on 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe SSDs to upgrade my desktop computer’s boot drive. Originally, I had a 512GB NVMe drive installed. I had pulled out the wifi card that was in the secondary M.2 slot awhile back. So, I moved the 512GB to that slot (under the video card as pictured above) and installed the 2TB Samsung drive into the primary M.2 slot (just above the video card as pictured above). With the hardware installation done, I reinstalled Linux Mint 21.1, which I run on my desktop and laptop computers.

Installing Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on QEMU

Since I reinstalled Linux Mint, I thought that it was a good opportunity to play around with QEMU. For most of my Macintosh emulation needs (mostly System 7.5.5 for Apple’s HotSauce and Voyager’s Expanded Books but occasionally earlier versions that best support some Hypercard stacks and other older software), I rely on SheepShaver and Basilisk II. QEMU-System-PPC supports Mac OS 9.x through Mac OS X 10.5. After Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard was my favorite version of Mac OS X, so I picked it for QEMU. After grabbing an ISO from archive.org, it was a short order to install and use Leopard. I had hoped to use an older version of OsiriX to look at the MRI that I had at the University of Liverpool (contemporary DICOM viewers have trouble opening the files), but I should have read the documentation first and seen that OpenGL was a non-starter on the regular version of QEMU.

Star Wars Action Figures from eBay

At the beginning of Spring Recess, I hit eBay and racked up some good deals with bidding and best offers on 3.75″ Hasbro Vintage Collection action figures, Hasbro Retro Collection action figures, and Kenner action figures. I don’t like to collect action figures in their packages. I like to create scenes with them for display. With these new acquisitions, I plan to create some Empire and Return of the Jedi scenes with my 1979 Kenner Millennium Falcon (not pictured) and 2008 Hasbro Legacy Collection Millennium Falcon (pictured above, aka the Big Falcon).

Compiling a Bibliography of Generative AI Technologies and Pedagogy Resources

I compiled all of my current research on Generative AI technologies and how they might be used in teaching on this page. It’s not an exhaustive list, but it has a lot of recent publications. It can help someone get up to speed on what’s going on now with ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, and other AI tools to create text, images, and music from prompts.

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Y and I also got to spend time catching up via video chat with my cousin Angie in Maryland and our graduate school friend Masaya in Japan. We enjoyed a walk in Green-Wood Cemetery just before we were awash in tree pollen. And, we watched a lot of Family Guy, too.