TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Darwin commercial pilot, James Greenberger,   has fulfilled a childhood dream by building his own hovercraft in his carport.  M ost people are familiar with the concept of a hovercraft. Usually it's a vehicle of some kind that sits on a pocket of air, held underneath it via some kind of 'skirt', allowing it to travel on land or water. Typically they're mostly used on water.  While I'm late to the party, recently an ABC news report from 2019 popped up in my YouTube feed of a hovercraft that actually looks like it hovers above the ground. Designed and built by Darwin man,  James Greenberger, the commercial pilot fulfilled a childhood dream by building his own hovercraft: a ground effect vehicle, built in his carport from plans purchased on the internet. The original report is embeded below. Darwin man stuns locals with a hovercraft built in his carport | ABC News Cut to a couple of years later, and James has upgraded his hovercraft to something looking a litt...

W e've always been able to talk to animals, and it's sometimes said, jokingly, you may have a problem if they start talking back, but what if they could? One thing that AI is good at is processing data and spotting patterns, common elements, and highlighting relationships which makes it ideal for all kind of research, so why not studying the language of animals? It seems like science fiction but so were  real-time language translators not too long ago. What if you could understand exactly what your pets are saying to you and speak back to them (through a real-time translator) in their own language? While were not there yet, advancements in AI learning systems seem to suggest that the idea is no longer as far fetched and fanciful as it used to be. To be honest, using AI to decipher animal communication accurately, is something that never crossed my mind but I'm truly excited to know that this research is being done. Watch the Bloomberg Originals video, Could AI Unlock the S...

Han Solo moments from potentially being cooked over an open flame. H ave you ever wondered about the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi ?  When we first meet the tribe, their plan is to serve Han, Chewie, Luke up as the main course in a banquet in C3-PO's honor. That's pretty bad ass right? That suggests they've eaten human meat before. It's not like they're going to experiment on a new cuisine for such an important occasion. They think human meat is pretty tasty, especially roasted over an open flame, and they want to serve it for a special event - it's that good! Which gets me wondering, does that mean, prior to the Rebels arrival on Endor, Ewoks were capturing the occasional Empire employee that wanders a bit too far from the shield generator? There are a couple of movies and animated shows featuring Ewoks that were released after Return of the Jedi, in which the Ewoks do assist humans however there's this except from Wikipedia : The Ewoks capture Han Solo, Che...

Could I be staring in Luc Besson's next Sci-fi epic? T echnically this isn't really Deep Faking but 'Training an AI Model on Yourself' isn't quite as eye catching a headline. Deep faking is the act of replacing one person's face (and sometimes voice) in an image or video with another. It's often done in fantasy casting for films where the face of one or more actors is replaced by another to get an idea of what that actor may have been like in the role. One particularly famous deep fake is  Robert Downey Jr and Tom Holland replacing Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox in the school hallway scene in Back to the future. But I digress... Deep Faking yourself into situations that never happened is now one of my new favorite things to do with AI Image Generators. I don't know why I hadn't thought to do this much sooner as it totally feeds into my somewhat suppressed narcissism. EverArt I got to trial EverArt.ai , a new text to image AI generator totally ...

A TET Cat generated by Leonardo.ai. You may be familiar with the English Artist, Louis Wain (5 August 1860 – 4 July 1939), who is known for his illustrations of anthropomorphic cats that became more patterned and psychedelic in his later years as his mental health declined (at least according to speculation by psychiatrist, Walter Maclay in 1939). Six examples of Louis Wain's cat art supposedly suggesting the decline of the artist's mental health but the date of each work is unspecified. Previously I've written about my attempts to train an AI art generator to mimic my own cat art style without much success. While I was able to generate a 'cat art' that was definitely influenced by my own style I could not say, without a doubt, the art looked like something I would have painted. TET's Cats AI generated art trained on my own art style. Recently I switched form Open AI's text to image model to Leonardo.ai who allow you to train one model on anything comple...

The LEGOLAND California Skateboard in action at Braille Skateboarding. Ever since Braille Skateboarding started their You Make It, We Skate It series and began receiving the occasional Lego skateboard, that would barely last a round of very delicate skating before snapping apart on the most basic of skateboard tricks, I've long thought it possible to make a Lego skateboard that would hold up. If they just built it right. Highlight Braille Skateboarding episodes from their YouTube Channel featuring Lego. Click to enlarge. I was going to step you through a history of Braille Skateboarding and Lego Skateboarding creations but it is quite extensive and most end up the same way... broken. Instead I've included a graphic of the videos you'll find if you go to the Braille Skateboard Channel and search Lego Skateboard . (You'll actually get a lot more than this but many have little or nothing to do with Lego). In particular I'd draw your attention to Episode 217 of their...

Mini Figure Version of the Liquefying Robot after escaping its cage. This development in the ongoing march to the inevitable robot uprising is not quite as scary as the headline sounds, unless you're a Lego Mini figure, in which case you had better hope they don't hand this abomination a laser gun and program it to destroy. Chinese Scientists have made a breakthrough in robotics by creating a machine that is able to turn itself into a liquid and then reform back into a solid .  In one demonstration a tiny robot, the size and shape of a Lego mini figure, liquifies itself to escape through the bars of a cage and then reforms, like a very early 'proof of concept' prototype of a  T-1000 Terminator  from the movie Terminator 2 . Fortunately the process isn't lightening fast and, since the robot liquifies itself through heat rather than nanobot technology, one imagines a human sized version would require considerable power and an  extremely high body temperature to achiev...

How special am I to have finally come of age (53 years young) and am now eligible to participate in building the world alongside other members of the Illuminati Brotherhood... Yes I've received the call by way of an email, which I'm sure is real because I had to translate it from the Dutch language and it was personally written by Hiltom Rothschild, one of the non-existent members of the Rothschild family (or perhaps deep undercover because Google has never heard of them?). A Transcript of the email below: To: etourist From: Illuminati Brotherhood  Subject: Illuminati Broederschap (Illuminati Brotherhood) I am Hiltom Rothschild, a member of the Rothschild family, one of the 13 families of the Illuminati brotherhood. I'm here to let you know that you've come of age and are eligible to participate in building the 🌎 world. It is a calling and a privilege to honor him with pride and gratitude as not everyone will ever be chosen by the LIGHT, many are called but few are ch...

Maybe the Daily Mail exaggerated a touch? "A giant brown snake menacing a mother and her child." Image by Dall-E and David Arandle. Australia has an international reputation for being the home of multiple things that will kill you on the land or in the oceans (and potentially hiding under toilet seats). What isn't mentioned is that most of these things really can't be arsed (sorry for the bit of vulgarity but we're talking Aussie wildlife here) attacking you unless you accidentally surprise them or deliberately attack them first. So when a viral TikTok showing a Queensland, Cloncurry Mother shepherding her toddler child and pet dog back indoors, while holding a baby, because she spotted a 'massive' brown snake quietly taking advantage of the warmth from her driveway. started doing the rounds, I was like, that's pretty much an average day in an Australian country town. However that didn't stop the Daily Mail from talking up the danger with their h...

Abbie Richards - creator of The Conspiracy Chart. I've never heard of Abbie Richards until today, while I was trawling the internet for something to post to this blog. She claims to be professionally obsessed with TikTok, a mis and disinformation researcher, and a research fellow at @TheARConsortium but she may just be an A.I. bot programmed by the far left to annoy right wing keyboard warriors, probably? Anyway Abbie produced an updated version of her Conspiracy Theory Chart to reflect more recent thinking (up until November 23, 2021 at least). Whether or not you believe anything listed to be a conspiracy or 'truth that will come out as more people wake up' the chart is a great starting point for anyone investigating 'new, enlightened thinking' with dubious connection to actual facts to draw their conclusions. Conspiracy theories are everywhere and people don't understand how harmful they are. I made the original Conspiracy Chart over a year ago. An update was ...

By ;Jerryhattric - Flickr : wizard's wishes , CC BY-SA 2.0 , Link Firstly, kudos to UK born, Ian Brackenbury, who some how managed to be paid USD$11,300 annually to be Christchurch's official Wizard for the last 23 years. Probably one of the most unconventional local  government jobs out there but it gives everyone hope that dream jobs can become a reality.  I mean, if you asked anyone pre 1998 that Christchurch City Council would employ an official Wizard for even a year, you'd probably get told you were dreaming. Interestingly enough 1998 is pre New Zealand becoming 'Middle Earth' in Peter Jackson's highly acclaimed movies based on Tolkien's books, The Lord of the Rings. Though I'm sure they did a lot to keep Ian on the payroll for so many years as a living tourist attraction of the city (yeah, if you thought he worked in the engineering department or something you were way off). The city council has decided to let their wizard go as part of 'mo...

After Elon Musk's SpaceX program launched a Tesla with their Starman into space, Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, thinks he can go weirder by sending himself, his brother Mark , and a mystery winning bidder of a third seat in his Blue Origin, reusable rocket, the New Shepard, into space. Which is not weird in itself but kind of sounds a bit bonkers when you word it as "we're sending our CEO into space". To be fair Jeff is fulfilling a life long dream of going into space, and probably wants to demonstrate that his new space tourism business is safe by trying it out for himself. I'm not sure Elon ever had a lifelong dream to launch a car into space but good on him for doing it just because he can. Of course NASA and Russia's Space programs pioneered sending weird things into space in the 1960's, particularly chimpanzees, but, more weirdly a dog (or two?). I kind of understand the chimpanzees as an analogue for human space travel but I'm not so sure about the do...

The Earth is flat. You can easily prove this for yourself. Just grab the biggest hard edged ruler you have, put the edge up against the ground (preferably on a bit with no bumps) and you'll see the Earth does not curve away from the ruler. It's flat from end to end. I'm the first to admit I don't know a lot about the beliefs of modern day 'Flat Earth' believers other than they believe the Earth to be flat and not spherical as Science has generally demonstrated since before we could send people into space and actually see for ourselves.

The  LEIF Tech ESnowboard , whilst it moves a lot like a snowboard, is really more related to a RipStik combined with an Electric Skateboard . Granted the hooks for your feet on the top are very snowboard like, they're not entirely essential (and it's recommended beginners remove them until they're used to general riding around). That said, watching someone fully proficient with riding a LEIF ESnowboard is kind of like watching a snowboarder riding on concrete in the Summertime... and it looks like so much fun.

We need a Jedi Temple in the Outback. August 9th is Australian Census night, the Australian Bureau of Statistics survey that, every five years, takes a snapshot of the country, finding out who we are, how old we are, what we do for a living and more... including what religion we identify with. The Atheist Foundation is running a social media campaign discouraging Australians from marking down their religion as 'Jedi' , a practice that started as a kind of joke but, since 2001's census has had over 70,000 (2001), 58,000 (2006), and 64,000 (2011) like minded people show their support on the census.

A giant tank of Chemicals for growing a drone plane. Technology Company, BAE Systems , believes that it'll soon be possible to 'grow' complete electronic systems like drone fighter planes in the lab using something called a 'Chemputer'. Some think that, if this technology becomes available, we're one step away from machines growing their own liquid metal, Terminator II style, robot armies.

Not the actual Koala. When I take our dogs for a walk it's not enough that I have to watch out for snakes, lizards, prickles and other over enthusiastic dogs but now I also have to watch out for man eating koalas too! Well alright more like woman biting koalas but this happened right in the suburb where I live, and possibly where I walk my own dogs. Who would ever suspect a largely vegan koala would go rogue for a pound of leg flesh!

Probably not the two historians who claim to have found the Holy Grail. Two historians say they've found the elusive Holy Grail , A.K.A. the Cup of Christ, drunk from by Jesus himself at the last supper. Apparently the jewel-encrusted goblet has been on display for nearly one thousand years at the San Isidro Basilica Church in the northwestern Spanish city of Leon. Who can really say if this cup is the real one with 200 or so other cups clamoring for the title and said historians only doing three years of research to arrive at their conclusion. I mean Indiana Jones' dad spent his whole life searching for the Grail. I bet they didn't even have a single Nazi pursuing them during their research or got a single clue from a painting by Leonardo Da Vinci . With the news breaking on March 31st many have thought the announcement to be an early April Fool's day joke, but enough people have taken the news seriously to cause the church to remove their Grail from displa...

A new video going around by HUVr Tech is trying to convince us that they've finally invented the hoverboard exactly like those that appear in the Back to the Future movies. A bunch of stars are featured including original Doc Emmertt Brown, Christopher Lloyd, professional skateboarder, Tony Hawk (of course) and international musician, Moby. The video claims that the demonstration is 100 percent real but I gotta say the hokey physics displayed by people actually riding these HUVr boards is just as dodgy as the original movies. Not to mention the whole demonstration feels completely staged with not a genuine emotion about how awesome the invention of real hoverboards would actually be. There's speculation that the video and companion website may be a promotion for a fourth movie in the BTTF series but my money is on a Virtual Reality computer game of some sort. Why do I think that? First because the website talks about an upcoming phone app that tracks your location...

Thorin never knew just how wrong he could be! WARNING: This article is not about what you're thinking. For only the second time since I started writing this blog you're about to read about 'Lady Parts'. If you're interested, read my other article, The Female Orgasm Explained . You have been warned! I'm subscribed to the Australian site MamaMia , which is basically the online version of a Women's Opinion Magazine but with a more diverse range of topics. I'm one of the 'occasional blokes' who reads the odd article that catches my attention. So when I see a headline like Why all women should grow a beard at least once , how can I not read it? Now, if the article had been about women actually growing beards, that may have been interesting for the social/cultural implications but it was actually about all women growing out their pubic hair at least once in their life instead of going bald down there. When did growing pubes become a thing inste...