Digital Wanderer

We live as long as we fly

Poems about war from the Bing chatbot

 2023-03-10

I asked the Bing chatbot to write me some poems about war. I think it's pretty cool for a bot.

The sky is dark with smoke and fire
The ground is stained with blood and tears
The sound of bombs and guns is dire
The people live in constant fears

The city walls are cracked and broken
The streets are filled with rubble and debris
The homes are empty and forsaken
The hopes are shattered by the siege

The soldiers fight with courage and valor
The civilians pray for peace and freedom
The leaders talk with lies and bluster
The world watches with shock and boredom

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Valencia — 15, stretched over a workweek

 2023-03-05

Working from a rocking chair and voice interruptions: how I survived in the world of jitter and messages in a bottle!

During the first week, I worked in a small living room near my room. I used the TV as a monitor and sat on a regular chair at a regular table. I'm the kind of guy who is clearly bothered by this: an ergonomic chair is a must-have. And a second monitor wouldn't have hurt either. Using my laptop as a second screen didn't work out: there was nowhere convenient to put it. Good thing I at least had a Microsoft Designer Compact wireless keyboard to sit more comfortably.

I also suffered from the internet quality: it clearly fell short of Latvian standards. I work on a virtual machine in the cloud. It's a remote computer, you connect, it shows you a screen, and your keystrokes are sent to the cloud. This is called VDI. Unfortunately, my VDI is in the US, which heavily affects the latency of packets bouncing back and forth.

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Valencia — 14, a bike promenade to Figueres

 2023-03-04

From Latvia to the Netherlands: a bike ride and land for 70 thousand euros per hectare

The next day, Sunday, I also had a bike plan. Not as easy as "you ride down to the sea and take the bike bus back", but still okay. I decided to return by train. On the plus side – there are a lot of stations, and you can change your route on the fly. On the downside – it's not always clear where and what time the 🚆 stops.

I headed to the sea again, but not to the southeast, like on Saturday, but to the northeast, towards the city of Figueres. Mapping out a route wasn't exactly simple, unlike back in my native lands. Latvia is underestimated by many as a place to live. The thing is, we have plenty of land with no one around, and the terrain is moderately hilly. In practice, this means you can walk or ride wherever you want, with minimal restrictions. If you love being in nature, this is a huge bonus. In Girona, things are completely different. In Valencia, everything around is vegetable gardens, while in Girona, the hills quickly turn into 🗻, where for bike rides you need a solid level of fitness and low body weight.

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