I for one welcome our new machine overlords

Adverts for AI that can "bring your old photos to life" are all over the place at the moment. And I scoffed at the obviously-not-really-animating-old-photos videos the ads showcase... but I couldn't resist trying it out on one of the sites that lets you get a free sample without openly harvesting your personal data and using it to take over the world. I stuck in the oldest photo I'd got on my laptop... 

... And what came out is, I have to admit, a work of true wonder!

Yes, it doesn't look remotely like Granddad (the years really fall off him as he walks along!), and there's weird stuff going on with the hands, and what's with the woman in the trouser suit it invents in the background, and yes, AI art is a terrible thing and should be destroyed by fire - but I'm really impressed by this! Cleethorpes in 1950 brought to life, albeit a scary artificial fictional kind of life!

It's fun to play with, and I don't honestly care as much as I probably should about helping to train AI to take over the world. It'll be a visually interesting kind of world, at least.

Memory takes you places

 With the Europa League final happening in Bilbao as I write this, I can cheerfully say that I've been there once, in my capacity as a Memory Man.

In fact, Spain is one of the seventeen countries I've visited specifically because I take part in memory competitions, which just goes to show it's a hobby that's really widened my horizons over the last 25 years. Some were to compete, some were to appear on TV because memory champions are cool, some were for weirder and still memory-related reasons. And since I always have to stop and count on my fingers to recall what the seventeen countries are, here's the definitive list in no particular order:

Ireland - a TV show

France - at least three memory competitions

Spain - a very fun promotional video for the Guggenheim Museum

Germany - countless memory competitions! Also once went there to have my brain scanned, and at least once for a cool TV show.

Austria - at least one or two memory competitions

Switzerland - being a work of modern art in an exhibition!

Sweden - multiple memory competitions

Denmark - one or more memory competitions

Turkey - a memory competition, or rather a Memoriad with other things as well as the memory

China - three world memory championships and two awesome TV shows

Korea - a cool memory competition

Japan - multiple TV shows and some more brain-scanning as part of the trip

Bahrain - two more world memory championships

Malaysia - just one world memory championship, but still possibly my favourite one ever

Canada - a nice memory competition

USA - three Extreme memory competitions! And I've had my brain scanned there too.

Brazil - an early exotic trip for a TV show

I think that's everywhere I've been for memory reasons. Though I've probably forgotten something.