i.webthings hub

intelligent colorization

I recently found and shared something that seemed kinda magical to me. It’s helped me directly with something I’ve been working on, so I just gotta share it with you here:

Palette — “a vibrant AI colorizer app. Think instagram filters, but more intelligent.”

I recently added a scan of an old photo of me taken somewhere around 1970 to the image gallery at bulltown.2022. It was a poorly taken photo with a reddish tinge to everything but I added it anyway. It fit the spirit I’m trying to recapture with bulltown so I let it rip. Since then, I thought it would be nice to improve the photo but nothing materialized.

Before I shared Palette at the linkport, I used that old photo to play with the app and what it generated by default looked considerably better than the original - I replaced the image at bulltown. That’s the one captioned ‘default prompt’ over there on the right.

This morning, I decided to further explore Palette using that same old photo - only this time, I modified the prompt generated by the app in the hope that I could improve the color of the sky and it worked well except the sand on the beach lost some of it’s color. Modifying the prompt a second time fixed that too - this is one smart generator, thank you very much. The 3rd photo on the right links to the larger version, now at bulltown. Yep - it’s magical!

something new for Matrix users

I’ve discovered a lot of interesting things from a guy named mikael - besides tons of cool pointers, I also discovered the Matrix protocol on his @mikael profile. I hope he knows how much I appreciate him for all of that and for putting up with my using him a bit (about a month ago) to check out what communicating with Matrix was like. 🙏🏻

Since then, I found a commenting system based on the Matrix protocol which allows visitors to post comments without having to log in (though Matrix users can log in if they prefer to follow the conversation in their Matrix client). I like that and decided to implement Cactus Comments on this blog and at simply. And now, on to the new thing...

I’ve been dabbling with an idea: the i.webthings café, a place to hangout and talk about websites or linking or anything else about the web. For those who use Matrix, the room also includes feeds from several of the webthings.

Another thing I’m considering is setting up a page for the café with Cactus Comments integrated so anyone can join in on the conversation here on the site, even if they don’t use Matrix. As usual, my idea is in its early stage and for all I know, might not work. Hopefully, it will. So, I’ve got questions:

• Whataya think?
• Do you use Matrix, Discord, and/or Telegram?

Please let me know, if for no other reason, to see if my fancy new commenting system works. Thanks.

‘Not their network but our network.’

Other people’s websites are the OG social network, and the optimist in me is going to riff on MLK’s quote: the social arc of the internet is long, but it bends towards individual websites.

Amen! [via ftofani]

a new webring for the oldstyle web

My friend Brad “made a Thing!” And I”m kinda tickled about it:

Retroweb Ring

A webring for non-commercial personal pages be they static homepages or blogs or non-commercial directories that list the 1995 – 2005 style Web pages. No hate, no resumes, no third party advertising.

Needless to say, I submitted bulltown.2022 as soon as I knew about the webring. It was a good fit and I”m hoping to see some other retrostyle sites come onboard. Like Brad said, “it’s kind of lonely” at the moment. If the shoe fits, please apply to be included!