I’ve added a Notebook page to the website so now every post I tag as “notebook” is all displayed together. These will be short-form posts and quick thoughts. The tags will be labeled under “quickies.”
Chris Denbow Posts
Imagine looking at your body of work—decades of writing, ideas, and creative projects—with a sense of overwhelm, but suddenly, through the lens of an LLM, it all becomes neatly distilled. It’s as if the fog clears, and for the first time, you can see the common threads, the underlying themes, and the true depth of what you’ve created. It gives you a new appreciation, a way to step outside yourself and view your work with fresh eyes, almost like discovering a new perspective on something deeply personal. There’s a sense of validation, perhaps even awe, because what was once complex and scattered now feels cohesive, profound, and worth celebrating.
It’s the realization that your voice and vision are not only valuable but now laid out so clearly that you, too, can fully grasp the weight of what you’ve built. It’s like reading the story of your journey as if someone else wrote it, but with the satisfying recognition that it’s truly yours.
I read about Google’s NotebookLM software today to see how it stacks up and if it could help collect and collate some notes, documents, research, and sources to help me make sense of it some of my work here.
WTH?!
As an experiment, I uploaded the blog posts from this website from September 1 through September 18. It took seconds for Google to analyze and provide some contexts on those posts as read below:
The provided text is a collection of blog posts from Chris Denbow’s website, covering a variety of topics related to his life and interests. He shares his experiences with self-publishing, technology, travel, photography, and reading. Denbow also discusses his thoughts on the internet, research, and creativity. The posts are organized chronologically, starting on September 1, 2024, and ending on September 18, 2024.
After that brief synapsis, Google offers prompts, or suggestions for follow-up you to ask about. See screenshot below:
Then, and here’s the kicker that caused me to literally step back and grab the bourbon. I saw a prompt that allows me to generate an audio dialogue regarding my work. It took Google all of 2 minutes to generate an audio synapsis in the form of two artificial podcast hosts discussing my work with fervor. They made me seem like a Hollywood celebrity solely based on the 20 posts, just from the past 18 days. It is both flattering and scary to me. Then again, we always fear what we don’t understand. So I will dig deeper to further understand and see how this tool can be used to my benefit. If nothing, else, it will be amazing feedback.
Listen here and let me know what you think afterwards.
Back in 2018, I signed up for NaNoWriMo with the intention of writing a 50,000-word novel that failed spectacularly.
In the past year, however, something clicked. Whereas now I have about 35 good stories to tell and have been slowly plugging away at some of them lately.
So for the month of November, I’ll type away to hit that 50K word goal, if nothing else other than pride and a sense of accomplishment.
Spent the better part of the day sorting and organizing text for the Angkor draft, all while there was a slight draft outside thanks to Hurricane Helene.
I almost had a major catastrophe- not hurricane related- due to me sorting chapters around when they disappeared. All of it!
Whew, all the chapters were relocated into the “Author’s Notes” section of the software.
And breathe again.
Sunrise found us on Fort Myers beach early this morning and with a good fall harvest of la concha marina.
Next weekend we’ll hop over to Sanibel Island for more and hopefully find sand dollars and shark teeth too.
Unlike my first two attempts at paper collage, digital scraps are limitless. I’ll make an effort to do better but these are first proofs of a working concept.
Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.
– Carol Burnett
The first 35 of 3,287 pages to print this website are complete, hole-punched and placed lovingly in a three-ring binder for safekeeping.
Right away, I noticed there are formatting issues such as a small blurb of an article takes up only 10% of the page. Wasted space. I had to discard of three blank pieces of paper as a result.
So re-formatting, or allowing the printer to cover both sides of the page, for example could help save space, ink and money.
As first-run test print, I am pleased to see a small portion of my written words on a black and white paper as opposed to a screen.
Since the early 1990’s I have had a fascination with the ancient Khmer Empire in modern day Cambodia. There is a story there waiting to be told. Over the years, I have researched and tried to keep up with the archeological news. Four years ago I offered a hypothesis regarding the Angkor Wat temple complex and another temple in the mountains to the north. I haven’t read or heard anything related to it so I still make my claim here.
In the meantime, I have decided to do a re-write on a story I started years ago regarding this area and its hidden secrets. The original ideas were too grandiose in my head and it was a challenge to sort it all out. I’ve kept some main ideas but simplified it somewhat. Also made it more relatable and relevant.
When wrapping up a chapter in my writing software (Ulysses), I noticed a feature that allows me to publish in various formats. “What the hell” I thought, so I exported my draft (NOT a final release) in the e.Pub format and figured why not, and sent it to my Kindle.
Moments later I was reading my own writing on an e-book reader!
This was a fun discovery and encourages me to keep going, press publish and read in its entirety. Someday.
The iPhone, iPad and MacBook software upgrades are complete and I have had a chance to integrate and play a bit. One new feature I’ve been exploring is the ability to connect the laptop and the phone together, it is called “iPhone Mirroring.”
I’m not sure of the use-case for this feature but it could be helpful in the future- controlling your phone remotely. This will play well with connecting my MacBooks together too.
The exploration of my server’s capabilities and limitations are ongoing. I’ve found a new home for Headless Minnie underneath the bed in my home office. She’s quiet, gets lots of shade, unseen and responds when I dial into her.
Limitations
The Mini is a refurbished Mac from a third-party seller with 1TB of storage. There are two partitions with the Mac OS taking up a lot of storage space. I can remove those partitions easily enough but do not have an OS image to install. I’d take it to the Apple geniuses to but this model is no longer supported. Also, it has an older processor therefore making the processes slower than I’d like.
Capabilities
File sharing, printer sharing, host my website and podcast files and eventually host my own private email mailbox. By generating its own static IP address, I can remotely access files from my phone or iPad while away from home.
Conclusion
The Mac mini provides a robust and flexible set of server functionalities, making it suitable for me. Its ability to handle file sharing, backups, web and mail hosting, remote access, media streaming, and more—all from a small, energy-efficient device—makes it an attractive choice for me when I need reliable server features without the overhead of a dedicated server.
I attempted to print a few pages from the Archives .pdf last night at the library. It would not accept the 485MB file. I didn’t want to print all of it but the printer didn’t give me a chance to tell it which pages to print. Need a better solution.
My second attempt at scrap collage work. I grabbed a discovered post card from Germany, some scrap and used an index card for the backing. It’s simple, it’s fun. Need more scrap that suits my tastes and take it from there.
