Friday, January 19, 2024

I came, I saw, I ate potatoes

It's the eating of potatoes that makes everything even better. Potatoes make everything better, not that a bad time was had.

But there were potatoes. Roasted potatoes. Patatas Bravas when it all boils down to it. Roasted potatoes with a spicy dressing from a Spanish/South American restaurant on Grote Street, eaten after a morning of training and a wander through the Adelaide Central Market, where I stood in front of Charlesworth Nuts and conjured up kid through Marion Shopping Centre with my grandparents as a child. they don't make glace fruit anymore. That used to be the height of sophistication. The desire to steal a cherry or fondle the apricots and other assorted stone fruit was strong. 

But we needed potatoes. And a Virgin Mojito. It was a warm day. A warm day in Adelaide. A day where your sheets would dry on the line in an hour. 

Kaz and I were a little shaken. We'd had our little writerly minds blown by an AI demonstration. 

Kaz is and editor. I'm a writer. We watched as a computer program wrote 400 words, plus subsequent Facebook and Twitter/X posts in a matter of seconds. Kaz felt a bit defeated, seeing her clients being no longer in need of her. I saw some potential. Particularly around non-fiction works. Our trainer was gentle with us. He showed us the pros and cons. 

On further and closer reading, the AI product was good, but not great. And sure, it was grammatically correct, but it lacked charm and needed finessing. But the bones were there. 

We also came out of the session with jobs. I need to learn how to manipulate images using Photoshop - or some online bastardisation of this - more for curiosity than necessity, but I got a few questions answered around working images settled. 

I've also got articles to write. Maybe with the help of AI. 

So after all this, we needed potatoes.  

I don't eat potatoes very often. Potatoes are the devil's food. 

Gee, they're good.

We also had a little shop, breaking Kaz's Birkenstock cherry. She walked out of this rather lovely shop with a pair of Mayaris. Like me, she's been banned from wearing thongs - the flip-flop kind, not the ones that go up your bum crack. 

Then we went and collected her sons from their school holiday program, we had a cup of tea and I jumped into an uber to go to the airport. 

It was a successful day trip. 

But I will always remember the potatoes.

(p.s. I discovered the joys of Helen Fisk on Netflix while trying to go to sleep in Kaz's pool house. She's very funny.)

Today's song:



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