Tag: technology

AI images: San Diego 100 years in the future!

What will the city of San Diego look like 100 years in the future? I was curious how today’s generative AI might picture it.

I used the prompt “San Diego 100 years in the future” with the AI Drawing Assist on a Samsung Galaxy phone. The images that were produced were rather startling!

Futuristic buildings, exotic elevated walkways and new modes of transportation…but how realistic is it to believe such radical transformations could be made in only one hundred years? (Um…anti-gravity?)

Nevertheless, this is pretty cool!

I see identifiable aspects of the present city skyline are incorporated into images, as well as San Diego Bay. Notice how certain recognizable buildings are arbitrarily positioned or weirdly altered by the artificial intelligence?

I love how lush green vegetation sprouts everywhere including the roofs and sides of many buildings. I love how curvy and absurdly complicated some of the conjectured architecture is!

(Earlier this year, I performed a similar experiment. I used the term “Balboa Park at sunset” to produce generative AI images in the same way. The results were bizarre. This is what I got!)

Okay–now for today’s experiment. AI draws the future of San Diego…

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Lowriders depart, so that Ferraris can arrive!

Half a dozen lowriders exhibited at the San Diego Automotive Museum have begun their departure. The exhibition was called Low and Slow: A Celebration of Lowriders. But now room on the museum’s floor is being made for fast, shiny Ferraris!

The new exhibit, opening on August 30th, 2025, will concern the evolution of Ferraris–from street to track. I learned sports cars to be displayed include a Ferrari 360, 550, 430, 308 and more!

I love how the San Diego Automotive Museum frequently changes vehicles in their 17,000 square foot exhibit space. Every time I visit, I find something new!

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

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Century-old locomotive to be restored in La Mesa!

Old No. 3, the 1923 steam locomotive on display outside the La Mesa Depot, is to be restored. I learned that yesterday from Timothy, who is Station Master at the historic old train depot in La Mesa.

No. 3 originally was purchased to haul lime rock on the Mojave Northern Railroad from a quarry near Victorville, California. In 1966 it was retired and donated to the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum Association in Campo, then made its way to the La Mesa Depot Museum in 1981. Unfortunately, in its outdoor setting, exposed to the weather, the century-old locomotive now needs a little loving care.

Old wood needs to be replaced. Rust has eaten holes in steel. Missing instrumentation in the locomotive’s cab needs to be replaced.

Timothy, after showing me how the steam locomotive operates, told me that La Mesa’s old No. 3 shouldn’t appear like a thing in a junkyard, so its restoration is on the way.

Once the work begins, hopefully I’ll be able to swing by and record another bit of history!

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

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AbleGamers, helping the disabled to connect!

I’m fortunate to be fairly healthy and active. I know that if I couldn’t enjoy my sunshine-filled walks, meeting friends–if I had severe mobility difficulties–I would become seriously depressed. That’s the way I’m made.

Knowing this, I was excited to learn about AbleGamers today at San Diego Comic-Con. AbleGamers is an organization that fights social isolation by making it easier for the disabled to participate in gaming. Here’s their website.

AbleGamers has been around for around 20 years. They have helped countless numbers of people find more joy and connection in their lives.

Their mission:

Creating opportunities that enable play in order to combat social isolation, foster inclusive communities, and improve the quality of life for people with disabilities.

Their website explains it better than I can:

With your help, we are working every day to make sure people with disabilities have the same opportunities as everyone else for positive experiences through play. With our two decades as pioneers in inclusive play, thousands of hours working with people with disabilities, leading developers and engineers we create opportunities for players to find inclusive places to play and connect with family and friends.

AbleGamers partners with various organizations, including hospitals and rehabilitation centers, to reach more people with disabilities and provide them with a nearby location to assist in setup to enter the world of gaming.

No matter how severe the disability, today’s technology allows anyone to fully connect with other gamers. Gaming controls are made in such a way that even those without use of their hands can join the online community, having fun. Many of the major video game developers work with AbleGamers to make play more accessible.

I hope you are as inspired as I am. Please check out The AbleGamers website and perhaps help these good people in their mission.

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If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, click here!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

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Doctor Who TARDIS arrives in pieces!

Oh, dear! It seems Doctor Who’s famous TARDIS isn’t functioning properly. It arrived in San Diego for Comic-Con 2025 not by traveling through the Time Vortex, but in a big old truck! And in pieces!

Hopefully the reassembled TARDIS can be reactivated in time for San Diego Comic-Con. The Doctor Who UNIT’s Black Archive activation is set to open to the public at 10 am this coming Thursday. You’ll find the offsite activation along Martin Luther King Jr. Promenade.

Yes, I saw numerous crates marked BBC Studios unloading from the truck.

And I noticed with a bit of despair that there are only two TARDIS pieces in only one crate!

I hope this complex, living organism capable of traveling through time and space (stuck in the shape of a British police box) can be pieced together as easily as a book shelf from IKEA.

Visitors to the offsite would love to travel through space and time, I’m sure. But then, downtown San Diego every year during Comic-Con becomes its own peculiar world.

Is the Time Lord wandering about the city late this afternoon? One can already stumble upon a few unusual creatures…

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If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, click here!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Feel free to share!

Exhibition in San Diego celebrates Women in STEM.

An inspirational exhibition celebrating women in STEM opened a couple days ago in Balboa Park. San Diego STEM Women: Creativity and Curiosity can be experienced in the Women’s Museum of California‘s new, dedicated gallery, which is found inside the San Diego History Center.

The exhibition details how women in San Diego history, from the 19th century to the present, have excelled in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, leading to important contributions in different fields.

There’s a special emphasis on young women pursuing career paths in STEM today. Various organizations are highlighted that can help those with STEM aspirations.

Young people, upon seeing this exhibition, will understand that pursuits in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics can do more than make a world a better place, but can be personally very rewarding.

Examples of what visitors will find…

ECOLOGIK was launched at Cabrillo National Monument in 2017. The free program engages children and young adults in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics. There is an emphasis on ecology and environmental sciences.
Girls Who Code has reached over 760,000 students through virtual and in-person programming. The organization helps to spark an interest in transformative technology.
Dr. Charlotte Baker was San Diego’s first practicing female physician. She moved to San Diego in 1888 and ten years later she became the first female president of the San Diego County Medical Society.
During World War II, many women helped with military manufacturing in San Diego. In the aircraft industry, women made up to 65% of the workforce in 1943.
Dr. Janese Swanson, graduate of SDSU, was a pioneer at the dawn of the digital age. At Broderbund Software, she helped develop the popular game Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?
Dr. Ellen Ochoa grew up in La Mesa. An engineer and astronaut, she was the first Latina astronaut in NASA history. She would log nearly 1,000 hours in space!

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Feel free to share!

The huge “toy box” docked in San Diego!

An impressive yacht has been docked on San Diego’s Embarcadero for weeks now. Perhaps you’ve seen it, just north of the Maritime Museum of San Diego.

As I walked past the yacht this morning, I was surprised to see its side open and gentlemen working on a super cool, bubble-like submersible. For a moment I thought I had wandered into a documentary about ocean exploration–or a science fiction movie!

In fact, I was looking inside the Hodor, a 66-meter catamaran that this article describes as the world’s largest floating toy box! Among the toys it holds is the three-person Seamagine Aurora-3 submersible, which I spotted in its open “submarine garage” while walking down the boardwalk. Other toys include a helicopter, motorcycles, and ATVs!

Hodor is support vessel of larger privately owned superyacht Lonian, which is also docked in San Diego.

You never know what cool thing you might discover during a morning walk!

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Feel free to share!

Historic downtown street clock to be repaired!

The unusual Seiko street clock on B Street in downtown San Diego hasn’t been working for years. I learned today an effort is now underway to repair it!

The 20 feet tall clock is very unique. The “Solar Post Clock” is said to be the first solar powered clock to be installed in San Diego. It was a gift in 1983 from Seiko to Jacobs & Sons Jewelers, a family business that once was located on the corner of B Street and 7th Avenue. You can read more about the historic clock here.

Today I walked past a fun “Dogs of Downtown” event on my way home from another event, so I had to see what that was all about. I was greeted by Joel Hermosillo from the Downtown San Diego Partnership who recognized Cool San Diego Sights, and informed me they are working to repair the Seiko street clock!

How cool would that be!

I’ll try to stay informed on its progress.

Meanwhile, here are several photos of the “Dogs of Downtown” community event. (Thank you for the free Coke!)

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Feel free to share!

Bizarre AI images of Balboa Park!

I performed an experiment today. I asked the AI Drawing Assist on a Samsung Galaxy phone to create artistic images of “Balboa Park at sunset.”

Well, the AI, as you can see, produced some rather bizarre results!

Sure the towers and facades appear superficially like those in Balboa Park, but take a close look. The configurations of buildings, towers, fountains and reflecting pools are truly weird.

In the above photo, why are two towers side by side? Why is the pool located where it is, and so curvy? Why is there a big mountain in the background? Low mountains in reality are far to the east, and Balboa Park’s grand entrance at the California Quadrangle is to the west where the sun sets.

Why is image construction so apparently arbitrary?

It all makes me wonder: How exactly are these images generated? Is there no accurate reference to countless photographs on the internet? Is the AI just too primitive at this point in its development? Is it capable of creating only fantasy worlds? Someone out there with technical expertise might expound on this.

Of course, when the AI images are created, the user is cautioned: Image generation may produce unexpected results. No kidding!

Here are more bizarre examples. The only prompt I used was “Balboa Park at sunset.”

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Feel free to share!

The 1915 San Diego Exposition Auto Road Race.

A famous car race was held in Point Loma in 1915. A historical display at the San Diego Automotive Museum recalls how the San Diego Exposition Auto Road Race involved many famous race car drivers of the era and received nationwide attention.

The race promoted the Panama-California Exposition in Balboa Park. It is estimated 50,000 people watched the 305 mile race as it looped through Point Loma’s rather rough-appearing streets. The winning purse was a whopping (for 1915) $5,000. Only five of the eighteen drivers would finish the race.

The race winner would be Earl Cooper in Stutz No. 8. His average speed was a nail-biting 65.3 miles per hour!

A vintage car accompanies the museum display. The 1932 Morgan Super Sports, as much as it resembles some of the earlier race cars, debuted 17 years after the San Diego Exposition Auto Road Race was held. It can go 100 miles per hour–much faster.

When I saw this historical display, I immediately remembered my experience of the 1915 Road Race vintage car show. That amazing event was held in the parking lot by the San Diego Automotive Museum during Balboa Park’s centennial in 2015. See those photos here.

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Feel free to share!