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    Franklin on the Practicing Musician Podcast with Jake Douglass

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      When I retired from performing in 2022, I wasn't sure how music was going to show up in my life. For a couple of months, I didn't pick up the guitar - the longest stretch without playing since I got my first guitar. Even during the years I struggled with tendinitis, I would still pick it up and play until the pain stopped me. In the months since I stopped performing, I've regained my love and appreciation just for the time I get to pick up my guitar and play. That is the essence of this interview. My long-time friend Margo set up this interview with Jake Douglass. His mission is exciting. It's driven by the desire to turn people on to the joy of playing music for music's sake. We cover every aspect of the role of music in my life, from my first piano lessons to my last gig and beyond. It was fun and at moments, touching, to remember specific moments when a random encounter started a new trajectory of my journey. Please listen, and if you enjoy what you hear, give ...
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    A Conversation With Tech Journalist Pete Pachal About the Impact of AI on Media and the Creative Sector

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      It's been easy to talk about the worst parts of the tech explosion, artificial intelligence, and social media experience. It's noisy, confusing, often unpleasant, and complicated. It's not easy to navigate. Algorithms think they know what you want, but they keep showing you stuff that you wouldn't choose for yourself if you had time to decide anything.  I was on YouTube this morning, looking at the hundreds of videos that were being promoted on my feed. The thumbnails all look the same so as to seem generic. While the once popular promise that the internet and social media were going to offer endless possibilities to be uniquely yourself, the movement seems to be more toward homogeneity. I don't have a lot of time to watch, but I need a better way to choose than endless scrolling and filtering. I've grown more weary of the online world, and I often wonder how useful it really is. There was a gracefulness about the card catalog at the library that made the expe...
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    Quickly Make a Checklist with Canva AI - New Trick

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    I've been experimenting with several of the latest AI platforms. Canva's most recent AI updates have introduced some fun possibilities.  I make a lot of checklists, worksheets, workbooks, and interactive PDFs that can be tedious and time-consuming to design and make. I've been learning how to use Canva's AI to generate the basic PDFs for me and then I take them to Adobe Acrobat Pro to make them fillable and saveable. I'm hoping Canva will be able to add fillable PDFs to it's output options soon. In the latest New Tricks video, I share how I made a quick social media survey form in less than 15 minutes. Watch it here:
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