alanwsmith.com

Photoshop's Content-Aware Fill Ain't Half Bad

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 17:28:00 -0400

Discussing generative AI is fraught^images. It's easy to make binary distinctions. Love it, hate it. No in-between.

I'm mostly against it for images. Fully admitting some look dope, the fact that it's making it harder for artists to make a living is too much^time. Not to mention the resource usage^energy.

There is one place I'm fine with it: background generation.

Behind the Scenes

I've taken to playing Magic: The Gathering. The crew I play with is spread across multiple countries. We use Tabletop Simulator^tts for our virtual play surface. The app lets you customize play mats and card backs. I'm collecting a bunch of images for them^playmats.

Take this awesome bear from The Smithsonian's public domain collection^bear.

Wonderful. But, not the right aspect ratio. Play mats are 16:9. I don't know what the bear is. Just that it ain't that. I'd been dropping images into the middle of black backgrounds to cover the size. Something like this:

Not bad. Better than stretching the image. But, not great.

Then, I remembered Content-Aware Fill^fill.

Better Backing

Content-Aware Fill is a Photoshop feature. It attempts to use existing parts of an image to generate something that looks reasonable for new areas. It uses machine learning to figure out which pixels go where. "Machine learning" being what AI was called before AI became the buzz word.

A few clicks, and we get this:

16:9 but with a background that matches the original instead of black bars.

Close Enough for Jazz

It' not perfect. The gradient between dark and light is splotchy on the left side. The hard edge of the shadow on the right maybe cuts off a little quick. I could clean it up. Make it impossible to tell where the original ends and the addition begins. That would take time and effort. Content-Aware Fill took a few clicks and about 20 seconds.

Hard to beat.

-a

Endnotes

A quick video showing how to use Content-Aware Fill.

More videos should be like this. 24 seconds of mouse movement showing you exactly where to click. Most videos aren't even out of their "Hey, Guy!" intro in that time.

Here's Kermit with another example of extending an image with a more complicated visual to match.

Original:

Content-Aware Filled:

It doesn't do the greatest of jobs. The extended waves are all blurry and it emphasizes the darkening gradient of the background. I'll adjust the lighting a little but it's way better than black bars with nothing more than this.

Footnotes

^{images ⤴}

I'm referring here to image generation. Code and prose generation are separate topics.

^{time ⤴}

Check back in a few years. I have a feeling I'm in the same position from a couple decades ago when professional photographers refused to use digital/phone cameras. There's something different with AI since it's a different category of tool that makes the actual images, but still.

^{energy ⤴}

Everything I understand about generative AI is that it takes a lot of energy and

^{playmats ⤴}

My virtual play mats

The mats (and card backs) I'm collecting to use during rounds.

^{tts ⤴}

Tabletop Simulator

It make my fans spin up like all hell. Small price to pay for being able to play with a globally diverse group. The feature set built in for Magic is great. (It's also hackable. I haven't gone down that rabbit hole yet.)

^{bear ⤴}

Grizzly Bear Sitting from The Smithsonian

Just a little guy.

^{fill ⤴}

Content-Aware Fill

The marketing page focuses more on removing things. That works well too.

Free Image/Art Resources

Mon, 25 May 2026 10:44:30 -0500

Some Links

Still Looking

If you've got other good ones with open access policies, let me know .

-a

Endnotes

There are some sites like unsplash but I'm not putting them on this list. They have some free images but are largely ads for paid stock image sites.

There are also some sites out there that have deceiving ads trying to get folks to download and install various pieces of nefarious software. I'm not linking to those.

Stress Writing

Sun, 3 May 2026 20:57:17 -0500

Normally, I write to think.

Today, we're trying something new.

Writing not to think.

Or, really, writing to not think about things that are stressing me out.

I'm one of the least stressed folks I know. I can go with pretty much any flow without much fanfare.

Thresholds exist. I'm on the other side of one.

There are some ideas floating around in my head. Things I could work on to draw my focus and give some reprieve. They require a certain amount of spoons. I ain't got them.

So, this is an experiment. A stream of consciousness thing to try to release some pressure.

It's working.

So, I'm just gonna keep writing.

I'm trying to decide if I want to get into what's stressing me out or not. Probably not. Not because it's something I want to avoid posting about. It's because it's something I'd want to get the words right for.

Writing mode with a capital "W".

Editing too. It takes me a bunch of passes to get things shaped the way I want.

There's none of that here.

Forward, always forward.

That's a quote from somewhere I think.

Writing this makes me want to start recording podcast episodes again. I just turn on a mic and let my mind wander. Same thing I'm doing now.

Kicking back into the audio has been on my mind for a while. I haven't pulled the trigger. Mainly, because I want to move the old stuff and redo it and get thing line up.

That's one of those perfection paralysis things though. I just need to rip one and let it fly.

(Okay, okay, writing is helping me think. That's not the purpose of this post. Just a natural side effect.)

Status Update: Everyone else just went to bed. Now I can sit in the dark and write. It's so much nicer. It's that whole "introvert recharge thing".

Anyway, this is helping way more that I would have expected. I can feel the tension easing out of my shoulders.

by the way: take 5 seconds and relax your shoulders.

better, right?

I know it is for me.

-a

Endnotes

I ended up making one edit pass on this. A single run from top to bottom. That's basically nothing for me. You can watch a bit of my crafting a reponse to a tweet to get an idea of what I mean. (The music kicks in at 30sec.)

The AI Phone Assault Has Begun

Sat, 2 May 2026 13:10:53 -0500

I'm visiting a friend of the over 65 variety. His name isn't Ron, but that's what I'm going to call him. His mind used to be very sharp. It's dulled a lot this year. He's a naturally trusting soul and I'm worried sick about him.

Incoming

Ron told me his biggest frustration is the number of spam calls he gets every day. He doesn't answer calls from unknown numbers outside his area code. He generally picks up the local ones, though.

I saw it happen twice in an hour while we were hanging out. Ron's hard of hearing. His phone volume is up so high it might as well be on speaker. I heard both sides of the conversations.

Each times, they were AI bots.

Two Strikes

The calls sounded like they were from friendly women. The introductions were both some form of "we've noticed you have unused Medicaid benefits and want to make sure you're not missing out."

Ron ended the first call quickly. He recognized it as spam, but not a bot. He stayed on the second one longer. It started asking questions with no prelude. He just started answering them. He didn't have time to get his guard up.

I stopped him as soon as I realized he hadn't clocked the nature of the call. After telling him it was an AI bot, he asked how I knew. I couldn't offer much beyond just having experience and learning how they sound.

Medicaid is the New Car Warranty

Spam robo-calls were easy to spot when they were recorded messages telling you to press one because your car warranty had expired. Now that they interact, they're way more dangerous.

You can get an idea about why from this video demonstrating a call:

To be clear, there is no woman on the other end of that call. The voice and the words it says are completely computer generated.

The voice in the video sounds exactly like the bot that called Ron. The bot in video says it's AI in its introduction. The one that called Ron did not. I don't know what the play was, but anything that starts off by implying it has access to your Medicaid information is absolutely a scam.

Playing Defense

This shit is gonna get worse. The bots are brand new and they're already convincing. They'll get better and cheaper to deploy. The onslaught will increase.

The bots will also pull in increasing amounts of personal information about their targets. They'll use it to be even more effective at manipulation.

There's nothing realistic we can do to stop them. The best we can do is work to protect ourselves. Currently, that looks like this:

Auto-forward every incoming call from an unknown number directly to voice mail.
Start from the assumption that every voice mail form an unknown number is malicioius.
Don't call the number back drirectly even if it's from a company/bank/service you use. Instead, find the companies phone number on their website and use that to contact them.

I helped Ron set up his phone. I suggest you do the same. Then, help friends and family who might not know how to do it on their own.

-a

Endnotes

Preying on the elderly is nothing new. These bots are just the latest iteration. They're going to be particularly nasty. But, senior citizens won't be the only ones targeted. We'll all have to deal with them.

The use of the "um" in the opening line in the video is particularly insidious. The computer isn't struggling to find the next word. It's an explicit deceit included to trick us into thinking we're talking to a person.

Here's the iPhone page showing how to set things up. It's done by following the instruction in the "Screen or silence unknown numbers" section and choosing "Silence: Calls from unsaved numbers will be silenced, sent to voicemail, and appear in the Recents list."

I haven't found an official support page for how to do it on Android devices. You'll need to look up your specific phone for how to do it.

AI is a giant topic. I have different thoughts about different parts of it. Some of those thoughts are complicated. When it comes to this type of shit, that's not the case. I can't think of a single improvement that'll be added to the world by deploying AI spam bots. Even if they aren't outright scams.

What I could get behind is AI being used on our side. Bots that provide protection from spam and scams.

Someone go build that.

I've found the RAZ Memory Phone . It's designed specifically for seniors and folks with cognitive issues. Basically, it lets you lock down the phone so that only numbers in the contact list can call/text both in or out. The phone is managed via an app on a caregiver's phone.

Dealing with things like one time login code text messages presents issues, but I'm going to suggest John and his family give it a shot.

It's basically just having to make a decision about where to place your mark on the security/convenience continuum.

Sleep for a Time in Rust's tokio

Fri, 3 Apr 2026 09:56:20 -0400

use tokio::time::{sleep, Duration};

sleep(Duration::from_millis(100)).await;
println!("100 ms have elapsed");

Open Videos - March 30, 2026

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 08:13:37 -0400

The current set of video tabs I have open right now. Archiving them here and closing them in the browser.

Pulling Magic Commander Rankings from EDHREC

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 22:44:49 -0400

I'm working on a tool to help me build Magic Decks^mdb. It'll let me search and assemble cards from data via Scryfall^sf. I also want to see other folks are doing. For example, which are the most used commanders. I'm grabbing data from EDHREC^edh for that.

This is the script I'm using to pull in the raw data.

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import json
import urllib.request

url = "https://edhrec.com/commanders"
output_path = "commanders.json"

def get_json():
    response = urllib.request.urlopen(url)
    html = response.read().decode('utf-8')
    parts = html.split('')
    data = json.loads(content[0])
    with open(output_path, "w") as _out:
        _out.write(json.dumps(data, sort_keys=True, indent=2, default=str))

if __name__ == "__main__":
    get_json()

The code's a little brittle in terms of doing a split to pull out the data instead of more advanced parsing with something like Beautiful Soup^bs. That's not a big deal. If they change the page and things break I'll just update the script.

-a

Endnotes

The EDHREC data uses Scryfall IDs. Combining data sets is no fuss, no muss.

Footnotes

^{mdb ⤴}

Magic Deck Builder

The little tool I'm making to make Magic decks. Still very much a work in progress at press time.

^{sf ⤴}

Scryfall

The place to search for Magic cards. Even better, they provide bulk data downloads .

^{edh ⤴}

EDHREC

Fantastic fan content for all things Magic. They've got articles and stuff which I'm sure are great. I'm only there for the deck lists and rankings though.

^{bs ⤴}

Beautiful Soup

For those times when doing simple splits doesn't get you what you need, try Beautiful Soup. It's the only way to fly with python HTML parsing.

Parse a String of Text into JSON in Python

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 22:38:08 -0400

import json

input = '{ "alfa": "bravo", "charlie": "delta" }'
data = json.loads(input)
print(data)
print("----")
print(json.dumps(data, sort_keys=True, indent=2, default=str))

Output:

{'alfa': 'bravo', 'charlie': 'delta'}
----
{
  "alfa": "bravo",
  "charlie": "delta"
}

Using IndexedDB to Store Key Value Pairs with Vanilla JavaScript

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 02:10:06 -0400

Dear RSS Reader:
The original version of this page includes JavaScript. It probably won't run in here. So, any functionality it might have had probably won't work. Check out the original page to see it in action.

I'm working on a Magic Deck Builder^magic. There's about 30,000 cards to choose from. Keeping track of them is beyond the capabilities of localStorage^ls. IndexedDB^idb, on the other hand, has no problem hanging on to that much stuff.

An Actual Solution

Most documentation and tutorials on IndexedDB are disapointing. They show how to store values just fine. They fail to demonstrate how to pull data out in a useful way. The only thing they give you is how to print to console.log(). Nothing about how to, you know, actually use the data outside the functions that query it^results.

The examples also lock in on storing full objects. That's great and all, but I want to use IndexedDB as a simple key/value store^kv.

This is how I'm doing that:

JavaScript

const DB_NAME = "example_db";
const STORE_NAME = "storage";
const DB_VERSION = 1;

async function initDB() {
  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    const request = indexedDB.open(DB_NAME, DB_VERSION);
    request.onsuccess = () => resolve(request.result);
    request.onerror= () => reject(request.result);
    request.onupgradeneeded = (event) => {
      const db = event.target.result;
      if (!db.objectStoreNames.contains(STORE_NAME)) {
        db.createObjectStore(STORE_NAME);
      }
    }
  });
}

async function putValue(value, key) {
  const db = await initDB();
  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    const store = db
      .transaction(STORE_NAME, "readwrite")
      .objectStore(STORE_NAME);
    const request = store.put(value, key);
    request.onsuccess = () => resolve(request.result);
    request.onerror= () => reject(request.result);
  });
}

async function getValue(key) {
  const db = await initDB();
  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    const store = db
      .transaction(STORE_NAME, "readonly")
      .objectStore(STORE_NAME);
    const request = store.get(key);
    request.onsuccess = () => resolve(request.result);
    request.onerror= () => reject(request.result);
  });
}

async function deleteValue(key) {
  const db = await initDB();
  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    const store = db
      .transaction(STORE_NAME, "readwrite")
      .objectStore(STORE_NAME);
    const request = store.delete(key);
    request.onsuccess = () => resolve(request.result);
    request.onerror= () => reject(request.result);
  });
}

await putValue("this is alfa", "alfa");
const afterPut = await getValue("alfa");
const afterPutEl = document.querySelector("#afterPut");
afterPutEl.innerHTML = afterPut;

await deleteValue("alfa");
const afterDelete = await getValue("alfa");
const afterDeleteEl = document.querySelector("#afterDelete");
afterDeleteEl.innerHTML = afterDelete;

HTML

<div id="afterPut">--div>
<div id="afterDelete">--div>

Output

Bulk Storage

That's a "non-trivial amount of code". It's also async/await based which adds to the complexity of using it. It would be nice if it was easier to work with, but the flexibility makes the complexity worth it.

-a

Endnotes

Using localStorage to do the same thing looks like this:

localStorage.setItem("bravo", "this is bravo");
const afterSet = localStorage.getItem("bravo");
const afterSetEl = document.querySelector("#afterSet");
afterSetEl.innerHTML = afterSet;

localStorage.removeItem("bravo");
const afterRemove = localStorage.getItem("bravo");
const afterRemoveEl = document.querySelector("#afterRemove");
afterRemoveEl.innerHTML = afterRemove;

Less than ten lines compared to more than sixty with no async to worry about is nice. It just falls over when trying to store large amounts of data since browsers have much lower limits on localStorage vs IndexedDB.

Normally, you'd check the return values in both the IndexedDB and localStorage approaches before trying to use them. I've skipped both here to reduce the code.

I'm using store.put(value, key) to add the values to the database. This is an upsert style change that updates the value if it exists and adds it if it doesn't. store.add(value, key) can be used to do an add without the update functionality.

The AI search results have the same problem with only showing how to log data instead of using it. When prompted for how to actually use the data they point to external libraries. Dexie , in particular. It looks great. It does tons of stuff including auth. Overkill for what I'm doing right now so I'm avoiding the dependency. It's on the radar though.

References

IndexedDB: What Makes It Better Than LocalStorage and Cookies? - YouTube

This is the video where I got the approach. It uses React and TypeScript. My version is vanilla JS.

IndexedDB API - MDN

IndexedDB key characteristics and basic terminology - MDN

Using IndexedDB - MDN

IDBDatabase: createObjectStore() method - MDN

Promise - MDN

Footnotes

^{magic ⤴}

My Magic Deck Builder

Very much a Work-In-Progress at press time. It's a lot like Archidekt . Just refined down only the feature I want (and a way to kick the tires for bitty .

^{ls ⤴}

localStorage

The traditional way to store data for a web site when you need something more than a cookie. Great for simple key/value pairs when the values are strings and you don't have too many of them. Storing objects requires jumping through JSON.stringify and JSON.parse. There are stricter size limits than IndexedDB as well.

^{idb ⤴}

The IndexedDB API

The new hotness in web app data storage. Just gotta jump through some more hoops.

^{results ⤴}

Using results from IndexedDB without async/await promises moves you into the world of callbacks. I could probably remember how do do that if I tried. I'd rather not.

^{kv ⤴}

The general IndexedDB tutorials show how to store objects with IDs. The requires putting the ID in the object. Great when you need it. More complicated than necessary when all you need is a key/value.

Music for Today (March 15, 2026)

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 18:40:34 -0400

I published a big block of work last night. Stayed up super late to do it.

Today, I'm zoned out. In the post-deployment come down. I've mostly been poking around youtube. Lots of music in the mix.

A few selections from the day.

Down to the River to Pray - The Petersens

Tom Waits - "Get Behind The Mule"

Going to California - Led Zeppelin - Sierra Eagleson Cover

Getting Ready to Get Down - Josh Ritter - 2017-13-05

San Fermin - Daedalus

the Mountain Goats - This Year - Jordan Lake Sessions

Siren Song - Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby - O Brother, Where Art Thou

Lake Street Dive feat. Tiny Habits - "Leaving on a Jet Plane" - Live From the Road

Chet Faker - Gold

San Fermin - Daedalus

Sweet Child O' Mine Bluegrass Cover - Thunder and Rain

Can't Find My Way Home (Blind Faith) - Rachael Price - Live from Here with Chris Thile

It's gray outside. A light rain. Perfect for the chill mood.

-a