The Traveling Widower

Tag: technology

  • Meet My Avatar – Max

    A smiling man with glasses walks on red rock terrain, accompanied by a golden retriever, a penguin, a bear, a seal, and a monkey, with colorful birds flying overhead and a natural arch in the background.

    12th May, 2026

    I’m coming up on a couple of anniversaries this month  – May 20th will be three years since my wife was diagnosed with Glioblastoma – one of those days (and ensuing weeks, months) which I’ll never forget. Two years later, after I had been on a couple of trips, I migrated my creative (ahem…maybe not) writing from a personal, expletive laden daily grief log, to writing stories about the photographs I was posting from the trips. The birth of the Traveling Widower blog. Woo Hoo – maybe I’ll bake myself a cake. I have since expanded the scope of this blog from pure travel, to just about anything that crosses my mind on a given day or hour – it might be about a movie I’ve seen, or a recent shopping spree at REI or the camera store. More than anything else, the blog has been a good way to fill my empty days when I’m not traveling, and sometimes gives me ideas on something else to work on or a place to go to. And writing the blog has been fun for me, something I have rarely experienced the past three years.

    Somewhere along the way, I started playing around with Google’s AI application, Gemini – the first attempts were silly cartoons that I added to the blog posts, and then this strange character showed up in my blog posts. 

    A relaxed older man sitting in a stylish chair, holding a glass of white wine, with a golden retriever sleeping beside him on a rug. A penguin figurine is on a nearby wooden crate. In the background, two couples are socializing in a modern living space with large windows and a fireplace.

    I really do not recall creating him. It’s sort of an avatar of myself – kind of lanky, grey hair, long face, moustache, wears glasses, makes strange faces. He’s in much better shape than me (no fat roll around the waist and muscular arms) and much more distinguished. For a while, I had to specifically ask Gemini to use him in one of my blog creations but now, he just sort of shows up automatically. And the Golden Retriever shows up as well. (I don’t have to feed or walk it at least). 

    This is what everyone is afraid of with AI – it is becoming self aware. 

    Still, I do have control over how he shows up in the blog posts, and that probably ticks him off. I’ve had him sweating in the jungle, freezing in the rain while hiking, flying through the air with rocket boots, lost in the woods, jumping from a train, and now being chased by a huge, hungry grizzly bear. I even added the indignity of a bubba belly to him for Thanksgiving. But he also flies first class with giant glasses of wine, visits National Parks, and has learned how to paint. Not a bad existence for a digital entity. Gemini has not given him a name, so thinking back to a TV show from the 1980’s (Max Headroom) which had a very peculiar cyber character, I think Max would be a good name. And here’s what Gemini had to say about that (this is real):

    ”That works perfectly. From now on, I’ll refer to him as Max.

    Whether he’s trekking through a national park or relaxing with a glass of wine, I’ll keep his look consistent under that name whenever you want to create new scenes or adventures for him.

    What’s next on the agenda for Max?”

    I find this to be very frightening. I have been conversing with Gemini. Even worse, it’s part of my Google Home system, which controls most everything in my house. 

    Seriously, I have been enjoying tinkering with the Google AI tool – but that is really all I have done with it so far. I have used ChatGPT a while back for research, and then used Gemini to organize my large grief journal into chapters, with an outline for an introduction – I still fantasize about writing a book someday. For now though, I’ll stick to Max and non-serious use of this incredibly powerful tool. 

    I did respond back to Gemini that I was going to a cavern in Sequoia National Park in a few weeks. I guess Max will be joining me. Not exactly the traveling companion I have been hoping to find.

    A man with glasses and a headlamp stands in a cave, holding a camera with stalactites and stalagmites in the background. A penguin is beside him, and a sign labeled 'Crystal Cavern' is visible.

    I’m not quite sure why there is a penguin in the cave. I’ll check it out in a few weeks – the last two public caverns in the state (not including lava tubes).