Using DALL-E to create imagery for YouTube videos

This may not seem to have much to do with cycling, and it doesn't. I have some YouTube channels and I have been playing with DALL-E to generate some imagery to make the videos more appealing. Here's an example.

I created a DALL-E account and asked it to create an image using the prompt "a cyclist on a long country road in perspective in the style of turner". I got this.

 A cyclist on a long country road in perspective in the style of turner

Actually it was one of four images. I chose this one because it encapsulated "long" the best. But it's 1024x1024 pixels. I want a 16:9 aspect ratio so I cropped it using Windows Photo Editor. I could also have used a technique called out-painting but that gobbles up DALL-E points. With cropping, the image looks like this.

Cyclist 16:9 aspect ratio 1024x576 pixels 1.08Mb

The new image is 1024 x 576 pixels - quite low resolution even for an impressionist painting. My next task is to increase the resolution. This task would be even more important if I had asked DALL-E to generate a photographic quality image  This article has some options and I tried both BigJpg.com and Upscaler because they both have the ability to test drive them before paying money. Both have failed miserably.

BigJpg can't finish an upscaling. With and without a free account, both attempts to upscale the image above ran to 95% done and then hung forever. If it ever finishes, I'll update this post. Well, after an hour it did finish but the download times out. My guess is the site didn't make any money and is now not supported. The owner is still happy to take your money, but you won't get anything for it. So that's a huge NO! from me.

Upscaler failed to produce an image and is also flagged as a malware site. 

I tried Topaz last, because the article doesn't mention it offers a demo option. The product is a downloadable app that costs $159 right now. I downloaded it and quickly realized it does a brilliant job. The demo does not allow you to save the image, so I took a screen shot instead. It looks like this.

Cyclist 16:9 aspect ratio upscaled using Topaz

You can see it has increased the resolution (you have to maximize both images to see the difference) but I don't really like what it did with the red flowers. I think I'm more comfortable restricting myself to asking DALL-E for painting styles that still look good in low resolutions.

Sticking with the low resolution image, here is the intro video I created for the 300k brevet.

DaVinci Resolve has an upscaler built in, but it adds a watermark in the free version. The paid version costs $300 and I haven't paid for it. It would make more sense for me to pay for DaVinci than to purchase Topaz.

Here's the same video using DaVinci Resolve's upscaling (please excuse the watermark). I think I'm going to have to buy a license for it. It's difficult to see the difference because of BlogSpot's video compression. So here are the two videos uploaded to YouTube.

No upscaling https://youtu.be/17N89x2GSQU

Upscaled with DaVinci Resolve https://youtu.be/KNaRxN3r-gE

Upper SART reconnaissance

I signed up to ride Greg and Stacy Kline's 300k on Feb 11th which uses the entire length of the Santa Ana River Trail. Last time I was on the upper half (about a year ago) the homeless problem had become quite severe so I thought I should check it out.

I rode the top 10 miles after work on Friday evening and I'm pleased to see it has actually improved slightly. There are still several large encampments in the river bed, but almost no tents next to the trail and nothing encroaching. I still wouldn't feel comfortable being out here at night, and I think I'd like company during the day.

I didn't get a chance to ride the rest of the upper SART, hopefully it's no worse.

BrooksEngland.com website hacked?

I received a notification from YouTube this morning saying that two of my videos had been removed for violating their policies.

It looks like they are objecting to me posting a link to the Brooks saddles website. When I browse to the website I can see that Google has flagged it. As Brooks has been in business for over 100 years I have to assume they've been hacked. I bet there are thousands of YouTube videos that link to this site.

I hope Brooks sorts this out quickly and YouTube puts my content back online soon. I am impressed with the way YouTube handled the problem. Their algorithm surgically disabled the link with an explanation. Hopefully when the Brooks website is unflagged the algorithm will enable the link again.

Tour de Palm Springs

The 25th Tour de Palm Springs will be held on Feb 11th 2023. I decided to ride the route on my Brompton yesterday. I rode the first and second years a century option was offered, which I think was 1999 and 2000. In 2000 I decided to ride as far as I could without refueling. I got about 50 miles before I completely ran out of gas. I didn't really recover full strength until almost the end of the ride. That was very unpleasant but very educational.

The route is a little contrived in places to get the full 100 miles. I straightened out some of the sillier bits and took a detour at the south end to visit a date farm. I got a total of 98.6 miles and ended up riding 90% of the route.

To avoid paying for parking, I started at the Palm Springs Amtrak station instead of downtown. For a town of 45,000 people the train station is remarkably bleak. The only facility is a trash bin. The rest room is locked, the phone is destroyed, and there are no staff or even ticket machines. There are two trains a day arriving from Los Angeles, one at 10am and the other at midnight. This might be the least used station I have ever seen. Fortunately that meant there was plenty of parking available. It has nice views of San Jacinto mountain.

View from Palm Springs Amtrak station

The route can be split in two halves. The first half is through desert, hilly, with narrow or no shoulders, light traffic, poor road surfaces and few stop lights. The second half is more urban, with wider shoulders, heavy traffic, good road surfaces, and lots of stop lights - some of them two to three minutes long. I preferred the second half. The first half was exhausting on a folding bike and even though I had 35mm tires and some suspension, the quality of the road had turned my backside into hamburger. A smooth pavement and frequent rests at the stop lights was welcome.

I cannot imagine paying $100 to ride this with thousands of other cyclists.

Edgar got his new bike

Amber, Edgar, and I rode 40 miles on Christmas day. Edgar finally received his new Lynskey gravel bike and it was worth the three month wait. Apparently Lynskey builds their bikes in batches so they will produce 1000 road bikes, then 1000 gravel bikes etc. If you place your order at the wrong time you may have quite a wait.

I saw the bike has through axle fittings instead of quick releases. I'm not sure I like them. I don't know what problem they are supposed to be fixing, but wasn't the whole point of quick releases to be able to remove the wheel without tools?

A proud new bicycle owner

Amber is finding her Brompton M bars are good at keeping the pregnancy back pains at bay. That's good news. I don't know how much longer she can keep riding but she's getting good use out of her Brompton and her smart trainer.

We rode from Anaheim to the Bolsa Chica Café on two Bromptons and a Lynskey. It's cool that we can do an all Brompton or an all Titanium ride. The café was closed, of course, because it was Christmas day. We had brought sandwiches so we ate them at the café - hope they don't mind. I'm looking forward to them being open again on Jan 6th - I miss their cheese quesadillas.

A quick metric century on the Brompton after work

I decided to ride a cheeky 100k on my Brompton after work yesterday. There is a storm coming in and it looked like the weekend was going to be a washout. I hadn't originally planned to ride 100k but I got a few miles into the ride and realized my jacket was in the saddlebag of my other bike and my vest was in the car. I was expecting a low of 50F during the ride so I decided to turn back to the car and get my vest. That turned out to be a good decision.

I started at Yorba Linda park, in the pay section, because I don't think anyone is going to pay $3 for the privilege of vandalizing my car.

I've must have ridden this section of the Santa Ana bike trail 1000 times (I'm not exaggerating) and seen the gravel path that runs alongside it. I was saying to someone just the other day that there's no good gravel riding in Southern California so I thought I'd ride on the gravel for once. It's only two miles long but it was a lot of fun. I'm playing one of Mozart's Bassoon concertos on my mp3 player.

I'm riding my Brompton one handed and recording video with my cell phone. So it's a bit slow.

That was way more fun that I thought it would be. It has a totally different vibe from riding the bike path but it's only 10 yards away. 

I got to the Bolsa Chica café and had my usual Monster drink with a cheese quesadilla. It's mid December, about 4pm, and it is beautiful. There's no sign of the storm yet. Surely this is why I live here. 

Because I was stopped, I put the vest on to avoid getting chilled. Although the temperature at the start was 60F, it had dropped to 55 at the beach. I had had a mild headwind all the way here and I was looking forward to a tailwind on the way back. But I've ridden here enough times to know the tailwind would disappear when the sun went down in about an hour.

So I set off and instead of warming up slightly as I headed inland, it continued to cool until it was 49F. That jacket would have been nice. Not fast, but nevertheless another wonderful ride. I'm so lucky I enjoy cycling and I truly feel sorry for people who have the mindset that exercise is a chore.

First double-metric in 18 months

After my enjoyable century a couple of weeks ago, I decided it was time to ride a double-metric  for the first time in about 18 months. I decided to ride the Serotta, because this is such an efficient and comfortable bike.

The route is very easy, though not very scenic. I started at Yorba Linda park and rode the Santa Ana bike trail to the beach. It was overcast and cold (about 50F) when I started at 7:35am. I had a light jacket, arm warmers, and tights on. There was very little wind and I couldn't have asked for better conditions. My target average moving speed on a ride like this is 14mph but I was holding 16mph so I tried to see how long I could keep it for.

Once I reached the Pacific ocean I took my jacket off and headed north to Seal Beach, eating at The Crema. I had a ham and brie baguette and a Thai iced tea. I sat on a bench outside to eat it. Total down time was 23 minutes. I could have been faster.

Then I headed inland on the San Gabriel bike path. This has seen a significant increase in homeless encampments since I last rode on it. It was quite disgusting in places. I rode up towards the Santa Fe dam until I had a total of 100km. Fortunately I reached that distance before I had to climb over the dam. Then I turned around to the Shell gas station at Peck Rd. It was crazy busy and it would probably have been faster to go to the Mobil next door, but I stuck it out. A bottle of water and an egg salad sandwich kept me off the bike for 13 minutes. That's not too bad.

The weather forecast had been for a 12% chance of rain. I got several bouts of light rain during the ride, but nothing that even made me stop and put my jacket on.

I continued back on the San Gabriel even though this route normally follows the Los Angeles river trail. Last time I rode that trail, though, the homeless problem was appalling. So I decided to do a simple out and back. 

My last food stop was at another of my favorite places to eat - the Bolsa Chica café. They were crazy busy too so it took me 25 minutes to get and eat my cheese quesadillas. I don't think they have ever tasted so good. There was a new band playing that I hadn't heard before - very good.

I always wondered what the band would do in the rain

While I was there the cashier mentioned that next Sunday would be their last day until the next year. I guess I'll have to find somewhere else to eat for the last three weeks in December. It's not like there's a lack of places to eat along the beach :-)

So my total time off the bike was 1:01 but RideWithGPS says I was off for 1:08. I assume the seven minutes was stop lights. I finished with an average of 16.2 mph and a total elapsed time of 8:50. I'm over the moon about that time. It would have been good when I was regularly riding 200k rides. I'm pretty wrecked today, but I don't care.