Not bad, AI
I asked Grok to “make me an image of elon musk eating a pickle in comic book style” and this is what it gave me. Not bad at all.
Why the phrase “elon musk eating a pickle” popped into my head, I do not know. I’m kind of surprised Grok allowed it, in that it could easily be edited into something ruder.
I do know a whole lot of illustrators will be out of work.
Have a good weekend!
February 7, 2025 — 7:16 pm
Comments: 6
Embarrassing
Bought myself one of these. It’s the small version of the big and unwieldy one I have with my desktop machine. It’s small and unwieldy (Huion tablets use an unfeasible number of ports). I haven’t been able to set it up yet because I’m having a Windows 11 update that’s been downloading for over an hour.
Just had a message saying installing the update could take an unusually long time(!). Yeah, maybe later.
I bought this from the Huion Ebay shop – it’s a refurb. Yes, sorry, I can’t make myself not be a cheapskate. I ordered it yesterday afternoon and it showed up at 1:00 today. Wow.
Took a picture of the box to show you, propped up in a chair. When I saw the image on computer, there was a terrifying amount of cat hair on the chair. Crop! Crop!
February 6, 2025 — 6:42 pm
Comments: 6
Uncle B liked it, anyway
This photo won the Natural History Museum’s 2024 Wildlife Photographer of the Year People’s Choice Award. It was taken in an urban setting not that far from here. Do hit the link – there are some wonderful photos there.
There is a darker side to this image. I live in rural Dorset where I’m on a rewilding mission to enhance habitats for a huge array of wildlife. The badger cull – which is still ongoing – has decimated their numbers and I fear that unless the cull is stopped, we’ll only see badgers in urban settings in several parts of England. My hope is for this image to raise awareness of the damaging effect of the badger cull and help push for change.” – Ian Wood, winner of this year’s People’s Choice Award.
That’s the photographer, Ian Wood. While I agree the cull is disgraceful (they’re trying to murder their way out of bovine tuberculosis), I don’t know why anyone would want badgers in the city. They’re a menace to traffic and awfully destructive.
If you scroll down the BBC article on the topic, you might just spot a Belgian ermine.
p.s. don’t get me started on Banksy.
February 5, 2025 — 5:41 pm
Comments: 5
Lucky little newt
Look at the adorable smooth newt that Uncle B found SWIMMING IN THE DOWNSTAIRS TOILET. I may never poop again.
Yes, he rescued it.
Speaking of slimy things: Adobe. I posted a rave review of Photoshop Elements some time ago, which has damn near all the functionality of my full Photoshop but only costs, like, £70. I went to buy a copy for new machine, and noticed in the fine print it now says “3 year license.”
So I looked it up. Yup. After three years, the program stops working and you have to pony up again. They started this in 2025 and, because everything is delivered digitally now, you simply cannot buy an older version.
Anyway, I may have a workaround. I bought the 2024 version for work and it’s a one person, two seat license. If I can find the serial number.
Wot bastards.
February 4, 2025 — 7:50 pm
Comments: 8
Guess who got a new computer?
Me. It was me. It was a trick question.
The laptop that I sit around and shitpost with is over ten years old. It still works fine for my purposes, but the keyboard is going (notably the spacebar, which is hard to work around) and it was starting to lock and complain more and more.
Stupid. I can easily afford a new one. But a certain innate cheapness is hard to overcome. So I bought a nice computer, but bowed to my thrifty instincts and bought an ex-display model. They knocked a few hundred off it.
Nice, bangy screen. Lots of memory. Good sound. Big hard drive. I was loving this thing.
Day two, after assorted updates, the soundcard stopped working. I had sound with Bluetooth speakers but not the native sound. I spent an entire day in Gates hell, fart-assing around with the Device Manager, Control Panel, downloading drivers, rebooting.. I so didn’t want to send this computer back.
In the end, Uncle B found the answer: a Windows update from December broke Realtek and Microsoft hasn’t bothered to fix it. The solution: do a firmware update on the computer. The search idea that called it up for him was the bizarre fact that sound worked with Bluetooth speakers.
I wonder how much of my life I’ve spent chasing Gates bullshit.
Anyway – new computer! w00t!
February 3, 2025 — 7:19 pm
Comments: 19
Like…nothing at all!
I bought some barefoot shoes. No, not as silly as the ones at the link.
Mine are the ones in the pic. I really like them. Uncle B says they’re pink, but the model is called ‘paprika’ so I’m pretty sure it’s red. Pink shoes. As if!
The idea is that they let your feet and toes move around in a normal way, as if you were barefoot. I worried that I’d have problems walking long distances or riding my bike, but no. Although they’re more comfortable without socks than with, but without is philosophically gross.
They’re vegan, so…yay, I guess. But, hey, these same people also sell dog hair socks, so not entirely vegan.
Wait, are naturally shed animal products vegan or not?
They get wider at the tip so your toes can move around, but that does make them look like clown shoes. Also, I keep catching my toe on things.
You’ll have to Google it for yourself, though. There’s no point me trying to sell you shoes from Germany.
Have a good weekend!
January 31, 2025 — 6:38 pm
Comments: 11
Spotted at an open air market
Yes, it’s a genu-wine ermine collar. It was kind of ratty and nasty, but this was a junk stall.
January 30, 2025 — 7:40 pm
Comments: 9
Happy New Year!
Chinese New Year, that is. It is the Year of the Snake:
2025 is the year of the Snake based on Chinese zodiac. This is a year of Wood Snake, starting from Jan. 29, 2025 to Feb. 16, 2026. Snake is the sixth in the 12-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac sign. The years of the Snake include 1917, 1929, 1941, 1953, 1965, 1977, 1989, 2001, 2013, 2025, 2037…
Snake carries the meanings of malevolence, cattiness, mystery, as well as acumen and divination. In most cases, this animal is considered evil and the elongated legless body always scares people. However, in ancient Chinese traditions, the snake once presented a venerated image and it is one of the earliest totems of Chinese nations. Chinese mother goddess Nüwa who said to have created humanity has the body of a snake and the head of a human. The Chinese dragon also has a snake body. Today, in some places in China, people still believe that a snake found in their courtyard can bring good luck.
If you don’t know your Zodiac sign, you can calculate it here. From hence, you can read your horoscope. Mine’s okay this year. Uncle B’s, not so good.
The picture comes from the British Museum shop. Their stuff is nice, but very pricey, and it would probably kill you to have anything shipped to the States.
January 29, 2025 — 5:41 pm
Comments: 3
Silly AI, tricks are for kids
This one is going to run long, sorry. This is the text of a Twitter thread on why DeepSeek is scaring the poop out of our domestic AI guys. I found most of it easy to understand. There are a few more tweets in the thread, so if this interests you, check out the original and maybe give the author a follow.
Let me break down why DeepSeek’s AI innovations are blowing people’s minds (and possibly threatening Nvidia’s $2T market cap) in simple terms…
1/ First, some context: Right now, training top AI models is INSANELY expensive. OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. spend $100M+ just on compute. They need massive data centers with thousands of $40K GPUs. It’s like needing a whole power plant to run a factory.
2/ DeepSeek just showed up and said “LOL what if we did this for $5M instead?” And they didn’t just talk – they actually DID it. Their models match or beat GPT-4 and Claude on many tasks. The AI world is (as my teenagers say) shook.
3/ How? They rethought everything from the ground up. Traditional AI is like writing every number with 32 decimal places. DeepSeek was like “what if we just used 8? It’s still accurate enough!” Boom – 75% less memory needed.
4/ Then there’s their “multi-token” system. Normal AI reads like a first-grader: “The… cat… sat…” DeepSeek reads in whole phrases at once. 2x faster, 90% as accurate. When you’re processing billions of words, this MATTERS.
5/ But here’s the really clever bit: They built an “expert system.” Instead of one massive AI trying to know everything (like having one person be a doctor, lawyer, AND engineer), they have specialized experts that only wake up when needed.
6/ Traditional models? All 1.8 trillion parameters active ALL THE TIME. DeepSeek? 671B total but only 37B active at once. It’s like having a huge team but only calling in the experts you actually need for each task.
7/ The results are mind-blowing:
– Training cost: $100M → $5M
– GPUs needed: 100,000 → 2,000
– API costs: 95% cheaper
– Can run on gaming GPUs instead of data center hardware
8/ “But wait,” you might say, “there must be a catch!” That’s the wild part – it’s all open source. Anyone can check their work. The code is public. The technical papers explain everything. It’s not magic, just incredibly clever engineering.
9/ Why does this matter? Because it breaks the model of “only huge tech companies can play in AI.” You don’t need a billion-dollar data center anymore. A few good GPUs might do it.
10/ For Nvidia, this is scary. Their entire business model is built on selling super expensive GPUs with 90% margins. If everyone can suddenly do AI with regular gaming GPUs… well, you see the problem.
11/ And here’s the kicker: DeepSeek did this with a team of <200 people. Meanwhile, Meta has teams where the compensation alone exceeds DeepSeek's entire training budget... and their models aren't as good.
January 28, 2025 — 6:41 pm
Comments: 6
They got me!
Nah, it’s a Fitbit. Got a factory refurb, so it was relatively cheap to try. I knew it would drive me nutty coo-coo banana-pants to have something on my wrist all the time, so I got a band long enough to wear on my ankle. I hardly notice it.
I don’t know how accurate these things are. It does appear to confirm what I suspected: I don’t get nearly enough deep sleep. Also, I don’t go anywhere NEAR 10,000 steps a day.
Have you tried one oF these things?
Speaking of nutty coo-coo banana-pants, if this wind doesn’t stop soon, I’m going to go there.
January 27, 2025 — 6:46 pm
Comments: 9