It’s that time of year
Sorry for the lightposting this week. The weather’s been nice and I’ve done nothing but duck out early from work and sit in the garden staring out across the fields.
That there is the view from my front garden.
Okay, I had to zoom way in because they were right down the bottom of the field, but there’s plenty of them. They staggered the lambing more than usual this year, so some lambs are tiny and new and some are thundering across the turf in menacing lamb gangs.
Happy Easter, everyone, and have a great weekend! Back to the garden for this weasel.
April 18, 2025 — 5:48 pm
Comments: 8
I have seen the future
It’s a shed lockplate in the shape of a pig. Yes, it’s pink. Saw it on the way to work this morning (how much more you notice when you walk in).
No, nothing more interesting happened to me today.
Wait – it did! I bought a crystal ball from a junk seller in the town. I said, “can you see the future in that thing?” and he squinted and said, “I see a five pound note.”
April 17, 2025 — 5:00 pm
Comments: 5
kind of a short neck for a weasel
MidJourney. The prompt was “an angry berserker weasel running at the camera, mouth open, waving a sword.” A miss, I think.
I was proud of the image I wrung out of AI for my book cover, so I sent it off to my new boss last night. Didn’t hear anything back. Finally sent a timid WhatsApp asking if it arrived.
Meh. He has moral qualms about AI. Energy consumption and copyright infringement.
Dear reader, I think my boss just might be a virtue-signalling twat.
April 16, 2025 — 6:28 pm
Comments: 8
Say “friend” and enter
I stole Uncle B’s lime. I mean, his lime picture. It gives him great pleasure to grow citrus fruit in the UK. Also, he likes limes.
I finally got AI to bend to my will. After using three services and dozens of prompts, I had a brainstorm. I told it “Make me a book cover for a book called ‘name of the book I need a cover for'” and it did a really good job!
Points if you recognize the subject line. More points if you can explain to me how it relates to the above, because I can’t quite draw a line between them.
April 15, 2025 — 6:53 pm
Comments: 6
Soon to be spuds
I had a meeting of my art club this afternoon, so I left Uncle B to do what he does best – dig holes. I am informed this is a well-respected second early potato called Jazzy. It will render up tubers on July 21.
I am unaccustomed to potatoes with names. As far as I’m concerned, there are three kinds of potatoes: new potatoes, red potatoes and Idaho bakers.
It is a complicated place.
April 14, 2025 — 6:10 pm
Comments: 8
First world problems
BBC pissing and moaning about the ‘critically endangered’ Sussex trug.
Why is it critically endangered? Because nobody wants to pay £50 for a handbasket, is why. It doesn’t say that in the article, but it’s the truth.
This is a thing we see a lot – people doing working class jobs expecting middle class money. Somebody retires to the country to start a little business making cakes or blacksmithing or basket weaving and they bring their city salary expectations with them. Which they can get away with for a while, but ultimately it’s hard to justify paying stupid money for a piece of cake, even if it’s a very nice piece of cake.
Anyway, Sussex trugs are kind of cool. They’re tacked together out of flexible strips of wood so tightly you can carry water in them, so they say. We see people making them at every country show we go to, so nuts to critically endangered. I don’t own one, though.
Have a good weekend!
April 11, 2025 — 5:08 pm
Comments: 7
That’s a lot of satellite dishes
We’re going out tonight, so I’ll leave you with another of the images MidJourney gave me after I yelled at it for giving me the wrong building.
April 10, 2025 — 3:46 pm
Comments: 7
Learning curve? I was promised there wouldn’t be a learning curve
I’m getting there. I have a very specific task for our robot masters: I upload a picture of a specific real-world building and you put it in a night-time landscape with a full moon. It’s for work.
What I’m getting: I take your building and I turn it into a gigantic Disney fairy princess castle. Also full moon.
I mean, it’s making some astonishing images, but they aren’t what I need.
Finally, I got mad and typed in “that’s the wrong building, you stupid AI” and it gave me this.
Huh.
Uncle B said, “wouldn’t it be easier just to do the illustration yourself?” and I’m, like, “SHUT UP!”
April 9, 2025 — 6:28 pm
Comments: 5
That’s not…what…
I asked for an image of a hand pushing a rope and this is what I got. Not exactly what I had in my head.
I’m having a hard time getting MidJourney to give me what I want. Complicated by the fact I’m paying for it and there are limits to the number of images I can generate per month. It’s giving me awful performance anxiety.
What are the limits? Nobody can say. It’s based on how hard your images hammer their GPU. That’s what you’re paying for: GPU cycles.
I could just go my merry way and see what happens when I run out, but I have an actual work image I need to generate this month.
This? I made this one in Chat GPT. There’s a limit to how many images I can make with it, too, but at least I’m not paying for it.
April 8, 2025 — 4:42 pm
Comments: 6
My journey to obsolete myself continues
I’ve continued to be fascinated with making AI draw me pictures. The mother of them all is MidJourney, and I haven’t gone there yet.
Have a look at the gallery. This top page changes every day and showcases images created that day. Creators can’t opt out!
The image above I thought was especially lovely. I don’t know if links to it will work after it moves off the front page, but here it is.
The cool thing about these images is that they publish the prompt that produced them. Some of them are long and complex and will include the names of several artists.
The prompt for the above is “geometrical, minimalist logo design, abstract fusion of words “ALLA PIXEL” in center of illustration, paintbrushs, splral from rough fabric, rose flowers, ethereal elegance, high fashion branding style, smooth curves with sacred geometry, soft golden and ivory tones, modern luxury aesthetic, vector style, centered composition, ultra clean lines, futuristic yet mythical, elegant symbol, ivory background, isolated,” and it cuts off there, so there was more to it.
I’m going to have to jump in, but there is no free option. It’s not much ($8 a month for the most basic), but I hate the subscription model.
Eh. Hold my beer.
April 7, 2025 — 6:49 pm
Comments: 4