🔗 LIfe Imitating Art? … that is if 🎬 Love Actually counts as ‘art’?
If you like playing around with AI image generators - I like and use Leonardo.ai (free version) - separately there is this … might be fun?
Never base your identity on politics. The world will eventually change, but you won’t.
💬 Mark Manson
… except I don’t agree. Unless I am missing something?
What do you think?
“Wisdom is when you stop over-investing in every shiny new idea, feeling, or person that comes along.”
💬 Mark Manson
Hell yes - tell me about it.
Well, except for apps … and notebooks … and pens of course - don’t forget pens … and that new craft ale … not to mention exploring that new idea that Jim shared last night, Oh and that new blogging tool thingy. Yeah - I think I am covered. Or maybe …..
Thought I’d try out 🔗 paid tinylytics for a while.
Some odd stats there - so now I need to check out what is being checked out!
📺 Ted Lasso
Just marvelous. No point in saying more, since I can’t add to all the other plaudits.
Ted Lasso on 🔗 Reelgood
🎥 The Covenant, 2023 - ★★★★
Massive fan of Guy Ritchie. This is not your usual Guy Ritchie. Do not miss it. Wonderful.
🎥 Fast X, 2023 - ★★★★
I’m not a massive fan of the FandF franchise, I am definitely not a ‘hater’. This one though .. X … OH MY .. and totally made my Jason Momoa. Played the ‘baddie’ brilliantly, highly recommend just to see him do his thing. This ain’t Aquaman.
🎥 Renfield, 2023 - ★★★★
Love and Hate Mr Cage … and his movies. This one is definetlu love. Over the top as only he can do, without it being bad. I’m not a Dracula dude. This was great.
Had a hankering for some Chinese, so looked up the local places.
Now trying to decide between taking out a mortgage or adjusting my palette.
Good Grief!
Steve Winwood and Carlos - and no - I do not know how I missed this 2 to 3 years ago - but missed it I did.
Well worth recording. Well worth a listen.
📼 .. and then a little older. … GROOVIN!
Heh Ron!
Bu Bye Now.
🎈022/366 🤖 AI Experiment
… is a picture I took this morning while I sat with a cup of coffee.
If you have been following along with these posts recently, you will have noticed that a lot of images I use in the 366 series are generated by an AI. (More often than not Leonardo.ai) I do not spend a lot of time on creating the perfect prompt. I am really just playing around and creating a little eye candy whilst learning what I can. Which got me to wondering, what would Leonardo make of my view?
I used this prompt.
“I am looking at Auckland Harbour from a balcony in the viaduct. The sun is shining, but the day is still quiet. Create an image for me that you think reflects what I am seeing.
I ran the prompt three times and these were the results.
I decided this was the closest to the right result as in ‘matching the prompt’.
- It has Sky Tower - so ‘Auckland’ - except if I was looking at the harbour from a balcony - Sky tower would be behind me.
- It is very clearly a balcony.
- I rejected the bottom left, because really - to match the prompt ‘I’ wouldn’t be in the picture.
- There were others that were as acceptable. None were ‘right’/
So - why no boats in the AI images? Because they weren’t included in the original prompt.
Just for kicks I modified the prompt
“I am looking at Auckland Harbour with some moored boats from a balcony in the viaduct. The sun is shining, but the day is still quiet. Create an image for me that you think reflects what I am seeing.”
Am I happy with the finished results? Well - no.
But if i didn’t have access to the actual image, for a few minutes of work - the results weren’t too bad.
(These are the results from the free version of Leonardo. I know they would be massively improved if I subscribed and added access to the other models they have available. First though, I want to learn as much as I can for free.)
What do you think?
📼 🔗 Ferret - Apple’s new multi modal AI
I found this rather interesting, of course when you think about it - their camera work and car dev will absolutely have given them an edge on understanding images … makes total sense.
Then I read…
Apple stopped using and supporting NVidia products in 2016, its Ferret model was developed using NVidia’s highly efficient A100 graphics cards. Therefore, the source code available on GitHub does not work on Apple’s products.
🤦🏽
So here’s an odd thing for anyone interested to do with the very excellent ‘Conversation on Micro.blog’ plugin. 🖇️ This link (2016) works - BUT at the bottom - it reads ‘Also on Micro.blog - and not the usual ‘Conversation on Micro.blog’ like on say 🖇️ this post.
‘Also on’ - just takes you to the home page of the blog.
‘Conversation on’ - takes you to the actual post.
On closer looking at the plugin I see something that is called a fall back link - which i THINK is new? Certainly newer than my original install - so I am guessing that posts of a certain age and/or posts that were imported (like this one) don’t work.
Is that right @sod ?
Anything a mere mortal can do to improve this?
It’s an Instagram account. Clever ideas brought to life …
I am not a paid subscriber ..so don’t know how this ends, but this is one of the best pre paywall cliff hangers I have ever read ….
🔗 Postcard from Sundance… Starting with H'wood Agents at Burbank Airport
Maybe The Media Is Biased?
The comforting conceit that Donald Trump is an unpleasant yet passing American aberration, often heard during his 2017-21 presidency, is harder to believe than ever after his Iowa caucus landslide victory last week.
Simon .. it wasn’t a landslide. Even the article you linked to doesn’t say ‘landslide’. You of all people should know this .. maybe you should read your own newspaper more …
🔗 Iowa caucuses 2024: Republican results in full | US elections 2024 | The Guardian
He won 20 delegates .. and 3 more after the idiot Ramaswamy dropped out. 17 more won by ‘others’.
Call that a landslide? Ronald Reagan winning 49 of the 50 states .. THAT’S a landslide. (Tip o’ the hat to Crocodile Dundee.)
🔗 Here’s what Iowa’s own newspaper wrote.
TL;DR 15% of registered republicans actually voted. Around 110 thousand out of 3.2 million people.
It really does seem that we have a biased media .. but not like the Rethuglicans think.
🎈021/366 👮🏼♂️ The Seven Laws of Identity
I was listening to 🎙️this podcast and of course duly reminded of Kim Cameron’s 7 Laws of Identity, so replaying here for posterity. You can 🔗 read a quick summary here.
Law 1: User control and consent
Technical identity systems must only reveal information identifying a user with the user’s consent
Law 2: Minimum disclosure for a constrained use
The solution which discloses the least amount of identifying information and best limits its use is the most stable long-term solution
Law 3: Justifiable Parties
Digital identity systems must be designed so the disclosure of identifying information is limited to parties having a necessary and justifiable place in a given identity relationship
Law 4: Directed Identity
A universal identity system must support both “omni-directional” identifiers for use by public entities and “unidirectional” identifiers for use by private entities, thus facilitating discovery while preventing unnecessary release of correlation handles
Law 5: Pluralism of Operators and Technologies
A universal identity system must channel and enable the inter-working of multiple identity technologies run by multiple identity providers
Law 6: Human Integration
The universal identity metasystem must define the human user to be a component of the distributed system integrated through unambiguous human-machine communication mechanisms offering protection against identity attacks
Law 7: Consistent Experience Across Contexts
The unifying identity metasystem must guarantee its users a simple, consistent experience while enabling separation of contexts through multiple operators and technologies
Down here in sunny New Zealand, I have been helping a local man with his identity solution. More on that in due course - because - guess what - its pretty much ‘tops’ .. and expression I learned last night which is the antonym of ‘pants’ … but I digress.
It turns out his system hits all seven laws - and that’s just how it worked out, to because he designed to them. This gives me even more confidence that we are on to something. It would be kinda like building a robot and then realizing it is ‘Asimov compliant’.