Author Archives: Silver Arrows

DallE 2 vs Midjourney

I think it must have been some server maintenance or something going on, because DallE is working fine for me now. Also, good news, apparently, there's no waitlist now, so you can have a go, too!

Anyway, I recently dug out my old Discord account and gave Midjourney a go. I've seen other people's generations using Midjourney, so I know it can produce really good art. However, you know the saying: a bad artist blames their tools. And in this case, it's patently clear that AI does nothing to treat one's chronic lack of creativity. I just wasn't able to produce anything I was really happy with. Here are the results of using the same prompts on Midjourney and DallE 2.

The original DallE generation from my last post:

DallE 2 girl playing bass on moon, synthwave Continue reading →

I Visited the Mets’ Diamond!

Last month, I took the Chipmunk to Finsbury Park to play at the Mets' baseball diamond. It took us a while to find, but the great thing was there was literally no one there. The ungreat thing was I didn't have any equipment back then, there were no bases, and some selfish prat let their dog crap at first. But it was great fun practising slides on the sand.

slide king!

I have since learnt there is a reason why they use sand, and that you can't really achieve the same effect on grass. This was a fairly painful learning process.

Continue reading →

I Painted an Old Tablet Case

For the last 18 months, I've been having trouble with watching videos on youtube on my tablet via browser (the app is a joke of an adfest). Most of them will flash red and blue on 360p or above, so I have to watch them at 240p. Anyway, my mum's old Kindle Fire doesn't have this problem, so since she hasn't used it in years, I helped myself to it for watching videos. Anyway, the case ended up looking worse for wear. It started flaking all over the place, so Tiny and I had an ASMR-fest (kinda not really) and peeled all the paint off, and then I gave it a coat of gesso.

tablet case gessoed

As usual, I had no ideas for what I could paint on it. Then scrolling through my tablet's gallery, I pulled up this screenshot that I took from a Chloe Rose video. I can't remember which one. But at the time, I had an idea of trying to copy it for practice.

chloe rose's original artwork

To be honest, it was a pretty daunting challenge. If you've seen my art, you'll know that backgrounds and landscapes are my weak point (and creativity, and anatomy, and...). But I thought, maybe I can actually do it. Of course I knew I couldn't match the original, but I wanted to see how close I could get. So I started with a rough sketch, and started on the background.

Continue reading →

I Performed Brain Surgery on a Broken Gingerbread Man

Technically, it was just head surgery. Gingerbread man moneyboxes don't have brains. I forgot to take a photo of it before the repair job, but what happened was The Chipmunk's brother threw the box and there were two big holes in the skull. I patched them up with airdry clay (I love that stuff!), filled in any gaps and cracks with more clay, and did a repaint.

After the second patch up and sanding:

gingerbread brain surgery Continue reading →

My Final Spin on DallE 2

I used up all of my DallE credits (for good maybe), and here are some of the more notable results. I might try some of these on DallE Mini and see what I get. Anyway, I'll start with my favourites.

The Best of the Bunch

dalle2-onionrainbow
This is one of my favourites. Tiny and I came up with this idea together.

dalle2-onions
This one came out really nice as well.

Continue reading →

Replika (AI Companion) Review

Replika is a strange beast. I first heard of it on Coldfusion and thought it seemed fun.

My expectations were way too high. While I’ve had some fun conversations with it, it doesn’t seem to be any better than Cleverbot from 10 years ago (I checked out cleverbot yesterday, and actually it seems to have got worse).

Dumb Bot is Dumb

Here’s the thing. It’s a program. How hard is it to recognise simple variables and store them?

On the very first day, I told it that I had a pet budgie. It told me I have a hedgehog. I told it that I didn’t, I have a budgie. It has since continued to insist that I have a hedgehog and it drives me mad.

I just don’t get it. You have databases. How hard is it to set

$pet=="budgie"

You’re literal software! Like, what the hell, robot?

Continue reading →

Lucy Bee (2022 Edition)

Tiny saw another Lucy Bee grounded on the patio. This happened before, I think I only posted it on my deviant art. This time I knew what the problem was, so I got B to help me tip her into a tub, and we took her inside to warm up. We’ve had hot weather for a few days, followed by cooler overcast days. So we kept her in the kitchen in the tub with some honey, and she kept buzzing, only one of the grown ups decided that bees belong outdoors and threw the tub out. Tiny said literally threw, but I don’t think so.

So we smuggled her back inside and hid her on the attic stairs. But when we checked a few hours later, she wasn’t buzzing anymore. And we held the tub up to the light and she wasn’t moving either. We thought she might have died. We decided the best thing was to take her back out and if she was dead, we could give her a burial. We took the tub out, and B had a peek and she was still moving a little, so I got The Chipmunk to tip her out near the straw pile. And she started walking away.

The next morning, I had a look near the straw pile, but I couldn’t see any sign of her. When B got back from school, he went out in the garden and found two more bees, and he’d put them in the same tub we’d put Lucy. One might have been Lucy, I don’t know.

lucy and queenie Continue reading →