A.C. Flory's Blog, page 15

Another Tukti scene

Just finished another visual ‘snapshot’ from the Tukti story that’s taking shape in graphic form. In this one, Little Miss is peering out of the mound, hoping to catch sight of her brother. She’s not allowed out alone, especially during firstlight and Takhset – because that’s when the Vokh hunt – but Big Brother is missing and Little Miss is terrified something has happened to him.

And yes, I remembered to add the watermark.

cheers,
Meeks

Why are you making commenting so hard, WordPress?

We’ve all complained about aspects of the WordPress interface in the past, but the ‘new’ hoops we have to jump through just to comment on each other’s blogs is ridiculous…and it’s been going on for too long. So I’ve taken it to Youtube:

Are you as sick of this as I am? Feel free to rant in comments. Who knows, if enough of us complain, maybe WordPress will be forced to take notice. Fingers crossed. [image error]

Meeks

Brilliant eating hack, especially for those with Type 2 Diabetes!!!!

The video below is not by your typical, young Influencer. The young woman in the video is a bio-chemist, and her videos all talk about how to improve your health by lowering the glucose spikes that can lead to Type 2 Diabetes. The video is long, but every minute is important. And she is a damn good communicator so the explanations are as important as the eating ‘hack’.

Oh, and this hack is vital for people who don’t have Type 2 Diabetes too. Insulin resistance is on the rise. If you want to avoid Type 2 Diabetes and/or just feel better generally, this is a must see video.

You’re VERY welcome,
Meeks

WordPress content to train AI!!!!!

Please read the post ‘WordPress Strikes Again’ to find out how you can ‘OPT OUT’ of this new bit of …’sharing’. And don’t forget to click ‘Save Settings’ when you’re done or your choice won’t stick.

Very angry,
Meeks

WordPress Strikes Again

Paypal email scam, 2024

I just received an email, purportedly a ‘receipt’, that referenced Paypal AND addressed me by my full name. This is a screenshot of the body of the email:

I knew I hadn’t bought the ridiculous item shown on the ‘receipt’, but as I do have a Paypal account, even though I don’t use it, I was worried enough to login to Paypal [NOT from the email] to check that there was no such transaction.

The good news is that there was no transaction. The bad news is that my email and full name is known to hackers who create these email phishing scams. It is possible that someone reading my blog would work out my full name, but what is more likely is that my contact details have been hacked as part of some major data breaches that occurred recently. And that’s a problem many of us may share.

As large corporations have our data, and appear incapable of keeping it secure, the onus falls on us not to be caught out when these bloody hackers strike.

Phishing emails work exactly as the name implies: hackers ‘fish’ for information they can use to steal our money. Or our identities. They do this by buying a database of email addresses from the Dark Web, or in my case, email addresses and names. Then they create an email that pretends to be from a large institution.

That institution could be a bank, or Paypal, or the electricity company! The point is that the email tries to frighten you into following a link and giving the hackers more information, like your bank account details. They then use those details to take your money.

Millions of these phishing emails are sent out and most don’t catch any ‘fish’ because the details are so obviously wrong. For example, if I did not have a Paypal account, I would have deleted the email without even bothering to log in to Paypal. But I did have a Paypal account so my first reaction was fear.

And that’s the whole point! The hackers know that when people first get a fright, they don’t act logically, and they may click the link that’s supposed to stop whatever it is from happening.

It’s a clever psychological manipulation, and now that the hackers can call us by name, the fear factor is even greater. But there are some things we can do – ALWAYS – to get past the fear and keep ourselves safe:

DO NOT FOLLOW ANY LINKS IN THE EMAIL. This is probably the single most protective thing we can do.If the information in the email looks as if it might apply to us – e.g. a bank or Paypal etc., – we should contact the institution directly . Ring them up and ask, or type the name of the institution in the address bar of your browser and login from there. And last but not least, recognize that these scams are not personal. The hackers may know your email address, and nowadays they may know your name, but they don’t actually know YOU. They are just pretending .

I wish all large institutions were banned from putting legitimate links in emails. Yes, those links may be convenient, but they create a mindset where we assume that all links in emails are ‘safe’. And they are not. Unfortunately, regulations always lag behind reality, and the reality is that emails are not safe. Please remember that the next time you receive an email that makes you gasp in shock.

Take care,
Meeks

AI and DIY Watermarks

The copyright issues with AI simply aren’t going away, so I’ve started applying a custom watermark to all of my graphics. And I think that everyone who works with graphics should do the same.

So long as your graphics package allows you to:

make an image semi transparent, andsave it as a .png file

…you can make your own watermark.

For those who don’t know what a .png file is, it’s an image format, similar to a .jpeg, but it’s higher quality, AND it retains any transparency in the image so you can ‘place’ the file over another image.

This is a .png file I made of my watermark:

And this is a quick mock-up showing how the watermark behaves over various colours:

As you can see, my watermark works best with lighter colours, but that’s partly due to the large areas of ‘light’ I left in the image. More solid images would show up better.

And finally this is the watermark on my latest graphic – Little Miss Asleep:

Can’t see it? How about this:

I’ve tried to make my watermark ‘unobtrusive’ so that it doesn’t completely ruin the image, but the trade-off with that is that it may not be obtrusive enough to deter others from copying the image. -shrug- I live in hope, but the only way to truly protect an image is to place a grid of watermarks over it, the way iStock does. But this would look horrible:

If governments don’t regulate AI, then I imagine that ‘the market’ will eventually have to do something for its own protection, but that could take years. In the meantime, content creators have to take what precautions we can, and watermarks are one weapon in our arsenal.

Happy watermarking,
Meeks

Some big changes

In order of importance, these are the changes I’ve made this morning:

I unpublished most of my books on Amazon. The only two remaining are ‘Miira’ and ‘The Vintage Egg’.I dropped the price on ‘Miira’ to $0.99.I cancelled my Redbubble account.I deleted the link to Redbubble from the sidebar of my blog.

Now, as to why I’ve done all this housekeeping, the answer is simple: my ABN [Australian Business Number] was cancelled due to lack of use. In other words, the government cancelled it due to lack of income. The pension doesn’t count. Getting it back isn’t hard, but I suddenly couldn’t see the point.

Before the pandemic, I was doing some teaching that brought in extra cash, but as the Offspring and I are still in protective self-isolation, and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future, I can’t see the point of keeping an ABN just so I have to fill in tax forms that declare no income.

And before anyone asks, I’ve only ever had to declare income from Amazon once, meaning I’ve only reached the $100 threshold once. As for Rebubble, the exorbitant price of all the merchandise, plus my complete lack of marketing, means I’ve never earned anything at all.

So, for the time being, I have to accept that I’m more of a hobbyist than anything else, and I don’t want to get into trouble with the tax office, so it just seemed logical to withdraw from sales until I’m ready to actually work at it again. And by that I mean writing and publishing a new book which I then market to the best of my ability.

It will happen, but not soon, hence the housekeeping. I will, however, do the odd freebie on Amazon, which is why I kept ‘Miira’ and ‘The Vintage Egg’. If by some weird and wonderful chance someone reads ‘Miira’ and wants more, I may rethink my position, but for now I just want things to quietly tick over with the minimum of fuss and bother. On the social media front, I will continue to do the things I enjoy the most – i.e. post on my blog and make videos.

I was ready for a change, albeit a small one in real terms. Now, I feel strangely liberated, as if I’ve shed the weight of some old, unrealistic expectations. Feels good.

cheers,
Meeks

From the sublime to the…woolly. :D

The Offspring and I had a major success today – we devised feeding troughs for Bill, Ben and Big Girl so they wouldn’t waste half of their chaff at every feed. And this is it:

Oaten chaff in the new feeding troughs.

The troughs are attached to the rural gate at the side of the house, and they are just far enough off the ground to stop Bill and Ben from putting their feet in them. For reasons known only to Da Boyz, they love pawing at their chaff and spreading it all over the place. And then they poop in it. They really have no table manners!

Now, however, they are much better behaved!

Benny in the foreground and Billy at the back.

The plastic troughs are wedged in tightly enough that the Boyz can’t knock them out, another one of their favourite tricks. Still a bit of a mess, but nothing like normal.

And last, but not least, this is Big Girl the Alpaca come to share in the bounty.

The herd.

We were actually surprised to see the Boyz move over and allow Big Girl to have her own trough. For those who’ve never met this motley crew before, Big Girl is the last surviving alpaca out of four and we didn’t want to farm her away from the only home she’s ever known, so we got Da Boyz to keep her company. And it worked. She’s happy, they’re happy, and we’re happy!

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Cheers,
Meeks

Dimash – oh so sexy music video!

And it’s in English! If I’m gushing please forgive me, but this absolutely gorgeous young man has a 6 octave voice, which is incredibly rare. It means he can sing from baritone all the way up through tenor and contralto to coloratura soprano.

And did I say he’s gorgeous?

Dimash ‘is a Kazakh singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist’ [Wiki] who is finally starting to be recognized in the West, partly thanks to collaborations he’s done with Opera superstars such as Placido Domingo.

Ok, enough words, watch, listen, and become a Dimash fan like me.

cheers,
Meeks

Art in the infancy of AI

The day before yesterday, I posted about a digital collage that I created to represent the alien world of Vokhtah.

Yesterday I posted about the very hands-on, delicious art of Robbie Cheadle.

Today, I want to talk about the AI assisted reference pictures created by D.Wallace Peach for her new WIP – The Weaver’s Tale.

All of Diana’s images were beautiful, but this one captivated me the most:

You can find this pic, along with many other entrancing graphics on Diana’s post.

Every time I look at this graphic of the Winter King [from Diana’s WIP], my heart sinks because it is so beautiful. And I know I could never create anything half as good.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy with the digital collages I create, but each one takes me weeks, sometimes months to finish. Why bother putting in so much effort when an AI can do it better, and in a fraction of the time?

That is the question that has been haunting me this morning, and instead of opening up Corel Draw X8 and working on the next image, I’ve been distracting myself with social media. One of the sites I visited was the blog of John Scalzi, a famous, traditionally published science fiction writer. And that was when it hit me – his book covers are created by professional illustrators…professional human illustrators!!

I’ve known that simple fact from the very beginning, but it didn’t bother me because, well, they’re professionals, right? They have the training and the kind of crazy skills that I could never have. Of course they’re going to be better than me!

But then…if I’m not discouraged by professional illustrators, why should I be discouraged by an AI?

I think the answer to that question may be important for all content creators: I believe we do what we do because we love what we do.

There are other, creative reasons too. For me, writer’s block is a big one. Ever since the pandemic began, I’ve found it almost impossible to write fiction. I’ve tried, but my writing energy seems to peter out after just a few weeks. I either can’t drum up the interest in fiction, or I can’t complete the story floating around in my head. It’s felt kind of…pointless?

That’s where my digital graphics have been a boon because they allow me to ‘storyboard when the words won’t come‘. Something about the process of focusing on visual images instead of words gets past the mental block I’ve created. And the proof is that finally, after at least six months of total block, I wrote 273 words yesterday. And I owe each and every word to the graphics I’ve been creating.

Would an AI have been able to break through my writer’s block?

I don’t think so because when it comes to fiction, I’m a pantster, and that means I don’t know what I want, or need, until I’ve created it. So how would I instruct an AI when I don’t know what I want?

Getting back to Diana’s fabulous reference pics, this one is another favourite:

Like all of the reference pics Diana created with the help of an AI, each graphic came after the creation process, not before.

I think that ‘before vs after’ distinction is incredibly important because it means that the AI is still just a tool. Like a pencil, or a pot of paint, or a chisel…it merely translates a mental creation into a visual one. And it still requires skill from the creator.

There’s a saying in old school computing: GIGO – garbage in, garbage out. Diana got beauty out of the AI because she put beauty in.

I can live with that.

Meeks