A.C. Flory's Blog, page 7

Digital Collage – inspired by nature

This is a graphic of the Six in the air, banking as it spots prey on the ground. Getting the sense of movement right has been hell. After multiple attempts, all of which felt ‘wrong’, I went online searching for images of birds doing what I imagine the Six is doing. This is what finally did the trick:

Compensating for two sets of arms and wings shaped a bit like those of a bat was tricky, and I’m still not sure the bones are in exactly the right place, but the sense of movement is finally how it should be. My thanks to that beautiful eagle!

And this is what the image is made of:

All of those pieces – except for the watermark – come from this free image I sourced from, I think, Pixabay:

I’ve used very little of the actual image. Instead, I used it as a pallet of colours and textures and light and shade. Then, I layered the snippets one on top of the other, all by hand, before adding transparent bits to blend the colours together.

I suspect that graphical AI, like Midjourney, use a similar technique, but the difference is that I only use free images, and I quote my source when I do posts like this. The photographers who give their art for free, for other humans to use, should be thanked, not exploited. <>

cheers,
Meeks

In Solidarity with LA

I’ve been quiet the last few days because I’ve been obsessed with the fires in LA. Watching the flames and storm of embers has brought back memories of Australia’s own Black Summer, and before that, my State’s horrendous Black Saturday. The parallels are chilling: long drought and then ferocious winds to send embers kilometres in front of the fire front. Devastation in its wake.

After Black Saturday, I remember the awful feeling of guilt that Warrandyte survived because the wind change sent the fire away from us to devastate someone else’s town, someone else’s home. So like every other Victorian, I donated food at the supermarket, hay to feed the animals left without anything to eat, money to help ease the pain.

Was it enough? Of course not, not for people who had lost everything. Never enough. But I hoped that they felt some of the love that prompted each donation. Because they were loved. Everyone knew at least one person directly affected by the fire. For me, it was the doctor whose friend died in the blaze, and the vet nurse who fought for days without sleep to protect her home, and the famous newsreader who died in Kinglake.

Real people, real pain.

So now there is another state suffering, and if anyone knows what that feels like, it’s us. My donation is tiny because that is all I can afford, but I sent it with love.

If any other Aussies want to donate this crowd seem to be legit:

https://www.calfund.org/funds/wildfire-recovery-fund/

When you click on the donate button you’re taken to a page where you can select what currency you want to use and how much you want to send. You can donate in US dollars but I recommend changing the currency to AUD for two reasons:

you won’t have to worry about the currency conversion and,so that Angelenos can see that Australians care too

The realtime, scrolling list on the right will show the country of origin if you donate in your own currency. You can choose to have your name displayed or donate anonymously:

If you can, please donate something so that those who’ve lost everything know that they are loved, even on the other side of the Pacific.

Meeks

Do you remember this?

If you’re my vintage, this song and the video clip from the movie ‘Chariots of Fire’ will be forever etched into your memory, along with the name Vangelis. But what does a modern composer of soundtracks and, well, pop have to do with NASA, Mars and two of my all-time, favourite female opera singers?

The answer is ‘Mythodea – music for the NASA Mission Mars Odyssey 2001 with Jessye Norman a Kathleen Battle (At The Temple of Zeus – Athens)‘. That’s Jessye Norman on the left and Kathleen Battle on the right. Some of you may remember Kathleen Battle from my post about Turandot.

Anyway, even if you hate opera, please… close your eyes and just listen to the music in the video below:

If Mythodea didn’t give you goosebumps you must be as deaf as a post!

-cough- sorry, the fangirl got the better of me…

Seriously though, I hope you enjoyed these two very different, and yet incredibly uplifting pieces of music as much as I did.

cheers,
Meeks

When making mistakes is a good thing

I’ve been learning how to create videos for about two years now, and I’m getting fairly good at it…but I still only learn new things on a ‘need to know’ basis. After all, why drive yourself nuts if you don’t need to, right?

-mutters- Yes and no.

If you’re happy doing the same thing, over and over again, then making mistakes can be a terrifying and completely negative experience. But the truth is that mistakes force you to overcome inertia. They force you to seek out new solutions, or re-jig existing ones. They force you out of your nice, comfortable rut, and sometimes, what you find out there is so much better than what you had.

As you’ve probably guessed, this exact same scenario happened to me today. I made a mistake right at the start of my latest project, and by the time I realised how much of a problem it would become, I’d already spent hours editing. I won’t bore you with a blow by blow description of what I finally discovered, but I will say that it’s shown me some fixes I wasn’t even aware of before.

So if you’re not interested in gaming or videos, you can leave now. Otherwise you’re welcome to watch a short video [31/2 minutes] which looks simple, but wasn’t.

Have a great weekend everyone,

cheers,
Meeks

ChatGPT is not an ‘intelligence’

I found this Short on Youtube just now, and it highlights just how very not intelligent AI is. In this example, it’s ChatGPT but the principle behind it is the same for the others:

Statistically, there are far more pictures of watches showing 10:10 than there are of watches showing other times. Ditto for pictures of hands writing: they are almost all of the right hand, not the left. And these Large Language Models [LLMs] use the values provided by statistics – from the internet – for their answers to questions. But statistics, especially on the internet, can be horribly skewed, sometimes by accident, often by malicious intent.

Let me repeat that, statistics on the internet can be horribly skewed by malicious intent. So how will we ever be able to trust the hallucinations provided by so-called ‘AI’?

Meeks

The Washington Post gags political cartoonist

I’ve long known that Newscorpse is simply a tool for Murdoch’s politics, but I actually believed that the Washington Post had more integrity. I actually believed that the Washington Post had balls. So wrong.

Today, I’m reblogging Jill Dennison’s post because she shines a spotlight on Ann Telnaes, a political cartoonist who had the balls to quit the Washington Post when her cartoon – featuring Jeff Bezos amongst other bastards – was pulled BECAUSE IT SHOWED BEZOS IN A BAD LIGHT.

In her explanation, Ann Telnaes says that she doesn’t think her stand will make much of a difference because she’s ‘only a cartoonist’. Please, every writer out there, in every English speaking country on this planet, please…prove to the world that Ann Telnaes’ integrity matters. That we care. And that every person who enjoys the benefits of living in a democracy cares too.

Please click the reblog link below to read the entire, shameful truth about the Washington Post, and by extension, it’s owner, Jeff Bezos:

A Free Press Hero — Ann Telnaes

Terraforming in the real world

Terraforming is a familiar concept in science fiction and refers to the process of changing an alien planet to more closely resemble our own Earth. But in Africa, simple physics and people power are already changing dead land into ‘livable’ land.

This incredible, terraforming effort is occurring just south of the Sahara desert, in a region called the Sahel.

The Sahel is like a buffer zone between the Sahara to the north, and the more lush, arable land to the south. Unfortunately, the Sahara is creeping further and further into the Sahel, and one day all of northern Africa will be a dead zone.

The reasons for the desertification of the Sahel are complex but essentially boil down to climate. Nine months of the year, the region receives no rain, the soil cracks and the top soil blows away. Then for three months of the year, the Sahel gets a Wet, but because the soil has been so degraded, the rain can’t soak in. Instead, it floods and washes away whatever managed to survive during the last Dry:

This cycle of Wet and Dry is slowly turning the Sahel into an extension of the Sahara. To combat this desertification, and to allow the people of the region to feed themselves, a mammoth project is creating a Great Green Wall in the Sahel. And this incredible terraforming project is being done using simple physics, and people power. Lots and lots of people power:

The technique described in the video involves digging thousands of small, half-moon shaped ponds, surrounded by small ‘sink holes’, to catch and retain the water that scours the land during the brief Wet:

And each half moon is dug by hand, using the most basic of tools.

The result of all this effort is that roughly 500,000 people no longer need to be given food in order to survive. They have created a green zone in which they can feed themselves. This is one of the most amazing feats of human resilience and determination I have ever seen, and it’s a lesson other countries need to learn. That includes my own country, Australia.

Aussie farmers have to stop treating the land as a resource and start treating it as if it were one of their livestock. No farmer would willingly allow their livestock to starve, yet every time they cut down a stand of trees, they are effectively starving the soil. When the soil starves, the smaller plants die too. Their roots shrivel up and can no longer hold the top soil in place. Then the winds come, or a big flood, and that loose soil is washed away, paving the way for real desert to take over.

Most Australians live in the lush green strip of land around the coastline of this island continent, but we know what the middle of the country looks like, and it’s a lot like the Sahel. In spots, it’s just like the Sahara.

This is the Painted Desert in South Australia:

Not all of Australia looks like this, and not all of the world is covered in desert, but we humans are definitely having an impact, and most of the time, that impact is destructive.

If we want to keep living on this planet, we really do have to stop shitting in our own backyard. Happy 2025.

Meeks

Happy New Year 2025

It’s early morning, December 31, 2024 here in Australia, so I’m a little early, but I’d like to wish everyone a safe and happy New Year’s Eve. And I sincerely hope that tomorrow will be the start of a better year.

Massive hugs,
Meeks

Something to make you smile for Xmas. :)

This is what humans can do, and AI can’t : heart.

Have a wonderful Holiday everyone. See you on the other side.

-hugs and kisses-
Meeks

Youtube will uphold copyright…if you demand it

The following video is by a young artist who had her work stolen from her Youtube channel. At roughly the 5 minute and 8 minute marks, she provides incredibly valuable information about what you can do to protect your work. More importantly, she says that after she assembled her proofs – screenshots etc – and contacted Youtube about the copyright theft…they took the offending video DOWN. No ifs, no buts.

I’m not sure I’ll ever consider myself to be an ‘artist’, but I do value the digital art that I create, and I have been worried about posting my creations online for fear that they would be sucked up to feed some voracious AI. Well, this video shows that it can happen, but it also shows that we have legal options open to us.

I consider this video to be one of the most valuable learning tools I’ve ever come across. I hope you find it valuable too.

cheers,
Meeks