A.C. Flory's Blog, page 9

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

Mogi pics

This is for Marsha who wanted to see what my little chihuahua cross dog looks like.

Mogi as a tiny puppy Pippi and her pillow..ahem I mean her dog. Pippi is no longer with us, but of all the cats, she was the one who loved Mogi the most. Be sure to get my good side

cheers,
Meeks

The Wet

Far northern Australia is close to the equator and experiences just two seasons: the Wet and the Dry. As the names imply, when it’s Dry it’s very dry, and when it’s Wet, you get torrential rains and flooding:

This handout photo taken on March 10, 2023 and received on March 11, 2023 from the Queensland Police Service shows an aerial view of the flooded northern Queensland town of Burketown.

Image courtesy of: https://gdb.voanews.com/01000000-0aff-0242-5476-08db22a1bf0a_w1023_r1_s.jpg

Growing up in Australia, floods and fires were part of my world view, so it’s no surprise that my imaginary planet, Vokhtah, experiences extremes of weather too. During Kohoh, torrential rain falls for about 80 days. Rivers overflow and low lying plains flood until water laps at the feet of the mountains:

So what happens to the Tukti? They live on the plains and burrow down into the ground. Where do they go when their burrows fill with water?

When I first started thinking about the Tukti, they were only bit players in the story of Vokhtah, so I didn’t nut out the details of their lives. Now that I’m writing about Little Miss and Big Brother though, these questions demand answers.

Well, two days ago I finally saw the obvious: the Tukti don’t just burrow down, they also burrow up, into the mushroom shaped top of their mounds!

When their normal burrows flood, they move up into their emergency quarters, which also happen to be their storage caverns. Space is always tight, and sometimes the food runs out, leaving the Tukti of the mound to starve.

Most years though, the Tukti survive far better than animals like the plains runners. The Akaht [similar in appearance to emus] that don’t drown are forced to compete for dry space with animals like the To’pak which eat Akaht for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In the worst seasons, only the incredibly tough eggs of the Akaht survive to restart the great herds.

I only just worked that out too.

As epiphanies go, these two were so obvious, I’m ashamed it took me so long to get that ‘ah hah!’ moment. Now that I have though, I’m thrilled that two more ‘facts’ have slotted so neatly into place.

cheers,
Meeks