Archive for March 16th, 2023

2023/03/16

Stills from the Cult Hit of 1977!

Lost for decades, now rediscovered and presented here for the first time!

A handsome young man with a 70's haircut. Behind him, blurred by depth of field, are more young 70's style people and some trees and grass.
Mike and the Gang
A man in an odd leather helmet working in some odd devices (perhaps small bombs), in a room with a harsh light and a couple of mysterious racks.
The Mysterious Mr. G in his Secret Lab
Four 70s style people, two men in suits and two young blonde women. The man and woman in the foreground are talking on bakelite telephones, sitting at a table crowded with 70s looking technology (perhaps modems).
The legal team in action
Three women in white nun's habits sitting around a table in a room with leaded-glass windows, doing something enigmatic. Behind them on the wall is a portrait of a man with a large sword or something.
What is happening at St. Agnes?
Five 70's style people standing outdoors. At our left a man with a typical moustache and "soul patch". With him four young women with long straight hair.
The Outsiders
Three people, a man and two women, in white kitchen attire (the women with hats, all three with shirts and probably aprons) sit around a silver cylindrical machine of some kind. The women are holding orange objects
In the kitchen at St. Agnes
Four 70s style people, a man in an orange jumpsuit in the back, and three women in white gradually closer to us. The women have long straight blonde hair, and white clothing. Each of the women has a white cloth cap, or part of one, on her head.
Under Control
Close-up of a man's face. He has a 70's mustache, and 70's sunglasses. There are other people barely visible behind him (his face takes up almost the entire image).
The Discovery!

Courtesy, of course, of the early v5 version of Midjourney.

2023/03/16

So much new!

As I’m sure you’ve heard there’s a new level of GPT in the world. Friend Steve has been playing with it, and says that it does seem to do some stuff better, but also still make stuff up amusingly and all. At the moment for whatever reason I can’t be arsed to investigate, or even read yet more hype / analysis about it. Similarly, Google announced a thing, and Microsoft is putting LLMs into various products whose names I don’t recognize, and I’m not reading about any of that. NovelAI‘s good old open-source model works fine for all of the telling-weird-stories stuff that I need right now.

And there’s a test version of a new Midjourney engine out! Being tested! And it seems pretty cool. Hands in particular seem much more likely to have five fingers when you’d expect them too, which is a whole thing.

And I spent too much time arguing with people on the Twitter, which isn’t at all new. And I definitely shouldn’t do because it is not healthy. So I’m trying to stop that.

Now I’m just making pretty pictures! And not thinking very much until later on sometime!

A black and white photo of grassy prairie land with hills in the distance. The sky is thick with storm clouds, and two long bolts of lightning reach from the clouds to the horizon.
Colorful artistic image of a city street in the rain, with a woman in a raincoat and umbrella walking away from the viewer, and lots of cars and buses and traffic lights and things. There are impressionistic reflections in the wet pavement.
A photo of trees standing apart from each other, all thickly covered with snow, in a snowy landscape. A sunburst shines at the center of the image, and above and around it is a plume of bright cloud or ice.

Lots of weather in those, eh? Hadn’t noticed that. :)