Tag: just for fun

Restored footage from just after WWI

I don’t know how the YouTube algorithm decides what to show me, but every once and a while something really fascinating shows up in my recommends. This was one of those times. Really excellent job restoring this old footage.

Just for fun: Retroflow 1985

So the YouTube algorithm recently recommended this channel to me called Retroflow 1985. It’s a guy in Germany who puts out these synthwave music videos, with AI-generated artwork (and probably AI-generated music) that feels like it could have come out of the 1980s (hence the term “synthwave”).

I’m not a huge synthwave fan, but I do like this guy’s stuff. More than that, though, I’m fascinated by the fact that he’s put out something like 250 videos since he started his channel six months ago. In fact, he puts out something like 3-5 videos per day, so that the algorithm is constantly recommended new ones to me. Most of them only have a couple of hundred views, but a handful have more than a thousand. As of right now, he has <2k subscribers.

As a fellow creative who is also dabbling with AI, I am really interested to see how this strategy works for him, and where he (or she, I suppose) goes from here. Because we do live in an age where the algorithms determine a lot about what art & entertainment we are exposed to, and how we consume it—and it appears that in many domains (including books, to some extent) you have to churn out a lot of content in order to feed the algorithm.

Or maybe this guy isn’t human at all, but an AI agent creating and publishing this stuff? In which case, it will be even more interesting to see what he/she/it comes up with…

Your taste in AI art can say a lot about you…

So a couple of weeks ago, my wife and I both got into the new trend of using chatgpt to convert photos and images into “studio Ghibli style.” We started with some pictures of ourselves…

We then tried out some of our wedding photos…

And then, we realized that we didn’t have to upload an actual picture–we could actually just tell chatgpt what we wanted it to make, and guide it through the creative process until it made what we were looking for.

On the free version, this is super difficult, because you only get like 3 image generations per day, and you often have to go through several iterations to get what you want.

But both of us have the paid version of chatgpt, me through my writing business, and my wife through her school. So over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been playing around with it quite a lot!

This is the direction I decided to take it…

… And this is the direction my wife decided to take it…

… Needless to say, you can tell a lot about someone by their taste in AI art!

If the Bible had a movie trailer…

The YouTube algorithm recommended this to me this morning, and while it’s very obviously AI (and parts are more than a little cheesy), I’m not gonna lie, it’s kind of awesome. Also, the fact that it’s got more than 120k views in three days is pretty impressive, and a sign that the culture is moving more toward this sort of thing.

Re: DOGE: Five things I accomplished at work last week

  1. I started and finished the rough AI draft of The Unknown Sea, at 54,330 words (cover reveal forthcoming).
  2. I published 14 titles from my backlist on Audible using Amazon’s AI narration system.
  3. I compiled ten years of author’s notes for an upcoming book release.
  4. I developed a magic system for a new fantasy series, where magical powers can only be unlocked through marriage between a man and a women who both have latent abilities.
  5. I workshopped the first three chapters of an unpublished WIP through my writing group, and used their feedback to start outlining my next WIP, a fantasy adaptation of David and Goliath (but with 100% more jackalopes).