AI Got Me

 A few months ago I discovered an app for my phone called "Dream" by Wombo. My eyes were opened to a whole new world of Artificial Intelligence Art. But the art I was generating with Wombo looked like it was a painting, sort of abstract with paintbrush/oil strokes. I began to see different styles popping up around the internet and decided to try different engines. DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, etc... and also using apps like Wonder, Starryai, Nightcafe, Playground.ai, Dawn ai, and many more smaller ones. 

As I began to get more and more interested in it, I started playing with prompts. At first I would choose a pre-loaded style, and type in something like "fox on a bicycle" and see what would happen. Then I started seeing really specific prompts and I loved the result, so what I would do is take parts of other prompts I saw, and add them to my own to see what came out. Now I will say something like, "Red fox on shiny bicycle in the street, medium-shot, golden hour, hyper-detailed, trending on artstation, upscaling, octane render, PS and raw filter." Being very specific with what you're wanting to create, is key. And the more synonyms for an important word that you use, the better chance that word will be represented in your picture. Sometimes you'll put "astronaut with an apple" and ... where's the apple? It isn't there. So I'll put "astronaut with apple, fruit, granny smith, red apple, green apple" (if I didn't care about which color that apple was, of course). 

Since my music persona I created in 2020 is ManiK Fox, I had set up an instagram for UX design using that persona. I never went through with the UX Design thing, so I had an extra Instagram account just sitting there, doing nothing. Now, why not use it for AI Art? Yes. So I have all my work up at instagram, username manikfoxlaughs, if you'd like to take a look. I enjoy participating in daily themed art, from group instagram communities like ai_art_community and others. Each day we vote on a theme, and the next day which ever theme got the most votes, we submit our version of ai art that goes best with that theme. I believe some recent themes have been donut, flower, spider, and now today's is "fear". 

Here's an example of a few of my favorites that I have generated:

It wasn't until just recently I discovered the controversy and backlash against AI. Some people argue that AI is taking away from real artists' work, and soon real artists won't be able to make any money. They say it isn't fair to just type a text prompt and get art immediately. They basically are invalidating AI art. 

Here is my response to that: First of all, I am doing this for my own enjoyment. I am having fun playing around with it to see what I can come up with. I am not making money or getting anything in return for these images. Second, obviously it takes a lot of time, commitment, and work to produce a quality painting using a physical medium. The value and worth of a real painting is so much greater than an internet image, no matter how you look at it. I see these instagram accounts begging for us to submit photos to them so they can get your permission to sell them as NFT, that is kinda dirty, and scammy, and no one likes it. I get asked at least once a day if I'd like to hand over my work so they can make money off them. Of course I ignore that shit. I do NOT believe that anyone should MAKE MONEY off of AI Generated art. It is not too difficult of work, a machine is creating the images for you. 

TL;DR of that paragraph, is that I 100% support AI Generated Art. I do not support making money or selling them as NFT. The only people that should be making money off of their art, are physical medium artists who spend a ton of time perfecting their work, slaving over a canvas (or whatever they are using) to create something only they could ever have imagined. 

That being said, as long as we are just enjoying ourselves and having fun with Ai Art, I have absolutely zero issues with it, and find it to be a cathartic, relaxing endeavor to explore. 

My favorite apps to use for AI are Wonder, and Starryai. I don't "do" discord, so I am not using Midjourney and never have. It is probably the best one based on all the images I have seen, but again... I don't understand Discord. That's "for the children" as Kathleen Madigan, my favorite comedian, would say.

I will now link a few of them for you, if you, Dear Reader, would like to try it out:

Wonder on the app store, Wonder on the Play store

Starryai 

Nightcafe 

Google around to find some prompt websites that will give you some assistance at how to write really great ones, in order to get the image you are wanting. 

And now, enjoy! I mean... I do. 

I Want a New Back

One summer, of 1995 to be exact, when I was 15&16 years old, out of the blue almost, my back started hurting, really badly. Sharp stabbing pains. So my mom put me on her insurance and took me to an Osteopath. They did a fluoroscopy video thingy, and saw that my alignment on almost every vertebrae was out of whack. So they did therapy on me. 

They'd first wrap me in a heated towel for 10 minutes to loosen the muscles, then they'd crack me (what they call "adjust") and then they'd apply the Jack Hammer (that's what the doctor called it, I don't know it's technical term) which would knock my veterbrae back into place. It made it hurt even worse, but they told me in time, it would feel better. 

But.. after going to therapy 3 times a week for 3 months that whole summer, my mom's insurance ran out for it, and I had to stop going. It did feel better though by then, enough to not really bother me as much. 

 

Cut to 2020. We are working remote from home, and there's nowhere to put any desk or anything to sit at for work so we stand at a kitchen island with our laptops. After about 2 months, my back started to ache. It got progressively worse, and a few times I would accidentally tweak it where it would be a sharp pain in my lumbar. 

After moving to STL, we are standing at the same rolling kitchen island cart, but this time it's on concrete floors. So I put therapeutic arch support gel inserts in my shoes when I stand up to work. But my back is now completely fucked.

Every morning I wake out of bed and it's a dull ache, that subsides 40% with 3 Tylenol taken every 4 hours. It aches and aches while I work, so I put on my back brace snugly, which only relives the pain for a short time, maybe 20 minutes. So I put an ice pack on it and strap it around me to relieve the pain which only works maybe 30 minutes. Back and forth like this, all day.

 

And then yesterday, my back ached especially badly. I went to get ready to run on the treadmill, and as I took off my pajama pants, SNAP! Something in my lower lumbar decided it had had enough, and an extremely sharp pain coursed through the area. Now it hurts to move in certain ways. I put a heating pad to it, and ice, and that just made it feel stiff and sore. 

I already have spondylosis in my neck (osteoarthritis) which makes it incredibly stiff, and, in the cold weather, very sore.

I figured by writing this down I could stop thinking about it, and focusing on the pain. Maybe if I just get it all out... get it off of my chest, it will maybe feel better. Like I have the whole story down, no need to think about it. 

We'll see. I know it works for anxiety, maybe it works for pain too. 

I'm not keen on seeing a doctor because I don't have enough $, even with insurance. We got to be looking for houses/apartments to move to soon, in Indy, so we don't have all the money to spend on doctor appointments for my back. I am planning on asking my upcoming GP PCP about maybe cortisone shots or something, we'll see if that helps. She might not though because one wrong move and it's bye-bye to the spinal cord. I'll still ask, though.  

So there it is. I really hope doing stretches, taking tylenol, and icing/heating will eventually help.  

 

Battle For The Best: WIndows Music Player Part 2

 In my last entry (see below), I had pitted AIMP against Winamp and Music Bee. I decided to go with Music Bee, but kept AIMP as a backup. But now... I added another contender to see who would be the best fit for me:

Clementine.

 

I had also used this player, fleetingly, in the past and found it to be rather fun to use. You can change the background or the colors, you can stream internet radio which I love (woot woot Soma.fm!), and you can quickly add your vast library and easily play any music. 

 

As you see, mine is orange. I mean, it's October. Why wouldn't it be?

 

Or maybe you like this better:

 

I might keep this instead of AIMP as my backup. We will see. I have to test the capabilities of the 3 of them even more.