Category Archives: technology

My Cyborg Friend

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Today I downloaded Stable Diffusion which is an open text-to-image technology from Stability.ai that can render images on your own computer.  You need a heavy duty graphics card but it’s free to use.  The technology is open and many other start-ups are incorporating it into their systems including Midjourney which I have been very impressed with.

It’s early days and some of the installation methods are technically complicated (“step one: install Python programing language…” etc.) but I found a user interface project – Stable Diffusion UI – that has a “1 click” installer for Windows.  It was a little more than one click, but I managed and now I’m rendering away testing it out.

portrait_photo_of_a_cyborg_with_electronic_brain_a_a8795619My initial impression is that it’s not as good as Midjourney, not as artistic or flexible.  The resolution is lower, 1024 x 1024 is the largest available in the drop down menu, at least in the GUI that I installed.  I’ve also discovered that it has a tendency to create double headed characters if you use any resolution over 512 x 512.  Apparently the AI was trained at that resolution and if you try something larger it tries to fill the space by duplicating things.  Like I said, it’s early days.

I’m still very impressed though.  I’ve only tried copying and pasting some of my midjourney prompts which were of course optimized for a different system.  I have yet to spend time figuring out all the controls and I’m still getting some interesting images.  They render fast, within a minute or two on my system which has nVidia Titan RTX graphics cards.

More to come…

Today I let Artificial Intelligence draw what it wants

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I’m continuing to check out art created by artificial intelligence at craiyon.com.  You type in some words and the AI creates nine pictures from the prompt.

Yesterday I was trying to see if the AI could capture emotion on a face.  It took some iterations but the answer?  YES.  A big yes.  The final few renders were amazing.  Here’s an example that I didn’t post yesterday:

the face of a cyborg overwhelmed with love in a painterly style

craiyon_070222_the_face_of_a_cyborg_overwhelmed_with_love_in_a_painterly_style_br_To get a good result the AI needed lots of very specific text telling it what to do and lots of trial and error to find the right words.  The AI needed to understand the meaning and context of the words correctly.  When it didn’t things fell apart and became superficial and symbolic, like bland clip-art.

But what if I started from scratch and gave the AI as little direction as possible?  Where would it go?  Will anything dramatic come out?

Lets begin with one word:

face

craiyon_160707_face_br_OK, not bad.  Since I’m giving as little direction as possible, I’ll do two renders of every prompt just to see more variation.

craiyon_160948_face_br_There’s some drawing style in this second one but essentially the same theme.

a face

craiyon_160826_a_face_br_craiyon_161121_a_face_br_Things are already getting super cool and abstract.  Let’s keep going…

the face

craiyon_161344_the_face_br_craiyon_161538_the_face_br_Changing the article seems to change the style.  There’s an interesting lack of color in most of the pictures.  I also get an old silent motion picture vibe… maybe even some German Expressionism.

These are all wonderfully artistic with deep expression and dramatic lighting.  They are way, way beyond the bland images I was expecting.

my face

craiyon_161651_my_face_br_craiyon_161924_my_face_br_That changed the style quite a bit probably because the craiyon AI is now referencing all the selfie avatars of the world.  That large pictorial reference contaminates this minimalist experiment a bit I think.  And what’s up with all the messed up noses?    Anyway, continuing on…

your face

craiyon_161804_your_face_br_craiyon_162343_your_face_br_The thing I find interesting here is that “my face” really injected a sense of photo realism because of the selfie avatars but “your face” leans more toward cartoon drawings.

her face

craiyon_162609_her_face_br_craiyon_162842_her_face_br_Not sure what to think here.  The middle bottom of the first render is really creepy with what looks like a two fingered hand.

his face

craiyon_163020_his_face_br_craiyon_163138_his_face_br_This is getting very strange.  Do I see monkeys in some of these?

its face

craiyon_163306_its_face_br_craiyon_163414_its_face_br_Definitely seeing monkeys again.

our face

craiyon_163542_our_face_br_craiyon_163748_our_face_br_These are wonderful.  Boy, if you ever need a creepy avatar for something, craiyon is the place to go.

no face

craiyon_164425_no_face_br_Uh oh… There’s a relatively well known character called “no face” in the animated film Spirited Away.  Craiyon has choked and reverted to referencing character images as well as using symbols for concepts like the red circle with a line for “no.”  It’s also bringing in a t-shirt again presumably because somewhere the no face character is for sale on t-shirts.  This is definitely a fail for the AI.  I should go back to something that worked, but first I absolutely must try the opposite of this prompt…

yes face

craiyon_164600_yes_face_br_Oh no!  Emojis!  The ultimate symbol for emotions.  Super FAIL!  OK fun’s over.  Time to get back to the good stuff.  Lets go back to something that looked artistic and dramatic…

a face

craiyon_165427_a_face_br_I see people specifying different “Iterations” on Craiyon.  Not sure what it does but I’m going to try it.

a face, iteration x

craiyon_165614_a_face__iteration_7_br_Hmmm… Flat abstract line drawings.  Let’s try a few more…

craiyon_165730_a_face__iteration_237_br_craiyon_165900_a_face__iteration_3_br_craiyon_170007_a_face__iteration_2_br_I’m not sure why all these are line drawings now.  I’ll have to read up on what “iterations” do.  Maybe I should try something more descriptive to add, like trying to make it a pencil sketch.

a face, sketchy

craiyon_170213_a_face__sketchy_br_Not bad.  The single word “sketchy” could be taken several ways, but it understood what I meant.  Not a bad sketch top middle either, for an AI that usually makes horrible faces.  What other description can we try?

a face, shadowy

craiyon_170450_a_face__shadowy_br_WOW!!!  I need to try a few more of these!

craiyon_171154_a_face__shadowy__iteration_7_br_craiyon_171340_a_face__shadowy__iteration_36_br_craiyon_171649_a_face__shadowy__iteration_237_br_Amazing!  Dramatic!  Haunting!  I could play with this all day!

Check out Craiyon for yourself at craiyon.com.

1st Tesla Model 3 Road Trip!! – Where’s the Juice?

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Our first long trip with our new Tesla Model 3 (December 2018) We try auto pilot and juice up with a super-charger for the first time! It’s an electric motoring adventure!!  We visit The Roscoe Diner in Roscoe, NY (The Roscoe charging station was finished in February 2019.) …and The Spot Diner in Binghamton NY.

update:  100,000 views in 90 days on YouTube!  Not bad.  Lots of comments on the video though.  Here are answers to some of the most common questions:

The car is dual motor (AWD) with the extend range battery, auto pilot, and 19 inch wheels.

We stopped in Binghamton twice to charge up. It took about twenty minutes each time. The first time was when the battery was lower the cost was $8.64. The second time on the way back it was $3.60. (When your battery is relatively full the charging goes much slower.) You don’t need a credit card. The charger recognizes your car and bills your Tesla account directly. The price shows up on the screen inside the car. 6:47

We were following the Roscoe super charger construction for a long time. The only information on the Tesla page for completion was “forth quarter 2018.” Since it was the end of the year and we were stopping anyway we gave it a shot.

The video was mostly shot with a sony a6000 with a sony ecm-xyst1m mic on top. Some of it was shot with a GoPro when the sony batteries died.

 

Copying is not Stealing

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Deviant Art - The Art Theft Discussion 640The art website Deviant Art has started a discussion on Art Theft with eight articles on Copyright infringement and related topics that effect digital artists on the internet.  Based on the comments, the articles are extremely controversial, especially the one on Stealing, where they separate the concept of stealing from copyright infringement.  I’m glad to see this.  Copying may be wrong or even illegal, but it’s not stealing.  Stealing is taking something away from someone.  When a copy is made the person still has the original.  If we’re going to build a future in our changing times where artists are paid and treated fairly, then we are going to have to start by being specific about what we are talking about.  Words have meanings.

About 15 years ago the music industry went bananas over Napster and started the incessant drumbeat claiming that copying and stealing are the same thing.  Now there is a generation of people who can’t tell the difference and I can see a lot of that in the angry comments on Deviant Art.  But the music companies didn’t want to build a future for artists.  They wanted everything to stay the same so they could keep their revenue streams.  They just wanted people to stop copying so they came up with a dramatic short cut to re-frame the discussion and shut it down.  Copying is stealing and that’s that.  Well it’s not, and the reality is much more complicated.

And change isn’t going to stop either.  As artists we need to take charge of this discussion because it’s up to us to build the future for ourselves.  Let’s say what we mean and mean what we say, and not fall into the trap of using language that was designed to stop the discussion and stop change.

The e-mail I just sent to the FCC

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Dear Chairman Genachowski and Commissioners Copps, McDowell, Clyburn, and Baker:

My name is Eric Susch.  I have been producing an internet video show called Let’s Knit2gether for over four years now.

http://LetsKnit2gether.com/

I’m the little guy, the small business person who always gets mentioned in the abstract but who rarely gets a chance to speak for himself directly.  I, and many others like me, are trying to pioneer a new form of video entertainment and information exchange, outside the traditional forms of movies and television that are dominated by large conglomerates.  This new cottage industry needs Net Neutrality desperately to survive.  We’re in direct competition with large companies like Comcast Cable and Time-Warner just as blogs were in competition with newspapers and magazines six or seven years ago.  Because the net was “neutral” back then, blogs (for good or bad) were able to broaden the scope of the marketplace and bring information and opinion to the public at large that the big media news organizations weren’t.  That’s what we are doing in the video space.  We are creating video content that big companies don’t want to take a risk on and we’re delivering that content to millions of viewers who thank us every day for providing something new and different.  Please don’t shut down this new innovative marketplace by giving those who control the wires of the internet the power to discriminate against certain data.  The consumer’s and the producers should decide what content is readily available, not the middle-men who control the wires.

I share the concerns that Union Square Ventures has outlined on its blog:

http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2010/12/an-applications-agnostic-approach.php

I urge you to work together in the coming weeks to improve this proposal along the lines described in their post.  I support your effort to create an application-agnostic regulatory framework for the Internet.

Sincerely,
Eric Susch

Is YouTube search weighted in favor of big media companies?

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Check out the related videos that are presented after watching an acoustic version of Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? on YouTube.

The big budget movie “Avatar” gets the top three spots. Why? The official music video version of Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? has almost the exact same title and also has WAY more views than any of the other three, yet it gets bumped to fourth position. The movie “Avatar” only matches one word in the title of the current video but it gets the top three spots. I sense something fishy. Are small independent producers getting pushed down in the rankings in favor of companies like 20th Century Fox? It looks like it to me.

all your technology are belong to us!

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All this is mine!

VoloMedia announced today that it has been awarded what it calls the “patent for podcasting.” OK, whatever. Podcasting is so last Tuesday but the government takes a long, long time to approve these things so, what’s this all about. Turns out it was an application from 2003 that doesn’t even mention the word “podcasting” (because the word hadn’t been invented yet.) I think then it’s a bit disingenuous for the company to say it’s the patent for podcasting in the title of their announcement about it. It looks to me like they might be trying to make claims after the fact.

And who is this VoloMedia? I’ve been podcasting for three years. I speak at technology conferences about it. I’ve never heard of VoloMedia until today.

OK so what does the patent claim actually say? Here are the details from VoloMedia’s website. (See you on the other side of this quote. Don’t get lost on the way 😉

For reference, below are the claims issued under U.S. patent 7,568,213:

1. A method for providing episodic media, the method comprising: providing a user with access to a channel dedicated to episodic media, wherein the episodic media provided over the channel is pre-defined into one or more episodes by a remote publisher of the episodic media; receiving a subscription request to the channel dedicated to the episodic media from the user; automatically downloading updated episodic media associated with the channel dedicated to the episodic media to a computing device associated with the user in accordance with the subscription request upon availability of the updated episodic media, the automatic download occurring without further user interaction; and providing the user with: an indication of a maximum available channel depth, the channel depth indicating a size of episodic media yet to be downloaded from the channel and size of episodic media already downloaded from the channel, the channel depth being specified in playtime or storage resources, and the ability to modify the channel depth by deleting selected episodic media content, thereby overriding the previously configured channel depth.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising automatically providing the user with an indication of the availability of updated episodic media via the channel dedicated to the episodic media in accordance with the subscription request.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising synchronizing the updated episodic media automatically downloaded to the computing device associated with the user with a portable computing device communicatively coupled to the computing device associated with the user.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein synchronization of the updated episodic media automatically occurs in response to a predetermined user setting.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein synchronization of the updated episodic media occurs in response to a request received from the user.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the updated episodic media is made available to users not associated with the computing device over a local area network.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the automatic download is further based on a priority assigned to the channel.

8. The method of claim 3, wherein the channel dedicated to the episodic media is reduced in size during synchronization in order to fit available cache storage within the portable device.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the channel dedicated to the episodic media is modified in size by removing one or more episodes of episodic media.

What a bunch of vague gobbly-gook. This patent claim could apply to iTunes, my DVR… heck it could even apply to Twitter and Facebook. There’s no mention of an RSS feed at all which is essential for a podcast. I don’t think this patent is enforceable but they could certainly cause trouble for a lot of people.

What’s happening here reminds me of what happened a hundred years ago to the emerging motion picture industry. Several companies got together and formed the “Edison Trust” and tried to control the industry with their patents. The “independents” as they were called (the ones shut out of the trust) moved to the west coast to get as far away from the trust as they could. They concentrated on story and longer feature length films that were easier to market. In the end “content” beat out the control of the technology.

So, what does it all mean? Tom Webster over at Edison research has some good thoughts. Leesa Barnes over at Marketing Fit weighs in as well. But all in all, Alex Lindsay from Pixel Corps may have said it best on twitter:

OK… whoever approved this at the Patent Office… I want my tax dollars back for your salary… youre an idiot.

Yep.